Building Safety Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Report stage
Tuesday 29th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Prashar (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Crisp. In so doing, I declare that I am a trustee of the Nationwide Foundation, which supports the TCPA’s Healthy Homes Act campaign. I shall not detain the House for too long other than to reiterate the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, who introduced the amendment admirably. This is a simple but profound amendment that should be taken note of. As we have heard, we already have a great deal of evidence about the impact of housing on both health and education—Covid highlighted all of that—and how that contributes to inequalities in health. For all those reasons, it is important that we take note of the amendment and make sure that it is incorporated, whether into this Bill or a planning Bill, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, said. One cannot fault the logic of what has been recommended, so I strongly support the amendment and look forward to the Minister’s response. I also urge him to agree to meet some of us to see how this issue can be taken forward.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I offer Green support for all these amendments, which have been so powerfully and comprehensively introduced. I am not going to go over any of the same ground but shall focus particularly on Amendment 2 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, with full cross-party backing, particularly the wording,

“‘safety’ means the risk of harm arising from the location … of buildings”.

In some ways that might be seen to deliver the aims of two amendments that I tabled in Committee but have not brought back on Report, Amendments 132A and 132B, which would have delivered what has been called Zane’s law, targeting the issue of contaminated land and the risks that such land may represent to residents and others in nearby buildings. For those who do not know, Zane’s law refers to the tragic child Zane Gbangbola, who died and whose father was disabled when flooding carried contaminants from nearby land into their home.

If we had a safe location for every building, that would seem to deal with the issue. However, looking at our debate in Committee, I note that the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, kindly offered support for amendments in this direction. What she said then clearly sets out the problem:

“If we can identify the size and scale in every part of the country where contamination is, that would be a very logical starting point to prevent future risk to life and support local authorities in tackling the whole issue of contamination”.


In responding, the Minister suggested that the Building Safety Bill was not the right place to bring in Zane’s law because it would take the focus away from the environment and put it only on buildings. I think that she was right in that supposition, which is why I have not brought the amendments back now; the planning Bill, if indeed we see one, may well be the place to do that. However, where I disagree with the Minister—she was responding to my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, who kindly introduced these amendments as I could not be present—is where she noted that Section 143 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990

“was repealed, but it was replaced by Part IIA of the Environmental Protection Act 1990”.—[Official Report, 2/3/22; cols. GC 333-34.]

However, that was a significant downgrading of the protection and the powers offered by local authorities. It is worth looking at what was known as, perhaps rather unfortunately, the Red Tape Challenge: Environment Theme Proposals from March 2012, which effectively downgraded three-quarters of environmental regulation. Those changes to the guidelines said that they were

“anticipated to save business £140 million a year by reducing uncertainty about when land needs to be remediated”.

“Reducing uncertainty” is a phrase that needs to be re-examined and reconsidered.

I commend all the amendments, particularly Amendment 2, which focuses on the issue of the safe location of buildings. A great deal of regulatory work would have to be done to deliver that, which would include Zane’s law. If this becomes part of the Bill, the Government would have to look at that, but it would be a big step forward if we focused adequately on ensuring that—in this age of the Anthropocene and the climate emergency, in which new risks are emerging that were not present before—no one has a home or building in a place that is dangerous.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I will briefly speak to support the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, and declare an interest as chair of Oxford University’s Commission on Creating Healthy Cities. I also declare my interest as a vice-president of the Town and Country Planning Association.

An obvious case of building safety impacting on health and well-being is surely the permitted development rights regime. Submissions to the Oxford Commission on Creating Healthy Cities have revealed widespread condemnation of the appalling building standards allowed via permitted development rights, which permit conversions of commercial and industrial buildings into accommodation without the need for normal planning consents. This has led to the creation of some ghastly, substandard new slums often on non-residential business parks full of safety hazards, with no facilities, no play areas for children and danger from traffic. Research at University College London reveals that a very large proportion of the well over 100,000 homes delivered through these permitted development rights have been substandard.

