Universal Credit

Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts

Thursday 16th November 2017 Lords Chamber

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[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

That this House takes note of the impact of Universal Credit on claimants.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)]

My Lords, I am sure that we all want—wanted—universal credit to succeed, so in opening this debate I first pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Freud, who has heroically sought to build UC. It has been badly battered by HMT, but his architecture is still there. Secondly, I thank our Lords Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, who has been so helpful and approachable. It is a pleasure to work with her.

With so much early good will, why is UC in so much trouble, its effects on so many claimants catastrophic? People newly claiming UC from today on will not get their first payment until after Christmas. How will they cope? The story of UC is now a story of broken promises. During the Second Reading debates of 2011, Mr Duncan Smith and the noble Lord, Lord Freud, in good faith made three core promises to us all.

On 9 March 2011, Mr Duncan Smith said,

“work will always and must always be made to pay”.—[Official Report, Commons, 9/3/11; col. 921.]

The second promise, by the noble Lord, Lord Freud, was made on 13 September 2011, when he claimed that UC would lift,

“600,000 adults and 350,000 children out of poverty”.—[Official Report, 13/9/11; col. 629.]

Thirdly, Mr Duncan Smith said that UC would be,

“a regime that is easy to understand”.—[Official Report, Commons, 9/3/11; col. 923.]

The noble Lord, Lord Freud, said that a single UC benefit would be simple to claim and access.

Three promises: work would always pay; families would be lifted out of poverty; and a single benefit would ensure a simple structure. UC would, we hoped, be transformational. Three core promises, and every one broken. Why? HMT’s cuts and, to some extent, DWP delivery. The DWP fought Treasury cuts and lost. Now that UC is far meaner in its payments, nastier in its sanctions and harsher in its delivery than tax credits, HMT is suddenly anxious to roll it out ever faster—10 times faster, laying waste to DWP promises and our fellow citizens’ lives.

My examples come mainly from the deeply distressing 650 pages or so of last month’s written evidence to the Work and Pensions Select Committee. One claimant wrote that UC can transform lives,

“that is certainly true, by catapulting the ‘only just managing’ into poverty and debt”.

That is in UCR 0019.

Broken promises: let me count the ways. Promise one was that work would always pay. No. The IFS says that 3 million working families will, on average, be £2,500 a year worse off. The work allowance, which is taper free, before UC withdrawal kicks in, has been cut by up to £2,000 for a lone parent, and for single people, scrapped. A lone parent with one child now has to work 25 hours a week on UC to get the same income as working 16 hours a week under tax credits—60% more hours for the same income. Would we?

Second earners, mostly partnered women, are even worse hit, with no work allowance, so 63p in the pound taper from the first pound, tax and NI, childcare and loss of council tax support can take some 93% of her earnings. Why work when, with travel costs, you can be worse off? Would we?

The self-employed are especially exposed, as are disabled families. One client told the charity, Turn2us, “I will be better off giving up work because with the new UC I will be £200 worse off … so contemplating unemployment in 2018”. That first promise that work always pays is not for him, nor in future, when UC reaches 7 million people, for many thousands of others, so the DWP uses the whip of unbelievably harsh sanctions to get people into work that for too many does not pay. The first core promise is therefore broken. The second core promise was that UC would lift 350,000 children out of poverty. Instead, says CPAG, drawing on DWP and IFS stats a fortnight ago, HMT’s repeated cuts to UC will send 1 million more children into poverty by 2021, their lives blighted. How in all decency can we defend this even to ourselves? Promise number two is therefore broken.

I come to the third broken promise on smooth delivery. Where to begin? There are missed payments, delayed payments, wrong payments, cases lost or closed, making late appeals impossible, staff unable to handle contributory benefits, claimants lacking acceptable ID, reputable advisers such as CAB unable to act for clients in hospital because they lack explicit consent, staff asking for the wrong information, documents getting lost, keeping incomplete records and giving conflicting advice. Claimants have informed the DWP that they could not attend an appointment as their employer refused them time off. They were sanctioned. They were in hospital: sanctioned. An appointment posted by the DWP to the wrong address: a three-month sanction.

