Baroness Hollis of Heigham
Main Page: Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Labour - Life peer)Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [HL]
Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, I will deal first with Amendments 18, 20, 21 and 22.
Amendment 18 would require the mayor to obtain the consent of the combined authority before appointing the deputy mayor. As the Bill stands, the deputy mayor is appointed by the mayor from the members of the combined authority, as the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said. The mayor may, if she or he thinks fit, remove the deputy mayor from office and appoint a new deputy mayor. The Bill’s provisions align with a local authority mayor’s current powers to appoint a deputy mayor. In practice, a mayor will consult some or all of the members of a combined authority about a deputy mayor appointment. At the very least, the mayor will consult the person she or he is minded to appoint, and may well take the views of other members of the authority about this.
For mayoral governance to be effective the mayor and the deputy mayor must be able to work together and the mayor must have confidence in her or his deputy, as again the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said. More significantly, the mayor has been directly elected by the people of the combined authority area and has a clear mandate, a mandate which the deputy mayor will have a role in helping the mayor to fulfil. It would be wrong in both principle and practice for the members of the combined authority to have an ultimate say over who is the deputy mayor, which would be the case if this amendment were made. It is wrong in principle since the mayor, with his or her mandate, needs to be able to have a say over who is the deputy who will assist the mayor to deliver what he or she has promised the voters. It is wrong in practice, since giving the members of a combined authority the ultimate say as to whether a person can or cannot be deputy opens up the possibility of appointments being made which would frustrate or hinder the mayor and create division almost from the outset, as the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said.
We need to remember the purpose of all this. It is not about forms of governance for their own sake. It is about putting in place the governance needed to support that devolution of powers which is now so urgently needed, as my noble friend Lord Deben said, if this country is to achieve the economic competitiveness and productivity on which the prosperity of all depends. Requiring the combined authority to consent to the deputy mayor’s appointment is not a sensible check or balance on the exercise of executive functions. It risks creating arrangements which frustrate the exercise of these powers, and hence I invite noble Lords not to press this amendment.
Amendments 21 and 22 would likewise simply risk frustrating the exercise of the mayor’s executive functions, and hence frustrate the very purpose of a devolution deal. These amendments would require a mayor to consult the combined authority whenever the mayor wishes to delegate a general function to the deputy mayor, another member or, indeed, an officer. As the Bill stands, the provisions relating to delegation align with the policy for a local authority mayor or leader, who may arrange for the discharge of functions by members of the executive or officers of the authority. Although the mayor may delegate functions, the mayor remains accountable for any actions taken. The mayor is accountable directly to the electorate.
I understand the motivation behind these amendments, which is to ensure that a mayor is indeed effectively held to account, that the executive actions of the mayor are transparent and that people can have confidence that the mayor will properly exercise his or her functions; in short, that while there is the capacity and scope for strong executive action, there are equally the right checks and balances to give that confidence, to ensure accountability and to deliver transparency. However, confusing executive and non-executive actions by involving members of the combined authority in decisions such as how the mayor decides to do his or her job is not providing these checks and balances. These are provided by strong and effective scrutiny, as we will discuss.
I turn back to Amendment 20, which would require the Secretary of State to obtain the consent of the combined authority before making an order providing for a function to be exercisable only by the mayor. I must make clear again that a devolution deal will be agreed only where there is consent from the combined authority or, in the case where the deal also creates the combined authority, the constituent councils. The devolution deal would set out the functions to be exercised by the mayor—the mayoral functions—and those that are to be exercised by the combined authority. The details of the deal will be implemented through an affirmative order, so the arrangements regarding the scope of the mayoral functions will also be fully scrutinised and approved by each House of Parliament, and any order creating or modifying a combined authority is made with the consent of the constituent councils. Hence, we are very clear that the combined authority and/or its constituent councils must agree which functions are mayoral functions and which functions are to be exercised by the combined authority. I am ready to look to ensure that the Bill makes this clear in every circumstance that can arise.