I am pleased that there has now been some regulatory change and requirements for at least some natural light and minimum space standards. However, this controversy has highlighted the importance of adequate space, sufficient daylight, protection from noise and a surrounding environment that is not hostile and unhealthy. That underlines the need for bringing together housing and health issues under the banner of minimum standards that recognise the broader definition of safety in the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Crisp. This would engage the new regulator in the process and require attention to be paid to health and well-being as essential aspects of the homes that we build and the places that we make. I support Amendment 2.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 264 in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Pinnock, which would require a report on the built environment industry workforce that takes into account various factors. I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, that this is very much a probing amendment; we certainly do not intend to press it today.

However, we need to give this issue an airing. The whole pyramid on which this Bill is constructed depends on that bottom level: the workforce who will deliver it. We know that there is a grievous shortage of fire risk assessors, not least because the fire risk assessor who assessed Grenfell Tower was an unqualified, off-duty firefighter who made up the qualification letters that he put after his name when he applied for the job with the tenant management organisation. That evidence was given in phase 1 of the Grenfell inquiry.

We know that the Government have made strenuous efforts to get fire assessment training going but there is every indication that there is not enough and that, when this regime comes into force—we all want to see this as soon as possible—there will be a shortage of fire risk assessors. Earlier today, wearing his fire responsibilities hat via the Home Office, the Minister made the point that one of the jobs in the fire and rescue service is to upskill staff to gain the competences they need to fulfil their functions of realistically assessing risks and remedies in the duties they undertake. We think that there needs to be a clear plan for developing training for and upskilling the people taking on the new roles in this Bill. There is a whole series of new posts, including accountable persons and responsible persons—not to mention the safety regulator staffing itself—and we need some assurance that the Government are clear on all of them and have a laser-like focus on producing the answers that are needed. This is against the background of an industry that employs 2 million people, has 90,000 sole traders operating on the ground and in many ways, as we have discussed, has a dysfunctional contracting model. It certainly has low productivity and very poor standards of delivery of outcome.

The amendment may or may not be over-elaborate. I hope that it would be a work plan that someone is working on, even if it should not be in the Bill. I really want to hear the Minister give an account of how a work plan such as this is in fact going forward. If not, we will certainly be snapping at his heels over the coming months. Much more seriously than that, he will find that there will be the gravest difficulty in implementing the Bill, which is what we all want to see, on the shortest possible timescale.

I am the resident pointing at the hole in the road and saying to the contractor, “Please come and fill in this hole”. That is what this amendment is about.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I want briefly, having just had a signal on those lines, to offer Green support for all the amendments. I will speak only to Amendment 261 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath. I commend him on his long work in this area.

I am perhaps a little less charitable to the Government than him about where things are now. Just this afternoon, while we were debating the second group of amendments, the Green Alliance put out a new report, Cutting the Cost of Living with a Green Economy. It has some figures that are interesting and helpful for this debate. It points out that the cuts to energy efficiency subsidies and the scrapping of the zero-carbon homes policy over the past decade saw the installation rate of home insulation and energy measures go from 2.3 million in 2012 to 230,000 in 2013—a rate that has continued since.

This addresses the question that the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, just asked about what we can do and whether it is possible to step up again. We have done this in the past; we can do this in future. The noble Baroness expressed concern about a lack of costing for that. The Green Alliance report points out that, if we followed Amendment 261, through insulating 15.3 million homes, it would save them all £511 a year after the April price cap rise. For the country, that is £7.8 billion a year, mostly in fossil fuel.

Looking again at the costing, the Great Homes Upgrade plan, put together by the New Economics Foundation along with 28 organisations, shows that spending £11.7 billion over this Parliament could raise 7 million homes up to this standard by 2025. As the noble Lord, Lord Foster, said, this is very much a health and safety issue. We have set the standard of zero carbon by 2050. That is a target for the environment; this is a target for people’s health. Surely we can have both health and environment targets that so crucially fit together.

[The Earl of Courtown (Con)]

My Lords, taking the time into consideration, I beg to move that we adjourn the debate on this amendment and that consideration on Report be adjourned until after the Urgent Question.