Take IT. Parts of rural Norfolk lack internet access; in any case struggling claimants, especially older or disabled people, cannot afford dial up or smart phones, nor can they always get to jobcentres, 87 of which, unbelievably, are closing just at the time when we should be boosting jobcentre support. What can they do? A claimant had an appointment for 10 am. He notified the DWP that his first local bus arrived at noon: he was sanctioned. One man—reference: UCR 0065—with a traumatic brain injury affecting his memory, was late for his appointment. He was sanctioned and lost several hundred pounds. He self-harmed, and, unable to afford the bus fare to hospital, he closed his wound himself with super glue.

Tribunal judges are scathing. The greatest problem, however, is the six-week or more waiting period, and then monthly payments in arrears—supposed, if I may say so, to moralise some of the most marginal in society into behaving like middle-class salaried professionals resilient with savings. The Government must know the stats: 58% of those on UC are paid weekly or fortnightly, not monthly. Plymouth Community Homes has 14,000 tenants; 75% of its claimants are paid weekly, fortnightly, or have limited hours, so payment delays sink those claimants deeper into the quagmire of debt. In Gateshead, 221 of 231 tenants on UC have arrears over £800; in Halton, 920 of its 1,000 tenants have these arrears. Croydon, Southwark and Tower Hamlets have an average debt for all UC payments of about £1,000. Many, I fear, will never get out of the debt we have constructed for them. Family members, themselves struggling, are trying to support other family members. As one sister said, it is “the poor that are supporting the poorest”.

More than a quarter of claimants are waiting more than six weeks for their initial payment; one in 10 is waiting for more than 10 weeks—without earnings, benefits, or savings. They are pawning their belongings and missing meals. Charity workers are finding fivers out of their own pockets to put the meter back on for some lighting and heating. All these people are facing Christmas.

Half of new UC claimants now claim advance payments, which is surely evidence that the six-week model was flawed from its very beginning. But, unlike the low cap in tax credits debt recovery, for the next six months DWP takes up to 40%—often far more with other debts—from your UC standard allowance for advance payments, council tax and utilities arrears. Each month, your personal, private debt rises to cover the shortfall from your public debt, as handled by DWP.

The second largest delivery issue is that UC is not paid directly to landlords on request. Some 79% of UC claimants are in rent arrears. Some have already been evicted by social landlords. In Northern Ireland and Scotland, at tenants’ request, UC can be paid fortnightly rather than monthly in arrears and the housing element paid directly to the landlord. If it can be done in Scotland and in Northern Ireland, why not in England?

DWP is extending its trusted partner and landlord portal scheme, but not to the private sector. Private landlords need their rents to finance their mortgages. Some tenants are waiting for 10 or 12 weeks—yet eight weeks of arrears are mandatory grounds for re-possession.

So what changes might, in my view, help to rescue UC? What might begin to redeem those broken promises: that work should always pay; that people would be lifted out of poverty; and that delivery would be simple? Of course, I would like a reinstatement of the cuts, from benefit freeze to second child policy—those are big ticket items. But, in particular, we hope to see a four-week rather than a six-week initial payment period in the Budget.

We want, at tenants’ request, fortnightly payments of UC and direct payments of the housing elements to landlords, as in Scotland and Northern Ireland. We should cap and slow down DWP debt recovery to avoid even deeper debt.

We should raise the work allowance; pilot some second earners to see whether their own work allowance would bring them into work. Two-thirds of children in poverty have a working parent. If work really paid, a second earner could lift her children out of poverty—and that must matter, I am sure, to us all.

Here is a proposal from someone who knows how UC works. Most UC problems hit and hurt claimants within the first three or four months. A fortnight’s UC grant at the beginning of a UC claim—with no clawback, just a fortnight’s grant until first full payment as now—would keep so many families afloat.

