Tees Valley Combined Authority: Best Value Notice

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Thursday 2nd May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a very serious issue. I met someone yesterday who told me that their father, who lives in the Tees Valley mayoral area, had decided they were going to vote for the incumbent candidate because he was a really good Liberal Democrat.

[Baroness Swinburne (Con)]

I am sure he is therefore voting for the person who is delivering for him and his local community, regardless of political affiliation.

Property Agents: Regulation

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Thursday 18th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Swinburne (Con)]

Estate agents are regulated under the Estate Agents Act 1979, which is currently enforced by the National Trading Standards estate and letting agency team—the abbreviation or acronym is too complicated for me to work out, so I have given the full title. It has powers to issue warnings and banning orders, and estate agents are required to belong to an approved redress scheme. These things can all be improved on. When we bring forward the home buyers and sellers reform strategy over the coming months, I hope to come back to the House and give details on further actions.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, the bad apples are giving legitimate, professional agents a very bad name, recently highlighted in my own city of Sheffield, where instances of adding charges that never existed to ground rents and refusing to answer correspondence and communication were taken up by the honourable Member for Sheffield South East, Clive Betts. We have just ascertained, including from the Minister, that we have unanimity across the House. Could we not just agree in the legislation coming forward very shortly to pass the necessary measures to put this right?

[Baroness Swinburne (Con)]

I can confirm that in the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill we are introducing measures to empower leaseholders to take action in the event of unreasonable behaviour. The Bill will make it easier for leaseholders to scrutinise costs and challenge the services provided by both landlords and property managing agents and ultimately for them to take on the management of their building themselves or directly appoint or replace agents. Alongside existing protections and work undertaken by the industry, these measures will seek to make property managing agents more accountable to leaseholders who pay for their services. It is coming.

General Elections: Party-political Spending

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Wednesday 29th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, the Government have no plans to limit the size of donations made. We have procedures in place to ensure that there is transparency over those donations and, as we are discussing today, spending limits for candidates and parties in elections. That is how we govern the use of money in our political system.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I hope that the House and the Minister will forgive me for asking a tangential question. Is it not time that the Government restored the special fund that put those with disabilities on an equal footing in campaigning in a general election?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I hope that the noble Lord will forgive me for acknowledging that it is a slightly tangential question; I may need to write to him with a fuller answer. I remember the establishment of the fund; it was established for very good reasons, so I am happy to take that away and look at it further.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 27th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, in his amendments, and join the noble Lord, Lord Stunell and Lord Young, in doing so. I spoke on the Healthy Homes Bill on Friday morning, so I will try to not repeat all of it, because some Members here in Committee will have been there on that occasion. I will just say that designing for the future and retrofitting for the present go hand in hand. It is a no-brainer that homes need to be both warm and well ventilated. It is a no-brainer that the community around the dwellings we have and those we build needs to be both sustainable and a contributor to the health and well-being of those living in those homes.

I recall one small occasion when my predecessor as leader of Sheffield City Council was getting deeply frustrated at the cost of building. He decided to design his own bungalow on the back of fag packet. This bungalow’s heating was to be provided by a gas fire that was strategically placed so that when the door of the one bedroom was open, it would heat the lounge, the bedroom and, if you were lucky, might get some heat into the small kitchen as well. When I took over, I am afraid we decided not to go ahead with these mini-dwellings, but we tried to put in standards that would be lasting, supportive of the well-being of individuals and their families, and sustainable in terms of the different uses to which they would be put.

In the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, the word “safety” is also used. We should be planning, as we age, to stay in dwellings—as well as moving to more suitable accommodation—because they have been planned or redesigned to allow that. Doing it from the beginning is obviously a great deal more affordable, but doing it now will save an enormous amount of resources in future. I said, on the Healthy Homes Bill, that if in Lanarkshire and west Yorkshire, Rowntree and Cadbury, and even Wedgwood—who was not the greatest of employers but understood entirely that his workers could not come to work and be able to work if they did not live in healthy homes—could do that all those years ago, surely we can get it right now. It is beholden on us to ensure that the guidance and support from the centre encourages the best possible practice at local level.