Building Safety Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 2nd February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I believe I can make this a full cross-House welcome for the Bill—rather a rare occurrence. I join others in warmly welcoming the tone of the Minister’s speech. With its regular repeats of the campaigners’ hashtag “polluter pays” and the promise to take on board proposed amendments from your Lordships’ House, it truly is a breath of fresh air. I can only congratulate the Minister and the Government.

I note how this shows that campaigning works. After uncountable long hours of effort from affected residents, petitioning, marching, letter-writing and social media campaigning, the people who, through no fault of their own, find themselves in unsafe, faulty, terrible standard buildings are today being heard in your Lordships’ House. I hope that they will get some sense of repayment from that. If only the residents of Grenfell —who before the terrible tragedy tried so hard to get officialdom to listen to their safety concerns—had been listened to, then 72 people might be alive today. There is a lesson there that I hope Ministers will take note off. Experts by experience are indeed experts about their lives and environment and need to be listened to.

As so many speeches thus far have demonstrated, there is much to do in improving the Bill, ensuring that it covers all the dangerous buildings that it should, particularly those occupied by vulnerable residents, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, highlighted, as well as the crucial issue of fire doors, as highlighted by the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, and many others. What could be more basic and surely solvable than that? As many other noble Lords have noted, a lot of the focus has been specifically on cladding, but there are so many other issues, and it is crucial that the Bill does not become overly focused on cladding at the cost of those other issues. Following on from the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, who talked about fire suppression systems, there has often been an ideological resistance in the UK to sprinklers, but we really need to rethink that for many types of buildings. On the structure of the Bill, the idea that housebuilders will just hand over their ill-gotten gains to cover the damages at the Government’s request is surely a fantasy. The Bill needs to demand full, complete recompense.

However, rather than running down the already well-travelled list of the ways in which this Bill needs to be improved, I will briefly take a broader view. I cannot help thinking that the Bill Office was perhaps demonstrating a better quality of engineering than many buildings in putting me after the noble Lord, Lord Foster, given the point he made about building safety more broadly and cold homes—I would add to that homes that overheat, given the increasing number of heatwaves that we will experience in the climate emergency—being a risk to life which should be covered in this Bill.

We have the poorest quality housing in western Europe—draughty, poorly insulated and expensively relying on gas for heating and cooking, which has, as we increasingly understand, significant health impacts as well. I foresee long conversations with the Bill Office about scope, but a home that kills its vulnerable resident with excessive heat, or that sickens and kills them through biting cold, is one that is deadly. That has to be a building safety issue. This is an issue that the Government seem astonishingly reluctant to tackle after their green homes grant fiasco. I note that the big announcement today on levelling up fails to address this issue—astonishingly, given how much of a factor it is in the terrible quality of life and the poverty in so many of the areas in this country that the scheme is supposed to address.

The Bill also needs to at least start to address the enormous systems disaster that is the building sector. I have no doubt at all that, this morning, inadequately trained workers were putting the finishing touches on buildings that are dangerous and that will be moved into by unsuspecting residents—or possibly suspecting residents, who still have no choice in the matter. The CEOs of our mass housebuilders should be forced to have the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Best, embedded on their phones, playing morning and night, to show them what society thinks of them and their companies. They have operated for the profit of the few at the cost of the rest of us, as in so much of our society. That financialisation has to be challenged, treated as morally unacceptable and made legally impossible. I acknowledge that this is something that we cannot fix just with this Bill, however much your Lordships’ House improves it—and I am sure that we will improve it massively.

It is interesting to take a global perspective and see the other parts of the world with building safety crises similar to that in the UK. In the US, in Florida, there was the dramatic, awful, deadly Champlain Towers South collapse, which was recently explored in-depth by the New York Times. It demonstrated that in the building boom there in the 1980s, regulatory corners were not cut but rather bulldozed through, and now there is a legacy of incredibly dangerous buildings in an incredibly difficult and dangerous environment. In Australia, the University of New South Wales’s City Futures Research Centre looked at 635 apartment buildings in Sydney. Its report—called Cracks in the Compact City, if noble Lords want to look it up—found that 42% of blocks had water problems, 26% had cracking problems and 17% had fire safety issues. One building, built just six years ago, was in danger of immediate collapse.

