Gypsy and Traveller Communities: Accommodation

Baroness Blower Excerpts

Wednesday 6th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

The noble Lord will know that we face the most acute housing crisis this country has ever had. I cannot help but feel that the issue of further caravan provision is partly to do with that. However, there is a difference between that and the culturally specific provision that needs to be made. I cannot answer directly his question about the numbers, but there may be some further insight in the department. I will ask that question and write to him if there is more information.

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, is the Minister working with her noble friend at the DfE to ensure that all schools understand the culture of Gypsies and Travellers, and that they are welcoming both in their policies and in their curriculum to ensure that when Gypsy and Traveller children arrive in schools they feel welcomed and are not bullied, and that all children understand that diversity is of benefit to schools?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend. I have seen some wonderful examples of good practice in schools on this issue, but I will refer the question to my noble friend the Minister for Education.

Religious Hate Crime

Baroness Blower Excerpts

Tuesday 15th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

I will just say to the noble and learned Baroness that it is for the Department for Education to better advise her. I am sure that she does not need any advice from me, knowing her experience in this area.

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, would the Minister be prepared to meet with Show Racism the Red Card, the country’s largest anti-racist education charity? It has workers in schools every day, making sure that our children are exposed to anti-racist ideas, all the better to be able to confront the racism that we see in much of our press and media and, regrettably, that we have seen on our streets.

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My noble friend makes an interesting point, but let me be quite clear that we have a lot of plans moving forward. I hoped to talk about having these plans in place, but we are at the very difficult stage of finalising our plans. Rest assured that I will come back to my noble friend and the House about some of the challenges when we have our finalised integrated approach. The steps we take will be able to alleviate a lot of the issues that my noble friend raised.

Anti-Muslim Prejudice and Hate Crime

Baroness Blower Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness makes an important point. On the latter question, the Home Office has announced a rapid response force—work which involves more security to help support mosques that are facing direct public and violent disorder against them. I have visited quite a few mosques and had discussions with communities. In relation to our £29.4 million pledge to support mosques, a lot of mosques are taking up these schemes. Their continuation is important, as it is to tackle any form of religious hatred we see, including anti-Semitism. Where there are high levels of religious hate crime, there is existing government funding to support institutions to protect themselves.

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the review of the national curriculum that the Government are planning provides the opportunity to ensure that schools are places where all ignorance and prejudice-based behaviour are challenged, and where anti-racism—in this case, islamophobia—is actively taught, to try to stop these attitudes developing in our young people?

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My noble friend makes an important point in recognising that school has a huge role to play in raising awareness and tackling discrimination. At a very early age, young people can understand our British values. I visited Middlesbrough, and that was what the community was telling me. We should be looking at this more closely, looking at the national curriculum. That is a discussion to be had with the community and the Department for Education. We will take that forward and pass it to the relevant department.

Social Disorder

Baroness Blower Excerpts

Wednesday 4th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government were elected on a manifesto that stressed a partnership approach with local authorities and an intention to stabilise the funding system through multiyear funding settlements. In a meeting with England’s metro mayors on 9 July, we put into action our plan to work hand in hand to spread better opportunities and transfer power out of Westminster into the hands of elected local leaders. Local places will rightly seek clarity on funding commitments in relation to the challenges ahead.

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, since 2010, 1,200 council-funded youth clubs, 800 libraries and hundreds of local community centres, children’s centres and leisure centres have closed. Many young people therefore roam the streets with nowhere to go and become easy prey to far-right extremists and, indeed, county lines gangs. What resources will the Government seek to provide to enable local councils to rebuild such community networks?

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My noble friend makes a very interesting point. As the Minister with responsibility for regional investment within MHCLG, I know at first hand that deprivation and poor cohesion tend to leave communities more vulnerable to extremist narratives and disorder. Regardless of those factors, there is no place in British society for violent disorder. I have been engaging with communities across the country to understand the issues that they face, and I have recently visited Leeds, Southport, Sunderland, Middlesborough and Hartlepool to witness their concerns at first hand. I reassure the noble Baroness that work is under way to understand what contributed to the disorder that we saw and to develop a more joined-up and strategic approach to communities and social cohesion. I shall be in a position to make a statement on that in due course.

Windrush Generation: 75th Anniversary

Baroness Blower Excerpts

Wednesday 24th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

As I said in a previous answer, we will not be implementing those three recommendations. I probably have not got time to address here how far we have got with the other recommendations, but I will write to the noble Lord once I get that detailed information from the Home Office.