To finish, one of my very long-standing friends was canvassing in the local elections in Sheffield a week or two ago. He came across a Labour Party member who said she was not going to vote Labour on this occasion. When he asked why, she said it was because the Labour Party would impose 15-minute neighbourhoods in which people would be forced to live in a very confined area, and she was against it. Well, I am against it as well; it is not Labour Party policy. So I will put a word out as a vice president of the TCPA. When planners come up with very good ideas about how we should be able to reach good facilities easily and in a carbon-neutral way, and when we encourage people to rebuild the communities of the past in new ways—as people would aspire to do in villages if, as we discussed last Monday, they were not being taken over by holiday homes—we have to be very careful in the language we use, because there are people on the internet who believe that the best intentions of many people are somehow a conspiracy. We live in a crazy world; we need to get it right.

[The Lord Bishop of Derby]

My Lords, I am glad that today we have the opportunity to consider the health and well-being dimensions of planning. It is my view that development planning cannot be truly successful if it does not also enhance health and well-being. I speak first in favour of Amendment 188 and Amendments 394 to 399 from the noble Lord, Lord Crisp. The right reverend Prelates the Lord Bishop of London, the Lord Bishop of Chelmsford, the Lord Bishop of Manchester and the Lord Bishop of Carlisle, who have previously spoken on these issues, regret they cannot be in their place today. However, I have no doubt they would want to give their support to these amendments were they in the Chamber.

I am sure noble Lords will recall stories of what can happen when living conditions deteriorate. Awaab Ishak’s death in December 2020 from a respiratory condition caused by “extensive mould” was an incredibly tragic story, as was that of Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah’s death, partly caused by toxic air near where she lived. It is welcome that the Government are working to deliver Awaab’s Law through the Social Housing (Regulation) Bill and that Ella’s Law, the Clean Air (Human Rights) Bill, continues its journey through Parliament in the other place.

Today, we have the opportunity to put health and well-being at the heart of regulating our built environment: an essential step to preventing such awful outcomes and instead facilitating the flourishing of individuals and communities. The amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, set out the healthy homes principles for new housing stock. Those 11 principles range from safety

“in relation to the risk of fire”

to

“year-round thermal comfort”

and more. Surely these are planning standards that we all can agree are good to uphold.

Not only that but, as we have heard, these principles would significantly benefit the public purse. Research by the Building Research Establishment found that 2.6 million homes in England—roughly 11% of them—were of poor quality and hazardous to their occupants. As a result, those poor-quality homes cost the NHS, as we have heard, up to £1.4 billion every year. My view echoes that of the Archbishops’ housing commission that

“good housing should be sustainable, safe, stable, sociable and satisfying”.

Such housing would significantly reduce the strain placed on the NHS. I believe these amendments to be a valuable addition to this Bill.

The Government have acknowledged that housing and health are key to the levelling-up agenda. However, the Bill as it stands contains no clear provisions that achieve that objective. I echo the challenge to the assertion made by the Minister’s all-Peers letter of 27 January that the healthy homes provisions are being dealt with by existing laws or alternative policy. While the NPPF and national technical housing standards cover some elements of issues addressed by these principles, these are not mandatory legal duties for local decision makers, and nor is there an overall statutory duty on the Secretary of State to uphold the healthy homes principles. Therefore, I hope the Government will accept these amendments.

Amendment 241, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Young, would also be an invaluable addition to the Bill. Its introduction of a new statutory duty to reduce health inequalities and improve well-being would also help the Government to address poor health, described in their own levelling up White Paper, as we have heard, as

“One of the gravest inequalities faced by our most disadvantaged communities”.


By requiring local authorities to include policies that meet this objective in their local development plans, his amendment will help to transform our built environments into spaces that help create good health and well-being, and, as such, reduce health inequalities.