This would be a grant that does not need be repaid. But how much would it be? By 2021, it is calculated, total social security cuts and welfare reforms will be “saving” HMT £37 billion per year—86% of that falling on women, of course. A two-week grant, costing between £400 million to £600 million, combined with four weeks until first payment, could indeed transform lives for the better. It could be a grant financed, perhaps, by last year’s £680 million underspend on tax credits, as pointed out by the OBR. People are so scared out there. The work and pensions evidence that I have here is completely draining in its wretchedness.

Two people are facing Christmas. Donna—UCR 0060—is a lone parent with three children, who has been working zero-hour contracts, on UC, for 18 months. When her hours were cut as a ZHC worker, as little work was available, she tried to get an advance payment but was told—correctly, according to the rules—that it was too late. It was her fault, they said—she should have budgeted better. She says, “I wanted to say, ‘You don’t know my situation. I work, I work, 40 hours a week if I can get it. You don’t know how hard this has been. I’m a person!’”.

Steve, a 55 year-old maintenance engineer, was made redundant in April 2016. After four visits and three months, he got his first payment. The stress and fear led to angina and he was hospitalised, so he missed an interview and was sanctioned for two months. The resulting rent arrears of £1,000 meant that he lost his home. He did everything right. We did everything wrong. We broke our promises—and we broke him with it. What Christmas is there for Donna or Steve? We can and must do better than this. Sir John Major said last month that UC was,

“operationally messy, socially unfair and unforgiving”.

Was he wrong? I beg to move.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, this debate is very well subscribed and is taking place within a tight timetable. I urge all noble Lords to stick within the five-minute limit.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, I do not have the time—understandably, given the pressure of other debates—to challenge so many of the assertions the Minister made in her reply which I have to say, from my work on the subject, are not well founded. I thank everybody who has taken part in today’s debate. The meaningful, moving, compassionate, well-informed examples and evidence that have come from around the House show how many of your Lordships are seeking to walk in the footsteps of claimants rather than sign up automatically—I am not accusing the Minister of this—to leafy government assurances which from my research are not supported by the evidence.

None the less, we have a Budget coming. I say to the Minister—I know she and her colleagues in the department will fight for this—that there is a choice. The Government can choose in the Budget to align themselves with the just about managing and the even more deprived—

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Morris of Bolton) (Con)]

I apologise, but the time allotted for this debate has now elapsed, and I must put the Question. The Question is that this Motion be agreed to.

Government-commissioned Research

Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts

Wednesday 28th June 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I am sure there is room for progress, but I note that the UK is a world leader on open data and, in 2016, for the third year running, ranked first in the world on the World Wide Web Foundation’s Open Data Barometer.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)]

My Lords, we all know of circumstances in which government research has been published after the relevant debate in this House. We all know that government research has been published in the long vacations or vacations where there is no access to it or ability to scrutinise it or interrogate Ministers about it. In other words, delay is effectively suppression in too many fields. Will the Minister please take seriously the very real and pertinent points made by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, in order to help the House of Lords in its primary function, which is scrutiny?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I certainly agree that research should be released as soon as possible and it would be wrong to suppress it for political reasons. As I said a moment ago, Sir Stephen said he found no indication that research had been indefinitely suppressed. However, he went on to say that delay could be damaging or unfortunate. The protocol that I referred to gives advice to departments on the timing of the publication of research. I will do what I can to make sure that is adhered to.

Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham and Sheffield Combined Authority (Election of Mayor) (Amendment) Order 2017

Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts

Thursday 16th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)]

My Lords, will the Minister accept that the biggest single obstacle to the devolution deal in areas outside big cities is the requirement to have an elected mayor, which most of the authorities do not want? For example, in Norfolk and Suffolk, we have an effective LEP arrangement between authorities without an elected mayor. The proposition for a devolution deal for Norfolk and Suffolk fell because of the requirement to have an elected mayor over two counties—most of which is rural, some of which is urban; most of which is Conservative, some of which is Labour, with UKIP and Green councillors making up the mix. The result was that there could be no agreement about what would be a rurally based elected mayor in perpetuity over the two counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, where the economic drivers for those authorities are the cities: Norwich, Ipswich and so on. If the Government were to detach the elected mayor from devolution so that where authorities wish it and they have a combined agenda, a combined outlook and perhaps a combined urban authority, doing so might be perfectly fine and make very good sense. But where there are the disparities that I have suggested in largely rural areas, such devolution deals will fall if one person is asked to be responsible for an area that is 120 miles long. Will the Minister consider detaching the requirement to have a mayor where authorities do not wish it but none the less need the powers of devolution, particularly on transport connectivity, to make their areas even more economically productive?

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I am inspired by those words of the noble Baroness to say that she makes an extremely good point and one that would be warmly echoed in Lincolnshire where there has been a decision not to have a directly elected mayor because it is not felt suitable in such a large county and for a largely rural area. This obsession with elected mayors is frankly ridiculous. It may be appropriate in certain urban areas, although to me it is inimical to the British tradition of local government, but that is my prejudice and I readily admit it. It frankly does not sit happily in largely rural areas. For the Government to say, “You cannot have your devolution unless you have a mayor”, is a thoroughly unreasonable ultimatum.

Shortly after Mrs May became Prime Minister, I was greatly encouraged when it was noised abroad that she is not wedded to this idea. That is one divorce which I hope she will expedite because it is not a good idea in rural areas, it should not be persisted with and I hope my noble friend, while possibly rebuking the noble Baroness and me for talking about areas which are not the subject of this order, will take the message that is coming from both sides of the House and all political parties that in rural areas this is something up with which we should not need to put.

Housing and Planning Bill

Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts

Monday 25th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, I shall briefly follow the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane. At Second Reading, I and many other people acknowledged that there were some very good bits in the Bill before us at that time. However, we pointed out that there were also many bits about which we had considerable concern. There are at least some areas where deliberation in your Lordships’ House has brought about improvements to those areas where we had concern. I, too, pay tribute to the Minister and her colleagues on the Front Bench for the way in which they have been willing to listen and bring forward amendments in the light of our deliberations.

However, none of that can take away from the fact that the Bill has been presented, not only in another place but more recently to your Lordships’ House, in a pretty poor state. Because I am relatively new to your Lordships’ House, I turned to my elders and betters to see what they have thought about it. As we come to the end of the deliberations on this legislation, it is worth reflecting what your Lordships’ Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee has had to say about the Bill—not only when it first received it but subsequently, after various deliberations had taken place.

I note that, in its 27th report, the committee says:

“This Bill has given rise to a particularly large number of comments and recommendations … It is also disappointing that we have felt it necessary to comment adversely on aspects of the delegated powers memoranda provided by the department”.

It described those memoranda as “variable in quality” and pointed out that in relation to some parts of the Bill,

“no delegated powers memorandum was provided at all”.

When the Government responded to the committee’s initial findings, the committee then had to point out that:

“It is a matter of regret that the Government’s response to this Bill … gives us cause for continued concern in that a number of our recommendations received no comment at all”.

The committee made the point that many Members of your Lordships’ House have made many times over many weeks, when it said that,

“we would observe again that these provisions are being presented to the House before the underlying policy is sufficiently developed to afford Members a clear basis for discussing it”.

In its 28th report, the committee amplified that in saying:

“Inadequate and incomplete provisions of … primary legislation cannot be excused on the basis that consultation has not taken place or that the Government wish to retain ‘flexibility to set out differing timeframes as they apply in different contexts’”.

The committee concludes:

“The policy should have been finalised following appropriate consultation before, not after, the Bill was introduced”.

