Devolution: English Cities

Baroness Janke Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2019 Grand Committee

[Baroness Janke (LD)]

My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, for the report and for giving a good profile to this issue, which I think has faded a bit in recent months—not surprisingly, with the attention being on Brexit. There have been myriad reports from organisations that have been working to promote greater devolution to cities. The spotlight has also fallen on this idea through the experience of some of the people that we have heard about through Brexit. In our own cities we have seen disenchantment and disillusion, often symbolised by boarded-up high streets, no local facilities to support people in poverty, food banks and all the other things that tell us that parts of our country are in great need of attention.

The whole issue of devolution, as my noble friend Lord Tyler has said, is one that we very much support but, as he also said, we mean devolution, not delegation. We have seen that through all parties’ attempts to give powers, such as the recent assemblies. I served on one in the south-west and actually it had no powers, so no one could really see the point of attending it. What happened was that all the powers went to the RDAs and the assembly, as the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, has said, was given powers to discuss rather than to act. In my view it is essential that any devolution is about transferring powers.

I know that in my city, Bristol, when I have gone out for election, all the matters that people raise on the doorstep are things that we have very little power to do anything about. Transport is the biggest but there is also housing, schools—they are not in democratic control locally—and social care. One of the issues that we felt was important was that taxes should raise money locally. The noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, talked about this: in France, three times more finance for local government is raised locally, while in Sweden the figure is 12 times as much. As the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, was saying, the money coming from the Government is not so much what people are looking for from devolution, although there would have to be equalisation as some parts of the country are much wealthier than others.

Some devolution has taken place but if you are a city leader then my suspicion is that you feel that the most enormous amount of time, attention and resource has been put into devising schemes where very little power is actually handed over to elected representatives, whether mayors, city leaders or councillors, along with a whole panoply of contracts with rules, conditions and teams of lawyers to ensure that these are adhered to. A lot of this stifles local imagination, local creativity, and local solutions to local problems. As the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, said, local business finds exactly the same thing.

The noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, talks about other European cities. I used to represent my city in EUROCITIES and heard about the powers that other European cities have. They are astounded, and some are bemused, to hear that the Mayor of London has to go to the Government cap in hand and ask for money to support essential infrastructure. As for provincial cities, they have even fewer powers; London has actually not done too badly out of it. It would be ridiculous to expect the mayors of Hamburg, Toulouse or Lyon, as in the report, to have this much sticky tape, as I always think of it, from central government preventing them finding local solutions, unleashing energy and harnessing the creativity of their own areas.

I welcome the fact that some local tax-raising is mentioned in the report. However, until locally elected representatives—whether they be mayors, councillors or leaders of combined authorities—can raise their money and be accountable for it, borrow money locally and raise taxes to pay for it, we are seeing only a delegation from central government and not true devolution. I very much welcome the report and hope that it is a long stride on the road to what I see as real devolution.

In my city of Bristol, we have five mayors over the whole combined authority, which the public sometimes find quite difficult to understand. With accountability must come clarity of roles, transparency of powers and the recognition that one elected individual, although they may be accountable to government, cannot be the only person accountable to the people. The big responsibilities of education, social care, the environment and all the services that underpin the least well off, cannot be managed by only one person. They must have a properly accountable team, enabling decisions to be taken to provide the resources to provide that. As many organisations have said, not least Core Cities, of which I used to be a member, the enormous power to the economy that our cities could give, the pride of ambition, the feeling of recognition by people in those areas that they are not secondary to London and do not see all the money going back there, is essential and, I believe, will motivate people. The noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, goes into this, too, in his report. “Breathing life into devolution” is essential, and I totally agree that we need government confidence to take this forward. The only way that unleashing local energy will really happen is if there are real powers—if people feel that they are in the driving seat and have a say and, if they do not agree, can throw people out.

I am very encouraged by the noble Lord’s report and hope that we are going to advance further on this agenda. I look forward to seeing the effect, which I believe will be transformational.

Local Authorities: Essential Services

Baroness Janke Excerpts

Thursday 24th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Janke (LD)]

It is always a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Bird, with his very many direct experiences of local government. I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I very much share his views about the importance of local authorities to vulnerable people, people who have suffered, people who just cannot manage—yet cuts to local government have hugely increased over a period of an unprecedented increase in poverty.

There is evidence of that all around us. The number of rough sleepers has increased by 15% over the last year and by 169% over the last eight years. Some 4.1 million children are living in poverty. Some 24% of refuges for victims of domestic violence have closed. We have elderly and vulnerable people frightened for their futures as they read about the number of homes shrinking due to lack of council funding. Libraries have closed as funding has been cut by £12 million in the last two years. I have to say that in my community there is a general feeling that there is nothing for many people and that they and their families are not valued. Even with several jobs, many parents find it difficult to provide for their families’ basic needs. All this comes as we see major cuts and changes to the benefits system in the form of universal credit.

