Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Debate between Earl of Lytton and Lord Moylan

Committee stage
Monday 20th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Lytton (CB)]

I thank the noble Lord for his intervention, because that is exactly the point I am making about having a degree of hypothecation. In other words, it should not just go into the general purposes fund. I hope the Minister will comment on that, because there is a question of trust and transparency in this. If these things are to be robust, they will need that.

From my observations, I know that what the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, said about the instances and the impact in some of these hotspot areas is true. However, we need a bit more data to get the visible, empirical facts. The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, referred to that, and I entirely agree with him. We also need to identify the likely economic outcomes of certain actions. Letting platforms were referred to; we need an analysis of how they operate for some bits of businesses but not others, because they are doing lettings direct or whatever it may be, to get some idea of how that is functioning.

There is a bit of incoherence here. For a while, conversions into residential accommodation in rural areas were often subject to the condition that they could not be occupied full-time. They had to be occupied, effectively, as holiday accommodation. Usually, they could be occupied only for something like 11 months of the year continuously, because local authorities did not want to give consent for new, independent dwellings in the countryside; there was an objective not to add to them, which I understand.

When I attended a meeting on second homes at Exmoor National Park, it was asked why there was a reduced council tax assessment for people with second homes. It transpired that only by having the bait of self-declaration could they identify how many second homes they had in the area, so that is how they did it. I say incoherence, because one really feels that the world has gone mad in some of these situations.

There is a good deal of misinformation about what is perceived to be the vast profitability of short-term lettings. When I had the privilege of being on the Built Environment Committee, I ran a little exercise, which established what I knew: that I would be better off in headline income letting full-time on an assured shorthold tenancy. However, that would probably be not to a local person but to some writer, artist or someone who wanted a nice location. The real reason behind this is that, if you are dealing with an old stone cottage which requires constant maintenance and a lot of refitting—never mind that you may have energy issues and things breaking down; things go wrong in old cottages more than they do in new ones—you are constantly in and out. The only way you can keep control of that is short-term letting, because you can take a week out and get in there and fix the boiler and all the other things that have fallen apart. It is really not for the faint-hearted.

When you compare the weekly headline rents for short-term holiday lettings with those of an ordinary assured shorthold tenancy, you are not looking at like for like. You are not dealing with fully serviced accommodation, where all the linen and services are paid for, and where somebody just walks in and all they have to do is buy their own food and go, with all the cleaning and everything else being done in-between. All that costs money. One of the greatest litmus tests of health and well-being in these rural areas is whether you can get a cleaner or someone to fix your windows. That is the real test of what is happening in the economy. With that, I will sit down and wait for group 10.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Earl, Lord Lytton. I will speak briefly and narrowly to the point made earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Foster, in which he argued for a national registration scheme rather than one which, as the noble Earl said, the Built Environment Committee said should be available locally and at local option. The noble Lord’s reason was that having a national registration scheme would make it easier for the Government to gather large amounts of data. That is a very weak reason for what would be an astonishing intrusion into privacy and the rights of property.

I believe the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, said that a national scheme was preferable because it could be implemented more quickly than one implemented by a local authority.

Procurement Bill [HL]

Debate between Earl of Lytton and Lord Moylan

Committee stage
Monday 4th July 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

You could have more of me, my Lords, but I will simply say that I know nothing about ports. However, I know a little about airports and they are technically subject to economic regulation by the Civil Aviation Authority. It is true that that authority has, through its own risk assessment, decided that only Heathrow Airport will be subject to full economic regulation. Gatwick and Stansted are subject to some, while most other airports are not economically regulated; that is, they can set their own charges and if people do not want to fly into their airport, they will fly to another. It is not entirely true, it is fair to say, that where it matters airports are not economically regulated, because they are. I suppose that the Civil Aviation Authority could always reverse its decision, if it saw fit. It has the power to expand economic regulation to other airports if that were felt necessary. Having added that, I shall subside and look forward to my noble friend’s response.

[The Earl of Lytton (CB)]

My Lords, this is my first intervention on the Bill because on the day of Second Reading I was convalescing at home and not allowed to go anywhere.

On this business, regarding utilities, I am afraid I come at this from a simple property professional’s standpoint. It always used to be gas, water, electricity, drainage and telecoms; those were the utilities on which people relied for the use of buildings and property of all sorts. We seem to have dropped drainage, for reasons I cannot quite understand, when it is merely the dirty-water function of the clean-water provider of drinking water, which is referred to.

I declare my interest as one of those who serve under the chairmanship of the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, on the Built Environment Committee, as do the noble Lords, Lord Moylan and Lord Berkeley. I am very privileged to do that. Last week, when we were talking about the Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill, it was noted that the very purpose of the telecoms giants was to try to convince government that they were a utility, should have utility powers and should, encompassed in that, have certain powers of coercion. They have come into that from the private sector, whereas dear old British Telecom, aka Openreach and a few other things, has come at it from the other direction—the hardwired traditional utility standpoint that was protected, with all sorts of powers to acquire wayleaves and so on.

The noble Baroness referred to imperfect policy development. I almost got up and said “Hear, hear” to that, because we need to start sorting out what exactly we mean by these utilities that look in lots of different directions. Some of them are very commercial—some are very controversial—and others come from a highly and necessarily regulated background because they are important for health, stability and all sorts of other basic things that require regulation as to quality and quantity in the essential needs of the public. It is not so much the voluntary needs, and perhaps even less the voluntary needs of business, but the essential needs of the public.

We seem to have an increasing muddle between what may be regarded as that essential element that has to be regulated for the purposes I have suggested and the wider commercial endeavour that goes with it. Because that distinction has been made ever less clear, for reasons that I perfectly understand—the utilities were privatised for reasons to do with funding, and I do not pass judgment on that—like Voltaire’s Candide I stand here noting both cause and effect. This is exactly the situation we are in; utility activities are mired in this very issue. I look forward very much to the Minister’s answer on that. He has a great grasp of these intellectual refinements, and I hope he will be able to enlighten us. I think a bit of a distinction needs to be made here between essential purposes and processes that are essentially voluntary and commercial.