What ties together these countries? Neoliberal politics and, attached to that, a particular ideology that “cutting red tape” is how to set societies on a better way forward. It is important to highlight that because, as we are here in your Lordships’ House today, we see the Government embracing the need for regulation, forced by tragic circumstances and dedicated campaigning. They are accepting the need for so-called red tape, which actually forms the rules that keep us and the environment safe.

At the same time, we have a press release from No. 10 that tells us that a

“‘Brexit Freedoms’ Bill will be brought forward to end the special status of EU law and ensure that it can be more easily amended or removed”.


It tells us there will be a

“Major cross-government drive to cut £1 billion of red tape for businesses”.


Applying that approach is what forces us to be here today, trying to rebuild essential systems of regulation that were slashed away in an orgy of deregulation. We can do much today to force the repair of walls, the replacement of fire doors and the renovation of dangerous balconies. Changing our economic and government system is a much bigger task that this Bill demonstrates is urgently needed.

Land Use Framework

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 28th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I begin by welcoming the comments in the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, on the urgency of the climate emergency. I note that we are seeing a real change in the balance of the Benches opposite as more new and younger Members join them. I hope they will have an influence on the Government, particularly the Treasury.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, for securing this absolutely crucial debate and for her clear, informative and powerful introduction. As she and other speakers have noted, Wales, Scotland and Ireland already have land use strategies. We often hear from the Government that we are “world leading”; here we are obviously trailing, even on these islands.

If we are thinking about a land use framework and, more broadly, regulation and management of our land, there are three sides to this triangle. One is a strategy, approach and plan for how we use land. Another is to encourage good use of the land, something we mostly hear about from the Government—the sustainable farming initiative, the local nature recovery scheme and the landscape recovery scheme, all of which come under the ELMS banner. The reality of these schemes is that they are all voluntary. They are trial schemes in which people can invest, but we do not know how many people and landowners will invest in them.

We hear a great deal less about, and undoubtedly need to hear a great deal more about, how we stop deeply detrimental, disastrous land uses and management. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, referred to pesticides and nitrogen and phosphate runoff scarring our rivers and oceans. We have seen the impact of this, and a great deal of public concern. We need a strategy. We need to stop doing the things we should not be doing and to encourage the things we should be doing. That should be the Government’s overall approach.

I will pick up on a couple of issues that have been raised. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, who asked a good question: “Why not a national strategy”? However, I disagree with some of her comments about local management and decision-making. We have a national green-belt strategy, and we also have lots of communities who are desperate to defend their green spaces. I have visited quite a few communities who have good cause to question new “executive housing” being built. It is going into a very doubtful market and will not feed into the communities or be part of them. I am thinking in particular of a green-belt site in Sunderland which, at the time of my visit, was the only city in England that was losing population. Yet here was a patch of green land, hugely valued and much used by the public, on which executive homes were to be built for people who would commute on the motorway to work in other cities. I do not believe that that is a good use of valuable land.

It is worth looking at and trying to learn from what has been done elsewhere on these islands. Of course, as a number of noble Lords have referred to, Scotland has had two land use strategies since the Climate Change Act came into force there in 2009. They brought in a vision of sustainable land use, objectives and principles for decision-making. As the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, made clear, this is not saying, “We are going to allocate every piece of land to be used in a certain way”; it sets out certain principles.

I agree with pretty well every word that the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, said about food production, particularly healthy food production. I will add to that a little by looking at what is happening in Scotland, where the Scottish Land Rights and Responsibilities Statement takes a human rights-based approach to land use. It talks about the relationship between the people and the land. That is something that I do not think any noble Lord has really addressed yet. I am sure the Minister will be delighted to know that, should he be looking towards developing a land use strategy, the Green Party conference held just last weekend considered a draft land use strategy, an entire new chapter for the policy for a sustainable society. I would be delighted to share with the Minister the draft plans there, which set out our vision for land far more than I have time for today.

