Elections Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Khan of Burnley

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Wednesday 23rd March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I move and speak to Amendment 144E, which noble Lords will have noticed appears in the name of my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, but operating on our normal lark and owl rota, this one falls to me at the owl end of the evening.

We have just been talking about some major issues around the Bill and our whole electoral system. Here, we are doing something that some might regard as a more traditional aspect of your Lordships’ House: the scrutiny, modest measures, cleaning and tidying and curing of small injustices. Amendment 144E amends Section 79(1) of the Local Government Act 1972, addressing the situation where people have been placed by their local council into temporary housing outside the area for which they wish to stand for election.

We know that housing is now a huge issue. Many people are struggling to find housing, many people are being displaced and many local councils are struggling to find housing. The amendment comes from the case of a person who contacted our office who wants to stand in the forthcoming local elections and, through absolutely no fault of their own, under the current rules have been made ineligible to stand because they have been placed in temporary housing outside the local authority area.

It is obvious that this is not an isolated case. It is a factor of the current qualifications for standing in local elections. It is a case of instant disqualification. Someone may have been in an area for decades and be really embedded in that area, part of that community and have something to offer it but, because of the lack of housing—perhaps a failure of the local authority—they are suddenly unable to stand and to contribute. Of course, this can affect any candidate, regardless of their party or their social or economic situation. Perhaps they have been evicted because a landlord is selling the home they have been living in, perhaps they are fleeing domestic abuse. There is a whole host of other reasons why people might need temporary accommodation. They may have been planning stand in the forthcoming election for years, but the placement outside the borough scuppers all their hard work.

This is a small, modest amendment that would affect only a very small number of people, but it would address a basic injustice. I hope that I will get broad support across the Committee for the amendment and the Government might feel able to move modestly on it. I beg to move.

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly to this amendment, which would protect the rights of people in temporary housing to stand for election where the local authority provides temporary housing outside the local authority area. At any given point, close to 100,000 households live in temporary accommodation, according to quarterly statistics published by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, is right to draw attention to their right to participate in the democratic process, and I fully support the intention behind her amendment. We on these Benches fully support the points she made. Those who live in temporary accommodation are often most in need of their voice being heard, especially at local authority level. The suggestion that they would be prevented from standing for the relevant local authority due to the fact that their temporary accommodation is located outside the boundary is absurd. I hope the Minister will accept the case behind the amendment and work with the noble Baroness to find a solution to the problem.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for the amendment. Although admirable in its intent, it introduces an unwelcome subjective element into the current objective criteria that specify qualifications for election as a member of a local authority. It presupposes that an individual, if moved by their local authority into temporary accommodation out of the area where they are standing for election, would otherwise satisfy the qualification criteria had they not been moved by their local authority.

The qualification criteria for local elected office must be beyond doubt. The amendment as drafted would remove the demonstration of consistent connection with an area that the current criteria rightly demand. The amendment would introduce a subjective qualification that the individual believes that they would otherwise categorically have remained eligible within the existing criteria, but this is not objective; it could be neither proved nor disproved. It would be unreasonable for the local electorate to be asked to consider voting for someone who may no longer have a strong connection with the local area nor any demonstrable proof that they would otherwise have maintained that contact.

There are other criteria for standing in local elections, and I think it is important that anyone in this situation looks at those—specifically, that they have been a local government elector for the last 12 months and that they have during the last 12 months preceding that day occupied as owner or tenant any land or other premises in that area. If they work in that area then they can stand for local election, or if they have resided there for the whole of those 12 months before they were moved just before the election. Also, there is the case that they are a member of a parish or community council. There are other points for people to consider.

We have looked at this and will give it further thought, because it is an interesting concept that has not come up before. We do not make any promises, but we will look at it. At this moment, though, the Government cannot accept the amendment and I urge the noble Baroness to withdraw it. Maybe we can have further conversations.

Environment Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Khan of Burnley

Wednesday 15th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise briefly, in a slightly curious position, to speak on Amendment 119 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, and signed by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty. I continue to support this amendment while disagreeing with most of what they just said.

I will start with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, on prosperity and GDP growth. If we define prosperity as a good quality of life and a healthy life, GDP growth is profoundly not coupled to what I would call prosperity. In both these contexts I point noble Lords to an excellent, if now slightly old, book, Tim Jackson’s Prosperity Without Growth, which started out life as a government report. Professor Jackson continues to work with the APPG on Limits to Growth to produce excellent further reports on that.

However, I am sure noble Lords will be pleased to hear that I will not reprise the whole growth debate at this stage of the evening. What I will point out is that we have people coming from different sides saying that we need a decent measure. Further, on the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, the figures we have for our reduced carbon emissions exclude emissions produced offshore and used by us. As the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, said earlier, we are not counting the emissions associated with the blueberries we consume from overseas. We need to have counting. This is one measure of having true accounting of the actual cost.

Finally, on GDP, it is appropriate in the Environment Bill to look at how faulty GDP is as a measure. If you cut down a forest, you count the cost of selling the timber in GDP figures but not the cost of the lost forest. That really is a demonstration of how utterly faulty GDP is as a measure.

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, I first thank the noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, for his Amendment 119; I will speak very briefly. He talked about having an international system of climate parameters, a uniform approach and targets ahead of COP 26. I listened very carefully, as I always do, to my noble friend Lord Whitty on the importance of having a metric that measures performance, past and future. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, put across a really interesting point about GDP growth, prosperity and making sure we do not lose that prosperity in economic figures. A lot of interesting points were made in this very important debate, and I hope to hear the answers from the Minister.