Business and Planning Act 2020 (Pavement Licences) (Coronavirus) (Amendment) Regulations 2022

Debate between Baroness McIntosh of Pickering and Baroness Northover

Thursday 14th July 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I too give a warm welcome to my noble friend for stepping into the breach and presenting the regulations this afternoon. I join my noble friend Lord Young in congratulating my noble friend Lord Greenhalgh on all he achieved in his position. We have been extremely fortunate to have him. I do not think a day or a week passed without him making some contribution and he was extremely knowledgeable and skilled in his field, so I look forward to his many further contributions from the Back Benches—for the moment.

I will give a plug and a thank you to the Liaison Committee, which allowed us to do a follow-up report on the Licensing Act 2003, which is like the mother Act of many regulations, including those before us this afternoon. We published the report on Monday and it seems to have been extremely well received. I was fortunate enough to meet UKHospitality at a beer dinner last night, where I was able to discuss it briefly, and I hope we will have the opportunity to discuss our recommendations and conclusions.

One of the witnesses, Kate Nicholls, was in fact from UKHospitality and was extremely powerful. I pay tribute to her for the work that she has done; I think the Government have appointed her as the first ever disability ambassador for hospitality. She will have a great role to play on pavement licences. We are fortunate that we are able-bodied and able to walk around quite freely—if you can pass the crowds on the pavement at the moment. But I think anybody who is hard of sight, or with a disability and needing a mobility scooter, is very mindful of the obstructions that street furniture and other things can cause.

We had a debate on airport slot allocations earlier. I would say that the airline, retail and hospitality sectors have definitely been the most damaged by the Covid crisis, which is still ongoing, so I warmly welcome the provisions that my noble friend has set out today. Looking back to 2003, when I had been an MP for, I think, six years—I am looking at my former Chief Whip—we were full of expectation that there was going to be a café culture and that we would be able to take young children and older family members into cafés to order coffee, wine or soft drinks. That never really took off under the Licensing Act 2003 in the way that the then Government intended.

However, we should pay tribute to the original regulations that my noble friend referred to, which came in in 2020, as she stated. Under the temporary provision, the process for applying for a licence was capped at £100—I think it still is—so everybody knows and the local authorities are onside. Perhaps even more importantly, a licence is automatically deemed granted if the authority does not make a decision on the application before the end of the determination period.

The two things I welcome most warmly in what my noble friend said are, first, the fact that the regulations today will extend the provisions right up to 30 September 2023 and, secondly, the commitment to make that a permanent feature in the levelling-up Bill. I am really looking forward to tackling that Bill as I have many other ideas, and I hope that my noble friend will enter into the spirit of that. With those few remarks, I welcome the regulations before us.

[Baroness Northover (LD)]

My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lady Pinnock, who cannot be here today, I can say that we welcome the ability of cafés, restaurants and so on to have spaces outside on pavements. She leads in this area and wanted to make that clear. It has been a welcome development, pandemic or no pandemic. However, my noble friend’s particular concern is that businesses should pay rent for these spaces because the spaces are publicly owned and maintained by council taxpayers.

Trade Bill

Debate between Baroness McIntosh of Pickering and Baroness Northover

Committee stage & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 8th October 2020 Grand Committee

[Baroness Northover (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I am pleased to speak in support of Amendments 39 and 97 in the names of my noble friend Lord Purvis of Tweed and others. Clearly, any trade deals that we agree must be in keeping with our international commitment to the sustainable development goals. We keep our agreements, do we not?

The MDGs agreed in 2000 pledged to halve extreme poverty by 2015. We know that economic development and trade played a major part in that being achieved. The SDGs were put in place in 2015, building on the previous period, and pledged to eliminate extreme poverty by 2030, at the same time leaving no one behind—so you were not dealing with averages. As my noble friend Lord Chidgey has just pointed out, the SDGs recognise that ending poverty must go along with human development through improving health and education, reducing inequality and increasing economic participation, while tackling climate change.

My noble friend Lady Sheehan pointed out that we in the UK led on this. Indeed, Andrew Mitchell, as Secretary of State, worked very hard to ensure that Prime Minister David Cameron led on this internationally. Much of the framing of the SDGs was carried out by DfID, in particular by one of its directors. I had the privilege to be a DfID Minister in the coalition during this period, and was the Minister in the Lords when my noble friend Lord Purvis took through the 0.7% Bill as the last piece of legislation by the coalition.

There have been long years of engagement by the EU on trade agreements with developing countries. There was an important shift in the realisation of how the EU, as a major economic power and the biggest aid giver in the world, could either damage the poorest around the world or assist them. Major engagement now goes into seeking to benefit developing countries and if we are to have continuity, we have to have continuity here too.

As we seek to agree trade deals with such countries, the UK must address the SDGs too. They apply in the United Kingdom, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, has pointed out, as well as internationally. We know that this is right, and that it is in our interests. Can the Minister say, for example, which African countries have yet to agree rollover arrangements and what the sticking points are? What happens if these are not agreed by the end of this year? Will the Government guarantee existing market access for developing countries and undertake thorough and timely assessments of the impact of any changes, looking at this through a development lens?

The Government have said that any trade deals with developing countries will be in keeping with our commitments to the SDGs. I expect the Minister to reiterate this. The safest and easiest thing to do would therefore be to put this commitment in the Bill. I look forward to hearing what the Minister says.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, for giving me the opportunity to press the Minister on a couple of issues in the context of these amendments. Amendment 39, which relates to the sustainable development goals, is presumably a bit like motherhood and apple pie—something we would all wish to sign up to. Equally, Amendment 97, which calls on the Minister

“to report annually on the impact of trade agreements to which the UK is party on the world’s least developed countries”

will strike a chord with the Minister—my noble friend Lord Younger—regarding his remarks to me on day two of Committee that we want to avoid the unintended consequences of free trade agreements with these countries.

My specific question follows on from the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, who expressed her wish to have expedited rollover agreements with African countries. I would like to press my noble friend on this. This seems bizarre. The United Kingdom was at the forefront, since so many of our Commonwealth countries were involved, in negotiating agreements with African, Caribbean and Pacific countries. These agreements, I understand, have now been rolled over into—I forget the exact term—European partnership agreements. Will my noble friend take this opportunity to set out which ones have been rolled over, what the timetable is, and why we seem to be dragging our feet on them when it surely must be a political priority, given our historic relationship with so many of these countries?