European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Lord Stoneham of Droxford

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 1st March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall be as quick as I possibly can in supporting my noble friend’s amendment. As my noble friend said, this a disparate group of agencies with different structures. Many of them do not even need funding, but they are necessary for the ongoing business that I hope the UK will continue to do. As chairman of the Rail Freight Group, I attended a meeting today with Brexit Ministers and transport Ministers to talk about how Brexit would affect the rail sector. It was very interesting and very nice of the industry to invite us. They were seeking our advice and our concerns so that they could formulate their policy.

This amendment asks for a report before Article 50 is triggered. It will not happen because they are still looking for ideas—but at least they are asking us. I will give a couple of examples of our concerns. I had three. The first was about what happens at frontiers. Most of our freight these days comes across the Channel from Dover or through the Channel Tunnel and 80% of the drivers are non-British citizens. Will they all have to fill in this 84-page document that we heard about earlier? I hope not—but this is something that has to be recognised.

Secondly, if customs procedures are so long and complicated—I understand that if the port of Dover and the Channel Tunnel were closed for a day, the traffic jam would extend beyond Stansted Airport, which would be a bit of a blockage on the motorway—this, too, must be recognised.

Thirdly, the European Railway Agency sets standards and enforces them. I have worked very hard over the years to make sure the agency does its job properly, because it helps our industry quite dramatically. It means that there is one standard for railways across Europe and, as some noble Lords will know, the railways across Europe are incredibly old-fashioned. It was only recently that they managed to standardise the red lights on the back of trains. Otherwise, when a train got to a frontier, the driver had to walk from the front to the back and change the light—which is ridiculous in this day and age.

The European Railway Agency has stopped all that. We recently had some rail wagons that were manufactured and designed in this country and the company wanted to operate them in France. The French regulators said that they could not come because they did not comply with their regulations—which were probably created especially to keep out other people’s equipment. That kind of thing still goes on until the European Railway Agency gets involved—so if we want to export our equipment to other member states, we will somehow have to remain involved.

I hope we can continue to do so. An awful lot of jobs will be at risk if we do not—in the railways and other sectors. I am sure that a way can be found of doing it—not necessarily in the way that the Minister talked about in the earlier debate on Euratom, but I hope it will happen. I hope that at some point in the summer, as my noble friend said, we will have a report from the Government on their plan for what they intend to do. The industry at our meeting today told us that they needed to plan ahead and needed information. We need to find out what we should do in the future to make sure that we can preserve our jobs here and preserve our export opportunities. I hope that the Minister can give us some comfort on this. I am sure he did not mean to make a derogatory remark on Monday about the Community Plant Variety Office. I do not know anything about that, but some of these other agencies are extremely important for the future of trade with the rest of Europe, however that will be achieved.

[Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)]

My Lords, very briefly at this late hour, I want to say how grateful we are to the noble Lord, Lord Lea, for raising the list that he has produced for us. On behalf of these Benches, I would say that this emphasises the complexity of what the Government are entering into. We would, of course, like to know exactly how the Government will respond, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

Good morning, my Lords. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to this amendment again, as I did on Monday night.

Let me start by saying that these agencies are important and I was not wishing in any shape or form to be derogatory about any agency. The Government dispute the suggestion that we have to wait before triggering Article 50 to publish a report on all these agencies, but I think that the noble Lord made that point in his own words.

The list, as the noble Lord, Lord Lea, pointed out, covers a range of different policy areas: aviation, fisheries, justice and home affairs, banking and customs. Our approach to a lot of these policy areas was, of course, covered in the White Paper. There is a lot of analysis going on.

Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Lord Stoneham of Droxford

Tuesday 8th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)]

My Lords, I would quite like to take up the challenge to the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, as someone who has been involved in housing associations for the past 12 years and chaired three different associations. I assume that the one that I currently chair, Housing & Care 21 is, fortunately, excluded from the right-to-buy provisions—I hope that the Minister will confirm that—because it is involved in retirement housing.

Personally, I am depressed by this whole debate on the right to buy. I cannot believe that a Conservative Government can produce such a complicated and bureaucratic proposal, particularly when we come on to discuss how it will be funded. Frankly, I fear that they have a manifesto commitment around their neck which ideally they would like to get out of but have failed to do so.

