Local Government Finance Settlement

Debate between Lord Beecham and Lord Porter of Spalding

Tuesday 19th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)]

My Lords, first, I remind noble Lords of my interests listed in the register— namely, that I am the chairman of the Local Government Association. I am also the leader of South Holland District Council, which is in Lincolnshire, so I thank the Government very much for letting us be one of the pilots. We much appreciate that.

As my noble friend might expect, I need to be critical of the fact that again adult social care was not mentioned. I cannot see the new funding in a positive light, as the £2 billion will not actually be £2 billion; it will be about £900 million this year, which will be insufficient to deal with the pressures. However, I have every faith that my noble friend and the Secretary of State will be able to persuade the Treasury that it will be in this Treasury’s best interests to find additional money. We all know that the people most affected by adult social care crises are those who vote. Also, as has been said, there has been a massive rise in the number of looked-after children. That will need to be reflected in direct funding to local councils, which will have to pick up that burden. However, I am confident that there is still time for my noble friend and the rest of the DCLG team to persuade the Treasury that that needs to be met.

I do not want to carry on being critical, so I will make some really happy noises. The fact that the changes to the new homes bonus flagged in the last few months will not be implemented will be well received by local government. Clearly, that would have been a counterproductive move and we are pleased that it is not happening. On a South Holland-specific basis, if the Government are looking for somewhere safe to trial the setting of planning fees, somebody whom I know will probably be writing a letter in support of that and offering their council as a pilot. They would not use it to stop development, which, I know, is one of the risks that the Government are concerned about. They are worried that some people might use it as a way of stopping planning permissions being granted in the first place by pushing up the fees to a prohibitive level.

All in all, I think that the Statement was a game of two halves. There was quite a lot to be glad about. The 1% council tax increase was a massive move forward—by 50%—although it is still not massive in terms of cash. In the case of South Holland, I think that it will increase my council tax by about 15p a year over and above what was already in the budget, so it will not make a fantastic difference. Given that 50% of my council tax goes to a drainage board and not to direct services offered by the council, a bit more flexibility around that would be appreciated. However, from the sector’s point of view, it is a welcome move. A move to relinquish the Treasury’s control of what we can charge locally is much appreciated but it would be a much better idea to remove the Treasury from the equation altogether. It is a local tax taken from local people for local services, and that should not require HMT to go anywhere near it.

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords—

Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Debate between Lord Beecham and Lord Porter of Spalding

3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 15th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, I join the noble Lord in complimenting the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, for his very thoughtful and constructive contributions to the Bill and on this amendment. However, I have one question to put to him about it. Proposed new subsection (8) defines a local authority as,

“a district council … a county council, or … a London borough council”.

Where do the new mayoral combined authorities sit within this framework? Perhaps the noble Lord could assist me with that, or perhaps the Minister could indicate what role is envisaged for a combined authority, which will presumably by its very nature include land for development which crosses what would previously have been boundaries but are now within the new framework. I suspect the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, would wish that combined authority to exercise a role, but perhaps the Minister could indicate what the Government’s attitude would be and whether any further step needs to be taken to ensure that that outcome is fulfilled.

[Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)]

My Lords, I speak in favour of the amendment as well, and declare my interest in the register as chairman of the Local Government Association. The noble Lord, Lord Best, is right that the association welcomes this. It is pleased to do so, even in a version that is slightly watered down from the original. The Secretary of State should be congratulated on being prepared to cede some power: it is not very often that a Secretary of State is happy to let somebody else get on with something unless it is going to be a bad news story. I honestly believe this will be a good news story, so I am pleased that he is prepared to do it.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, though, I also have an issue with proposed new subsection (8): its definition of councils does not appear to allow unitary councils where they are the council of choice for people to be the body that makes a decision. It is fine for the districts or the counties to do that, but unitary councils outside London appear to be excluded. I am sure Newcastle or Sheffield would also want some space in this conversation. I am not sure at the moment how that could be changed, but perhaps it could be changed to “local planning authorities and county councils”. That would capture all existing councils. I urge against including combined authorities at this stage until we are sure where the constituent members of those authorities see this power resting.

