Greater Manchester Combined Authority (Functions and Amendment) Order 2017

Debate between Baroness Pinnock and Lord Kennedy of Southwark

Monday 24th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

We on this side support much of what is in the order. The extension of powers and functions to the mayoral authority in Manchester is to be applauded, especially as it moves some way towards those that are enjoyed in London. However, even in London, the decisions made by the mayor can be called to account by an elected body, the London Assembly. Manchester will have the leaders of the constituent councils, and a scrutiny committee will be formed from those constituent councils—that is all. No specific body will be elected for the purpose of calling the mayor and his decisions to account, but the more powers that are given to the mayoral function the more important that calling to account becomes.

The Minister has listed the significant powers that the mayor of Manchester is to have. They include policing, fire, strategic planning, transport and housing, and waste disposal is now added to that list. The only way in which the constituent members of the combined authority can call the mayor to account on the decisions and choices that he makes is via either the council leaders or a small scrutiny committee. I for one think that is inadequate, and I envisage a point further down the line when the mayor will make a controversial decision and local residents will ask themselves, “How did this happen? Who made the decision and why were we not involved?”.

That is the danger, which I would urge the Minister to consider and rectify at some point in the future, particularly as money is now involved. This has already been pointed out, but I will quote from Part 5 of the order, which relates to funding. It states that,

“the constituent councils must meet the costs of the expenditure reasonably”—

whatever that means—

“incurred by the Mayor in, or in connection with, the exercise of the functions specified”.

That, it goes on to describe, is regardless of whether the constituent councils agree, because there only has to be a majority decision among the leaders of those councils, which means of course that local taxpayers in one of the constituent councils could be asked to contribute to a scheme with which their leader does not agree. I find that quite disturbing. There ought to be a mechanism for reaching difficult decisions that enables all local councils to agree to them. That in my view means the kind of set-up that we have in London with the London Assembly.

Obviously there is much in the order about devolution that I agree with and that is right, because we will have a body with a strategic vision for the conurbation of Manchester. What is not acceptable in my view is the lack of democracy that attaches to that, and the dangers of investing all those powers in one person. I hope that the Minister will be able to respond to these concerns.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall start with my usual declaration and refer the House to my interests in the register. I declare that I am an elected councillor in the London Borough of Lewisham and a vice-president of the Local Government Association. The Greater Manchester Combined Authority order before us brings into force what I hope is the final part of the agreement. I feel that we always seem to be discussing the Greater Manchester Combined Authority in various forms and I hope that this is the last time we will need to consider it before the election itself.

I have no particular issue to raise on the order. My noble friend Lord Beecham raised an important point on consultation. We have now had a number of these orders and I think that it is fair to say that, for each one, the consultation responses, while I will not say they have been derisory, have not been overwhelming coming through the door. At some point the Government might need to look at how we are consulting people. These are quite big changes that are taking place and, if no one is engaging with the discussion on that, it will be something we shall all regret.

The noble Lord, Lord Deben, made some important points on the devolution of power. I support the devolution of power. If the noble Lord and I were agreeing the manifestos of our respective parties we would be absolutely fine and we would probably agree. But I have no role at all in the Labour manifesto this time, so we will have to see what comes up. The noble Lord and I would probably agree on many things.

Non-Domestic Rating (Rates Retention) and (Levy and Safety Net) (Amendment) Regulations 2017

Debate between Baroness Pinnock and Lord Kennedy of Southwark

Monday 20th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I draw the attention of the House to my entry in the register of interests as a councillor in the borough of Kirklees and as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

I wish to draw the House’s attention to the significant number of factors that are changing in the system of a 100% business rate retention and the consequences of those changes. We welcome the move to more locally raised funding for local services because it brings with it less reliance on the variation in perception of local government by different national government Ministers. Such a substantial change brings considerable uncertainty, and as local authorities are already grappling with substantial funding changes, this adds to the risks of councils being able to budget to meet local needs. The fact that the move to 100% retention coincides with the significant and overdue business rates revaluation has added to the complexity of what is being considered and how it will work out in practice. Consequently, there is an expectation that there will be a large number of business rate appeals, to which the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, and my noble friend Lord Shipley have already drawn attention. While it is to be welcomed that the Government have established a central fund for payment where appeals are successful rather than the existing system of a 50:50 share with local authorities, it must be fully funded, otherwise it will fall into disrepute.