I turn to Amendments 19 and 37. As the Bill stands, the mayor appoints a deputy mayor from the members of the combined authority. This is an action that properly belongs to the mayor and aligns with a local authority mayor’s power to appoint a deputy. The mayor has been directly appointed by the electors, with clear responsibilities and the accountability that goes along with them, and a deputy mayor will have a role in supporting the mayor to fulfil these responsibilities. For an effective partnership and the successful devolution of powers, the relationship between the mayor and deputy needs to work. The requirement for an overview and scrutiny committee to approve the appointment, and to have the power to void it, may frustrate and very much damage this relationship. In practice, a mayor will consult some or all of the members of a combined authority about a deputy mayor appointment, and may well take the views of other members of the authority about this. Adding an extra requirement of consent for a deputy mayor’s appointment is to add an extra layer of bureaucracy, which we are so keen to avoid, and may obstruct the successful devolution of powers that we are trying to achieve.
The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, asked about confirmatory hearings. Those hearings are used but their place is usually where the executive is making an appointment to a public office. The appointment of a deputy mayor is not in this process; rather, it is part of the process for creating the executive.
My noble friend Lord Deben made the point about the clarity of the Bill, on which I commend the Government, and the need for individual areas to do exactly what fits their area; hence the bespoke nature of each deal. With these assurances and the explanations that I have given, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, will agree to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)
My Lords, maybe I should know this, and I do not, but what provision is there without going via the courts for the public removal of a mayor who is regarded as underperforming in their duties? A lot of the Minister’s comments were about transparency, accountability and the authority and legitimacy that they get from direct election, and therefore that they must have a deputy who is aligned with their own views. I understand that argument, although I do not necessarily accept it. But at the moment, within Parliament and certainly within local government, most leaders—apart from having to win their elections every four years—may be required to stand for re-election annually for votes of confidence by their group. They can be removed if they are not regarded as performing appropriately.
On the assumption that a mayor may be elected only every four years or every five—we do not yet know, as we have not had that discussion—how is the accountability to the electorate to be exercised unless the Minister is willing to consider some sort of recall motion? It is clear that the combined authority does not appear to have any leverage over the mayor, in the way that a group would at the moment over the leader of their local authority. Maybe I should know this and it is in some subset of the briefing on the Bill but I cannot find out how, short of going through the courts, you could hold the mayor to account for their actions until that mayor stands for re-election, which may be four, five or six years down the line.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, the noble Baroness has answered the first part of that question herself because it is indeed through the ballot box that the mayor could be removed. I do not know whether she is aware that there is an assumption now in local government that leaders have four-year terms, unless they are indeed removed at the ballot box through election.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
But does the Minister agree that the leaders would have four-year terms unless their group decided that they were not appropriately fulfilling the functions for which they were chosen, in which case there would be either quiet or less-quiet discussions, and that person would stand down?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, authorities which fail to fulfil the duty of best value go into statutory intervention. If things were that bad, that would be the process but there is now an in-built assumption in local authorities that a leader has a four-year term, unless removed by full resolution of the council. However, for the mayor it would be via the ballot box. On the recall mechanism, there is no such mechanism within local authorities and this provision multiplies the local authority provisions up. If a mayor is corrupt we are on to a different level, as I think the noble Baroness understands.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
I understand absolutely that it is a different ball game when corruption is involved, as with some of the issues associated with Tower Hamlets. I am not talking about that. My experience of both district councils and county councils is that there may be a regular turnover of leaders within the four years if they are not driving through the agenda on which their group fought the election and they have failed to deliver the manifesto. Leaders on Norfolk County Council, in that case from the opposition party, have been overturned. In my city council, the leader has to be re-elected each and every year and there is occasionally, if not regularly, a change of leadership in the course of that because the leader has lost the confidence of their group. That is perfectly proper and usually happens because the ward councillors, one-third of whom may have had elections each year, are getting that feedback on the door-step from their constituents.