As pointed out by the Better Planning Coalition, this proposed new clause is a necessary addition given that pre-existing documents and provisions have not been sufficient to stop the growing health inequalities in recent years. I refer to research by Professor Sir Michael Marmot of the Institute of Health Equity, which found that the health gap between wealthy and deprived areas grew between 2010 and 2020. I therefore hope that the Minister will consider this amendment.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 15th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Lytton (CB)]

My Lords, my name is added to some of the amendments in this group, and I would like to speak very briefly to some of them. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, for having introduced her amendment so eloquently.

I recognise several of these from the time when I had the privilege of being the president of the National Association of Local Councils, and of the then combined Sussex Association of Local Councils. I know just how disruptive these conflicts can be. They can be between the chairman and councillors, between other councillors, or councillors and a clerk, or it can be something that a councillor is doing externally to the work of the parish. These things do need to be dealt with, and if the monitoring officer is not in a position to call order, these things have a habit of festering. I know just how disruptive they can be to the entire process, so I support that one very much.

I support also Amendment 160 on the dependants’ carer’s allowance, and in particular the review of neighbourhood governance. The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, referred to neighbourhoods and neighbourhood planning, and I think it is a matter of vital consequence, particularly as there seems to be a certain frequency of neighbourhood plans not being respected by the principal authorities. If we do not have something that neighbourhoods feel they can really aspire to and can be made to stick, what is the motivation for them to get engaged in the first place? Are we delivering something that is really talking about communities and supporting communities in what they do and their aspirations, or is it some sort of fig leaf? I hope it is not, and I think there should be this review so that we can see where things are going. I certainly agree with the power to pay grants to parish councils. This is something that goes back a long way—several years.

I did not put my name down to one other amendment that I should have—that was Amendment 164—because the general power of competence for parish councils certainly goes back into the mists of time and was a live issue during my period as president of NALC. Again, this goes back to the question of whether parish councils can demonstrate to their councillors, for all the time and effort that they give voluntarily, and the fact that they are spending public money, that they are going to be able to drive forward their proposals within their area of competence. This is not to say they should be in conflict in any way with principal authorities, or anything like that, but, within their remit, why can they not have the general power of competence? I can see no good reason not to have it. For those reasons, I support these amendments. The only one I have not mentioned is Amendment 163, on:

“Financial assistance to church or other religious bodies”,


because I really felt I did not have the competence to make any comment on that.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, before I speak to the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, could I make an appeal to the usual channels that, given that there is a major problem this evening in terms of transport, we are mindful of that in terms of how long we sit? Only in this House—certainly not in the House of Commons—could we be here with the difficulties that are experienced outside and, while I realise we have got to try and make progress on Committee, I appeal for the exercise of a degree of common sense.

In speaking to the amendments to which I have put my name, I want to make a broader point. When I was leader of the city of Sheffield, with its population of 560,000, I was not always mindful of the needs and the importance of the parish and town councils that lay to the north of the city and which had previously been in what was then the old West Riding—that is, Bradfield, Ecclesfield and the town council in Stocksbridge. It struck me much later, as a declared communitarian, that this was a big mistake. The more that we devolve and ensure that we make decisions and delegate decisions as close to people as possible, the more we will ensure that we protect and reinforce our democracy. Town and parish councils are the building blocks on which the broader decisions are taken by county and metropolitan authorities and, here in London, by the boroughs, the GLA and the mayor.

As we move to greater devolution, which was debated in the previous business this evening, we must take into account that, while elected mayors and mayoral combined authorities are the way forward in terms of infrastructure, investment and devolvement of powers from central government, this will not succeed unless people feel an affinity and are engaged with their community and neighbourhood in the cities and, in rural areas—of which I have had experience in the last 20 years—with their parish and town council.

