Queen’s Speech
Lord Best Excerpts(5 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Best (CB)
My Lords, my contribution to this debate on the humble Address considers the forward direction for housing policy in the UK and is Brexit-free. I draw attention to my housing interests in the register. This Queen’s Speech was virtually silent on housing, yet the issue is often cited, particularly by those aged under 40, as their most pressing concern. As the Affordable Housing Commission, which I chair, has found, rents now often absorb well over 40% of a household’s income, leading to arrears, debt and personal problems. From the most affluent suburbs to the most modest council estates, so many young people in their 30s must stay in their childhood homes because the only alternative is a privately rented flat at a rent they cannot afford. Buying a home has become a distant dream, especially in the southern half of England. Rough sleeping is more visible on our streets and acute shortages mean families and children living in temporary accommodation, such as bed and breakfast hotels, on a scale unseen for many years. Housing costs and conditions so often lie behind the other social ills of poverty and ill health.
Your Lordships might expect me to be horrified that no announcements were forthcoming in the Queen’s Speech to address these pressing problems of housing scarcity and affordability, but if the absence of new measures means continuity in the pursuit of policies now in the pipeline—a continuation of a direction of travel set by Mrs May and her Housing Ministers—no news may well be good news. I have paid tribute in this Chamber to the way the previous Prime Minister sought to reshape housing policy during her tenure. In a seminal speech at the end of her period in office, to the September conference of the National Housing Federation, she talked of government becoming the victim of a single-minded drive for home ownership, when the most pressing need was for homes at modest rents.
On Mrs May’s watch, some of the highly unfortunate measures in the Housing and Planning Act 2016 were scrapped or abandoned: an end to the forced sale of the best council housing to pay for an extension of the right to buy; abandoning the horrid “pay to stay”, whereby council tenants would have to pay more if they made a success of their lives and increased their earnings; and scrapping the plan to end secure, lifetime tenancies in the social sector. More positively, the cap on borrowing to build council housing was abolished, which is now leading to an emerging new stream of affordable accommodation. Indeed, we even have a model for what council housing for the 21st century should look like, following the award of the coveted Stirling Prize for architecture to Norwich Council’s new street of 105 energy-efficient, secure, well-designed family homes in a real community setting. As one new tenant there remarked, “I feel like I don’t rent it, I own it”.
This direction of travel has also embraced reforms to private renting, including abolishing agents’ letting fees for tenants, a commitment to end no-fault evictions and the creation of a new ombudsman for private landlords and their tenants. Housing associations have been given access to new funds for social rent, which has started the return to building what is really needed rather than being pushed into letting at rents mistakenly termed affordable, but which are, in so many areas, beyond the reach of people in the lower half of the income range.
All these changes from Mrs May’s Administration —I pay tribute to the noble Lords, Lord Barwell and Lord Bourne, and Toby Lloyd, who advised her—represent steps in absolutely the right direction. They should lead, if undisturbed by any countermeasures, to government acceptance that what is needed is for at least a third of their target of 300,000 homes a year to comprise homes to rent within the means of those on average incomes and below. We all know that this has to mean a significant increase in the levels of grant to social housing landlords, but we also know that investment in affordable new homes pays for itself—unlike, for example, the £1.7 billion a year spent on temporary accommodation for homeless families. Paying grant up front saves far more further down the line, not least in finally reducing the housing benefit bill and in cutting social care and health costs. I add that, while waiting for the payback on capital investment in new homes, social security policy must keep up. Shockingly, benefit freezes and caps mean that increasing numbers of the poorest households are having to make up a shortfall on the payment of rent out of the benefits intended for their living costs.
My question to the Minister is simple: can we take the lack of mention of housing issues in the Queen’s Speech as a positive sign that there will be no turning back from the path chosen by Mrs May? Will the Government take forward her important consumer reforms for the private rented sector and continue to pursue energetically her programme of supporting a new era for council housing, and will the upcoming Budget herald significant extra investment in the development of truly affordable rented homes?
Digital Economy Bill
Lord Best ExcerptsWednesday 8th February 2017
(7 years, 9 months ago)
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“Duty of OFCOM to make a recommendation on BBC funding
It shall be the duty of OFCOM to make a recommendation to the Secretary of State regarding appropriate levels of BBC funding in respect of the settlement from 1 April 2022.”
