Representation of the People (Overseas Electors etc.) (Amendment) Regulations 2023

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Tuesday 12th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister is well respected in this House for the cogent and clear way she presents material to us, so I listened with great care to what she had to say. While she explained in detail the practical—and, in some cases, quite complicated—details of how this will work, I heard very little about the philosophy underpinning what is being done. The noble Lord, Lord Lexden, just gave us an example of the philosophy of why this is appropriate—the principle of votes for life for citizens—but what we have not heard is the underpinning philosophy of why this solution is the appropriate response to that.

If elections mean anything, they are about local people choosing a local representative to represent their interests in a Parliament, a local authority or whatever else. Here, we are talking about people who have lived overseas—maybe for 15 or 20 years or even longer—so where is that local link and line through which local people vote for a local representative to sit on a body representing their interests? It becomes very blurred. As I understand the proposals, you will, in effect, have a choice. If you have lived overseas for many years but, in your youth, you lived in all sorts of places around the UK, you can pick and choose the constituency or area to which you have affinity. Is that an appropriate way of demonstrating that link?

Some have made jokes about one of the issues, saying that we should have an MP representing people living in the Bahamas. But the principle adopted in other countries is quite clear: it recognises that, after 10, 15 or 20 years, you no longer have the same sort of local affiliation, and it is therefore legitimate that your interests are represented in some other way. For somebody who was last resident in this country 20 years ago, there may well have been several changes in the Member of Parliament for their area—I have lost count of how many general elections we have had in the last 20 years, for a variety of reasons—and they may not have very much knowledge about what has gone on their area. The question then arises as to why it is appropriate for that link to a particular constituency to be allowed.

When the Minister responds to my noble friend Lord Khan’s regret amendment, she needs to address why we are doing this. What is the philosophy that underpins it and, secondly, what is the reason for choosing this particular method of delivering the commitment to lifelong electors? Why are we saying that you have this opportunity to pick and choose—to decide which constituency you might want and whether you will participate in local elections about local services? You will, ultimately, decide the amount of expenditure on refuse collection and other matters. That is no doubt fascinating, but if you have lived overseas for many years, it is difficult to see how you have that affinity and that interest. We have to understand why this particular solution has been taken. When the Minister explains why the option of creating a constituency for overseas residents has not been dealt with, perhaps we can then have some explanation as to whether this has created a significant further loophole in respect of bringing money into this country for electoral purposes. It is difficult to understand why there is this sudden move to do it, and to do it in this way.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I will be very brief, because I know your Lordships wish to move to the vote. I will just follow up on some of the points made by my colleague. The real problem we have is that the 2010 coalition abandoned all the work that Labour was doing on establishing a national identity. If that had proceeded, we would have created a national identity for every individual. We would have known where they were located at the time they left the country, and that would then have been used as the point at which they cast their vote. I address my remarks primarily to my Front Bench. As we prepare our manifesto, I hope we will go back to what we were doing then. We see the problems that we are having with immigration, the failure to know how many people we have in this country and so many areas in which we need a national database. We should have a look at the Indian experience and the way in which India has created quite an amazing national digital identity, and look to see whether we should not have one in the UK to bring ourselves up to date. It would answer many of the problems of this kind of legislation.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I have just one very quick point. The noble Lord, Lord Hayward, talked about the fact that I had asked about reviews; when we consider the potential for election fraud, that is really important. The Elections Act was brought in, according to the Government, because they were concerned about shutting the door on fraud. My concern is that this will open the door to more than they will stop.

I will just pick up some of the things the Minister said in her introduction. If there is no national insurance number, there needs to be documentary evidence provided. That will be provided by the applicant. Checks against the electoral register at the moment go only up to 15 years. The Minister said that will be retained for longer in future, but how do we know how accurate it is now? How will we measure that? What analysis will the Government do as this goes forward to check on the potential level of electoral fraud, and how is it going to be reviewed and analysed in future? We need to make sure that the people on the register are those who need to be on the register—especially if that can then lead to donations.