These amendments are not just technical amendments relating to the powers that should exist with parish and town councils. They are about the reinforcement of democratic representation by local people and the investment in community facilities, including religious facilities and institutions where it is possible to define sensibly what that investment is for. I imagine that the Government will want to reflect on this. It could be in heritage. It could be, as has been described by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, the community facility that in so many parishes and small towns across the country exists only within the local church. I did apologise to the annual conference of parish and town clerks for having been a bit centralist in the past, so I might as well put that on record tonight. A sinner who comes to understand is worth three of those who have not understood the mistakes that they have made—so there we are.

There is a very real issue here that the Government could deal with very simply and easily and, as has been described, where there are contradictory pieces of legislation—Section 137 was mentioned—we could set the record straight. We have moved on a lot since the Redcliffe-Maud Royal Commission’s proposals and the 1972 and 2003 Acts. Life has moved on. There is a greater consensus now about devolution and about subsidiarity—I never could say that word without losing my teeth. We have an opportunity on the levelling-up Bill, very simply and easily and without a great deal of fuss, to put this right on Report.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, I will probably upset my noble friends Lady Scott and Lady Harris when I speak to Amendment 163. There may be confusion, but if any of the Acts should be withdrawn, it should be the 1972 Act, not the 1894 Act, for one reason of practicality and one of principle.

The matter of practicality is that the Church Commissioners, in their latest report, said that the reserves of the Church of England after its liabilities in pensions is £7.5 billion. Therefore, there are issues concerning investment in church funds or church buildings where the first port of call should be the reserves which the Church of England holds. The report goes on to say that in dioceses, the reserves are £1.6 billion, with a cash reserve of £1.84 million, and cathedrals’ general reserves are £524 million, with £50 million in cash.

The second reason is one of principle. I find it absolutely incredible and unacceptable that the Church of England—an organisation that does not see me as an equal citizen in this country, that has used discrimination and prejudice to try to deny my marriage and many other people’s marriages in this country and continues to do so, and that uses a fudge to try to hold its own organisation together rather than see equality for all in love—should be the first port of call as a matter of principle in which parish or any other councils should be able to claim off the state.

For those reasons—one of practicality, the funds that the Church holds, and one a matter of principle, which I see as a position of prejudice and discrimination held particularly by the Church of England—I feel that if any legislation should be repealed, it should be the clause in the 1972 Act and not the 1894 Act.

England: Historic Counties

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Thursday 16th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My noble friend is right to raise this issue. The Government have taken steps to ensure it is easier to recognise historic counties. In 2014, planning rules were changed to allow councils to put up boundary signs marking traditional English counties. In 2015, the Government commissioned Ordnance Survey to produce historic and ceremonial county-boundary datasets, and we are open to other ideas.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, the national insurance hike last week skewed funding under the Barnett formula still further. If the historic county of Yorkshire, which has a population slightly larger than Scotland’s, had its own Barnett formula, it would receive an extra £12 billion. Would that not be levelling up?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, I thought the supplementary questions might go in any direction, but I recognise that the noble Lord is a proud Yorkshireman and that he will do all he can to ensure the county gets the resources it needs.

Housing Strategy

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Wednesday 24th March 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

I congratulate the most reverend Primate on securing this debate and, above all, on the powerful and heartfelt way in which he has presented what I think is an unanswerable case. I echo his words about the tragedy of the death of Lord Greaves. I shall miss his interjections and his dulcet north-western tones greatly.

This is a very appropriate moment for this report and the commitment of the Church of England to be presented to us. I am a Methodist, so I hope your Lordships will forgive me for intruding on the debate in terms of the stewards taking forward this report. I put on record my thanks to Charlie Arbuthnot for the conversations I have had with him and congratulate all those who have taken part in putting this excellent report together.

In a moment I will talk a little more about social value, to which the most reverend Primate quite rightly referred, but first I will talk about housing. When I was leader of Sheffield City Council, I discovered that all of us—because, thankfully, all of us had a home—thought we were experts in housing. I am not. I am quite clear that there are others contributing this afternoon who have much greater expertise, both in the economics of the housing market and in the critical issues that the most reverend Primate referred to in terms of the balance, the importance of affordable housing and the setting aside of the ideology that we are in favour of either renting or buying.