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree that on the occasion of this anniversary, it would be extremely fitting for His Majesty’s Government to announce that anti-racism should be an explicit part of the national curriculum, to be taught in all our schools in England?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

That should be discussed and decided by the Department for Education; but now, when we are celebrating the wonderful part that the Windrush generation has played in our society, is not the time for us to discuss that.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Blower Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 24th May 2023 Grand Committee

If levelling up means anything, it surely must mean looking at the areas where indicators suggest there are a range of problems, and then seeking to drag them up. So my noble friend addresses an important point here because, if you have problems with reading and writing, how will you get out there, get a job, provide for your family and make a contribution, paying your taxes and everything else? So this is really important. I am sceptical about the Government’s levelling-up stuff but, if it means anything, it must address the issues set out in this group. I beg to move.

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Kennedy. I shall speak specifically to my Amendment 504GC. As evidenced in previous debates on the Bill, levelling up can clearly be about large and strategic macro issues, but a significant aspect of it is that, on an individual level, some people simply cannot read as well as we would want. On an individual level, there must be an aspiration to ensure that all adults are literate. Speaking on this issue in another place, Margaret Greenwood MP said:

“Poor literacy skills and illiteracy often consign people to insecure and low-paid work. They are a form of deprivation that can lead to isolation and poverty and can leave people vulnerable to exploitation”.—[Official Report, 23/11/22; col. 353.]


It would seem that the most recent national survey of adult basic skills in England was as long ago as 2011. It showed that 1 million adults had literacy skills at entry level 3 or below. At this level, people are deemed to be functionally illiterate, although they can, for the most part, read straightforward text on familiar topics and obtain information from everyday sources—but this is not reading at a level that any Government should want the population to function at. It is not the level at which a parent can be confident to read with a child beyond infancy, and it is not the level at which a parent can assist with, or show interest in, schoolwork with children as they grow up. It is not the level at which a worker can seek retraining, upskilling or new opportunities.

As is often said, talent is everywhere but opportunity is not. Adult further and community education provision is not uniform. This provision affords opportunities to adults who have a lower level of literacy than that which we want for everyone. For precisely that reason, this amendment calls for a report on the “impact of geographical disparities” in adult literacy on levelling up and regeneration and for the Secretary of State to publish a strategy

“setting out steps they intend to take to improve levels of adult literacy”.

In 2022, 11 years after the survey to which I referred, the National Literacy Trust found that 7.1 million adults can be described as functionally illiterate. If this is accurate, we are, as a nation, allowing about 16% of our population to languish without the skills they need both personally and to be effectively economically active. As I said, the provision of adult learning opportunities to address low levels of literacy in the population is not uniform, and therefore neither is the participation. This amendment would require the Government to publish the information and then the strategy. If we accept, as I am sure we all do, that employers value and require essential skills, of which literacy is clearly the foundation, improving the capacity of those who struggle to read and write must be a priority.

Speaking as a teacher of many years, it pains me to recognise that not every young person finishes their schooling able to read and write as well as they might or as we would want. However, for a variety of reasons, adult illiteracy and low levels of literacy are a fact in our society. Regrettably, there have been significant cuts in adult education, with as much as a 50% fall in classroom-based adult learning opportunities. This must be addressed if we are to afford the opportunities needed to ensure that all are able to reach their potential.

The Government should not ignore this, especially now, as we continue to tackle education issues arising from the Covid pandemic. There can be no real levelling up without attention to adult illiteracy and a strategy to eradicate it. It is a matter of levelling up but also of social justice.

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak extremely briefly and only to Amendment 499, just to ask the Minister two very basic questions.

It is my firm belief that, for far too long, there has been a failure by Governments of all parties to tackle the inequalities between rural and urban areas. So much of government policy is designed for urban areas and ignores the special and different requirements of rural areas. So, frankly, it is no wonder that there is a disparity in the cost of living between urban and rural areas. In rural areas, house prices are higher and wages are lower; council taxes are higher, but government support for their councils is lower; and the funding per head for services such as healthcare, policing and public transport is lower, but it costs more to provide those services. If you look at other issues, from broadband coverage to banking, you will see that rural areas lag way behind urban areas.