A 100% business rates retention scheme brings with it both winners and losers. An analysis by the House of Commons Select Committee last year estimated that the winners are more likely to be in all the regions to the south of Birmingham, with the northern regions and the Midlands being net losers. Although government estimates are that local government as a whole will gain by between £10.5 billion and £12.5 billion a year, many local authorities will not gain and will rely on the system of tariffs, top-ups and the new levy system to allow equalisation.

This redistribution through tariffs and top-ups will be absolutely critical if local authorities that are currently not in a position to raise sufficient funding are to be able to meet local needs. This must be done on the basis of an individual council’s needs and not on a regional, sub-regional or combined authority basis as there can be wide variations even between adjacent local authorities, again as the House of Commons committee report of 2016 demonstrated. The safety net is a critical factor and the detail of how this will operate is fundamental to enabling local authorities to deliver essential public services.

The other crucial factor in these considerations is the frequency of the so-called resets—the length of time between business rate revaluations. Obviously businesses, wanting certainty, would want a longer period, but local authorities, reliant on income from business rates and with fluctuation in need, will want a more frequent reset. It will be interesting to hear from the Minister about the lengths of time between resets that the Government are considering. It will also be interesting to hear what action the Government propose to take if, for instance, a large retailing business closes within a local authority and it therefore loses the income from that company’s business rates. Would there be compensation for what could be a significant loss of income?

In addition to these variables, the Government are proposing that local authorities should have new responsibilities as a result of the increase in funding that will be gained by them from the 100% retention scheme. I am relieved that the attendance allowance scheme has now been excluded from the suggestions that the Government originally made, but I hope—perhaps the Minister will be able to give some reassurance—that they will not use the opportunity of local authorities gaining from additional funding to pass on more responsibilities than the funding available. That would be quite a cynical move and would just add to the cuts in local authority funding.

The Government have yet to spell out the arrangements for sharing business rates in two-tier authorities. Perhaps the Minister can throw some light on how that will happen. I would also like to hear from the Government about the central list of major public utilities whose business rates are centrally gathered. It would be nice to know which is on that list, what business rates in total they bring in, and how the money will be redistributed. I have not been able to find a list. I am sure there is one, but it is a little list that I have not been able to find.

A final uncertainty in this major reform of local government finance is the fair funding review, which I hope will live up to its name. The assessment of need referred to by my noble friend Lord Shipley is the fundamental building block for providing local councils and the people they serve with an assurance that councils will be able to meet their basic needs.

The Government are making substantial changes to local government finance at the same time as large cuts are being made to local government funding. This brings with it risks and uncertainty as well as an inability to plan for the long term. We seek assurances from the Government that these changes will not, first, result in even more significant cuts to funding for those councils that will struggle to increase business rate income in the short and medium term. Secondly, can the Minister give an assurance that there will be a fair equalisation mechanism? Thirdly, will he take into account the significant changes in income or, as I have referred to, between the reset periods? Fourthly, will the fair funding review enable all local authorities to meet the needs of the people they represent?

Finally, I look forward to the Government providing information about the one-liner I spotted today in the Local Government Finance Bill:

“The Government will amend the related approach to the setting of council tax referendum principles”.


I have thrown that in in the hope that the Minister will have some information on it.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, in debating these regulations I refer noble Lords to my entry on the register of interests. I declare that I am a local councillor in the London borough of Lewisham and a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

The first set of regulations, as we have heard, governs the payments to and from authorities and to the Government, while the second set governs the operation of the levy and the safety net for 2017-18, taking into account the revaluation and the 2017-18 business rates pilots. The amendments make provision for the following: allowing the pilot authorities, including in Greater Manchester, Liverpool City Region, West Midlands and West of England and Cornwall, not to pay a central share. There is to be a reduced central share in London to allow for the fact that the GLA will now receive Transport for London investment funding through business rates rather than a grant. The West of England Combined Authority is to receive 5% of business rates as well. There are changes to the baseline funding level for all authorities in line with the 2017 revaluation and the rise in RPI. Changes are made to the levy rates to reflect revaluation and the fact that the levy will not be payable for authorities in the pilot areas.