In other words, there are quite effective, if subtle, ways of ensuring that the current leaders of local authorities continue to deliver their manifesto and carry the consent of their group, who are also regularly standing for election. However, as far as I can see, once a mayor has been elected, he or she is free from any such scrutiny, let alone from recall, by his or her electorate. The leader of a group is indirectly elected, and can be recalled by that group; the mayor is directly elected but apparently cannot be recalled by the electorate. Could the Minister help me on this?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I certainly can. With other mayoral systems—for example, the Mayor of London and mayors elsewhere—accountability and the way to change the status quo is via the ballot box. There is no provision for recall within local authorities that I know of. Unless something has recently been introduced, there is no mechanism of recall. In the discussion that the noble Baroness is having with me—I am sure she will tell me if I am wrong—there is perhaps an additional suspicion around a mayor which there is not around local authority leaders. I take her point that local authority leaders are removed in subtle or not so subtle ways, depending on where you are, but for mayors the ultimate accountability is via the ballot box.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, there is not a process for local authority councillors to be recalled—or for local authority leaders or any other local authority mayors. This would be an anomaly were it to be introduced.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
I will stop pushing on this point, but I have one last question that I am still not clear on. That may be because we have not yet got to the point about the length of the mayor’s term of office and the co-terminosity or otherwise of other elections. However, one could easily see a combined authority with, say, five bodies where one or two might be NOC while the other three, because their elections do not occur at the same time as the mayoral elections, might have leaders of different political persuasions so that none of the leaders was of the same political persuasion as the directly elected mayor. I assure the Minister that, as I am sure she is aware, that will happen. We have seen it between elections for local government and elections for MPs where we get very different results. Indeed, some people quite deliberately cross-vote to get precisely that outcome. I have seen that in Norwich on many occasions. What then happens if the mayor has no leaders politically sympathetic to the views on which he was elected?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, the noble Baroness makes a very interesting point. Other points have been made at length in this House about single-party states, but in terms of election periods or cycles being out of kilter because of different types of elections, I would imagine—although I will confirm this with the noble Baroness—that they are the sorts of things that would need to be ironed out when a devolution deal was done on how that combined authority’s elections would pan out. I am thinking of the Greater Manchester situation, where we are in thirds and all synchronise nicely. But I can foresee that process.
Lord Woolmer of Leeds
That comes back to the clarification that we asked for—and we are getting a little lost in it. Is an elected councillor in one of the constituent authorities who is not a leader a member of the combined authority in the sense that it is being used? In other words, could a mayor choose somebody as a deputy who was a back-bencher in any of the local authorities, to put it simply, and not a decision-maker on the board of the combined authority? Would that be possible?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
That is a good question—particularly if there were no leaders in political sympathy with the mayor and therefore he or she had to scrabble around to find a deputy and had to go to a minority party, which might be very minority indeed.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, the deputy mayor has to be a member of the combined authority, not just a councillor in one of the councils.
Lord Storey
My Lords, it has to be about more than swapping the police and crime commissioner’s police car for the mayoral car; the appointments process is hugely important. However, I want to speak to Amendment 28 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. Unfortunately, he cannot be here at the moment, so I volunteered to say a few words on it. It makes perfect sense—
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
I wonder whether the noble Lord might withhold his comments. A very important issue is raised by that amendment, but perhaps we could continue to explore the issue that we are on and then move on to the new amendment.
Lord Storey
I am awfully sorry, my Lords. As I sat down, I squeezed my mobile phone and suddenly a voice was saying something into my ear, so I did not hear a word that the noble Baroness said. I mean that as no disrespect.
I shall try to continue. Amendment 28 is quite clear. If an elected mayor takes on the position of police and crime commissioner, we should be clear as to what those functions and roles are. I have, and had, grave reservations about the whole notion of police and crime commissioners, but we have them. If we look throughout the land, we see that they have interpreted and developed their powers in all sorts of interesting ways. Not only did the Select Committee’s report show that there have been significant variations in the interests and approaches taken across the country; it criticised the weak accountability of the police and crime commissioners. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, suggests in his amendment that we might have an opportunity to develop the policing and crime functions should they be taken up by an elected mayor.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Grocott, who is absolutely right. Let me give an example. In many of the shire counties there may well be a combined authority around the leading city of the county, together with its neighbours. There may or may not be, as part of the individual bespoke package, an elected mayor. Let us assume that the authority agrees and negotiates an elected mayor for the city and the adjacent authorities. That would mean that the rest of the county is not in such a system, although there will still be the county council, of course. In the mayoral authority the police powers would come to the mayor, but unfortunately for the rest of, say, Norfolk, the police headquarters and all the resources are in the city, along with all the senior superintendents. All of the police functions spill out from the city, but the heart and the head of the police service has just been moved out of the territory of the police and crime commissioner, who will be left to look after a scattering of marginal, rural districts with no resources, no buildings and no senior staff. I simply do not see how this is even faintly possible.
