Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Lord Beecham and Lord Forsyth of Drumlean

Tuesday 10th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My noble friend is absolutely right. As he knows, I always pull my punches, but he is right to invite me to make the case even more strongly. Of course, when I intervened earlier and asked the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, if he would deal with the issue of financial privilege, he said that in his opinion his amendment did not breach that; but that is what he said the last time, and the House of Commons took a different view. He has made his argument, and my noble friend the Minister has shown enormous patience throughout the passage of this Bill, along with the rest of us who have been here to support her in the Division Lobbies. I hope that the noble Lord will accept, as my noble friend Lord Cormack said, that he has taken this matter as far as he can and that it is a matter for the elected Government and for the House of Commons to take things forward.

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, last night the Commons spent all of 52 minutes debating the amendments passed by your Lordships’ House. In the course of the debate, the Minister, Brandon Lewis, asserted that this House had,

“chosen again to oppose one of”,

the Government’s,

“most important manifesto commitments, namely the commitment to ensure that more homes are built: homes that we need, and homes that young people are crying out for”.

To borrow a phrase from a somewhat more famous Conservative, Winston Churchill, that is a “terminological inexactitude”. It is perhaps less personal than the assertion by a Conservative Back-Bencher that the manifesto commitment was,

“struck down and circumscribed by the unelected, unaccountable panjandrums in the House of Lords”.—[Official Report, Commons, 9/5/16; cols. 458-59.]

I declare my interest, and perhaps others of your Lordships do so as well.

The Conservative manifesto commitment was to build 275,000 affordable homes by 2020 and all of—my words, not theirs—10,000 homes to rent at below market rents. Nothing in the Motion moved by the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, conflicts with the manifesto commitment to build more homes. Part of the problem lies in the repeated use of the adjective “affordable”, and the failure of the Bill—and Ministers—to define the term other than in relation to starter homes, where the examples of affordability, reaching up to £450,000, are widely recognised as unrealistic. But the particular difficulty is the evident and extreme reluctance of the Government to acknowledge the need for affordable housing, which essentially means social housing, for rent, beyond identifying the massive programme of 2,000 houses a year at below market rents for the next five years.

The Government purport to address this issue by the provisions of the Bill which allow, but do not require, the Secretary of State to enter into agreements with councils to reduce the amounts they would have to pay to the Secretary of State, principally to fund the right to buy of housing association tenants. There is no requirement to do so, beyond the need in London, under an agreement for two-for-one replacement, and one-for-one elsewhere; but there is no requirement for the replacement to be by way of like-for-like tenure—only that replacements should be “affordable”. Moreover, as we have heard at some length during the passage of this Bill, the Government are unable to produce figures defining the meaning of “high value”, or the number of properties affected locally or nationally, or the likely rate of vacancies, or the cost of administering the scheme, or how they will judge how much to require councils to pay up-front annually, since the Bill envisages such payment will be required whether or not sales are effected. To misquote Marx—Groucho, not Karl—“A child of five could understand the impact of this policy. Bring me a child of five”, or perhaps, in these days, a special adviser.

Ministers constantly state that there are 16 million pieces of paper relevant to this issue and they are therefore unable to make any assessments. In that case, surely the answer is not to legislate before any real assessment of the impact is made, and not to rely on unamendable secondary legislation to ram through controversial and untested policies. That brings me to the claim that financial privilege prevents us from amending the Bill. The Government have already accepted some amendments with possible financial consequences, but the point is that financial privilege is not some God-given formula by which this House is prevented from amending legislation. We are not in the Moses Room with tablets of legislative stone; Governments can choose not to invoke or apply financial privilege, and we are entitled to invite them to do so. In any case, as the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, suggested, the amendment does not breach financial privilege.