I have no issues with these regulations as they stand, but I have a few general observations and questions for the Minister. As we move to a system whereby local authorities keep their business rates, the Government need to ensure that the implementation is fair and provides councils with the resources they need to deliver services. Some areas will be able to generate large sums of money from their business rates while others, despite working on and growing their local economies, will struggle to generate sufficient business rate income to meet the demands placed on them. We have heard about the schemes in place to equalise that—the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, referred to them. Can the noble Lord comment on ensuring that the scheme to take account of imbalances has a very local focus rather than the focus being at the regional and combined authority level? I agree strongly with the comments of the noble Baroness in that respect. Can the Minister give local authorities some comfort by saying that the Government are aware of this issue and will be responding to it?

Can the Minister also comment on the trend of the Government to place more and more obligations on local authorities but not to provide the funds to meet them? It is a worrying trend that we have seen developing. I would certainly want to see extra business rates income being used to relieve existing funding pressures before we get to the additional responsibilities to be funded through business rates retention.

Can the Minister also say something in respect of business rates appeals, a point raised by other noble Lords in their contributions, and the risks associated with them for local government? My noble friend Lord Beecham and the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, both referred to this issue. I contend that local authorities holding £2.5 billion in case they need to refund money due to successful appeals is not the most efficient way to proceed.

Liverpool City Region Combined Authority (Functions and Amendment) Order 2017

Debate between Baroness Pinnock and Lord Kennedy of Southwark

Thursday 16th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Deben, has just said about the need for spatial planning across the whole country, and I remind your Lordships that it was the current Government who abolished regional spatial planning to the disadvantage of many local councils. However, I will address my comments to the two orders in front of us today.

I turn, first, to the Liverpool City Region. Following the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, it struck me that we ought to develop a new collective noun for mayors, and I have a couple of suggestions. Should it be “a charm of mayors”, as with goldfinches; “an obstinacy of mayors”, as with, I understand, buffalos; a “gaggle”, as with geese, or—perhaps not—a “murder”, as with crows? However, as has already been pointed out, there will be too many people in an area with the title of mayor and people will be confused.

Most residents think of a mayor as the civic mayor, and we ought to have come up with a different title for the ones whom we are proposing should be elected for the combined authorities. The difficulty that Liverpool may suffer from is having elected individuals with large egos—it already has one with a very large ego. The consequence will either be energetic co-operation or a dysfunctional system. I hope that the Government are thinking very carefully about how elected mayors will be able to co-operate effectively for the benefit of local people and for the regeneration and economic development of their areas.

We discussed some of the functions at Tees Valley two or three weeks ago in your Lordships’ House, and today I want to draw attention to the comments of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. It draws to your Lordships’ attention that it was very clear that residents in the Tees Valley, when consulted, opposed by a clear majority having an elected mayor. The committee’s report says that,

“many people have in effect answered a question, ‘Do you want an elected Mayor for the Tees Valley?’, with the vast majority opposing it”.

Despite that, their views have been ignored. It is dangerous for local democracy to pose a question, get a response and then ignore it completely and do the opposite. They should not have asked the question if they did not want to respect the answer.

This is a very unsatisfactory way to proceed. The consequences are that Tees Valley will have an elected mayor, but that elected mayor will have to work extremely hard to gain the trust and confidence of local residents who, as we heard, opposed the measure. Huge effort will be needed and it may drag on the ability of the mayor to enable the development of economic regeneration and transport facilities, because that effort and energy will need to go into convincing local people that this is the right way to proceed. With those comments, I wish both areas a successful devolution, but have considerable concerns about the models that have been adopted.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, turning first to the Liverpool order, I certainly support the arrangements before the House today. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, I obviously wish the Liverpool and the Tees Valley combined authorities every success in the future. But I want to put on record that this is no giveaway for Merseyside local authorities from the Government—nothing could be further from the truth. As we have seen, local councils have suffered huge public sector spending cuts in recent years and Merseyside has not escaped that. Cuts to police and fire services, primary and secondary schools, Sure Start and so on far overshadow the comparatively small investment that the Government are making today. That investment will not deliver the Government’s vision for the northern powerhouse, although we seem to hear that phrase less and less from the Government. The foundations for devolution are being cut away by the Government every year, which is not helpful. It just makes the challenges faced by local government that bit harder. Having said that, I welcome the arrangements before us for devolution.