The Earl of Lytton (CB)
My Lords, having not spoken on the Bill before, I must declare a few interests as a former president of the National Association of Local Councils, a vice-president of the LGA and a practising chartered surveyor with urban interests of all sorts. Apart from apologising for my lack of involvement in the earlier stages through a clash of diaries, my reason for intervening is to remind noble Lords that the Committee on Standards in Public Life will shortly produce a report on the subject of police accountability. I suspect that part of it will look at the role and efficacy of police and crime commissioners. Before the Minister responds, she might like to bear in mind that that particular issue is in play.
Your Lordships would not expect a comment from these Benches that is unequivocally in favour of the normal democratic processes for deciding the best way of governing accountability. I always think of my late father’s nostrum that vox populi is not necessarily vox Dei—he was a man of great religious conviction—and I think that the saying may possibly apply here. I am not convinced that mixing these two functions together is necessarily a great idea. It may be, but I do not see that it is guaranteed to be so.
At the moment, I suspect that we have a growing problem that boils down to the question of who has oversight of the regulator. That is an issue where powers are extensive and largely not subject to any sort of external oversight. They gradually accrue to themselves things that perhaps should not be accrued. There is a natural tendency—it is a tendency in human nature and I do not apportion blame for that—to try to exclude those who might loosely be termed the prying eyes of external forces. The question is one of accountability: how it sits with elected mayors, who are elected on a rather different template, and how it actually keeps the two functions separate. I would hesitate to suggest that it would be appropriate for the hard-nosed commercial thrust used by the elected mayor of one of these great metropolitan combined authorities to be applied to dealing with the police. I do not think the two are quite at one.
I thought that I should flag up those points—particularly the Committee on Standards in Public Life which, as your Lordships will know, is under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Bew. I think that its deliberations and its report will throw some light on this whole question of accountability.
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, I have not so far participated in this Committee and apologise to the House for that. I have just not been able to be here either for Second Reading or the first day of Committee. I declare an interest as leader of a London borough. Actually, I am rather pleased that London does not feature in the Bill in respect of the potential ideas for centralising power in London away from the boroughs. I hope we will not see any of that stuff come forward in another place at a later stage without any opportunity for debating it in your Lordships’ House. I am not going to go into the broader subjects, but I have read the debates very carefully and I find it dangerously easy to restrain my enthusiasm for imposing models on people. Very important points have been raised so far in this Committee.