I said in my speech at Second Reading that the Rural Services Network used government metrics to come to the conclusion that, if all rural areas were treated as a single region, their need for levelling up would be greater than that of any other region. At the time, I asked what in the Bill would address that disparity. I ask again: in relation to this amendment, what aspects of the Bill will address the need to level up between urban and rural areas? Related to that is a question that I have also asked but that has not been answered: can the Government tell us how the absolute requirement for rural proofing of all legislation was carried out in relation to the Bill?

Levelling Up Fund

Baroness Blower Excerpts

Tuesday 24th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend is probably correct in that. I would encourage any ports that need better access to make them even better, particularly if they are freeports, to look at the third round of bidding.

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, given that the Minister at least expressed some interest in the possibility of some kind of reconsideration of the process in response to the question from her noble friend, might it be in her mind to do so before the third round of levelling up?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

No, my Lords. Anybody who knows anything about local government funding knows that this has been looked at by many Governments over many years, but we are committed, in the levelling up White Paper, to look at the complexity of this and to try to make it a better system.

Windrush: 75th Anniversary

Baroness Blower Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, in the context of this debate, on which I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, I highlight one of the asks of Show Racism the Red Card, of which I am proud to be the vice-president and a trustee. The Government should ensure that black history features explicitly in England’s curriculum. It already happens in Wales.

Of course, lots of schools engage fully with Black History Month in October but may not focus on the role played by our black communities in England at any other time; neither do they explicitly address the origins of racism. Given what we all know about the treatment of the Windrush generation, this anniversary would be an appropriate time to bring the Windrush and so many other aspects of black history and black experience explicitly into England’s national curriculum.

We often say that the curriculum should be a mirror and a window—a mirror so that pupils and students can see themselves reflected in what is presented, but also a window so that they can see beyond the classroom. Many black children do not see themselves reflected. There are now many excellent books, including the one by the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, but the Runnymede Trust says that only 1% of GCSE students read a book by an author of colour. In this 75th anniversary, perhaps the Government can encourage all schools to teach about the Windrush, focusing not just on the arrival of the ship but on why Britain encouraged migration from the Caribbean, the hostile way in which people who were encouraged to come were often received, and their treatment decades later, for which compensation is still awaited.

At Show Racism the Red Card, the education team, working with current and former footballers, including Trinidad’s Shaka Hislop, talk to children about what racism is and how we can work to eradicate it. Much good work is done in many schools but, alas, not in all. A Windrush stamp and a 50p coin are exceedingly worth while, but a proper place in England’s school curriculum for the breadth of black experience would be a lasting and fitting commemoration of and for the Windrush generation.

Building Safety Bill

Baroness Blower Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 21st February 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, I am getting used to the free-wheeling nature of these debates. I apologise that I stood up before the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, had her say.

There is no doubt that a large part of this is focused on high-risk, high-rise residential buildings, not least because of the tragedy of Grenfell, which followed the tragedies in Lakanal House and Garnett Court. We have also had near misses, such as the Bolton Cube, which was just under 17 metres and is one of the reasons why we talk about the cut-off being six storeys or more as it was a very big near miss.

There is that focus but, equally, it is fair to say that the Building Safety Bill also encapsulates building regulations for the entire built environment and makes a contribution to increasing competence among key actors, such as approved inspectors, duty holders, the accountable person and the building safety manager, to ensure that buildings in occupation remain safe. There are contributions around competence that will have wider benefit but what the noble Baroness said is right: this is very much part of our response to a broken regulatory system that we need to fix. I think that we recognise the need to do precisely that collectively in this Committee.

I thank noble Lords for a lively debate. This group of amendments is essentially around new reporting requirements. I shall respond to each amendment in turn.

The noble Lord, Lord Stunell, opened this short debate with Amendment 6 and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, spoke on it. I thank them for raising this important matter but I am afraid that the Government will not be able to accept the amendment. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe with her background as a civil servant who took that expertise to play a leading role in a supermarket. She did not mention which one but I know it was Tesco—every little helps—because I remember when she was in that position. It is important to reflect on when we can hold the Civil Service to account, as she put it. I understand where my noble friend is coming from, even if I do not accept it on this occasion.

Our assessment is that this amendment would unnecessarily prescribe issues to which the regulator must attend. I must also point out the unintended effect that this amendment would have in effectively restricting the regulator’s work to a limited list of subjects. Such prescription could unwittingly narrow the scope of the regulator’s focus and efforts. Furthermore, the imposition of a time limit could have the perverse effect of constraining the assessments being sought only to factors that can be determined within the timescales afforded.

