Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Debate between Duke of Montrose and Lord Stunell

Committee stage
Thursday 18th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 372A in this group. Previous speakers have invested a huge amount of time in devising alternatives and improvements to the existing legislation, and I support their efforts very much. My amendment is much more basic and straightforward, and based less on research and more on intuition. It says that no new standards should be set lower than those in force at the time that the Bill comes into law. It is just a very basic, no-steps-backward amendment.

I am well aware that Clause 142 is, at least in essence, saying the same thing, except that it has a get-out clause, which has already been spoken to. It balances one sort of harm offset by another sort of good, all to be decided by a Secretary of State. That is not a no-steps-backward provision at all.

This kind of issue, the discretion being given to Secretaries of State, has come up on several previous days. We have had many earnest assurances from noble Lords on the Front Bench that there is every intention of maintaining, indeed increasing, the level of protection. It was said just this morning in relation to council houses; we are going to have more social provision, not less, as a result of the changes, and we are to trust them. Well, I am sorry to tell noble Lords that there is still a degree of uncertainty in the minds of many of us about how those promises will be delivered.

I have to say that Conservative Governments have proved quite transient things. We have had four Secretaries of State since this time last year and at least three fundamentally different approaches to housing targets and the levelling-up Bill. At least one key feature of the levelling-up mechanism set out in the White Paper was scrapped only this week—the regional levelling-up director posts—at, apparently, a saving of £144,000 a year for each of them.

There is a right royal battle under way, on and off stage, among senior Conservatives, aimed at setting our country free of all the enveloping red tape that stifles innovation and money-making. That is a paraphrase, but I hope not an unfair one. Mr Rees-Mogg, Mr Redwood and the Home Secretary are all hoping for a return to one or other of the alternative models of levelling up that Conservative Governments have played with over the last 12 months. Those versions have had lots and lots of levelling up, none at all or several mixtures in between.

So I ask noble Lords and the Front Bench Ministers opposite: what is the future of environmental outcomes reports? What guarantee is there that standards will not be allowed to drop, or perhaps even required to drop, in future, as red tape is cut and industry set free to make money and innovate? The current safeguarding guarantees are time-limited, fundamentally, to the assurances given by Ministers in Hansard. Based on the last 12 months, that level of protection is somewhat transient, and Clause 142 has its own get-out, as has already been pointed out.

If you look out of the window and see big clouds rolling in, you know that it is sensible to take your umbrella with you when you go out. That is common sense, not paranoia. If you look out the window and see big blue clouds rolling in from Bournemouth, or this weekend from Westminster, it makes even more sense to have your umbrella with you. My Amendment 372A is that umbrella. Yes, I want to see the other amendments in this group adopted, but surely we have to secure in the Bill the standards that we already have. That is why I have tabled Amendment 372A.

[The Duke of Montrose (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment, which has been coupled with this group. We are now moving on to Part 6 of the Bill, which involves Scotland. We have heard about all these doubts and areas that need to be cleared up, which are even more worrying for devolved Administrations.

My amendment is to Clause 143, “Requirements to consult devolved administrations”. I declare my family’s interest, as noted in the register, in that we own land in Scotland. We are fortunate; it is not a big area in Scottish terms, but it includes part of a national park, a nature reserve, a site of special scientific interest and special protection areas. As the Minister pointed out in an earlier debate, this is the section of the Bill that is most likely to affect devolved competencies. There can be no doubt that the Bill is causing much concern in the UK’s devolved Administrations, and we have just been hearing about the extent of the existing Henry VIII powers. Anyone who has spent any time in this Chamber knows that we are allergic to Henry VIII powers, and I hope that my noble friend can assuage us on the extent to which they will be included.

In the earlier debate on Clause 83, my noble friend rejected my proposed amendment. That issue only involved powers regarding planning data. Clause 143, as drafted, is a mirror of that text:

“The Secretary of State may only make EOR regulations which contain provision within Scottish devolved competence after consulting the Scottish Ministers”.


My Amendment 382 provides that, following the consultation, the Secretary of State must report the outcome and provide reasons. This is surely a necessary step for transparency and to maintain the trust between the parties on an ongoing basis. Consultation implies that all will put their cards on the table; agreement, as we all know, is harder to achieve. My noble friend may like to say that we would carry out these steps anyway. This amendment as drafted does not give any more power to devolved Assemblies but just gives them the comfort of knowing exactly where they stand.

It was further encouraging to hear my noble friend say, in his reply to an earlier debate, that

“the Government are continuing to work with the devolved Administrations to understand whether there is scope to extend the EOR powers to provide a shared framework of powers across the UK. Once those discussions have concluded, the Government will bring forward any necessary amendments to both Part 6 and Part 3 to reflect the agreed position between the UK Government and the devolved Administrations”.—[Official Report, 22/3/23; col. 1803.]

A shared framework of powers is precisely what this amendment is aiming to achieve. There is always the danger that, without achieving this framework, and with one party withholding consent, the outcome might go against any changes at all.

The Scottish Parliament’s legislative consent Motion for this measure was tabled on 27 July 2022. As I mentioned before, the main one of the three committees to give it consideration was the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee. In its report, brought out on 22 December, it could see some elements of the Bill that it welcomed. But, after taking evidence, it concluded that:

“Environmental Outcome Reports would lead to a significant change to environmental assessment in Scotland. However, the UK Government has not provided sufficient clarity around how they will operate in practice.”


Similar concerns were also highlighted by both the other committees in the Scottish Parliament. After consideration, all were still not prepared to grant approval.

The Government have introduced quite a raft of amendments to the Bill already. It would be interesting to know whether some of these are the fruits of their intergovernmental discussions, but we are still a long way short of achieving an agreed framework. Can my noble friend say whether that is still their aim?