Policing and Crime Bill

Debate between Lord Beecham and Lord Porter of Spalding

Wednesday 14th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Harris, about the elected mayor. There is no confusion about that: the Secretary of State made it quite clear in a public statement last week that the 11 deals on the table would not be renegotiated and that the mayor was a mandatory requirement. The noble Lord sitting behind the noble Lord, Lord Harris, will be aware that the north-east deal fell over last week because they would not agree on a mayor; five of the authorities would not agree and that deal was rejected by the Government. They have made it quite clear that a mayor is mandatory for those devolution deals. It would be unhelpful for this House to spread any more confusion about that.

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

My Lords, I endorse the approach that my noble friend Lord Harris has advanced. Equally, I was very taken with the argument of my noble friend Lord Rosser in questioning why, for example, the ambulance service was not regarded as a likelier partner for the police service in any reorganisation. It seems to me that, if one has to do this—and that is another question—it would make more sense than amalgamating the two rather more discrete services of fire and police.

That is not to say that, in any circumstances, whether there is any reorganisation or not, there might not be some financial savings to be made by looking at the joint running of the back offices for all three of those services. It seems to me that that is potentially practical without changing the nature or accountability for the service. It would be a sensible investment in making savings, which can of course then support the services.

It seems odd that, despite suggestions that one should take place, there has been no consideration by the Government of a trial amalgamation, whether it be as envisaged in this Bill, a potential wider amalgamation involving all three services, or an alternative approach involving the fire and ambulance services. Will the Minister indicate whether there has been any discussion about the possibility of such a trial between two or more of the relevant services?

There is a real concern about the further concentration of powers in a single pair of hands—although it is potentially two pairs of hands in this case. You will have a chief officer of a combined authority, who will have overall responsibility for the two services as envisaged in the Bill. You may also have, in a mayoral combined authority, the role of the police and crime commissioner, which will bring with it that combined service, in the hands of the elected mayor. The mayor already has enormous powers under the devolution proposals as they are proceeding in the 11 authorities to which the noble Lord, Lord Porter, referred. It is questionable, to put it mildly, whether it is sensible to concentrate so much power on issues of this kind, as well as everything else, in the hands of an elected mayor. I should refer to my local government interests, which obviously have some bearing on the approach that I take in these matters.

Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Lord Beecham and Lord Porter of Spalding

Monday 25th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 120A and 121. I was going to try to stick to the proper script but, given that everybody before me has left the running order and spoken about the things they are really interested in, I am going to do the same. First, I thank my noble friend the Minister for listening to what was said last week and to what local government has been saying for a number of weeks, and for clarifying how some of this pilot stuff will work.

Since I am on my feet, I am going to speak to fees. I am in favour of private sector competition on the basis that I honestly believe it will drive fees up. It is the first time I can recall having private sector competition to drive up the cost of a service, but I think this will do it. At the moment, we are spending about £150 million a year as taxpayers subsidising the planning system, and we have spent £450 million over the past three years doing it. Clearly, the fee structure does not recoup the full costs. If the private sector is going to come in and compete against us, it is going to want at least to cover its costs. Even if it is doing it for a few years as a loss leader, it is not going to want to lose a lot of money, so local government should be able to get its fees set at a much higher rate. That will allow us to staff our planning departments to a much more suitable level, given the demand that will be coming through, and that will allow local government to win the competition hands down because the public will trust what we are delivering and any sensible developer will want to go through an established route rather than risk competition in the private sector.

The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, said that an impact assessment had said that competition reduced the cost of refuse collection by about 20%. Ours has been brought back in-house since I have been leader and that has saved 20%. While private sector competition should be encouraged, it is not always the route that the final decision should go down.

[Lord Beecham]

On a point of clarification, when the noble Lord talks about council fees increasing in the way that he has described, is he suggesting to the Government that they should change the position and no longer fix the fees that councils should charge? That would be a necessary precondition of that occurring.