I assure the noble Lord and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, that their intention to ensure that major safety issues are reviewed and assessed by the regulator has been met through the measures in the Bill. The building safety regulator will have a duty to keep the safety and standard of buildings under review and to be transparent about its work, reporting annually on the delivery of its functions under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, and Clause 3 stipulates that it must be transparent.

I can also assure your Lordships that the specific areas of building safety identified in the proposed amendment are actively being considered by the Government under research projects being undertaken with the help of academia and stakeholders. These projects include the technical review of approved document B, which includes research on means of escape in blocks of flats, including stairways and ramps, and means of escape provisions for people with disabilities. As I am sure the noble Lord and the noble Baroness are aware, the Government have already conducted an assessment of the effectiveness of sprinklers as a means of fire suppression and, in 2020, we changed the statutory guidance so that sprinklers should be provided in all new residential buildings more than 11 metres in height, as opposed to the previous 30-metre threshold. I want to thank the noble Lord and the noble Baroness for raising this important matter and hope that I have been able to assure them that all aspects of building safety are of importance for the Government.

Before turning to Amendment 89, I pay tribute to Alison Hills and Steve Day, who were mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock. I got to know Steve Day in particular, but also Alison Hills. They worked very hard on constructive amendments which will help the thinking around getting the polluter to pay, because they are victims. In the case of Steve Day, it is a sign of triumph, because he is part of a group of people who, in their spare time, without pay, essentially fought a big developer to get it to pay for the remediation of their building, bit by bit. We need to pay tribute to these heroes who work tirelessly on behalf of their fellow residents to get the polluter to pay; they are people for whom I have huge fondness and regard. It is right that some people have shelled out huge costs and have not been able to get the polluter to pay, and there are many orphaned buildings—if you like—for which we cannot easily find out who is liable to pay. The question is, how do we deal with that? That is something that we as a Government recognise that we need to have an answer to, but let us leave that until a later part of this Committee stage. I am sure we will return to it on Report.

Turning to Amendment 89, on which the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, spoke, I thank her for raising this important matter, but I am afraid that, again, the Government will not be able to accept this amendment. The Government remain committed to ensuring that those responsible are held to account to protect leaseholders from unaffordable costs, but our assessment is that the amendment would not constitute an appropriate use of the Government’s time and resources. The amendment would require the Secretary of State to quantify the impacts for any leaseholders who may have carried out remediation of cladding and fire safety defects over the past 10 years, regardless of the nature and scale of the works.

I draw the attention of the noble Baroness to the amendments tabled on 14 February, which make clear that freeholders with links to developers and those with the resources to fund remediation in full must do so. In other cases, the contributions of leaseholders will be subject to a legal cap. The new schedule to be inserted before Schedule 9, tabled on 14 February, also provides the Secretary of State with the power to make regulations providing for the recovery of sums due that have not been paid. These amendments ensure that leaseholders will no longer be susceptible to large costs. The supplementary requirements that would be introduced by Amendment 89 would therefore present an unnecessarily onerous task that would increase costs and burden to the Government, where resources could be better employed. I thank the noble Baroness for raising this important matter and assure her that this Government are committed to ensuring that those responsible are held to account to protect leaseholders from unaffordable costs.

Turning to Amendment 126, I again thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, for raising this important matter. Unfortunately, the amendment would have the effect of unacceptably increasing the burden on the Government at a time when we are concentrating on our programme of reform and raising standards in rented homes.

The 2018 Act built on the existing regulatory framework and empowered tenants, for the first time, to take action in the courts for breach of contract if their home was unfit to live in. That is why we supported it. It is right that this is in addition to, but separate from, enforcement of standards by local authorities, which we also strengthened in 2016. There is therefore limited benefit in requiring officials to spend time interrogating court records when we are, at the same time, concentrating on building on the 2018 Act and further raising the standard of rented homes, higher even than the requirement introduced by the Act. We will do this by consulting on introducing a legally binding decent homes standard in the private rented sector and by reviewing the decent homes standard itself, and we will provide more detail in due course.