The Motion moved by the noble Lord is a modest one. All that it seeks is that in calculating the financial adjustments to be made on the forced sale of high-value properties, councils should be able to retain sufficient money to provide two-for-one replacements in London, and one for one elsewhere, with the rider that the Secretary of State should consider allowing sufficient to be retained to permit that replacement by social housing for rent, when they can demonstrate need. It is not carte blanche—it is still a matter for the Minister to agree. It is the least that could reasonably be asked for. It is consistent with the manifesto pledge to build more homes, and it deserves the support of the House, and indeed of the Commons. In no way does it override a manifesto commitment, and if the noble Lord invites the House to ask the Commons to think again, the Opposition will support him.

Trade Union Bill

Debate between Lord Beecham and Lord Forsyth of Drumlean

Thursday 25th February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

There we are: we have the entire spectrum of the Conservative Party in agreement on this matter. I will not make any comments about Europe, so that we may maintain that position.

As the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, pointed out, we allow charitable deductions, and as Conservatives surely we believe in reducing the power of the state, not increasing it. What business is it of the Government or the state to decide what arrangements are made between free trade union movements and employers?

I have looked in vain to find this great cohort of employers that are against check-off. It seems to me—this is a central point that has been made in the debate—that you do not want to create a situation where there is tension between employers and trade unions, and where you perhaps end up back where we were before the 1980s, with militant people going round the workplace to collect subscriptions and to encourage people to do things which we on this side of the Chamber would not be very enthusiastic about.

I am also very concerned about another thing. We have had a debate on my noble friend Lord Strathclyde’s report on the use of secondary legislation, but here we have, in new Section 116B(3), in Clause 14:

“A Minister of the Crown may by regulations provide, in relation to a body or other person that is not a public authority but has functions of a public nature and is funded wholly or partly from public funds”—

that is quite a wide gang—

“that the body or other person is to be treated as a public authority for the purposes of this section”.

So the Government are taking unto themselves powers to be even broader in respect of something about which, as far as I can see, they have not yet made their case.

I do not want to take up much more of the Committee’s time, but will just give notice to my noble friend that, should this matter come to a Division, I will certainly not be supporting it. I suggest to my noble friend that she looks very carefully at the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, and the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, which seems to me to do everything that the Government could possibly want, if there is a genuine and sincere reason for making this change. It would provide for a proper code of practice, which means that people will be aware of what they are doing.

I suppose I should have declared my interest as a director of a bank, but the point has also been made about people who do not have bank accounts. I dare say we could find noble Lords on this side of the House who have not paid their subscription to the Conservative Party because they forgot to renew it and did not have a direct debit or something of that kind—my noble friend Lord King is indicating alarm at that. It is a very simple system, which is tried and tested and about which there are no complaints.

The costs are absolutely negligible. If it is a cost argument that is driving the Government, employers could charge the cost to the trade union, as the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, who I thought made an excellent speech, suggests. But to my mind the costs to the employer are considerably less than those of having people coming round the workplace collecting subscriptions. If anything, what is being proposed will add to the burden of employers, and I thought that as Conservatives we were against adding to the burden of employers and in favour of making life as simple as possible for them.

This looks to me like something that seemed a good idea at the time, which has now got into legislation, perhaps not with the best of motives. It would be wise of the Government to take the good advice which is coming from all sides of the Chamber and drop it.

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

My Lords, it is quite an exceptional pleasure to follow the speeches of two distinguished Members of this House on the Conservative Benches and the intervention by the noble Lord, Lord Deben, which was pithy but very striking, if I may say so. I declare my local government interest and my interest as an unpaid consultant at a firm which, for many years, has acted for trade unions. In that capacity, I am very well aware of the help and support they give to individual members across a huge range of concerns, from employment tribunals to accident cases, and of their support for members in the workplace.

I start by referring to the other check-off—Anton Chekhov—who wrote in one of his stories:

“To advise is not to compel … You must trust and believe in people or life becomes impossible”.

That seems to me a good description of the world of industrial relations. When it comes to check-off, many councils, including Newcastle, of which I remain a member of course, charge for the service. Newcastle actually makes a profit of around £20,000, which goes into the council’s budget. To put it another way, it could be said that it reduces the cost of facility time, which we touched on in an earlier debate. Many other councils do the same. It would be quite reasonable for the Government to require unions to pay the cost of check-off—Unison has made it very clear that is has absolutely no problem with that—but it should be a matter for individual councils and public bodies, as it is for private sector companies, to decide whether or not to operate a check-off scheme.