One can read so many other comments from the report:

“We draw this apparent ambiguity to the attention of the House … We draw this lack of clarity to the attention of the House … That seems to us to be a very unusual requirement, and we draw it to the attention of the House”,

and so on. It is “not persuaded”, it does not regard this as being remotely persuasive, and so the report goes on.

It is perfectly reasonable for people to propose a sunrise clause as a way of simply putting off legislation with which they disagree, and we on these Benches disagree with bits of this legislation. However, the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, has made a much more fundamental point about why there should be a sunrise clause, which is simply that the work has not yet been done. Until the work has been done and draft regulations are put before the House and we have an opportunity to know that that consultation has taken place and to understand what the Government mean by some of the definitions we have not yet heard, it seems perfectly reasonable to propose, as the noble Lord and others have done, that we have a sunrise clause to put off the introduction of this legislation until the Government have done the work that they should have done before presenting the Bill to this House.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)]

My Lords, I also support these amendments. I hope that the House will forgive me if I say that I have been in this House for 25 years and handled a number of Bills on both sides of the Benches, both for the Government and the Opposition. There are often cases where, as with the Cities and Local Government Devolution Act, there was a real need for something that was essentially broad brush to get resolutions coming from below, and we accepted that.

However, leaving that aside, in process terms—I am not talking about content, and it is absolutely not the fault of the Minister and her colleagues on the Front Bench—this is the worst Bill I have come across in my fields in 25 years. That is because we have not had pre-legislative scrutiny or proper legislative scrutiny and, because the consultation exercises which should have been completed before the Bill started will not be completed until after the Bill has finished, we will not get post-legislative scrutiny. What does it mean to talk about this House of Lords being a place of scrutiny when we cannot scrutinise because so much of what we need to know will not only not be in primary legislation, but will also not be in statutory instruments which we will see draft copies of before the Bill is complete? Why is that? They are dependent on consultation exercises, which were only started in some cases half way through not the proceedings down the other end but the proceedings in this House. This is disgraceful. It is a shabby way to treat Parliament and all those affected by the Bill—and hundreds of thousands of council tenants will be affected by it, as well as many people who will seek to buy starter homes, and they still do not know the small print of how it will be. It is a shabby way to treat the public.

It is fairly obvious that the Bill was introduced a year too early. It should have been pulled fairly early by the current equivalent of LegCo. Ministers should have been sent away and told to come back to both Houses when the Bill’s policy intent was clear, so that stuff that is of major policy import, not matters of detail, is not carried by SIs—which we are told we cannot amend but only discuss; we might just as well go home and not bother for that purpose—instead of being in the Bill, where we can amend it, dispute and argue with the House of Commons and, ultimately, of course, accept that it has the final say. That has been denied to us.

We are moving on to Third Reading, and I cannot recall being so unhappy about the handling of the process of a Bill, and, as I said, I have been involved with quite a number of Bills. I am not talking about the Minister, who has been as accommodating, helpful and generous with her time as possible. We have failed to scrutinise the Bill. We have allowed ourselves to be committed to a process which we should have rejected as inadequate, because the Bill was not ready for parliamentary scrutiny. We have all allowed ourselves to collude in that failure of scrutiny, and I have to say that I am ashamed of it.

Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Bill [HL]

Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)]

I find this very disturbing, in that I strongly oppose the sale of housing association homes. So many valid points have been put forward, but I am concerned about the points made that various other aspects in this amendment might not be quite right. I intend to support the amendment today, which is very unlike me because I am normally a very loyal Member of this side of the House. However, I accept the point that individuals have given their money. For us to take it over from them in order to hand it out, as we would virtually be doing, would be wrong.

I agree with so much that the noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton, just said about people buying houses, passing them on and their being turned into buy-to-let homes as commercial opportunities. That is worrying.