One thing I really want to focus on is that how we use land needs to address what I might call the other pressing issue. The maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, focused on climate; many other noble Lords have focused on biodiversity and the state of nature. I want to focus on poverty and inequality, and how we need a land use strategy that tackles those. The issue of the right to roam is something else we talked about at the Green Party conference. The noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, talked in her introduction about how there are multiple pressures. We need about 130% of the land we actually have for all the uses we need it for. One answer to that is very clearly multiple uses: using land to grow food, to store carbon or for nature but also making it available for recreation and public use is one way to double our use of the available land. In that way, the Scottish approach really does look forward.

Looking to Wales, as a number of noble Lords referred to the approach there is driven by its Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act—something that the noble Lord, Lord Bird, has been championing in your Lordships’ House and that we have seen a lot of support for. If we look to that, we can think about managing our land in ways that improve it for the future. We come back to the state of nature, but also, if we are thinking about the human rights approach, to improving the health and well-being of our population. That is where we come not just to issues of recreation and access of land, which we know are so crucial to human health and well-being, but to thinking about what kind of crops we are growing on that land. This is where I take issue, to some degree, with the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, and the idea that what we need to do with arable land is grow the kind of crops that we are growing on it now.

To take just one example, a large amount of some of our very best land is devoted to producing sugar beet, despite the fact that we consume vastly more sugar than we should be eating for public health and well-being. Were we growing fruit and vegetables on that land, perhaps in a mixed system that was managed in ways that were excellent for biodiversity and nature, then we would see a human rights approach, a nature-based approach, and an approach to land use that all fits together.

This comes back to the question of how we think about the ownership of land. Again, I refer back to the Green Party draft strategy. It talks about people in control of land being the stewards of that land. That is an approach that I believe we need to take forward and advance. It needs to be managed for the common good. That means profits can be made, certainly, and returns can be taken off, but we need to see all our land use managed under a strategy that works for the common good.

Finally, I come back to the noble Lord’s suggestion about energy generation. This is one of the great practical debates we are seeing now, particularly the issue of solar farms potentially being put on arable land and issues of biofuel crops. I have great concerns about those issues, but it is worth looking at the history. If we go back about 150 years, about one-third of our arable land was actually used for energy production. It grew hay and oats, producing, very literally, horsepower.

What we need is a land use strategy. We need rules that stop the damaging use of land. We need ELMS to be systems encouraging positive uses of land. It is really quite a challenge for the Government to fit those three sides of the triangle together into something that really works for people and nature, but that is the challenge that we need the land use strategy to cater to.

Public Services

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 26th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

I am not going to get into the use of consultants by a particular council, irrespective of the administration currently in control. A number of councils, both Conservative and Labour, have been subject to Secretary of State interventions because they have failed to fulfil their best-value duties. I point to the most recent intervention in Liverpool City Council, where, sadly, we have had to step in.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I declare my positions as a vice-president of the LGA and the NALC. Would the Minister agree that, in this age of shocks, when resilience is becoming more and more of a crucial issue—we addressed this in the last Question, on HGV drivers—eventually, if things go wrong and companies collapse, like Carillion, or fail to deliver services, as happened with the green homes grant, the Government have to step in and are always the final service of last resort? Surely we should stop pumping public money into private hands—taking all those risks of collapse that we have seen so often with private companies—cut out those extra costs and simply allow local governments to deliver services for local people?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, it will not surprise you that I do not agree with that. Some £64 billion-worth of money is being spent by local government on the delivery of very efficient services through the private sector, but you have to be very careful about how you engage. There are plenty of examples where local authorities have not used competitive tendering but have chosen to enter into partnerships, which have had tragic consequences in the last year because of the pandemic. So I encourage local authorities to be judicious, fulfil the guidelines that are supplied around procurement, go through sensitive competitive tendering and check the creditworthiness of those whom they choose to bring on board.

Inequalities of Region and Place

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 14th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, and to note her telling comparison with the German example of spending, starting three decades ago from a place of far less division than we saw in England.