Actually, we are in favour of building houses for people to live in as a basis for them to be able to grow a family and to be active and committed members of a community—to secure, as described in those five pillars, a safe and environmentally acceptable way of living their lives. It is an absolute basic in terms of everything else that we stand for, all we talk about in terms of the security of the family, the safety of the neighbourhood, the commitment to building social capital and the capacity of communities, such as at the moment, to be able to deal with major catastrophes such as the pandemic.

It is fundamentally about the building blocks of a civilised society. It is also a major contribution not only to the well-being and lives of young people and their ability to build a future but to how we care for our older generation. It is about the importance of creative ways in which we can develop social care so it is neither isolation without support nor encapsulation in often very committed social care, which, by its very nature, removes independence and presents real difficulty in terms of uniting, and keeping united, couples in old age where the wife or the husband has fallen ill or become severely disabled.

I hope that all parties will be able to commit to the clarion call from the Church of England. I have a close friend, the Reverend Dr Alan Billings, who is now the police and crime commissioner in South Yorkshire. I have spoken to him at great length over the years about his time serving on Faith in the City back in 1983-84—another era of great division. He assures me as a Methodist that it was a commitment underpinned by radical and sustainable theology. I cannot speak to that, but I know that carrying forward reports such as the one we are debating today will happen only if there is political commitment. The most reverend Primate referred to the welcome that this has received from right across the housing market, from housing associations to local government. I hope that will continue to be the case in the months ahead.

I want to say a word or two about what the most reverend Primate referred to towards the end of his excellent contribution: the need to change the legal framework—obviously, this includes the Church—for selling church assets and to amend the law so that we can include social and environmental values. The report talks about church land and buildings being used for social and environmental, as well as economic, benefit. To be able to do that, it is really important that the Church continues to join others in ensuring that there is a redefinition of the maximisation of value.

I know that the practice note that has been agreed with the Charity Commission will help the Church do this. But my point this afternoon is that, if this is to be a combined effort, I hope that, despite the agreement it has reached on the use of its own land and property, which is very welcome, the Church will continue to work with others to make any change requirements that are necessary to the wider interpretation by the Charity Commission of how land and property can be disposed of.

The most reverend Primate will know that a very old friend of mine is Geraldine Peacock, who now has the major challenge of severe Parkinson’s disease, who was head of the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association and then the Charity Commission itself. Nobody can ever forget being approached by Geraldine because her tenacity and terrier-like focus on what needs to be done can never be overlooked. I very much welcome that. I hope we will be able to find a way forward, following the excellent appointment of the Bishop of Chelmsford, and find solutions to problems that have arisen in North Yorkshire and in Wells, where Geraldine has been attempting to develop a community asset. I make no bones about mentioning that this afternoon, because it is an important example of a community asset, following the sale of the deanery in Wells, being used for the benefit of the wider community.

If we can pull together and understand the critical importance of housing as a centrepiece of the community, and if we can overcome barriers—easily done through a statutory instrument—to ensure that the social value Act 2013 is carried into practice right across our country, so much the better. Critically, we must back the Church of England as being in the vanguard of ensuring that we take forward what is necessary now to provide housing solutions for the future.

North of England: Investment

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord is right that we need to see not only economic development and growth in the economy but social regeneration and the upskilling of people in the north. That is why one part of the agenda is the devolution of decision-making, including adult education and skills budgets, to the mayors responsible for driving that agenda, as well as the economic agenda.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab) [V]]

I draw noble Lords’ attention to my registered interests. On 19 February, the Government made a welcome, if modest, announcement on the establishment of the Advanced Research and Invention Agency. Do the Government acknowledge, as they surely must, that unless the agency is able to deploy money directly to the north of England, as opposed to the golden triangle of Imperial, Oxford and Cambridge, we will not have the inventions or attract the inward investment that the report so graphically laid out?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, there should be no barrier to investing in the research and innovation that the noble Lord outlines. I am sure that the Government will take his point on board.