The point that perhaps concerns me most is what my noble friend Lord Mackay said about this law not being quite right and having other legal implications. Can the Minister assure me that, if this amendment is carried, he will make a commitment that by the time we get to Third Reading he will come back with further amendments to make this amendment work in the way we want it to? That is why I am supporting the amendment today. However, I understand that, technically, unless the Minister indicates that he will look at it again, he might not have the right to do that at Third Reading. We have to be aware of that technicality as well.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Gardner, made a very powerful point about the Minister considering the opinion of the House. Whether my noble friend will vote or not will be her judgment call.

The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, was absolutely right—this is the right amendment to the wrong Bill. The reason it is the wrong Bill is that we are actually back to front on this. I speak as chair of a housing association; I will be time-expired in the autumn. I remind the House that the bedroom tax is forcing up arrears; tenants’ incomes have been not only frozen but cut, given some of the Budget changes; rents will be reduced; the HCA grant no longer makes new build possible; and we are increasingly dependent, therefore, on arrangements with local authorities, private bodies or charitable bodies to get the land on which we can continue to build affordable homes. Given the proposal to add the right to buy, I am going to be spending a lot of the rest of this month trying to see whether a housing association such as mine will actually be around in a few years’ time. In fact, I think it will be gutted.

As I say, I hope I am wrong. I very much hope, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, said, that the other place will make adjustments to the Bill. We all want to promote home ownership and the shared ownership that housing associations can build; that would be the best way forward. None the less, we should protect and ring-fence housing associations, which can make an unequalled contribution, particularly in rural areas, to the viability of communities and enable young people who have nowhere else to rent and can never afford to buy to stay in villages and small towns. My local authority has lost nearly 40% of its best stock—semi-detached houses, 12 to the acre, overlooking the park where the sun always shines. They have gone and we are left with maisonettes and walk-up flats. The properties that we sold have been recycled and are now occupied by three or four students—often creating some nuisance, I am afraid, for the next-door neighbours, but with great profits to the owners. That was never the intention.

We have a dilemma. If my noble friend is satisfied with the Minister’s reply and does not think it right to test the opinion of the House on whether such protection for charities should be foremost in our minds when considering the housing association Bill, we will have missed an opportunity. Our colleagues in the other place should take into account the worries and views of this House, expressed so powerfully by the noble Lords, Lord Kerslake and Lord Best, and my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours. I do not usually use phrases like “sending a message” or “sending a signal” but we have an opportunity to say that, while we accept that this is not the right Bill to carry an amendment like this, the House is extremely concerned about the future viability of housing associations. Housing associations such as mine, which do not deal with stock transferred from local authorities, were charitable from the beginning. We may lose that stock and find that we do not exist as a charity in a few years’ time; and here, we have a Bill that is about charities.

I understand the well founded misgivings of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack—he may be right intellectually—and the concerns of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, with whom this issue can be discussed further. He is absolutely right to say that CPO powers have always been used, but they none the less have to be verified all the way up to ensure that they are being used appropriately. As a local authority leader I have, in the past, gone for CPO powers. However, with those reservations, we need today to say that we are worried about charities. We could say to the National Trust that we will take its assets to refurbish the Palace of Westminster. Why not? Dealing with a grade 1 listed building would be a perfectly legitimate use of the trust’s assets, but no one would go down that route. However, we are doing something similar to housing associations whose distinctive characteristic is that they are charities, and whose purpose, rationale, finances and viability may be deformed by proposals that are going to come our way.

In the light of everything that has been said—including the powerful remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack—if this House decides to accept my noble friend’s amendment and to say to the other place, “Think again before you go ahead with that Bill”, on this occasion, that is the right thing to do.

[Viscount Eccles (Con)]

My Lords, if signals are to be sent, Hansard is the place in which they can be read. Ministers on our Front Bench are also very good at passing on the feeling of this House. If we were to pass this amendment, we would be placing a duty on the Charity Commission that it would never be able to perform. It only needs Parliament to make some decision or another for this amendment to become inoperable by the commission. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, said, the commission must be hoping that the amendment is not passed, because it would in no way be in its interests if it were.