Lord Best (CB)
I shall also speak to Amendments 221 and 222 in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury, and myself. I declare my interest as chairing your Lordships’ Select Committee on Communications, and this amendment encapsulates one of the principal recommendations from that committee’s report on the renewal of the BBC’s charter, Reith not Revolution.
Most of the recommendations in our report, which did not cover matters of governance and management, have been taken forward by the Government in the BBC’s new charter, which the Select Committee appreciated. In particular, the Government accepted our recommendation for an 11-year period for the new charter: this provides stability and security for the BBC, enabling proper forward planning. We were also very pleased with the line taken by the Government, following our subsequent representations, that the mid-term review of the charter would not reopen the debate on the purposes, scale and scope of the BBC, but would concentrate exclusively on reviewing the new governance arrangements for a unitary board and an extended role for Ofcom.
However, one crucial ingredient has remained unresolved, since it was not a matter that had to be settled within the charter itself. This was the issue of how the BBC’s licence fee should be set—ie, what process should be followed when establishing the charge made to all the users of the BBC’s services, now including those delivered online through the internet. Of course, the licence fee represents the vast bulk of the BBC’s income and therefore determines its scale and scope. How that fee is set is obviously of the utmost importance to the future of the BBC. This is a much narrower point than the question of statutory underpinning for the BBC, but it relates to the independence of the BBC. Although the charter will cover a full 11-year period, the next setting of the licence fee, upon which so much depends, is only five years away.
Lord Ashton of Hyde
I understand the point the noble Lord is making; he illustrated it right at the beginning of his speech in the previous debate. This is a matter of principle: whether we think statutory underpinning is the right mechanism for the royal charter for the BBC. I acknowledged to him that in some cases it might be, but I did not agree that it was appropriate for the BBC. I take his point and his due warning about Report. I agree it is relevant to this, but we have established that we have a disagreement on that point of principle. As for binding future Governments, of course we do not want to do that, and, in fact, we cannot.
The next question is that of public consultation on the settlement or the level of the licence fee. As noble Lords will appreciate, funding a public service is not a straightforward topic for public consultation. For example, the recent charter review found that almost 75% of the public consider the BBC’s programming to be of a high quality, but just 20% said that they would like to see the licence fee rise in line with inflation, thus helping the BBC maintain these high standards. Public consultation, therefore, needs to be approached with due sensitivity.
The BBC’s funding needs are a very complicated and technical issue, as we have seen at every licence fee settlement. The judgment about the overall package is a fine one. It should therefore remain for the elected Government to decide how to approach reaching an appropriate level of BBC funding in a detailed and extensive negotiation with the BBC. As I have said, this resulted in a position that the director-general has said is a strong deal for the BBC that gives it financial stability.
Finally, Amendment 223 seeks to remove the ability of the BBC to set age-related licence fee concessions in the future. I have already explained that the licence fee is a tax and it is right that the Government should retain the ability to determine the outline priorities of what it should be spent on. The BBC explicitly sought responsibility for the age-related licence fee concession. Removing the BBC’s ability to determine this policy—for which it will pay—simply prevents the BBC being the master of its own destiny. I believe it is particularly arbitrary to withdraw the BBC’s ability to set this concession without knowledge of what the overall funding package for the BBC will be at that future point. I do not believe that that is in the BBC’s interest, now or in the future. With those explanations I hope that, for the time being, the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Best
My Lords, I am extremely grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken, all of whom spoke in support of a change. I get the very strong impression that the Ofcom route, which is the one proposed in my amendment, would not find so much favour with your Lordships as the creation of a separate new licence fee commission. The independence of that body would be assured. I can see that some regulators do take an interest in the fees and charges made by the bodies that they regulate—it would not be entirely unheard of for Ofcom to have a view. However, I take the point that Ofcom is fully stretched with the duties that it already has. On balance, although everyone who spoke accepts that the current arrangements have been entirely unsatisfactory and that change is needed, the idea of a new body—which does not always find favour—might be the preferable route.
In response to the Minister, there is absolute agreement that the Secretary of State must take the final decision—that is not under dispute. It also should be clear that this should not be confused with the statutory underpinning of the royal charter, which we debated earlier. This is a one-off, separate issue relating to the licence fee. I am glad the Minister accepts that independent advice might be required. However, I think it is possible to bind future Governments, in the sense that putting a process in the Bill would ensure that the transparency that everyone seeks comes to pass and that proper public consultation and parliamentary scrutiny whenever the licence fee is reviewed, which will be five years from now, happens. It might be useful to come back to this later. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Press Regulation (Communications Committee Report)
Lord Best Excerpts(7 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Best (CB)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to introduce this debate on press regulation, which flows from a report on this theme from your Lordships’ Select Committee on Communications, which I have the honour to chair.
