Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Lord Lansley

Committee stage
Monday 20th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

It is true that I am not familiar with the 1907 Act in detail, if at all. It is also true that I did not introduce the subject of Oliver Dowden or the term “woke”; I was responding to the comment that was made. I would just like to carry on, as this bit of what I am saying is important to the Bill.

Sometimes people speak on behalf of local democracy and actually the problem is that what passes for local democracy at the level of consultations is often faux and sham consultations, and local people feel aggrieved. In Haringey, there has been a big row about whether the name even has racist connotations. Local people have put forward all sorts of ideas that it was to do with chimney sweeps or was based on King Charles II —all sorts of things. Local supermarket owner Ali Demirci has been going round asking people what they thought the original name was. Whereas the council seem convinced it is racist, local people do not necessarily.

The bit where levelling up comes in is as follows. Carol Lee, who has lived on the road for 35 years and has mixed-race children, was quoted in the Guardian as saying:

“I’ll have to change my driver’s licence, and that’s £40 alone. You have to look after your money these days”,


as well as saying that she objects and that this has been imposed, and so on. Graffiti has been put up on the changed sign and signs put up in windows with the original name on them.

I was simply making the point that, although I do not think this Bill is the right place to deal with it, I do not think there is nothing to be dealt with. As to the Colston statue question, it would be wrong if, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, suggested, we took to pulling down statues that we disagreed with because things did not go our way. I think that would be a destructive conclusion to reach.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, before my noble friend responds to the debate, I want to ask a couple of questions. I do not want to get into the detail of the public health Act, although I might say to the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, who quoted marking and painting, the text here is simply the same as the public health Act, so I do not think the draftsman can be criticised too much for incorporating some of the original drafting in the process of rewriting this bit of legislation.

I have two questions. First, subsection (10) of this clause says:

“No local Act operates to enable a local authority within subsection (1)(a) or (b) to alter the name of a street, or part of a street, in its area.”


That relates to a district council or to a county council for which there is no district council. Are there any such local Acts? I was not clear what the import of this is, and whether there are local Acts that have given this power and they are being disapplied by this provision. I wondered whether my noble friend knew whether there were any such local Acts.

Secondly, I did not give him notice of this question, but I am asking my noble friend if he will be kind enough to see what the department’s view is on it. If one knows Cambridge at all, one knows that to the west of Cambridge there is a new town called Cambourne. I was the Member of Parliament there when it was first proposed and, in the original naming process for what were then three linked villages, it was intended to use the name Monkfield, since they were actually built on land that was called Monkfield farm.

However, the local authority discovered that it had no power to determine what the name of a new village or town would be. Presumably, the legislation, except in the context of development corporations, never believed that local authorities would be naming new villages or towns that were put on to greenfield sites by private developers. As it turned out, the private developer had the right in law to determine the name Cambourne, which it chose using Cambridge and Bourn, a local village. Everyone is perfectly happy about that now, but at the time it was questioned whether it was appropriate that a local authority could name streets but could not name a town. That is a curious situation for us to have arrived at.

As it happened, the local authority subsequently came up with the excellent name of Northstowe, which I think slightly reflects the point made in the other amendment by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, since it used the name of the hundred within which the town subsists—namely, Northstowe—which historically had never been applied to a specific village or town, so a historic name was able to be given a modern usage. Fortunately, that worked okay without anyone having any problems with it. The question is: should the local authority have such a power and, if not, is this worth thinking about at some point?

Health and Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Lord Lansley

Lords Hansard _ Part 1 & Report stage
Wednesday 16th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I was not intending to intervene, but I was prompted to do so not least by the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Birmingham. That the PPRS has been sustained by Governments, albeit amended from time to time, should not lead us to the conclusion that all products should have their pricing and regulation controlled by government. I do not think that the analogy runs at all, so we should ignore the PPRS for these purposes.

My noble friend on the Front Bench whom I believe is replying to this debate and I were in a coalition Government with the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, and we were pretty clear then. I remember a decade ago creating a bit of a storm by saying that I wanted to end up with a smoke-free England. We have reached a point now where there are tobacco companies which think that we are going to arrive at that position, and so we should. I do not think that this debate is about whether we achieve that; it is about the mechanisms by which we do so.

If my noble friend reiterates the Government’s intention, willingness and sense of urgency about bringing forward measures, as I hope he does, I would not bind the hands of the Government with these amendments. Frankly, even if they were passed, nothing would happen unless and until the Government bring forward legislation for the purpose. It would be better for us to have the debate and make the position clear. I do not disagree with the arguments presented by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, and others—when we were in government, we implemented things such as the ban on display in shops and preventing the availability of cigarettes to youngsters through vending machines, which I think was one of the most important things we could do. We made progress; we need to make more. We need the Government to come forward with proposals for that, but these amendments are not necessary if the Government say that they are willing to make progress.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I was not intending to speak, but I wanted to counter the point made to the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, that he was simply rehearsing lines from FOREST, the pro-freedom to smoke group. I also inadvertently receive communiques from ASH, the anti-smoking lobby group—I think it has me muddled up with someone else—and I have heard many of its lines rehearsed here as well on the other side of the argument. I thought it might be worth noting that.

Secondly, I have to declare an interest: I smoke. I appreciate that this means that I am beyond any redemption—goodness knows, I am controversial enough on a range of other things, but that is probably the worst.