Economic Leadership for Cities

Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)]

My Lords, as a councillor in the late 1960s, I helped woo a major company to Norwich with a package of site, planning consent, key worker housing, roads and training. Sedgwick became the second largest reinsurance company in the world. Some 15 years later, another major financial company wished to relocate in order to expand. I tried hard. I offered a site, housing and TLC, but highways and planning consent were for the county. The company did not want the hassle of negotiating with two very different authorities, so it walked. I lost 600 good jobs for Norwich and for Norfolk. What was the difference? It was the disastrous 1974 local government reorganisation, with its alpha male obsession with size. Despite our cathedrals, university, research parks, international airport and 600 years of unitary status, Norwich became a district council, the largest in the country, and larger than a dozen or so unitary authorities.

Today, we are still the regional capital of East Anglia, providing half of Norfolk’s jobs—and half of those jobs are in knowledge-intensive industries—as well as most of the leisure, retail and media services for Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. Our economic multiplier effect stretches far beyond our formal functions. Like other mid-sized cities, we think that we are focused, energetic, fast, innovative and entrepreneurial. We strive to do all this within the constricted boundaries, functions and revenues of a district council. We are fettered, and yet we are the key city of East Anglia.

This debate from the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, is superbly timed. Cities drive our economy. They are where things happen, but that potential is not limited to the great core cities. Mid-sized cities like Norwich and Luton are also key. They contribute £162 billion to the national economy alongside the £173 billion of the eight core cities. Some have a manufacturing or maritime identity, such as Coventry and Plymouth. Some share interdependent economies, such as Southampton and Portsmouth. Yet others are self-contained, travel-to-work centres like Norwich and Sunderland. All of us are driving growth and turning around the life chances of the deprived, the ill educated, the ill housed and the overlooked.

What do mid-sized cities such as ours need to grow our local economies? It is, of course, unitary status, as do Cambridge and Oxford, if we are to fulfil our potential to transform our knowledge economy into knowledge jobs. Who, in the recent Pfizer bid for Astra-Zeneca, spoke for Cambridge? Nobody. Combined authorities really work only where there are shared goals. Despite this, Norwich has formed a Greater Norwich Growth Board, a partnership that will drive forward our city deal to spin off new businesses from our research park, plan our wider growth programmes for 13,000 more jobs and 3,000 more homes, and attract the £2.5 billion private sector investment we need.

Over and beyond unitary status, we need additional economic powers and flexibilities, which have already been cited in this debate. First, we should localise the ineffective government Work Programme. Secondly, we need commissioning powers for the wider public services, irrespective of elected mayors, to work with the private sector and public agencies. Thirdly, all publicly held land within a city should be brought into a single property board to make the best use of development sites. Fourthly, on finance, ring-fenced funding should be removed in order to encourage new funding models, along with funding for five years for greater stability. I could go on.

Above all, we need a culture change within Whitehall and at Westminster. They need to understand that local government is about local difference, so they should respect our sense of place and encourage diverse structures, as the noble Lord, Lord True, said. They should stop being hung up on size and stop trying to impose on us the macho model of elected mayors. As a leader, I could do everything a mayor does, and consensually. Trust us: we are better at doing most of this than central government. Finally, that utterly insulting phrase, “earned autonomy”, should be banished from the Westminster and Whitehall mindset. My Lords, I wish.

Small and Medium-sized Enterprises

Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are also well aware of that. My right honourable friend Francis Maude and others have been looking in particular at the complexity of the pre-qualification questionnaires. We are doing our best to get rid of those for all contracts below £100,000 per year and to simplify the pre-qualification questionnaires for all others.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, following the last question, I ask the Minister also to look at the contracts offered by the Department for Work and Pensions. In terms of getting people back to work, these contracts are going to very few, very large contractors, and as a result charities and voluntary organisations which in the past have done this work are now being pushed out of the bidding process.