Home-ownership Rates

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Wednesday 6th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness is right that shared ownership represents an important part of our affordable homes programme and is an important part of helping first-time buyers, particularly younger first-time buyers, on to the housing ladder. We conduct extensive evaluations of our affordable homes programme and will always seek to learn what we can do to improve those schemes, including the users’ experience of them and whether their complexity creates problems further down the line. We will always look at improving where we can.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My noble friend is absolutely right that planning is key. Many measures in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act are targeted at supporting the planning system. We also had announcements at the Autumn Statement about improving the efficiency of the planning system and putting more resources into it. My noble friend is also right about small and medium- sized builders; part of the key to supporting them is ensuring that, when we have more difficult market conditions, we continue that supply chain and increase supplies. For example, the affordable homes programme can provide an important role in making sure that builders do not go out of business in tougher conditions.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, in the longer term it would clearly make homes more affordable for first-time buyers if there were enough homes to go round and current acute shortages were eased. In the short term, does the noble Baroness agree that it is ridiculous that so many young people pay more in rent to private landlords than they would pay for a mortgage to secure a home of their own if only they could persuade the banks and building societies to lend more sensibly? If she agrees, will the Government look at extending the new and useful mortgage guarantee scheme to reassure lenders and at the DWP’s support for mortgage interest scheme, which needs to be a benefit and not a loan, to pick up those rare cases where there are serious arrears?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, I have good news for the noble Lord on the first point. The mortgage guarantee scheme has been extended to June 2025 to allow more 95% mortgages to be available to first-time buyers. We have also made changes on support for mortgage interest. Since April, we have allowed those on universal credit to apply for a support for mortgage interest loan after three months rather than nine. However, it is right that it remains a loan rather than a grant in these circumstances.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, may I finally get in with a question? The noble Lord, Lord Naseby, mentioned the benefit of complete full relief on all mortgage interest that many of us had when we were purchasing. Why cannot young people have that?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, we consider all different routes to supporting young people into the housing market. One drawback may be that support is less targeted at those who face the greatest affordability challenges when getting into the housing market. We have sought to refine in our programmes over the years where we can get the biggest impact for the investment that we are making on behalf of the taxpayer.

Local Government Finance

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Tuesday 21st November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

The noble Lord talks about cut after cut. Since 2019, local authorities have had a real-terms increase in their core spending power, taking into account higher levels of inflation than anticipated at the time. In addition to that, we have provided money for the homelessness prevention grant and the rough sleeping strategy, and in addition to that we have provided the £750 million that I referred to in answer to the right reverend Prelate to begin to address some of the longer-term solutions to how we address housing supply in our country.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, there are avenues that the Government are not exploring. We have an increasing amount of retail accommodation which is now empty and an increasing amount of office space in many cities which is not being utilised. What is the Government’s policy around trying to put that to good social purpose? Why are they not thinking about trying to create public-private partnerships to use those, rather than worrying too much about looking to new builds?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, I believe that that is the case. The Government are committed to revitalising our high streets, whether that is rejuvenating existing commercial property or making the best use of it in the local circumstances.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 24th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, I too served on your Lordships’ Select Committee on licensing in 2017, and on the subsequent follow-up committee. I join with the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, in heaping praise on the absolutely able chairmanship of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering. As we have heard, both committees concluded that it was important to incorporate the agent of change principle in planning policy and guidance.

In case anybody is in any doubt what this means, the agent of change principle ensures that a new development must shoulder responsibility for compliance when situated near, for example, an existing music venue. Similarly, if a music venue opens in an existing residential area, it would be responsible for complying with residential requirements to minimise nuisance. For example, based on this principle, an apartment block built near an established music venue would have to pay for soundproofing, while a live music venue opening in an existing residential area would be responsible for the cost of soundproofing.

The committee was therefore very pleased that the Government agreed that the agent of change principle should be reflected in the National Planning Policy Framework and in Section 182 guidance. That has now happened. However, the follow-up committee heard that the principle as it stands, reflected in those documents, does not sufficiently explain the duties of all parties involved. The committee argued that the principle needs to go further to protect licensed premises and local residents in our changing high streets, and that a lack of consistency between the planning and licensing systems—something that it believed needed to be changed anyway—has led to, for example, live venues not being guaranteed to be protected. I will give two quick examples.