[Lord Porter of Spalding]

If we are truly about competition, the people in the competition should be the people setting the charges for that competition. Local government will set appropriate fees. All the Government need to say is, “This is the maximum profit you can make”, and we will all stick to those rules. I am sure local government will be able to drive down costs while putting fees up. As my noble friend Lord True said, we will be doing more shared management, and such arrangements will save some margin, but that will still not be enough to cover the full costs of the planning application. If we are able to put our fees up to recoup the full costs, so be it—bring on the competition. Like my noble friend Lord True, I will probably volunteer to pilot a rural competition.

Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Lord Beecham and Lord Porter of Spalding

Monday 18th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Porter of Spalding]

My Lords, I had no intention of speaking at this point because I have an amendment in the next group, but we need to stop perpetuating this myth that social housing is subsidised by the taxpayer. Well-prepared, well-delivered social housing is a financial benefit for this country. All the money we have mortgaged in those properties is about a third of its total value. If we are truly progressive we should be looking at how we sweat the asset that we already have tied up in there. There is no need for the Treasury to put fresh money into it. We just need to utilise the existing stock in a way that maximises its benefit for the whole country. That said, I will sit down now, as I am waiting to speak later.

[Lord Beecham]

I congratulate my worthy successor as chairman of the Local Government Association on disabusing his colleague of the notion I referred to—that the taxpayer is funding council housing and subsidising people who should not be subsidised. It is simply not true, and I am very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Porter, made that point.

I and all on our Benches support the amendments in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, and of my noble friend Lady Lister. I also endorse the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Shipley. He made the valuable point that we talk too much of “houses”, or, as I think Churchill once described them, “units of accommodation”—not, he thought, an appropriate phrase—but we ought to regard them as homes. In that context I remind the noble Lord, and other noble Lords, that homes with a spare room are also homes. They, of course, are subject to the bedroom tax. We do not want to reopen that debate, but it is analogous, really, to the way in which the Government look at social housing.

The Bill’s provisions about secure tenancies—in effect turning them into insecure tenancies—say a great deal about the Government’s professions of localism and their attitude to council housing. As other noble Lords said, councils were given the power by the previous Government to allocate properties on the basis of a two-year to five-year tenancy. I shall come back to some findings on that in due course, but they currently have that choice.

We take a diametrically opposite view from the Government, who simply replace the decision-making of local authorities by imposing their own solution. Local authorities should be free to determine their policies in this and other areas, subject to a requirement to provide, where relevant, at the least a basic level of service and entitlement, whatever the service may be. The Government approach the issue from the other end: councils should do only what the Government condescend to allow them to do. When it is convenient for the Government to pass the buck—as, for example, in the case of abolishing the council tax support scheme—they will do so, but when councils do not wish to subscribe to the Government’s distaste for the provision of council housing they have to conform.

Heriot-Watt University recently published an interesting study under the somewhat daunting title Welfare Conditionality—Sanctions, Support and Behaviour Change, dealing with the issue of fixed-term tenancies as provided by Clause 113 of the Bill. These have, as we have heard, been an option for local councils since the Localism Act 2011—a misleading title if ever there was one. Now they are to be compulsory, subject to the possibility of extension, on any future tenancy. The report avers that, taken together with pay to stay, the Government’s vision is one of,

“catering … for the very poorest on a temporary basis”.

Many councils that adopted the concept of two-year to five-year lets are regarded as being “disillusioned about their merits”, not least with regard to,

“the scope for using them to generate additional social lettings in high demand areas”,

and there is scepticism about the use of the mechanism to promote social mobility or positive tenant conduct. There is a suggestion that behaviour policy lay partly behind the scheme, so you would reward people by allowing them to stay in the property beyond two to five years if their behaviour was appropriate.