Unison reports that it is involved with 9,334 agreements about check-off, 7,242 of them in the public sector, with the rest in the private sector and, I suppose, the voluntary sector. Interestingly, some major companies, such as E.ON and United Utilities to name but two, are perfectly happy to operate such a scheme. The proposals were not in the Tory manifesto, and appeared at the last minute as the Bill was going through in the House of Commons. It would appear that there was no consultation with employers, let alone, of course, the unions themselves. Indeed, the director of human resources at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust—a very major trust—has written:

“Ending trade union deductions through payroll in the public sector came out of the blue”—

I do not think he is making a political reference there. He went on:

“From what I can tell there has been no consultation with employers, no engagement with trade unions, no assessment of what it may mean for employee relations or, more importantly, recent progress in partnership with trade unions … My anxiety—which I know is shared by others—is about the unintended (but in this case entirely foreseeable) consequences. Check-off… is a light touch management activity, but it does give employers a sense of their union density, particularly when dealing with multiple trade unions”—

a point made effectively by the noble Lord, Lord Balfe. He continued:

“When balloting does take place, check-off allows employers to undertake the SBET (standard British eyeball test)”,

which I had never heard of before. Quite what it means, I confess I do not know, but I assume that it means that the employer can check on the validity of a ballot in relation to union membership. Mr Royles goes on:

“Should we challenge it? All this will be more difficult if payments are made by direct debit”.

That is a big employer, of a major service, making a very telling point.

The Government suggest that payments be made by direct debit from the employee’s bank, as we have heard. Other noble Lords have said there is really no difficulty in this, and, just as much to the point, most Unison members have expressed a preference for check-off. As long as there is no cost to the employer, why should their wishes not be respected? Many employers in local government have voiced their views, including the north-eastern councils, which have collectively backed check-off. I think the Dorset police and crime commissioner—who I suspect is probably not a Labour member—has done likewise. As we have heard, the Government are reserving the position in relation to the functions of police and crime commissioners.

On Second Reading, I quoted Margaret Thatcher, who famously said that,

“for over 100 years … it has been the belief of the Conservative Party that the law should not only permit, but that it should assist, the trades unions to carry out their legitimate function of protecting their members”.

It could be argued that she rather departed from that view, although the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, disagrees, during her period in office as Prime Minister, when she spoke of “the enemy within”. The latter view, sadly, appears to have shaped the provisions of the Bill. It is time for the Government to treat the unions as partners in the provision of public service, not as enemies, and to treat public sector and council employers as reasonable decision-makers, not subordinates requiring constant interference with, and control of, their role as managers of public services.

There is also the issue of potential legal challenge. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, who is not in his place, wrote in the Times recently that the second area where the Bill is vulnerable to legal challenge—he had identified another issue—is Clause 14. He wrote, “It is very difficult to see the justification for such a restriction which has a very damaging effect on the efficacy of trade unions”. There must be the possibility of a legal challenge.

I suspect that there will be a broad consensus in this Committee about many of these provisions, particularly this one. I hope that the Minister will take these views back to the Government and that they will think again. An amendment was moved in the Commons by a Conservative Back-Bencher which would effectively remove the element of compulsion and leave it to employers, providing that the cost was met.

I began my speech by referring to a quotation from Chekhov. I offer three titles of his short stories which might well be applied to this Bill: “Gone Astray”, “Overdoing It” and “A Blunder”.

Legal Aid

Debate between Lord Beecham and Lord Forsyth of Drumlean

Wednesday 8th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, while supporting the Government—

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I give way to the noble Lord.

[Lord Beecham]

I am most obliged to the noble Lord.

My Lords, does the Minister agree that VAT and expenses, to which reference has been made, actually account for 40% of the fees that are currently being quoted? What is his response to those members of the judiciary who are concerned about future recruitment of judges to deal with criminal cases in the likely event of a decline in the quantity and quality of the criminal Bar?