As I said in a previous debate, however, I am concerned about the whole question of patchwork. I accept that there can be difference, but I still think the Government should set out a framework. We have a messy patchwork, which does not bring the best things forward. We should set out what we want from devolution for England and how we see the country going forward. I certainly recall that in a debate last week on Cambridgeshire, the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, referred to four tiers of local government in that part of the country. It is all a bit of a mess. We are not clear where the Government are coming from. I think the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, mentioned that in the debate as well. This is all a mess and we need some clarity from the Government about where they want to go in terms of devolution.

There has been a distinct lack of public engagement in the order for the combined authority for Tees Valley. It is important to engage the public in devolution discussions particularly where we propose to have mayoral elections. We want to get the agreement of the public because we will ask them to go out and vote for these people at some point in the future. It would be nice if the public engaged with that and agreed that they wanted this form of government. I think about 2,000 people responded to the local authority’s consultation but only 11 members of the public responded to the Government’s consultation, which from a population of 670,000 seems a derisory figure—0.001%, which is poor by any stretch of the imagination. Of those 11, seven had a negative view of the Government’s proposals. The Government should take account of consultation but also ensure that the consultation is done in a way that engages people and enables them to give their views to us.

As I said, it is necessary for the Government to set out clearly where they are going in England with devolution, and they are just not doing that. That is why we have these problems in understanding what is going on with devolution. However, I certainly wish Liverpool and Tees Valley every success in the future.

Tees Valley Combined Authority (Functions) Order 2017

Debate between Baroness Pinnock and Lord Kennedy of Southwark

Thursday 2nd March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, the north-east in particular is in desperate need of regeneration, inward investment and higher-skilled jobs to bring prosperity to the local area, and Tees Valley is no exception to that. Given that backdrop, I am very supportive of a proposal that enables the local elected representatives to take account, take charge and have the vision and ambition for their own local area; to respond to the challenges of the loss of the steelworks and glassworks in the north-east and the ensuing large area of industrial dereliction; and to themselves be responsible for the challenge in bringing in new businesses, new life and new hope to local people. Noble Lords can tell from that that I am supportive of the notion of that happening. However, I have a couple of questions to explore with the Minister.

First, although the planning functions are critical to the whole idea of a development area, the reports do not make clear how much of the planning responsibilities the constituent councils will pass over to the development corporation. For instance, I think it would be appropriate for major site applications to be the responsibility of a planning authority within the combined authority but that the details, particularly of housing design and so on for the smaller applications, should still be the responsibility of the constituent councils. Those are the sorts of things that strategic bodies do not pay enough attention to. Enabling local councils to take on that responsibility would seem to be the right split of functions. I hope that that is part of the thinking behind the proposal, although it is not clear to me that that was the case.

The second big issue for me is the level of scrutiny that will be applied. Will there be a separate scrutiny function for the mayoral development corporation? I think that such a function would be appropriate, given the significant powers that will be in the corporation’s hands to reshape a considerable area of the north-east. There ought to be a separate scrutiny function to ensure that decisions are appropriately made. With that, I support the order.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, I start my remarks by making the usual declarations of interest that I have made in previous debates.

The Tees Valley Combined Authority order brings into force, as we have heard, the agreement reached between the Government and the local authorities in the Tees Valley area. The Minister might be pleased to hear that I support the order, although I have one or two points to raise.

I noted from the report of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee that there were concerns about the creation of a mayoral development corporation, particularly if it covered part of the North York Moors National Park, but was pleased to learn that an agreement was reached whereby the functions and powers will be transferred only with the agreement of the national park authority. I think it is important for the Government to try generally to get an authority’s agreement when it can be brought into the sphere of an area.