Local councils, with their range of services, are by far the most able to deliver universal support for people moving on to universal credit, yet the Government have not provided the funding needed: instead, they have commissioned the CAB to deliver this. Of course, CAB is a marvellous organisation, but the pressures on its services at the moment are enormous and we are often told that many of the people on our streets are there as a result of their inability to access their benefits. The noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, told us that the UK is one of the most centralised and geographically unequal countries, and he gave evidence of this. Certainly, in my time as leader of my council I felt the frustration of 80% of local government funding coming directly from the Treasury. Many people asked me, “Why on earth should we vote for you? All you do is administer the Government’s cuts”. It certainly is a very good question.

If we look at other countries, we can easily see that the UK has one of the most centralised systems in the world. There is plenty of evidence that the whole system needs to be overhauled. We have seen how the constitution, in its informal form, has broken down in Westminster, and if we look across the country we can see that it is breaking down there as well. Many people say to me that there is a view that we have two countries: one is called London and the other is called the rest of the country. That is not to say that there are not a host of problems in London, but they are different from those elsewhere. As one of the most successful world cities, London attracts large numbers of the most wealthy in the world. It certainly receives far more in capital investment than any other English city, yet the struggle for the less well-off to meet the cost of living in the capital is intense. Other cities desperate for investment—for example, in transport—must queue up at the Department for Transport to be told that they have to wait their turn.

As for investment in the local economy, such devolution as has taken place requires legions of lawyers wrangling with government officials for sums of money that would cause derision in any international context. Indeed, as a leader of a UK city I met leaders of other cities, particularly in Europe, and their mayors and leaders were absolutely astounded at the few powers afforded to leaders in local government here. While being tightly controlled by central government, local authorities do not even have confidence in their woefully London-centric and very often incompetent masters when it comes to delivering on local needs. How much potential to achieve higher growth, greater productivity, more well-paid jobs and high levels of investment is there in our UK cities? There is massive potential.

The evidence is everywhere—in the City Growth Commission’s report; in the report of the inquiry chaired by noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, and commissioned by the APPG on devolution; in the ResPublica report, Restoring Britain’s City States; in reports by the non-metropolitan commission, the Local Government Association and many others. All of them demonstrate the potential for innovation, enterprise, inward investment and growth in our regions if they are freed from the dead hand of central government and given real powers.

A Core Cities report cites the potential to add £70 billion to £90 billion to GDP if cities and regions are given the powers to do so. In my view, there is a need for a new constitutional settlement that defines the relationship between local and national government. Again, we are told that local government controls a fifth of national spending, yet the relationship, responsibilities, rights and accountabilities are nowhere clearly defined in any one document.

The success of strong, devolved local powers can be seen particularly in our European neighbours, who have local tax-raising powers and the means of raising capital and investing in public infrastructure. Local government must also have these strategic powers. It must have the powers to raise long-term capital; economic strategies must be decided locally; and training for skills must be evaluated locally, with funding allocated according to local needs. If local government is to be effective, it needs to be transparent and accountable to the people who pay for it.

The local needs of support for the vulnerable, for social care and the civic fabric are a matter for the local electorate, not for the command and control of Whitehall. Those of us who do not live in London appreciate the differences between regions—we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, on Cumbria, and from colleagues in Cornwall and Yorkshire. Their needs, priorities, strengths and weaknesses, and their wealth of experience should be reflected in their local government.

Following the upheaval of Brexit, more and more people will demand not just to take back control from Europe but to take back local control—to demand that their local needs are met and to see to it that there is fair funding and fair investment for their part of the UK. They will hold their leaders accountable, both locally and nationally, and it is our job to take those ambitions and aspirations seriously and move forward.

National Planning Policy Framework

Baroness Janke Excerpts

Tuesday 6th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that question. I am certainly aware of some of the problems relating to London. The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, referred to money going back to the Treasury, and I think I am right in saying that £64 million was handed back to the Treasury by the GLA and the mayor. The noble Lord might not have been aware of that. In the recent Budget, we raised the cap on borrowing by councils by £1 billion in 2019, which will help. The noble Lord is right that these things cannot be done without finance, but I think he would accept that, in a market system, ensuring that we are building more in the areas of greatest need and highest prices will have a market effect and should deliver over a period of time, though not overnight.

[Baroness Janke (LD)]

What plans do the Government have on the holding of vacant sites and land banking? Would they consider enabling local authorities to levy a tax on unused sites, as part of the Government’s proposals?

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, the noble Baroness raises an issue of some importance. As I indicated, the issue of land banking is being looked at by a review by Sir Oliver Letwin that predated yesterday’s Statement. We want to see what his conclusions and recommendations are and then carry it forward. I know that this issue concerns noble Lords around the House. We will obviously look at it in the round when we see what Sir Oliver’s proposals are.