I join others in welcoming the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, to your Lordships’ House. It is lovely to see another champion of science in the House. I particularly note the noble Viscount’s background in biology, which far too often is a neglected area of science when shinier, glossier things get more attention.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, for securing this debate. I particularly thank him for not using the term “levelling up” in the way in which it is set out, because I believe that levelling up is entirely the wrong direction of travel and the wrong aim to be looking at. It implies that we are trying to lift other parts of England up to the level of London and the south-east. But what have we got? The right reverend Prelate made some reference to this when he talked about child poverty. We have a London of rampant inequality, with 28% of people living in poverty. We have filthy air and a horrible standard of overcrowded housing. We have the area of the country with the highest proportion of the population with high levels of anxiety. We need—and I think the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, set out the points here—a coherent, cost-effective and long-term approach, which I suggest means that what we need to spread out around the country is security, health and hope. Those are lacking in every part of England, and indeed the UK.

Economic growth is often seen as the solution—“If we just have economic growth…”—but what we are actually talking about is a real rearrangement of society. We are not talking just about improved infrastructure, much as that is needed—as is not putting the wrong infrastructure in the wrong place—but I will not get into the regular debate that the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and I have on the subject of HS2. What we are talking about, and many noble Lords have made this point, including the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, who is not currently in his place, is that we need local control, local power and, as many noble Lords have said, local resources.

I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, who said that elected mayors are the answer. Putting all the power and authority in the hands of one person is, I suggest, the wrong direction of travel. We should be looking towards full community involvement, from a Yorkshire parliament to a Cornwall assembly or parliament—different kinds of structures with far more power and resources shared around an entire region. However, ensuring that the money is in those regions and under their control is crucial. As many have said, we have to stop Whitehall doling out money.

We also have to stop the doling out of money for pilot projects. “We’ve got to try this, we’ve got to fund this for a year”—and then the money disappears. Even if it has been the most successful pilot ever recorded, it just sinks without trace. We need secure, long-term funding that is available to allow the growth and development of communities.

I said that economic growth and infrastructure will not give us anything like what we need. We need a focus on health and well-being. The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, said that we have to find ways to keep people out of hospital. I agree with that as a starting point but, much more, we need to ensure that people have healthy, active lives. That means everything from tackling food deserts to cleaning up air and water pollution. It means ensuring there are genuinely affordable energy-efficient, high-quality homes. It means walking and cycling facilities, and high-quality parks. It means restoration of the natural environment. All these things are much broader and will not be solved just by looking at the economy.

It is also about community structures. So many new developments are built without any community facilities at all—places for people to get together, such as halls or churches. Many older communities, cash-strapped local councils—and I declare here my position as vice-president of the LGA and the NALC—are being forced to sell off community facilities. Many places, even the pubs where people could get together, have closed down. In some poorer communities, the pubs are open only a couple of nights a week. We need an increase in social capital; this is an acute shortage in far too many communities in England.

Rent Arrears: Covid-19

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 20th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, I restate the Government’s position that we are not looking to encourage further debt. I also point to the statistics regarding homelessness. We have seen a 40% decrease in homelessness duty owed in the period between October 2020 and the same period in 2019. We are not seeing that massive spike in homelessness that has been alluded to.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, before the pandemic it was taking a median of 42 weeks for court cases to reach repossession. The mean length was nearer a year. Analysis suggests that the small number that are being processed now are taking nearly twice as long. The courts cannot cope with the likely flood, and the delays will greatly increase the stress, suffering and uncertainty for private tenants, and difficulty for landlords. Does the Minister agree that the pile-up of repossession cases in the courts is another argument for a grant scheme, ideally, or at least a loan scheme to rescue people from unpayable arrears, provide certainty and prevent delays?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, I am not aware of a pile-up in the courts. Indeed, we have actually seen a massive drop in the number of repossession cases. It decreased to 262 repossessions in January to March 2021—a reduction of some 96%—and 214 local authorities had no landlord repossessions at all.

