Homelessness

Debate between Lord Bird and Lord Young of Cookham

Monday 18th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bird (CB)]

Are the Government aware—

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords—

[The Earl of Courtown (Con)]

My Lords, there is plenty of time. Can we have the noble Lord, Lord Bird, and then my noble friend Lord Naseby?

Housing: Permitted Development Rights

Debate between Lord Bird and Lord Young of Cookham

Tuesday 23rd July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

On the case concerning Watford which the noble Baroness mentioned, the borough council may appeal against the planning inspector’s decision within the next few days, so she will understand if I put that to one side. I make two general points: first, I hope all noble Lords will agree that, if you have redundant office or industrial buildings in an area where there is a severe shortage of residential accommodation, it makes sense to convert the one to the other. That is why the coalition Government in 2013 issued the permitted development order, which said that if you have planning permission for an office, you have planning permission for residential. That policy has produced 46,000 new homes, the vast majority of which are of good quality. Secondly—here, I agree with the point the noble Baroness made in a debate last week and which the noble Lord, Lord Best, raised yesterday—there have been some very unsatisfactory applications of that policy and some homes of very poor quality have come on to the market. That is why we have announced the review. We want to learn from Watford. The review is scheduled to complete by the end of the year. I take what she says about urgency: we want the policy to produce properties of a decent quality.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

My Lords, can the Government not take this wonderful opportunity to praise the borough of Watford for not slipping us back to the 1940s and 1950s, when many of our poorest people lived in appalling conditions?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I hope the noble Lord will understand if I do not praise the London borough of Watford, as it may be about to take the Government to court—that might get me into difficulty. However, I agree with the thrust of what he said. It is worth reminding the House that the Prime Minister said last month that,

“I believe the next government should be bold enough to ensure the Nationally Described Space Standard applies to all new homes”.

I agree with that.

Future Generations

Debate between Lord Bird and Lord Young of Cookham

Wednesday 26th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bird]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Young of Cookham on 26 November 2018 (HL11361), by what means, if at all, they require public bodies to act, and to demonstrate how they act, in a manner which seeks to ensure that the needs of the present generation are met without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, public bodies operate in the context of an overall framework of government policies and guidance that ensure financial and environmental sustainability. Fiscal rules implemented have meant that the Government are forecast to meet their fiscal targets early, with debt falling as a proportion of GDP in 2020-21, reducing the burden on future generations. Government guidance, such as the Green Book, ensures that public bodies consider monetisable and unmonetisable value, including environmental impacts on air, water and climate change.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

It is interesting that today we have a “The Time is Now” demonstration outside; it is interesting to us all to realise that we are moving towards many big problems. The thing about the Welsh commission—which I am very pleased the Government want to look at—is that it tries to bring together poverty, education and so on, so that we can look at the problems coming down the line. I would like the Minister to agree to meet me so that we can look at what has happened over the last five years with the Welsh commission. I am guilty of banging on about the Welsh; I am not a Welshman, but I do love this Act.

Taxation: Digital Publications

Debate between Lord Bird and Lord Young of Cookham

Thursday 6th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The noble Lord makes a forceful case for equalising the VAT rate on e-publications and conventional publications. He rightly says that, on Tuesday, the EU decided that countries now have the freedom to make that equalisation, so we could now move to a zero rate instead of a standard rate on e-publications. Tuesday was apparently “eVAT Freedom Day”. I can tell him that the Professional Publishers Association is pursuing this with the Chancellor and the Treasury, and on 29 November the Financial Secretary wrote back to it saying: “The industry’s arguments and economic analysis are welcome to enable the Government to determine the benefits and risks both for digital business and high street retailers associated with extending the zero rate of VAT to e-publications”. I note the forceful arguments made by the noble Lord to support that case.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

Is it possible to follow the examples of Italy and France, which have just removed VAT on the basis that it is a tax on learning and intellectual rights? Perhaps this is the moment we can jump in and show that, whatever happens, we will not tax our children, who have to pay through the nose for their digital materials.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The noble Lord makes the same case as made by the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath. On Tuesday, all countries within the EU had the freedom to change the rate from 20%, the standard rate on e-publications, down to zero. We have had that freedom for only two days, so both noble Lords are very prompt in urging us to use it. As I said, negotiations are now under way between the interested parties and the Government to assess the case. If the case is made, I am sure that the Chancellor will look at it favourably.

Homelessness

Debate between Lord Bird and Lord Young of Cookham

Wednesday 7th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bird (CB)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for raising the issue of homelessness and ask the Government to put their mind to the problem. It is something that every Government in the last 25 years since I started the Big Issue have dealt with; every Government have had their favourites and particular twists on the situation of homelessness. I declare an interest in that I am a person who makes a living out of homelessness; if it was not for the homeless, I might well be homeless. Twenty-five years ago, I started something to help the thousands of homeless people who were sleeping in the West End of London. We are not back there. If you listened to politicians in opposition today you would think that we had arrived there already, but you must be aware of the fact that we could arrive there—so it is a very good idea for us to enter the fray again and say, “Let’s not return to 1991”.

One of the reasons why there were so many homeless people in 1991 was that at the end of the Thatcher Administration the social security laws had been changed and children of parents on social security from the ages 16 to 17 were refused social security. So social security was withdrawn, and the noble Lord, Lord—sorry, I have forgotten your name, forgive me.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

Young.

[Lord Bird]

When the noble Lord, Lord Young, was Sir George Young, as he will remember, there were thousands of young people filling our streets, because of the change in government policy. When I look at what has happened with homelessness over the years, I am probably in a minority, in that I do not believe that Governments are capable of making major changes by one policy followed by another and another. In a way, that is avoiding the major issue, which in Britain today is the fact that we fail 30% of our children in school—and those 30% of our children become 70% to 80% of our prison population and become 60%, 70% or 80% of the people on social security. You get a situation where families are broken, where our children are not given places of safety, where social security is not used as a place of security, and so what happens is you produce another generation of people who become homeless.

The noble Lord, Lord Cashman, says that we could all be homeless—we could be—but the chances are that, if you were failed at school, if your parents are on social security, if you live in a council flat on social security, you are more likely not to go to university and you will in fact have to rely on the university of the streets or the university of the social security office. Most of the people I have worked with over the past 25 years, 95% of them—with some notable exceptions, such as the man who went to school with Prince Charles—come from the same social background as those people who were failed in school.

After 25 years of the Big Issue, I have come into the House of Lords to help to dismantle poverty, not to make the poor comfortable, not to parry with the Government over this, that and the other; I have come into the House of Lords to find methods of changing the way in which we produce another generation of people. I am sorry, but all my knowledge leads to the fact that we spend £19 billion a year on education when we should actually be spending £50 billion a year on education. We should be breaking open the issue of those 30% of children who will go on to fill our prisons, our hostels, our streets and our social security queues.