I shall confine myself to this amendment, as is proper. I am not part of the little posse that came in to support my noble friend’s amendment, but I am glad to see that they are here. My own authority has been involved in discussions with the LGA proposals to look towards wider bond issues. But there are practical issues that need to be addressed, particularly in the difficult areas of things we all love and are potentially enthusiastic about, whether it is music or sport. It can be easy sometimes for that enthusiasm to run away a little. I can think of a number of local authorities not too far distant from my own where enthusiasm for the theatre has ended up with them having to underwrite substantial costs. So we need to proceed in this area with caution, but I hope that my noble friend will be able to respond positively, because caution is one thing and “no” is another. It should be possible to unleash the enthusiasm of local people. Do we not all believe in localism, as my noble friends have argued? Perhaps when she replies, my noble friend might offer to have discussions with my noble friend Lady Wheatcroft and others and representatives of local authorities and see whether, in the course of the passage of the legislation, she will give a positive commitment to considering this creative and interesting idea, albeit with corners that need to be probed—although perhaps not as many as some other aspects of the Bill. It is a very good and welcome thing that my noble friend has brought this forward.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
In one sense, one very much welcomes the proposal of powers that we used to have rather more freely, in recourse to raising bonds through the municipal public works board. I myself used to buy bonds from Derby and all the rest of it, and people put them to appropriate use for their savings. I am certainly not opposed to the principle at all, but I am not clear on something—and perhaps the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, can help me on this point. The mayor will have a levy over and beyond, presumably, the council tax precept run by the combined authority. What powers the mayor will have vis-à-vis the combined authority may differ with each bespoke arrangement. What does the noble Baroness expect to be funded by a bond as opposed to a levy? The levy clearly falls on all, and all have access to those services, whereas a bond would be a voluntary subscription for an additional service which, none the less, would be enjoyed by all but possibly at a fee to fund the additional interest rate over and beyond the levy. I am slightly confused about how those two things would run in parallel. Clearly, in the past what would happen is that Derby would decide to seek £10 million through a loan on capital expenditure and fund it through the interest payments through the levy on it. In other words, part of the revenue expenditure would go to fund that bond. How does the noble Baroness envisage that working in this new financial structure?
Lord Woolmer of Leeds
On a similar point, what has been lacking in recent years with regard to capital funding and borrowing is the difficulty for local authorities to have the freedom to borrow and, because of that, a disconnect between identifying what it is they want to invest in, enthusing people for that and saying that they will back it with the capability of borrowing. That is the kind of thing that local authorities are examining. The question is whether this proposal would be more likely to generate enthusiasm and how it would fit in to the financing and the cost of the borrowing.
The amendment relates to specific projects, and it is highly likely, to judge from the enthusiastic speeches, that most of those projects will not cover their costs. There will be deficits; the only way in which the bonds will be sellable is if they are underwritten by the local authorities, which means the taxpayers. If one sets aside the initial enthusiasm, this can be a reality only if the taxpayer underwrites the bond. I hope that that is fair to say; it may not be the case, and the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, may say so. If the bond was tied to a specific project whose finances meant that the bond stood or fell on those financial outcomes, it is highly likely that a number of those would fail. If they did not fail, that means it would have been perfectly easy to fund them, because they are profit making, and they did not need to go for this scheme. It would help me in understanding not the appeal but the practicality of this proposal, if I could understand the practicality of persuading the Treasury—among other things—that this would not ultimately rest on underwriting by the mayor. It would be the mayor, not the combined authority, who would be saying, “I’m going to guarantee that these bonds will be repaid however the projects perform”. It would be helpful to me to understand that, should the House in due course be moved to consider this issue.
Baroness Wheatcroft
I gather from the Minister that the capacity to expand borrowing would not be there, so this would just be a different way of raising money, but it would be a way of involving the local community far more. As I understand it, the Bill is aimed at building local communities and pushing power to the people. I accept that this is not without qualms. There are questions to be asked—noble Lords have raised them—but I was delighted with the support for the general direction of travel, which is after all in line with our wish to devolve more power to the community and to build those communities. I hope that there may be scope for the Minister to spend some time working with me and others who support the general drift of this amendment to try to come up with something that we might bring back at a later stage.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
From the noble Baroness’s response to the Minister’s point about borrowing capacity, I am still not clear whether she expects this ability to raise what would otherwise be capital expenditure to add to the PSBR.
Baroness Wheatcroft
There are clearly issues to be worked out. I am very flexible about this. It is the principle of getting local people involved in funding local facilities that I really want to pursue, and I hope that I can have talks that will enable me to do that. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, although I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, for managing, with some finesse, to shoehorn housing into this debate on the cities Bill, I share some of the reservations of my noble friend Lord Beecham. In two-tier authorities and shire counties, one of the primary functions of district councils is the housing responsibility. Even if they have stock transferred their property to a housing association, as quite a high proportion has, the district council none the less remains responsible as the strategic authority, so to speak, in dealing with homelessness. That is complicated enough, and I think that the problem is going to get infinitely worse if the wretched housing association Bill progresses. That will fire an Exocet through our ability to meet housing need in localities, as we will lose not only the housing association stock but council housing stock to pay for the discounts—we will lose two rental properties to fund one discount and not one extra house will be built as a result. It will be completely disastrous, and I am sure that the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, will be fiercely engaged in that fight. I very much hope that he will be.