I also note the imperative to establish quickly a mayoral development corporation in the South Tees area and that a shadow board has been established. I certainly wish that body well in its important work. Will the Minister say a bit more on what is envisaged and how he sees that body working with business to bring in inward investment? In particular, how will the body relate to the elected Members of Parliament for the area covered by the mayoral development corporation? The area has suffered a serious blow, and everything possible must be done to secure a successful recovery. A close working relationship with local and national government and business and elected representatives at every level is important to ensure that there is a recovery.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

I have one further point. I accept entirely that this is not a plebiscite, but I ask the Government, what is the point of consultation? Is the noble Lord saying, “Yes, of course we will consult on these things, but at the end of the day it will not make any difference: we will do what we are going to do”? If not, what is he saying?

[Baroness Pinnock]

On a separate point entirely, I asked earlier in the debate whether a specific scrutiny system would be established for the development corporation. If it is successful, as I hope it will be, it will make a huge difference to the area. A scrutiny system should be set up to investigate what decisions are made and how.

Local Government Finance Settlement

Debate between Baroness Pinnock and Lord Kennedy of Southwark

Thursday 15th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth, for repeating the Statement made in the other place earlier today.

This is a settlement that will leave the people of England paying higher taxes and getting worse public services for their money. It will not pay for a single extra carer this winter. With a current crisis in social care and care budgets stretched to breaking point, we have heard nothing from the noble Lord that will give any comfort to those who need good-quality care or to their anxious loved ones.

The Association of Directors of Adult Social Services was already raising the alarm this summer, but the response from the Government was to refuse to accept that adult social care was underfunded. Even now, have we really seen anything that leads one to believe that the Government are serious about dealing with the crisis in adult social care? We have seen £4.6 billion axed from social care budgets since 2010; 1.2 million people not getting the care they need, according to Age UK; and the service at tipping point, according to the Care Quality Commission. In addition, as the noble Lord, Lord Porter, the Conservative chairman of the Local Government Association, has made clear:

“Services supporting our elderly and vulnerable are at breaking point now”.

So what do we have? We have blame put on councils, a fair funding review and an increase in council tax. Can the noble Lord confirm how much new money is available to tackle this winter’s social care crisis? Will he also confirm that the further increase in council tax next year will not plug the funding gap for next year either? Does he regret that before the 2010 general election senior figures in his party chose to kill off cross-party talks on how to fund social care going forward? Then there was the Dilnot commission, whose recommendations have been shelved until at least 2020.

Why should we have any confidence that the noble Lord and his party are serious this time about sorting out social care funding? Can he tell us more about the fair funding review? What is the timetable for it? This is, after all, an immediate crisis and we have elderly and vulnerable people who need action now—they cannot wait for the review.

Will the review also address the worsening postcode lottery for social care and other services? In the most deprived areas of the country, social care spending fell by £65 per person as councils were hit particularly hard by government funding cuts, but it rose by £28 per person in the least deprived areas. And will not the social care precept only further entrench inequality? Blackpool, one of the most deprived unitary authorities in the country, faces a 31% reduction in spending between 2011 and 2019, while Wokingham, one of the least deprived areas, faces a fall of just 4% over the same period. When will the Government address that injustice?

I pay tribute to local authorities, councillors and local authority staff up and down the country who are doing their best to plug the funding gap to cope with huge rising demand for care and increasing costs. In 2014 alone, councils diverted £900 million from other services to maintain adult social care services.

Since the Prime Minister came to office, there has been much talk of help for those who are just about managing their finances, However, that seems to have gone out of the window today. The fact is that we need deeds as well as words. The Prime Minister has decided to put up council tax in every part of England again. She told us:

“If you’re from an ordinary working class family, life is much harder than many people in Downing Street realise”.

I think we can all agree with that statement. She also said:

“You have your own home, but you worry about … the cost of living”,

the state of your area and the services you rely on, and you worry whether you can pay the tax bill at the end of each month. Today, the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State and the noble Lord have decided to make things just a bit harder for those hard-working families. On top of council tax rises this year, there will be a 3% rise in 2017-18 and another increase in 2018-19—a 17% rise in council tax compared with 2015, all decided in Downing Street.