In the housing association organisation, I was tempted to let the Government get on with their own dirty work in implementing this legislation, but we have a voluntary deal and I respect that. My own association voted against it. But the mistake that the Government have made is that they have ignored the pioneering work that housing associations have been doing over the past 10 years to extend shared ownership. Indeed, they have got involved in private sales. Now the Government are undermining all that by bringing in this right-to-buy legislation. But we have already had the more general debate, so I will not go into that.

My own priority—and it should be all of ours—is to make sure that we are building more homes, and I have deep doubts about whether this will end up doing that at the end of the day. But we have a voluntary scheme. The only problem with that, which is why I support the amendments to which I have added my name in this group, is that we do not have sufficient oversight of what will go on, especially when there are particular problems. That is why it is important that we have some exclusions achieved through these amendments. I mentioned retirement housing, but supported housing is also excluded. There are already exclusions.

Rural housing, as this debate has shown, is a particular problem. We know that it is a problem because the stock is attractive. Anyone who has the opportunity of a discount will break the earth to get the advantage of it in a rural area because you would have a very good asset. Even if someone cannot afford it, they will get the help of friends and family or whatever to get that discount. There will be immense pressure on housing associations to sell the stock.

I want to say a word about how housing associations are run in this country. I personally think that the structure of housing associations has been allowed to grow like Topsy. I am glad to say that quite a lot of the housing associations that I have been involved in have a link with their localities, but a lot of the bigger ones no longer do. We have to look at how the bigger housing associations will behave. I accept that they will generally be honourable, but the problem is that when there is the possibility of disposing of a little rural stock that does not really count for very much in your association and which would get rid of a management problem and is normally quite valuable stock, I am not sure that housing associations will resist the temptation to quietly dispose of those units. It may well be that they are the only source of money grant for building new stock in areas where they can make a greater surplus. I worry about that.

That is why we have to understand that the successful housing associations are increasingly bigger and will be remote from some of these rural areas. They will not be sensitive to individual rural areas and they could become the agents of government because they simply want to get more grant. We have to be particularly sensitive about that, which is why our role in this House is important. We cannot just leave it to the voluntary scheme. I support Amendments 57B and 57D because the grant must be used to reinvest in the parish or neighbouring parish to where the house is being sold, if that is unfortunately happening. We must recognise that there has to be some restraint in respect of this housing.

Finally, I want to say a few words about Amendment 57C and community land trusts. I have spoken in earlier debates on this subject. If we do not make some exceptions for the smaller community land trusts, which have often achieved what they have from small, exceptional sites, often having been given the land, we will dry up the source of these exceptional sites. Landowners will simply not give up that land if they think that someone else will make money for themselves out of it. That has to be recognised. For those reasons, the Government must give close consideration to these amendments, which I support.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I have listened very carefully to all the arguments concerning the possible disposal of some houses in rural areas owned by these community trusts. In Cornwall, where I live, I see big concerns about where essential workers will live, as the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, mentioned earlier. I also go to the Isles of Scilly a lot and that is what I want to mention. I put down Amendments 56B and 66CA to cover that, although I think the problem is probably covered by the other amendments.

The Isles of Scilly are 25 miles away from the coast and 2,500 people live there. The transport services, as I have frequently mentioned in this House, are pretty awful. You cannot commute there if you want to be a bus driver or anything. There is some affordable housing, but if that is sold, where will people live? Building new houses on those islands, which are very beautiful, is a problem. Demand for housing for essential workers is high, but the provision is virtually zero. If anyone does build a house, it is usually for a holiday let or because they have lots of money and they want to go there occasionally and leave it empty for the rest of the year, which happens so much in other parts of the country, including Cornwall.

If there is a strong argument for exceptions in the Bill for rural areas, there is an even stronger argument for the Isles of Scilly. It should not be allowed at all. I hope that the Minister will take that into consideration when she comes to respond. There may be other ways of doing this, but if there is no housing for essential workers in places such as the Isles of Scilly, where you cannot commute from the mainland to drive your bus or dustcart or work for the council, the community will die. This is a very serious issue.