The latter point has been a factor in the promotion of the concept, but one for which there is little evidential support, the Heriot-Watt report says. Several academic authorities are quoted, on the other hand, as supporting the view that security of tenure has been an essential element of social housing. Yet this is already threatened by the total benefit cap for families with more than two children, who could find even social housing rents unaffordable. In any case, some two-thirds of all social housing, council and housing association properties are offered with a probationary period, but only 13% of new general-needs lettings were made on a fixed term basis in 2014-15. Interestingly, the advice from the Department for Communities and Local Government was originally to let for five years, with a two-year term as an exceptional alternative. Indeed, most local authorities that have taken advantage of that option have let for three to five years—the latter in effect now becoming the maximum, rather than the minimum, term under the Bill’s provisions.

Even where housing associations adopted the option, the report discovers growing disillusionment—especially where, as in high-demand areas like London, shortage of housing makes finding alternative accommodation exceedingly difficult—while the costs of managing the process were becoming disproportionately high. Those costs, of course, have to be met from within the housing revenue account and therefore by tenants in general. Conversely, there are areas of lower demand where it simply makes no sense to make people move on. Of course, the impact on householders and on communities can be considerable. Why should tenants invest in their homes if they have only limited tenure? Where, given the shrinking availability of affordable social housing to rent, are they supposed to go? If to the private rented sector, at what cost to them or the taxpayer if housing benefit has to be paid to cover the higher rents? Does not such pressure also feed through to ever-rising house prices?

The amendments in this group seek to minimise the damage to what has been a key contributor to the well-being of individuals, families and communities, namely the provision of decent, affordable, secure homes—as legitimate a part of overall housing provision as owner-occupation. Of course, as many other countries, not least in Europe, demonstrate, we have among the highest rates of home ownership of any country in Europe. Choice should not be confined to those who can afford—with or without generous subsidies, in the case of starter homes—to buy, but should be available to those who cannot afford it or who do not wish to buy. They are not second-class citizens. The Government should recognise that in the provisions they make in the context of tenancies in the social housing sector.

Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Lord Beecham and Lord Porter of Spalding

Monday 11th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)]

My Lords, as this is the first time I have spoken on Report, I remind the House of my declaration of interests. It is long and exhaustive, and I do not propose to read it out again. Noble Lords should refer to previous copies of Hansard or to the register, where it is all recorded.

I support my noble friend Lord True on the age restriction. I would not go through the wrong Lobby on this minor issue, which is going to go to the other end of the building and hopefully someone will look at it, but the age restriction based on the arguments that were exercised in this House excludes some people who may well be able to purchase a starter home if they are not university students. To exclude people who are not university students because we are worried about avaricious parents of university students seems perverse. I hope the Government will try to work out a way in which we can get a restriction on people getting into schemes that does not preclude those youngsters—probably in couples, with trades behind them—who could earn enough money, subject to being able to get access to a deposit, for 80% of the value of the scheme where they would not for 100%. That aspect requires a bit more work.

In response to my noble friend Lord Best’s comments about properties for the elderly being excluded from this measure, quite clearly there would be an expectation that we would not be putting starter homes on elderly-unit accommodation. However, that is not to say that a developer, if the financial circumstances warranted it, should not be expected to pay a commuted sum to offset the cost of starter homes on an alternative site. Some more work needs to be done on this to ensure that we are not allowing some developers to get off without it while we are imposing it on others.

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, the Opposition support the Government’s amendment here. I guess that a line has to be drawn somewhere with regard to age, and the Government are probably right to have drawn it where they have.

I also support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. I hope the Government will take it back in a positive sense because he makes a strong argument for extending the principle to these different forms of ownership—they are quite compatible with the Government’s intentions, after all—and meeting the particular needs that he has so clearly identified. I hope the Minister will feel able to say that she will take that back positively and perhaps return later on Report if she cannot accept it today. It would be ideal if she could accept it today but I guess that she may not have that freedom. Still, a positive response would be very welcome.

I sympathise again with the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Best. I am not sure whether that needs to be in the Bill so long as it is on the record that it is the Government’s intention that the thrust of the amendment would be realised in practice. If the Minister were able to give that assurance, that might avoid the need to amend the legislation. That is a matter for her judgment, but it might be a way forward.