I now turn to Amendment 129. I wish the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, had provided my speaking notes as he has such command of detail. It is quite incredible and testament to his long-term passion, commitment and interest in the subject. I certainly learned a lot about the almost dystopian future that certainly my children—probably not me—will to have to deal with. It is probably why school-age kids are so nervous about this. It is horrendous. Amendment 129 raises a very important issue and while the Government will not be able to accept this amendment, I hope to reassure the Committee that Clause 5 already makes appropriate provision for this and that risks to buildings as a result of climate change are already being dealt with through existing locally driven action.

Clause 5 places a duty on the building safety regulator to keep under review the safety and standards of all buildings. This would include advising industry and government on research into new or emerging risks, such as those presented by climate change. The regulator will also advise on and prepare proposals for changes to building regulations. Climate change mitigation and adaptation are intrinsic components of the building regulations and will remain so. We also recognise the importance of ensuring local authorities work with their communities to understand the risks buildings may face as a result of climate change. However, the amendment would duplicate existing locally driven action; for example, the requirement on lead local flood authorities to assess flood risks across their area through the local flood risk management strategy or the requirement for local authorities to develop the best approaches to managing the risk of coastal erosion and flooding through shoreline management plans and local planning policies.

I turn now to Amendment 134 and will respond to Amendment 149 at the same time. I thank the noble Lord and the noble Baronesses for raising how we monitor the effectiveness of the Bill and hope to reassure them that the Bill makes appropriate provision for monitoring. Dame Judith Hackitt’s independent review recommended that we ensure that the new system works through regular independent reviews. Clause 135 requires that these reviews happen at least every five years and that the resulting report must be published. In addition, the building safety regulator must report annually on the performance of its functions under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. Clause 3 further stipulates that the regulator must be transparent and accountable. The Government intend that the regulator’s published strategic plan, required by Clause 17, will set out further detail on what it must report on.

Finally, the Bill ensures that crucial aspects of the new system are included in the regulator’s annual reporting, notably engagement with residents under Clause 19 and mandatory occurrence reports, which can help industry track safety issues, under Clause 20. Further reporting requirements risk duplication, complexity and additional bureaucracy. Amendment 149 would also require the Government to report on the exact number of certified building safety managers and fire risk assessors when certification is not a function of government under the Bill. In light of the strong existing provisions, I hope that I have provided sufficient reassurance and that your Lordships will be content that the Government have fully addressed the concerns raised in the amendments.

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

I have a question about flooding in London. I am sure the noble Lord is aware of an article in the Observer yesterday—I declare an interest in that I live in Shepherd’s Bush, where a month’s worth of rain fell in one day in July last year. The point of this article was that in London very many people live in basements, which are at serious risk of flooding, and it suggests that people may drown in their own homes if there is flash flooding. The further aggravating point is that no one seems to be aware how many people live in such basements.

I simply ask the noble Lord whether there is any intention to take a strategic look across London; there are clearly responsibilities on local authorities but, at the London-wide level, there seems to be no requirement to look at this. I would be very interested to know what he thinks, particularly in light of Hammersmith and Fulham having been afflicted so badly.

Rating (Coronavirus) and Directors Disqualification (Dissolved Companies) Bill

Baroness Blower Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 19th October 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, there are many in this Committee with considerable and specific expertise in relation to the matters covered by this Bill, none more so than my noble friend Lord Sikka. I venture to speak in this debate, however, to seek clarification from the Minister on matters relating to the role of local councils.

On 25 March, Her Majesty’s Government announced that they would give councils £1.5 billion to offer grant relief to businesses, excluding retail, hospitality and leisure, that have been hard hit by the Covid pandemic. As I understand it, this relief is an alternative to any adjustment to rateable value as a result of changes in circumstances. I therefore have a number of questions for the Minister. I do not think that the basis of the calculation of £1.5 billion is known, except presumably by those who made it, nor is it unambiguously clear to me how the money will be disbursed. Can the Minister say what will happen if the fund is exhausted and whether perhaps any local councils would be expected to top it up?

Further, in regard to local councils, given that one assumes there will be criteria for disbursement, is it foreseeable that there may be disputes and possibly appeals? If there were, this would inevitably result in additional administrative and IT costs. It is not clear that any additional funding or financial support will be available to local councils to carry out these duties and responsibilities. Can the Minister tell the Committee whether local councils—their finances already hard hit, not just because of Covid but from years of cuts—will be expected to bear the administration costs of the scheme? If so, what assessment has been made of the impact on local ratepayers and local services? I look forward to the Minister’s response.