The problem is that, if this is the thinking of the noble Earl, I am not quite sure what distinction he is making between a combined authority and a unitary authority of three previous district councils. Housing is the main function. If this is where it is going, in alignment with the recommendations that will come with a combined authority for the development of the economy and so on, effectively, a unitary authority will be achieved in the name of adding more and more functions to the combined authorities, which are primarily about economic growth.
No one doubts that one responsibility of the combined authority will be to determine areas for housing growth, land development and land use. That is very different from taking on the responsibility for who gets what house due to local priorities. If that is taken away from the district council and given to the new combined authority, we will have effectively removed the responsibility for housing from a district council to a combined authority and would have to start inspecting houses of multiple occupation and all the rest of it to make it work. That would leave district councils virtually non-existent. That is my problem with Amendment 36A.
Although I am sure that Amendment 36B is well intentioned, my problem is with “affordable”. The research of my right honourable friend in the other place, John Healey, has shown that the two drivers of the housing benefit bill have been, frankly, the extension of the private rented sector, with its very high rents, and the displacement of social housing rents by affordable rents. Those two things alone are primarily responsible for the growth in housing benefit, neither of which adds a single property to the stock or houses a single additional person—they are displacement activities. All that is happening behind this amendment and may, I fear, be made worse by it. All the drivers will add to the welfare bill. The Government will then say that we must cut it by taking away the ability to make work pay and removing money from working tax credits because they are not willing to tackle the tax privileges of private landlords who are charging market rents or the issue of affordable rents, which is, in turn, driving up housing benefit bills in the social rented sector.
An infinitely more complicated set of problems has been opened up by the noble Earl’s amendments. None of us would dispute the outcomes that he is seeking, but I do not think that he can get there through this route.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, we have considerable sympathy with the thinking behind both amendments from the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. They touch upon one of the most serious issues that confront our society—our housing crisis— which must engage the action of central government and local authorities. It is also prescient, given concerns expressed in the press this morning about the figures for child poverty rising for the first time in a decade. We know that the lack of affordable housing is a key driver of homelessness and that homelessness inevitably sits at the centre of disadvantage and deprivation. The major influences on a child’s life—family income, effective parenting and a secure environment—are all directly or indirectly influenced by a family’s housing conditions.
The question posed by these two amendments is what the role of a combined authority should be in addressing our housing crisis and reducing homelessness. There certainly could and should be a role, and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority has shown the way. In its case, the elected mayor has control of a £300 million housing investment fund and powers over strategic planning, including the power to create a statutory spatial strategy for the CA area. There are somewhat convoluted arrangements for administration of the housing investment fund, but it has the prospect of delivering 10,000 to 15,000 homes over the period—a real contribution. Powers to create a spatial strategy for the area are particularly useful, given the demise, as my noble friend Lord Beecham said, of the former regional spatial strategies and the weakness of the duty to co-operate.
There are two issues, however, with the noble Earl’s amendments. Indeed, all noble Lords who have spoken today have, in one way or another, touched upon those issues. We should be mindful of the current requirement for local authorities to ensure that local plans meet the assessed needs for both affordable and market housing and that neighbourhood plans can supplement this. Further, important legislation is already in force that places a general duty on housing authorities to tackle homelessness, however difficult that is in the current circumstances. We would not wish to undermine these important responsibilities and local priorities, but it might well be appropriate to build on these requirements at an overarching strategic level. One way or another, those points were made by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and my noble friends Lord Beecham and Lady Hollis.