The Conservative Party, which once claimed to be in favour of low taxes, is putting up taxes every year until the next election. If you are a band B council tax payer in Blackpool, this will take twice as much as a proportion of your income as it will if you are a band B council tax payer in Wokingham. For some, it will mean the support they had hoped would be there for an elderly relative will not be, while for others visible public services such as street cleaning will be cut ever closer to the bone. There will be even fewer youth centres and more libraries will close.

Can the noble Lord say more about the proposals to, as he says, encourage more effective local planning by making positive decisions on planning applications and housing growth? I have to say to him that it is not councils being slow in approving housing planning applications that is the problem—that is just political dogma from the Conservative Party. We need to deal with the problem of land-banking by developers that just sit on land with planning applications but do not build the houses. What we need is real, urgent action so that the homes that we need are built quickly to deal with the housing crisis. What we have seen here today is too little, too late, with needs unmet, hopes dashed and social care in crisis, and complete and abject failure on the part of the Government to get a grip on the situation. It is not good enough.

In conclusion, I apologise that I did not at the start make my usual declaration of interests as a local councillor in Lewisham and a vice-president of the LGA.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as a local councillor in the Metropolitan Borough of Kirklees and as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

I am rather relieved today that I am not on the Government’s Christmas present list. The Government’s Christmas presents are ones you pay for with your money, not theirs. A clearer, more transparent picture of today’s Statement is this: the Government, in the four-year deal to local authorities, are slashing the grant they give to local government by 56% over the planned period. This, of course, has a disproportionate impact on those councils that, because of need, rely more heavily on government grants to provide the services that the Government demand of them. The effect so far has been that council spending has, for the majority of councils, fallen like a stone. Some spend 44% less on all services, excluding schools, than they did six years ago. An average metropolitan council serving 400,000 people spent £377 million in 2010 and £257 million this year, according to an analysis of figures by the ONS. The consequence is that hard-pressed councils have even had to cut services to vulnerable adults and children. A crisis has ensued. Care homes are closing down and the impact on the NHS is there for all to see. The Government’s response in this time of good will is to give local authorities their own money and label it a social care grant. The funding has been taken from the new homes bonus and redistributed. No doubt there will be winners and losers, and it will be no surprise to me if the winners are those who need it least.

The Government have given local authorities not one but two presents this year. The second present is to allow councils to collect and raise the Government’s social care tax—so those who are just about managing will be even more hard pressed. Worse still, this largesse from the Government does not do any more than apply a sticking plaster to the gaping wound that is social care, while the patient is bleeding to death. Local figures tell the story better than the national ones. In Kirklees Council there is already a funding gap of £12 million in adult social care because of rising demand. The social care tax of 3% will provide £3.3 million of extra funding, but there will still be significant cuts to be made in social care services.

The new homes bonus reallocation provides no new funding; it is just reallocating and relabelling the same money. What is given is also taken away. Existing new homes bonus funding is being used to prop up libraries, parks and road repairs. These services will now be even worse off, so outlook is bleak for many councils, and there is not much seasonal good will there.

Does the Minister believe that the scale of the crisis in social care requires more than two years of a 3% tax rise to meet existing needs? If not, how does he anticipate plugging the remaining gap? Will he discuss with his colleagues the potential to bring forward increases to the better care fund which are planned for 2020, so that the integration of health and social care can be accelerated? Can he explain how those families that are just about managing will manage the 6% rise in council tax imposed by the Government? Does he expect all local authorities to survive intact under the burden of these pressures?

Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Baroness Pinnock and Lord Kennedy of Southwark

Tuesday 8th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, the amendment is in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Beecham. It would make a grant made to a private provider conditional on the equivalent market rate for the property sold under the right to buy being spent on the provision of affordable housing in the same local authority area, including at least one replacement home of the same tenure and in the same locality.