The Night & Day Café is a live music venue in Manchester’s Northern Quarter. It opened in 1991 and is the venue that launched the careers of, for example, Elbow and Arctic Monkeys. In November 2021, the venue was served with a noise abatement notice from Manchester City Council. This followed ongoing complaints from local residents who had moved into a new development—warehouses converted into flats—during the Covid pandemic when the venue was temporarily closed. The case provoked a huge degree of interest. Some 94,000 people have signed a petition asking for the notice to be withdrawn, with one signatory describing the situation as

“like moving to Leicester Square and complaining about there being too many cinemas”.

Night & Day Café’s appeal over the order has been adjourned until later this year. It has still not been resolved.

The Jago is a venue in Dalston that hosts live music events, screenings and workshops. It is registered as an asset of community value and is very highly regarded in the local area. It has hosted musicians for almost two decades, but since the pandemic many surrounding buildings have been converted into residential properties, which has led to an increase in noise complaints and, in June 2022, it received a noise abatement notice. It too has been the subject of a petition trying to help, with over 2,500 signatures. Again, its problem has not yet been resolved.

The committee recommended that, to resolve issues such as these, the Government should review and strengthen the agent of change principle and consider incorporating it into the current planning reforms in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill. The Government did not disagree, and themselves pointed to the then upcoming Levelling-Up and Regeneration Bill as a vehicle to address these concerns. This amendment is simply by way of helping the Government achieve what they agreed was needed: greater clarity about what is expected of councils and businesses. In that light, I hope the Minister will see that the amendment is designed to support and help the Government. I hope she too will support it.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for moving the amendment and to others who have spoken. I too was a member of the original committee, although not the follow-up committee. It is amazing to look at how life has changed so quickly since the report in 2017 and the subsequent report. Since then we have had the pandemic and a whole new experience of living in a different world entirely, including a different world of work, from what we had in the past.

Leaving aside nightlife, look at what is happening with online trading and with the high street. When one wanders around Oxford Street one sees quite large premises now empty and not being used. The Strand has been transformed completely from what it was like 20 years ago. Companies that had been there for almost a century and a half have disappeared, yet the properties remain empty. What will happen to them? Without any doubt, if they fail to get commercial operatives they will be converted into residential premises in due course.

International Women’s Day

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Friday 10th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the privilege of being able to speak in this debate. I express my gratitude to the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, for the way she introduced the debate and, in particular, for her concluding remark that much remains still to be done, as we have heard from so many speakers. I also extend a warm welcome to the noble Baroness, Lady Lampard, and congratulations on an outstanding maiden speech. I think we have an association, as I am interested in addictions and the noble Baroness’s work with GambleAware. Perhaps we can speak about the assistance we give to people, as an increasing number are having problems with gambling addiction.

I am a vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on 12-step recovery from addictions, and that led me, prompted by my noble friend Lady Donaghy, to try to get in in on her Oral Question on Wednesday. I will repeat her Question for the benefit of the government Front Bench:

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to improve women’s safety (1) from domestic violence, and (2) in the streets.”—[Official Report, 8/3/23; col 795.]


A number of the questions asked in that short debate were not answered.

I have worked on domestic violence, particularly in relation to alcohol and drugs, and in fairness to the Government, I am pleased to say we are seeing some progress being made on drugs. A very good drugs strategy has been drawn up, and I thank the Government for that. In due course it will, I hope, ease some of the pressures arising from domestic violence. I pay tribute to Dame Carol Black, who has led the work and the research and produced a wonderful report. I hope the Government will be willing to encourage and support Dame Carol Black in doing similar work on alcohol. They had a good strategy in 2012 under David Cameron; regrettably, it was not followed through. There remains a lot of work to be done on alcohol and its effect on women and girls, particularly those living on the streets, so we could do with a strategy.