Certainly the prospect of a combined authority having spatial planning powers across an area could be a considerable advantage in creating a coherent housing framework. However—I am sure that the Minister will make this point—the approach suggested is prescriptive. Doubtless it will be said that there is nothing to prevent a combined authority seeking these powers by agreement, and I hope that the Minister will confirm that the Government would not be shy of agreeing such arrangements.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, Amendments 36A and 36B would insert two new clauses into the Bill that place statutory duties on the Secretary of State to undertake reviews of the advantages and disadvantages of placing a duty on combined authorities to reduce the numbers of homeless children and families in housing need, and give combined authorities responsibility for affordable housing in their area and associated borrowing powers. These amendments would also require the Secretary of State to lay the report of these reviews under the clauses before both Houses of Parliament.
At the outset, I must say that housing is a priority for this Government. In our manifesto, we committed to building 200,000 starter homes and more affordable housing. We are putting in place £38 billion of public and private sector investment to help ensure that 275,000 new affordable homes are provided between 2015 and 2020. This means that we will build more new affordable homes than during any equivalent period in the last twenty years.
A couple of noble Lords asked about the definition of “affordable”. The detail is set out in the national policy planning framework, and it is, broadly:
“social rented … and intermediate housing, provided to eligible households whose needs are not met by the market”.
However, within that, there is broad scope around what affordability means in different places to different people.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
I am surprised that the Minister has adduced that definition of “affordable”, because for those of us involved in the sector—I declare an interest as chair of a housing association—affordable housing rents are very different from social housing rents. Social housing rents are running at about 40% to 50% of the market rent, while affordable rents are running at about 80%. We are required in any new building, whether funded by HCA grant or not, to charge affordable rents, which merely drives up the HB bill without any addition to the stock. It is therefore disingenuous, if I may say so, to suggest that social housing is a subset of affordable housing; it is a very different category.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, because I appreciate that I have not given an acceptable definition today, perhaps I may write to noble Lords before our next day in Committee. There are a number of definitions of “affordable”. I will do that in the next few days if that is okay.
We have a good track record on preventing homelessness. Since 2010, we have sustained our investment in homelessness prevention, resulting in local authorities preventing just over 730,000 households becoming homeless. Investment since 2010 has exceeded £500 million to help local authorities prevent and tackle homelessness. This has included an £8 million Help for Single Homeless Fund, which will improve council services for 22,000 single people facing the prospect of homelessness, and a £15 million Fair Chance Fund to provide accommodation, education, training and employment opportunities for around 1,600 of our most vulnerable young, homeless people.
The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, asked whether combined authorities would be under the same duties as local authorities in relation to functions such as homelessness. If the combined authorities wish to take on housing functions, the functions will be the same as they would have been had they remained within the constituent councils. He also asked whether strategic housing policy is always part of combined authority responsibilities. What responsibilities a combined authority will have depends on the individual deal agreed with an area. That deal may include the constituent councils agreeing that certain of their powers and duties will be undertaken by the combined authority either on their behalf or concurrently with them.
I turn to an example of a devolution deal in which housing is an important element: that in Greater Manchester. It includes Greater Manchester having a housing investment fund worth £300 million over 10 years, to be administered by the mayor. The fund will support the delivery of at least 10,000 houses, some of which will be affordable, and will be subject to stringent evaluation before, during and after the 10 years come to an end. I think that it was either the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, or the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie—in fact, it might have been the noble Lord, Lord Shipley; I did not write down the name of the noble Lord—who asked whether there were any plans to alter the powers of local authorities in the Bill. The answer is no.
This Bill is an enabling Bill, creating the primary legislative framework for implementing bespoke devolution deals. It is not for the Bill to assume what might be included in a deal. Indeed, it is not for the Government to assume what might be in a deal. We are ready to have conversations with any area about what it wishes to see included in a deal for it to be able to meet its needs, develop its economy and increase the competitiveness, productivity and prosperity of the place —be it a city, a county or a town.
Including the amendments in the Bill would imply that a particular view was being taken centrally about homelessness and housing and about how those issues might be addressed in any particular area. It is not for the Secretary of State to prejudge, in advance of any conversations with areas, whether homelessness or providing affordable housing in a particular area is best dealt with by combined authorities or by local authorities, either generally or of a particular class or category.