We have heard a lot from the Government about this policy not reducing the number of affordable homes, but I am not so sure. One problem we must grapple with when debating this Bill is the term “affordable housing”, because I think it means different things to different noble Lords. When many noble Lords from the government Benches speak, they see affordable housing through the prism of a discounted rate of up to 80% of the market value. In many parts of the country, especially London, such housing would more accurately be described for people on low and modest incomes as unaffordable. There are not many noble Lords on the government Benches, with the exception of the noble Lord, Lord Horam, who have so far put the case for social housing and the need to build more of it. That is why we make specific reference to “tenure” in our amendment, otherwise we would be letting the Government off the hook when they say, “Everything is fine. We have provided so much more affordable housing. Haven’t we done a good job?”, when, in fact, if we look in more detail at what has happened, I fear that we will see an erosion of social housing, of council housing, and its replacement with “affordable housing” that is a very different product.

Amendment 60, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, and other noble Lords, will be spoken to shortly and has the full support of these Benches. It would put in the Bill a mechanism to ensure that the tenure of a replacement property was the same as that of the property sold, unless on the basis of local need a different tenure could be justified. This seems a good, sensible example of delivering a national policy with an element of localism included. I will probably intervene again as the debate progresses. I beg to move.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 60, to which the noble Lord has just referred and said he will fully support, as will colleagues on his Benches—so I start off from a good place. Before I do so, I draw attention to my entry in the register of interests: I am vice-president of the Local Government Association and a councillor in the metropolitan borough of Kirklees, which, for those who do not know, is in West Yorkshire.

I am very pleased to be able to support Amendment 60, because looking back at the evidence from the right to buy of former council properties during the past 35 years is very instructive in determining whether there is any genuine, realistic hope of like-for-like replacements.

The example that I would like to share with noble Lords is from Kirklees. Prior to the right to buy, there were nearly 40,000 council properties in Kirklees. Now there are fewer than 24,000. Only a very small minority have been replaced by what we now call social housing. Indeed, in the last two years and within the period when councils have had the ability to enable replacements —which is rather different from ensuring that they are enabled, of course—403 homes in Kirklees have been sold under right to buy and only six have been built to replace those that have been lost. What provision is being made to ensure that we can get like-for-like replacements? Without them, we are pushing many people, particularly families, into private rented accommodation.

The provision of decent-quality housing for rent is vital. A particular case was brought to me by a local family. It illustrates why I am particularly concerned about the diminishing stock of social housing for rent. A young family with four children was renting a former council house which was subsequently run by a private landlord. It had what I would describe as 2.5 bedrooms and was semi-detached. It was about 50 years old. The rent was £600 a month—this is in West Yorkshire, not London and that is a lot of money in West Yorkshire.

The other half of the semi next door was still in council ownership under the ALMO that was set up when I was leader of the council, I am pleased to say. It was rented out at £320 per month, so the private rented accommodation was nearly double the price. That was not the only difference. The council house was in a good state of repair. The ex-council house had a leaking roof, which was why it was brought to my attention. The roof had been leaking for a while and the walls were damp, there was mould and the wallpaper was peeling off. The children had health problems, which the GP determined were partly caused by the state of the house. Obviously my first question to the mother who brought this problem to me was, “Have you spoken to the landlord? They should keep the house in a good state of repair. They have a responsibility to do that”. “Yes”, she said. “The only problem is that he lives in South Africa”, and getting action through the agent to the owner was well-nigh impossible, despite the so-called responsibilities and duties of the landlord to do so. Fortunately, I was able to help her find good-quality social housing for her to move into.

That account paints a picture of what is going on. So when the noble Lord, Lord Porter, says, “Don’t worry. We’ll gain one when one is lost because the house is still there”, yes, but what he did not say is that the tenure of that house can be just as important. The selling off of housing association homes will start once this Bill wends its way into law, and the experience of selling off council houses shows that we are pushing families who cannot afford to buy into private rented accommodation. Despite what the Minister and other noble Lords on that side have said, which is that it is important for people to have the right to home ownership, someone needs to explain to me how families that in my experience are often—not always—pushed into poor-quality and poorly maintained private rented properties will ever be able to own their own home. If that conundrum can be explained, I might have more faith in what is being done here. But currently all I can see is that those at the bottom of the income pile are pushed into low-quality accommodation, paying high rents that are not always covered by housing benefit, with little opportunity to put down roots in the community because the length of the lease is short and they have to move on. I know that we passed a Bill which said that if you complain you would not be pushed out, but it does not seem to have worked. I hope that the Minister will be able to explain that conundrum away for me.