West Yorkshire Combined Authority (Election of Mayor and Functions) Order 2021

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Tuesday 26th January 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, in three minutes, I can touch on only one or two key issues. I welcome the order and the elevation of the leader of Leeds City Council, Judith Blake, to this House. I know that she will make a great contribution.

In winding up, could the Minister touch on when we might have the long-promised White Paper on devolution? How might it deal with the inconsistencies and incoherence of having different powers for different city regions and their mayors; the creation of powers for mayors to have the police and crime commissioner function in some areas but not in others; and the way in which the resources he referred to, combined as they were in the Autumn Statement, have been cut and the structural funds originally available from the European Union have disappeared? They now look more like the towns fund, which became a slush fund for individual Members of Parliament. How might that be avoided in these circumstances?

I want to touch particularly on the importance of Yorkshire getting its act together to collaborate, have its voice heard and ensure that it is not discriminated against as it has been so blatantly in recent years. If the Sheffield City Region—I hope that it will stop arguing about the name—and the newly created West Yorkshire mayoral authority, together with the leaders in the remainder of Yorkshire, can combine as they have done in the last few days with those in the East Midlands to make their voices heard on the HS2 scandal, some good will certainly have come out of this. Others will mention HS2; it is interesting that the briefing from HS2 always refers to the Crewe and Manchester leg as connecting to the north, as though the north were just the north-west. It is time that Yorkshire got its act together and collaborated.

That will involve the Government supporting the universities in Yorkshire to combine to counterweight the golden triangle of Imperial, Oxford and Cambridge. It will involve the local authorities, as well as the city mayors, being able to see where their voice can be heard, for instance in the present maldistribution of vaccines—parts of Yorkshire have done so well in distribution that they are now being rationed—to ensure above all that the work done at the local level can be properly supported and a coherent policy developed from central government.

Given what is happening with Scotland and in Ireland, and given the failure to have any coherent policy for the English regions, confirmation of the West Yorkshire Combined Authority is way overdue. Since, uniquely, the region has two major cities—because Bradford is the size of Bristol—this will be a step forward in ensuring that the voice of the great, historic county of Yorkshire can at last be heard just as loudly as the voice of the north-west of England.

Construction Products (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Tuesday 10th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, when two or three are gathered together you can guarantee there will be consensus. The atmosphere today is very different from that of yesterday when this House again considered the United Kingdom Internal Market Bill. I commend the Minister on reading beautifully the brief—and it was brief, and I shall be even briefer.

I decided that I would speak briefly this afternoon because I was intrigued. I thought to myself, “Not many noble Lords will seek to speak on these regulations; they are somewhat obscure and do not appear to have any great relevance to the wider debates we’ve been having”, but then I thought to myself, “I’ll go along and just test the water a bit regarding enforcement”. The Minister referred to enforcement; he said there will be no change in enforcement. He also referred to the importance of harmonisation. He reflected on the fact that this would have no impact on Great Britain even though EU regulations will continue to apply in Northern Ireland because of that harmonisation. I began to think to myself, “I might just turn up on Tuesday afternoon and test the water a bit with the Minister about what is all this fuss about? If we can do this on the CPR and recognise that harmonisation makes sense, if the enforcement regime remains the same, if we can have something that is operable through the EU regulation in Northern Ireland and its relationship to the border, and if we can still have the same transport and regulatory framework in terms of the relationship of Northern Ireland to the new Great Britain regulatory framework, which remains the same as the old, then what is the fuss about?” So I have just three questions, really.

First, why cannot we do this more broadly? Secondly, did the Prime Minister spot this one when he signed the protocol, given that he clearly did not spot one or two others? Thirdly, what about this enforcement regime? I genuinely would like to know a little bit more about it. Thank you very much.