Rough Sleeping

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, part of the ministerial working group is looking at the issue of rough sleepers in London who are former members of the Armed Forces. I pay tribute to the work of my honourable friend in the other place, Johnny Mercer. The key is to work with local authorities to identify those people so that we can get support services to them. The support services for our Armed Forces as well as for ex-offenders are in place; it is a question of ensuring that we identify those people so that we can wrap the service support around them.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my position as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. In the past hour, London has become the largest city in the world to call for a trial of universal basic income. An unconditional income sufficient to meet basic needs would be one way to ensure that no one ends up sleeping on the streets —that conditionality of benefits or insecurity of employment would not lead to eviction. As the noble Lord, Lord Truscott, said earlier, today’s figures report a fall in rough sleeping, but the future of rising unpayable debt, in particular among private tenants, looks grim. The Government keep saying that they will not introduce a national universal basic income, but will they support London and the 14 other local authorities that have voted for trials in their communities?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, it is indeed blue-sky thinking to guarantee someone an income that is paid by the state. I point out that in the pandemic we have seen the national debt increase substantially to the level of our economic output for a year, which is some £2.2 trillion. In that environment, it is very difficult to make these kinds of spending commitments, and I will certainly leave something like that to the Chancellor.

West Yorkshire Combined Authority (Election of Mayor and Functions) Order 2021

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 26th January 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the powerful remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and I associate myself with his and others’ questions about when we can expect the devolution White Paper. We know the slogan “Take back control” was at the forefront in 2016; I do not believe it has any less resonance today—I suggest it has more, given the loss of the democratic oversight and opportunities of the European Parliament.

I declare my position as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and the input of the Yorkshire & the Humber Green Party into these questions. Most of them concern democracy. The Minister referred in his introductory remarks to the consent for these plans and the percentage of people who indicated agreement to the lead question. So I ask the Minister: what alternative was offered to people? Would it have meant a loss of money to the region, as I understand it would? Were people given the alternative to show support for the One Yorkshire plan that, in 2019, 18 of the 20 councils of the regions backed? Where is the Government’s evidence for the support of the people? Why was a referendum not held, as has occurred in the past?

As other noble Lords have said, London has an elected Assembly that scrutinises the work of the mayor—perhaps not as strongly as we might like but it none the less exists and has the opportunity to question and challenge. Why does Yorkshire not have a similar assembly or, given its scale, a parliament? Can one person really represent 2.5 million people? Will there not be a democratic loss through the loss of the elected police and crime commissioner and making the deputy mayor for policing a political appointee, as the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, said? Across West Yorkshire, more than 8% of elected councillors are from parties other than Labour, the Conservatives or the Liberal Democrats. How are the voices of those other voters going to be properly represented on the combined authority?

Briefly, in the time available to me, I have some questions. There is a low level of participation in adult education across the region of 30%. The lowest level nationally is 29% in the south-west. Are there enough resources for the new mayor to be able to make a difference? Given that housing is such a huge issue in the area, perhaps the Minister could now, or at some point in the future, say whether the Government have considered allowing the mayor to suspend the right to buy in West Yorkshire and specify higher levels of energy efficiency as part of the mayor’s powers.

Provisional Local Government Finance Settlement

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 6th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

I will have to write to the noble Lord about that. I did not quite catch his question, but I will make sure that we get a full and proper answer to him and put a copy in the Library.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my position as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. On the subject of local government finance, I am going back to two answers from the Government on 15 December to questions that I and the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, had asked, referring to the £500 self-isolation payment to people who were ordered to self-isolate due to Covid-19 exposure or infection. At that point it was clear that there was a postcode lottery, and some local authorities had run out so people were unable to get payment. On 15 December the Government gave two answers, one of which said there was a fixed envelope of money and implied that no more money would be given, while the other, from the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, said that this was under review. Has it been reviewed, and has the postcode lottery over the money being paid out by local government been fixed?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, I am sure that my noble friend Lord Bethell is absolutely right and the matter is under review.

Towns Fund

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 19th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con) [V]]

My Lords, there is no doubt that regeneration involves physical regeneration, economic regeneration and social renewal. Women often play a bigger part than men in that process, from my experience in local government.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

Yesterday, the Government made an announcement acknowledging both the urgency of the climate emergency and their special global responsibility in chairing COP 26. If the Government are operating in a joined-up way, you would expect the towns fund money to be used for super-policies that have environmental benefits in addition to economic ones. Can the Minister tell me what percentage of spending addresses those goals?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I am happy to write to the noble Baroness on that point as I do not have those figures to hand.