Housebuilders

Baroness Janke Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Janke (LD)]

My Lords, I want first to give a few statistics about my home city of Bristol. There are 979 homeless people; in 2017, there were 86 rough sleepers, as against eight in 2010; 347 families were recorded as homeless, with 3,000 at risk; and Age UK is supporting 120 elderly people who could not stay in their homes otherwise. People here may not know that house prices and rents in Bristol are extremely high—the highest outside London. Average house prices are 10 times average income; typical rents are 40% of average income. In my city, £6.1 million is spent by the council on homelessness. How must it seem to those people whom we see on our streets every day when they hear of the Persimmon boss, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Best, who is getting a bonus of £110 million, while Persimmon made a 30% profit in the first part of 2017?

My noble friend Lady Thornhill mentioned the viability loop-hole. Bristol lost 200 affordable homes in a year as a result of the viability loop-hole. As a result, land prices, and so house prices, continue to be driven up. One of the worst things about this loop-hole is that it is very often kept secret: only a few local councils make these viability assessments public, so the public do not realise why the value of housing, the cost, is going up so much and how much developers are profiting out of the public purse, very often.

Affordable homes are no longer affordable in my city. We need social housing, we need high availability of social housing and I think there is a wide consensus across the board—including the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee, Shelter and even the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research— that local councils need to be involved much more if we are to achieve the number of homes that we clearly need.

As a former leader of Bristol, I spent quite a lot of time in the Core Cities organisation with other leaders, speaking strongly for government intervention, development and investment in other parts of the country. I very much welcome the northern powerhouse. It is true that when I speak to my colleagues here, while people cannot afford homes in Bristol and their availability is so scarce, there are very many empty houses and houses that cannot be sold in the rest of the country. It seems to me that the whole issue of infrastructure needs to be looked at, presumably through the industrial strategy. There is a huge difference between London and the rest of the country.

We heard from the noble Lord, Lord Best, about powers for local authorities. I certainly support those. The noble Lord, Lord Borwick, said that planning authorities are inefficient. I point out the level of cuts in local government in recent years and the fact that planning departments are skeletons of what they used to be. When I first went into local government, local authorities had their own architects and were proud of the quality housing that they produced. Local authorities need powers to borrow. We have heard of the ridiculous situation whereby they can borrow to build leisure centres or to buy hotels but cannot borrow enough to build housing. They need powers over the use of public land in order to introduce priorities for social use as well as powers to levy penalties on land banks and uncompleted sites. They need stronger powers for compulsory purchase. Who in local government has not been frustrated by the lack of teeth local authorities have on compulsory purchase?

As the noble Lord, Lord Best, said, such measures would mean less profit for the developers, but they would mean hope for so many people that they will not be struggling to afford a home for years to come while a small number of developers scoop up massive profits at the expense of future generations.

Housing

Baroness Janke Excerpts

Tuesday 11th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Janke (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to raise the important issue of supported homes and to ask the Minister what plans the Government have to provide more supported housing for disadvantaged groups of people.

For example, there are very many young people, care leavers in particular, who live in temporary accommodation, stay with friends, stay with relatives or sofa-surf and often end up rough sleeping and open to criminal influences. There are specialist housing associations which provide accommodation for such people, but there are not enough of them. I understand that one of the reasons given for high levels of reoffending by ex-offenders is a lack of suitable supported accommodation to enable them to take responsibility for their own lives. I would like the Government to look into more housing for women suffering from domestic violence. There is some accommodation, but not enough. Very often these people end up rough sleeping on our streets. Problems with getting people off drugs are exacerbated by the fact that often these people have nowhere to go and no support. Very often they end up in areas which are effectively drug supermarkets. We have to look at how better and more appropriate accommodation can be provided for these people.

There is a need for much more social housing. As we have heard, the Government are very keen on home ownership. As everyone says, nobody is against home ownership, but I know very many families in my city who will never be able to afford to own their own home. The number of social housing properties is going down as they are being sold off, and as we are selling off housing association accommodation too, that hits supported housing projects for people who really need it. Will the Minister say what plans the Government have for this kind of specialised accommodation and how more of it might be provided?

I do not believe that we cannot have lots more housing and good design. When I was leader of Bristol City Council, Bristol was the green capital. We visited lots of places in Europe with high-quality, high-density design, not high-rise flats but properly designed communities with infrastructure and schools using sustainable material. If we are looking at a high-quality environment, perhaps we should be looking at that in Europe.

There are three questions there. What is going to happen about more specialised supported housing? How are we going to increase social housing and provide accommodation for all those people who need it in cities with rising waiting lists? What will the Government do to encourage a high-quality environment? Perhaps this is again something on which we should learn from our neighbours in Europe.