Life for women has improved in many areas, as my noble friend Lord Monks, demonstrated, but in other areas we are still struggling and I regret to say that in some, we are going backwards. An example is pornography, which is a growth industry on a tremendous scale. We are seeking to address it through the Online Safety Bill but, regrettably, the Government’s attempts are falling well short of what is required. I welcome what we are doing to try to prevent children accessing online pornography, but clearly, the availability of pornographic content that depicts violence and abuse is not just a matter of child protection. I bring to the House’s attention the report by the APPG on Commercial Sexual Exploitation, which is well worth reading to discover the all-pervading extent of pornography. As the pornography industry grows, its impact on the whole of society increases.

We do not debate this enough. We do not stand up and say that a halt must be called or at least an attempt made to reverse the direction we are going in. Next week, some of us will be sampling the metaverse opportunities that are now developing, where you put a headset on. As I understand it—with others, I will experience it next week—what is happening there is really quite frightening. We now have censorship, in the lightest possible way, applied in the film industry and with DVDs, but there is no such approach adopted with regard to the material we have online. It is time to review that, to seek a change and to try to find legislation. We need to do that because I suspect that what will come with metaverse digital technology developments will be even more difficult to contain and regulate than what we have experienced in the past. In turn, there will be consequences which will, in particular, affect women and girls.

I hope that the Minister will say that the Government share the views I am expressing about pornography and its growth. What are they doing about it and what will they do to try to reverse the trend?

Local Councils: 2023-24 Budgets

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I cannot tell the noble Lord what inflation figure was used, but I think that 9% is a very reasonable figure in the economic situation that we are in at the moment, due to many things, such as Covid and the Ukrainian war.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree that one of our problems is that the current council tax structure is well past its sell-by date and needs changing? In those circumstances, and building on the noble Lord’s suggestion about a referendum, would they permit a council to run a referendum for a restructuring of its council tax?

Housing: Private Renters

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, I am not sure I detected a question, but I am completely with the noble Lord in spirit, in the sense that it is an important comment. We need to recognise that landlords have a choice. We need to make sure that it works for tenants but also that when landlords have reasonable grounds to recover their property, those conditions are in place. These reforms seek to get that balance right.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, can the Minister reaffirm the assertion he made that the fundamental problem we have is an overall shortage of accommodation, with a growing population? In those circumstances, what policy do the Government have—any radical turn? Does he not recognise that many people now want to stay at home, do not want to work in offices and do not want to go to retail premises, which are now declining? Waitrose is converting some of its property into homes. When will the Government encourage people to stay at home? Then, we can use offices and retail premises to create more accommodation.

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

That is a very reasonable point. In a sense, we have to recognise that the world is changing and that there are opportunities to build more homes. We see that in the urban setting, where retail will diminish; people are buying online far more than before. Equally, I talk to my friends who live in the country—I am a city guy—who say that there are also agricultural areas that could easily be rezoned to provide opportunities for growth. We need to look at that, and that is why we are bringing forward the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill to look at how we reform the planning system so that we get the right use of the right places and grow in the right way.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Monday 17th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful for this opportunity to raise a couple of points regarding the gracious Speech in today’s debate. One is minor and the other is a little bigger. I hope that the Minister will be back for the bigger one because, every time I raise it, we never engage with each other.

The first point relates to the introduction by the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, who spoke about—and I support him all the way—the need for decent, safe and well-designed homes, in the context of the planning Bill. Many people have followed the Government’s exhortation to stay at home, work from home and travel less. These are some of the important messages that we have been getting, and I declare an interest here: I live on a private estate where a lot of the younger people have stayed at home and converted their attics into working rooms. But they have a problem. They have local authority permission to do that, but they cannot get past the management board, which has restrictive covenants saying that they cannot touch the tiles on the roof. They cannot install a simple VELUX window, which would give light and air to a working space. In many instances we have people working in unfair conditions because of these restrictive covenants.