I am very grateful to noble Lords who are here to participate in this debate. I also place on the record my appreciation to the members of the committee, who work in an exemplary cross-party spirit to great effect. On their behalf I thank our clerks Anna Murphy and Nicole Mason, who did invaluable work at the time of this report, and Theo Pembroke, who has succeeded Anna, and our ever-helpful policy analyst, Helena Peacock.
Our report, Press Regulation: Where Are We Now?, came out back in March 2015. However, the committee has revisited the subject over recent weeks, and I will endeavour to share with your Lordships our understanding of the current state of play. Neither our original inquiry nor our latest investigation has sought to review the rights and wrongs of the Leveson report or the subsequent arrangements approved by all the political parties. We have seen our role as trying to clarify where things stand using the unique opportunities open to a Select Committee to quiz the key participants. Twenty months ago, we concluded that the picture was confusing for the public and uncertain for the press. I have to say that the picture today remains one of confusion and uncertainty. Let me recap.
Following the hacking scandals and criminal behaviour by the press uncovered in 2011, the Leveson inquiry was established. It reported in November 2012, and Lord Justice Leveson said:
“There have been too many times when, chasing the story, parts of the press have acted as if its own code, which it wrote, simply did not exist. This has caused real hardship and, on occasion, wreaked havoc with the lives of innocent people whose rights and liberties have been disdained”.
Lord Justice Leveson’s report sought to come up with a system of press regulation that would be acceptable to the public as sufficiently robust to protect the individual citizen, and acceptable to the industry in maintaining the freedom of the press from undue state interference. In the event, after lengthy negotiations between politicians, the press and others—including Hacked Off, the body representing hacking victims—the mechanism of a royal charter, not mentioned by Leveson, was agreed as a compromise between those supporting and those opposing statutory regulation. Then, first the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 and then the Crime and Courts Act 2013 were used by Parliament to give statutory backing to the new arrangements.
Two key ingredients were required to make a new system work. First, there had to be at least one regulator of the required competence, independent of government and of the industry; and secondly, there had to be some means of persuading publishers to subject themselves to such an approved regulator. The first issue was resolved through the creation of a Press Recognition Panel, duly established under the chairmanship of David Wolfe QC. This has had the job of considering whether any potential regulator can satisfy an established set of criteria mostly aimed at assuring the regulator’s independence, but including the requirement of the regulator for its members to join an arbitration scheme to settle disputes more cheaply and swiftly than through the courts.
Since our committee report last year, the Press Recognition Panel has indeed given formal recognition to a regulator, Impress, the Independent Monitor for the Press, chaired by Walter Merricks CBE. However, a large part of the national and local press which was already in membership of the self-regulatory body established by the industry itself—IPSO, the Independent Press Standards Organisation, chaired by Sir Alan Moses —has expressed no desire to switch to the newly recognised regulatory body, and IPSO itself has declared that it has no wish to be considered for official recognition. Indeed, my committee heard from Ashley Highfield, who chairs the News Media Association, that his organisation disputes the validity of the official recognition of Impress and will be taking the matter to judicial review.
The second ingredient in the new arrangements concerns the incentives for publishers to join an approved regulator, once one exists, and the disincentives for not doing so. The architects of the new arrangements in 2013 recognised that, in the absence of legal compulsion, some sticks and carrots were needed. This ingredient in the mix has proved even more problematic than the first. The carrot for joining an approved scheme is the more lenient treatment in respect of damages to be awarded where the publisher loses a case. This measure, covering exemplary damages, is already in force. The stick, which has not yet materialised, is contained in Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013. Under Section 40 all those publishers not signing up to be members of an approved regulator would face the potentially severe penalty of having all the costs of a complainant’s libel or privacy action automatically awarded against that publisher whether they won or lost the case. The intention was clearly that the significant risks of financial loss would strongly encourage publishers to join an approved, recognised regulator.
Section 40 could be effective only once there was a recognised regulator to which all publishers could belong. With the recognition of Impress, that requirement appears to be satisfied and the DCMS Secretary of State can press the button on implementing Section 40. The Secretary of State, Karen Bradley, told us how she wanted to consider all the relevant issues before taking any action, and a consultation process is under way and due to conclude on 10 January. The announcement of this government consultation emerged during debate on an amendment to the then Investigatory Powers Bill from my noble friend Lady Hollins, in effect to introduce the provisions of Section 40 in respect of hacking—“unlawful interceptions”—which was approved in your Lordships’ House but rejected in the other place.
Having listened to the key players, I think my fellow committee members will agree that matters are very far from being resolved. The members of IPSO will, it seems, passionately resist attempts to make them join a recognised regulator, of which the only one at present is Impress, with no others in the offing. Their objections are financial, with a belief that the compulsory arbitration scheme would be damaging to an industry which is going through tough times because of competition from the new online media, with consequent loss of advertising revenue. Their objections also relate to Impress itself, to which, for example, the News Media Association objects on grounds of lack of independence since its funding emanates mostly from a single sponsor, Max Mosley; because it lacks expertise, with no serving editors on its board or major publishers as members; and because it does not have its own code of practice. Important elements of the press object too on personal, philosophical, political and, to borrow a word from Sir Alan Moses, “theological” grounds. There is deep resentment of coercion by government, alongside fears for press freedom of expression that could deter editorial investigations and campaigns. We suspect that those newspapers such as the Guardian, the Financial Times and the Independent, which have not joined any regulatory body but have devised their own procedures for handling complaints, will also be very reluctant to join Impress for some of the same reasons.
The Communications Committee has also heard, on the other side, from Hacked Off and others that the current arrangements, although almost certainly an improvement on the previous position with the Press Complaints Commission, are far from perfect. IPSO is criticised for its lack of real independence from its paymasters and for its policies and decisions in relation to the prominence given to corrections, the need for apologies for victims, the ownership of the Editors’ Code of Practice by the industry and not the regulator, the absence of arbitration arrangements and more.
The position today seems to be one of stalemate, with the opposing camps showing no willingness to compromise on any point. Yet action by government to resolve matters has its own drawbacks. The Secretary of State could determine that self-regulation has not worked and could bring forward legislation for statutory regulation. This would lead to a protracted and acrimonious conflict with the press, which in my experience politicians are minded to avoid, not least at a time when Brexit discussions will occupy so much political time and capital. Alternatively, the Secretary of State could trigger Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013, thereby strongly incentivising the newspapers to join the only currently recognised regulator, Impress. From what we have heard, the press at large will do everything it possibly can to avoid this outcome. The temptation for the Government will be to postpone and delay action, perhaps keeping the sword of Damocles, in the form of an unimplemented Section 40, hanging over the press. Yet this outcome cannot be regarded as the optimum from the perspective of either the wider public or the press itself.
We are coming up to the 70th anniversary of the first Royal Commission on the Press, set up in 1947. The second royal commission was appointed in 1962 in response to the perceived failure of the first. The third royal commission reported in 1977, 40 years ago, and so the list goes on, with those concerned with the system of press regulation in the UK struggling to find a system that balances freedom of expression with the citizen’s right to privacy.
Yet broadly satisfactory regulatory regimes are operating within virtually all other industries. Statutory regulation applies to broadcasting; self-regulation works for the advertising industry; most sectors have mature arrangements for resolution of disputes. Surely it is not impossible to envisage arrangements that work satisfactorily for this important industry, the press, as well.
I ask the Government, once again, the question we posed in our earlier report: will the current situation, whereby the majority of the press refuses to submit to the royal charter, be allowed to pertain indefinitely? Your Lordships’ Communications Committee has not attempted to devise a new Leveson report or to produce the silver bullet that would make the royal charter a success. Rather we wanted, in our report of last year, to shed light on the state of play. In our recent probings, I hope we have brought things up to date in a helpful way. I beg to move.
Lord Best
My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for his excellent summary of all that has gone before, which means that I need not spend too much time repeating any of that. This debate illustrates that there is something to be said for a pause between a report being published and it being debated in your Lordships’ House. With the opportunity to reflect on these matters in the intervening period, the quality of debate has been enormously high. I am very grateful to noble Lords.
Roughly speaking, I discovered that one-third of your Lordships were in favour of the absolutely essential Section 40 being introduced forthwith; roughly one-third thought that Section 40 should not be introduced now or ever; and a third looked for the opportunity of a compromise solution that could genuinely be devised to secure that balance between the freedom of the press and real protection for citizens from libel or invasion of privacy by the press. That is a very rounded debate that I hope the Government will find of considerable value in the consultation exercise into which, fortuitously, all this now plays. With gratitude to all my colleagues for their contributions, I beg to move.