My question is whether this issue has been examined in the context of the planning Bill. If not, will the Government look at it again? Can we not adopt a more reasonable approach, rather than some of the nimbyism we encounter on issues such as this, whereby people’s health and well-being is being damaged by the enforcement of aesthetic views of what a roof should look like? A simple little VELUX window should not offend anybody.

My second point concerns the wider context of the future of God’s planet. I have had a number of exchanges with the Minister recently about the growth of the world’s population. This is the most fundamental issue relating to climate change and the unsustainable position in which we find ourselves. The Chinese are complaining that their numbers are growing in the order of just over 5% only, and they want to see bigger growth. The Pope has been complaining that young girls are not having enough babies, yet we are living in a world that has grown from 1.7 billion, when the Duke of Edinburgh was born in the early part of the last century, to 7.4 billion. All the projections are that, unless there are fundamental changes, we will be heading towards 10 billion, which many say is unsustainable. The planet cannot support it.

I have been trying to get answers from the Government on the extent to which they will engage in a discussion with people of influence. Why is this issue not on the agenda for COP 26? They engaged Dasgupta to report on biodiversity issues, but he spent several pages looking at world population and the absence of policies on it. I again ask the Minister: when will we have a debate on this fundamental issue?

I know that this is difficult and extraordinarily sensitive, but there are two people in the world who could greatly influence the course of events. One is the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church and the second—and he has made a very good start as a new President—is President Biden, who is a Roman Catholic too. They should engage in discussion about the fundamental issues of contraception, abortion, dying with dignity and so on. I know that these are difficult topics, but we cannot run away from the fundamental problems we face in this world of ours. There are other major ethical issues which require a deep-seated examination of where we have been going and why we have ended up in the mess we are in. I hope that the Minister can give me hope that some thought is being given to how we might have worldwide engagement on this issue. If we do not, the state of the planet will get even worse.

Inclusive Society

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Wednesday 14th April 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, like other noble Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend Lady Lister for this debate and for the strong speech that she gave at the beginning to get us going. I have torn up much of my speech because most of my points have been covered, but I particularly want to thank the British Academy for the work that it has been doing. My noble friend Lord McKenzie covered quite fully many of the points that it has made.

My one remaining point is worth repeating. The British Academy identifies a range of changes that we will need: a new, sharper array of public interventions than we have had in the past. It is making an important point. It also makes it in terms of internationalism, the national operation of the Government, local activities and local communities. This has been an enormous shock for us and it is good that we have people setting out how we might address it over coming decades, but I am one of those who believe that this is—I have said this before—a rehearsal for more difficult times ahead, which will come with climate change unless we are prepared to start addressing and changing the way we run our economy. If we try to grow in the way that we have done in the past instead of moving in a new direction, we will be hit much harder with climate change right across the board than we have experienced previously. This is an opportunity for us and we should be looking for ways in which we can address issues in quite different ways from the past.

I digress from the main topic to reflect, in the week when we have all been paying tribute to His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh, that the biggest change that took place during his lifetime was not the Second World War or other wars, or AIDS or other pandemics on a smaller scale, but the fact that the world’s population has grown from 1.8 billion when he was born in 1921 to 7.4 billion in 2021, and is projected, unless we do something about it, to rise to 10 billion. That will create enormous troubles in so many other areas, enormous inequalities and enormous numbers of deaths unless we start paying more attention to it than we have done so far.

I have been trying to engage the Government on this. There is no point me asking the Minister to respond to my questions because I am sure he will not. I have had so many written responses that have said nothing. Why is this—the world population growth and how we should start to address it—not on the agenda of COP 26 in November? Why do the Government find it so difficult to talk about this subject? Why do we find it so difficult to engage with the faiths—and I am a man of faith—about the fact that there are very big responsibilities held by the different churches to do with how our numbers continue to grow in a way that is damaging God’s planet in a way that none of us wants? I take a different angle from that taken by others so far, but this is all part of the same piece. What we need is an inclusive and joint approach to finding solutions that will benefit all in society and not just the rich, as we have seen in recent years.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Watkins of Tavistock) (CB)]

The next speaker, the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, has withdrawn, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick.