Queen’s Speech

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

My Lords, a lot of the contributions to these debates we hold on the Queen’s Speech involve noble Lords getting important issues off their chests. I am afraid that my contribution today is no exception. But, unusually, I want to talk about something that was actually in the gracious Speech rather than something that I feel should have been in it. I might add that when occasionally I am asked by outsiders why we independent Peers are called Cross-Benchers, I sometimes flippantly remark that it is because sometimes we get very cross. I warn your Lordships that this is one of those occasions.

The issue that I am cross about is the right to buy for housing association tenants. I do not intend to condemn the panic that induced this absurd attack from a Conservative Government on the property rights of some of the most needed and respected charities in this country; nor do I intend to go into detail about why it is so wrong to remove from the sector in perpetuity the main plank of affordable housing in this country, or why it is so wrong to undermine the activities of the people who founded these housing associations—quite often local people who saw a need not being properly addressed by government and set about trying to do something about it, only to find that now the Government, in a panicked electioneering gambit, have chosen to pull the rug from under their feet. Others have spoken about that in these debates, such as the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, in his excellent maiden speech, the noble Lord, Lord Best, immediately following him, and many others. Therefore, today I wish only to say—to put down a marker, as it were—that while this policy could perhaps be only mildly harmful, although that may be putting it mildly, to urban housing provision, it will have a cataclysmic effect if it is allowed to run rampant in rural areas.

The provision of affordable housing is most critical in rural communities. The affordability gap—the difference between wages and house prices—is worse in the countryside than the towns. Any rural property on the open market is almost always snapped up by outsiders with money and there are almost no homes available for those people we value and on whom rural communities often depend: those whose families have lived there for generations; those who have served on parish councils, hall committees or PCCs; or those who work in local hospitals, social services, shops or the many manufacturing businesses on which the rural economy depends. There will be little likelihood of these families surviving in their villages without some form of housing association housing, and you have to ask how far they will have to go to find alternative affordable housing. It will be very hard for housing associations now to justify building more homes that they know will be unlikely to remain in their ownership for long.

What of the farmers and landowners who gave away their land to housing associations for a peppercorn to make their own contribution to solving one of the greatest problems faced by rural communities today—namely, the lack of affordable housing? Will their generosity be trampled on? Will they ever trust a Tory Government again? What about the communities themselves? Will they continue to support exception sites when their designated purpose of providing affordable homes for locals in perpetuity is overridden by government?

This policy needs rural-proofing. Rural England lost 91,000 affordable homes in the last right-to-buy campaign in the 1980s and rural affordable housing has never managed to replace anything like those numbers since. It was—and remains—a disaster for rural communities so, for the sake of our rural villages, this right to buy must never ever apply to any house, under any circumstances, in communities of under 3,000 people. I may be maligning the Government. Maybe there are already plans afoot to ensure that rural communities do not suffer. Maybe there are other plans afoot to ensure that the rural affordable housing sector grows to meet the desperate need. But until I am reassured, I beg to remain, yours sincerely, a very cross Bencher.

Immigration Bill

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

Monday 10th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

There we are: he is an optimist from the Fens. I hope that he will take heed of all that has been said. I have just a small last point. The bureaucratic consequences of the Bill are horrendous, and the amendment has a wonderful simplicity about it. It simply removes overseas students from the tentacles of I do not know how many aspects of our modern, burgeoning bureaucracy.

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

My Lords, I believe this to be a very important amendment, and I am very glad to follow the noble Lord, Lord Phillips.

As some noble Lords will know, I spend some of my time visiting African developing countries with a view to promoting agriculture, and smallholder agriculture in particular, as a tool for development. While I am there, often on parliamentary visits, I meet parliamentarians in those countries, Cabinet Ministers, Prime Ministers, Vice-Presidents and even occasionally Presidents, and heads of institutions, top civil servants, heads of research stations and so on. It amazes me how many of those people have paid for themselves to be educated at British universities and institutions.

Being a bit more mercenary than the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, I want to make the point that the resultant Anglophilia that that education gives them, the resultant ingestion of our culture, way of life and thinking must be of huge value to UK Inc, as it were. It must be worth all the budget of the British Council, the BBC World Service, millions of pounds-worth of diplomacy in embassies, millions of pounds-worth of DfID’s great worldwide reputation and even, if it came to a fight, probably a couple of regiments as well.

We must do everything possible to encourage—not just not to discourage but to encourage—those overseas students because, in the short and long term, their value to us is huge. This is a very good case of government silos, because the Home Office clearly sees its job as to control immigration but ignores in this case the wider implications for UK business, UK education and UK reputation in its foreign policy. I beg the Minister to send out the message to the world that we are open for business and that those students—most likely the future leaders of their country—should be given every incentive possible, not just not discouraged but seriously encouraged, to come to pay for themselves to attend our institutions and absorb our culture and values.

[Lord Tugendhat (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, said that the amendment enjoyed support from all quarters of the House. I speak as the Conservative sponsor of the amendment, and I am very happy to do so.

We have heard a number of powerful speeches and I think that I agree with every word that has been spoken. I particularly draw attention to a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, in his introduction when he said that he was not making a special plea for any given set of individuals. Rather, he was pleading on behalf of one of the most successful sectors of British life and of the British economy in order to enable it to continue to be one of the most successful, not only within this country but in international terms.

If I may say so, it is very important when the Minister answers that he should not treat this as being something directed towards a particular group of people who come to this country, as if we are conferring some favour on them. Rather, he should deal with the issue in the context of the impact that the Government’s proposals will have on one of the most successful sectors of British life and of the British economy. The ability to attract international students is both a means by which British universities excel and a measure by which others can see that they are excelling. To diminish in any way the free flow of talent to this country would be very damaging.

I should like to make one final point, because so much has been said that there is no point in repeating it. The Government should look at the beam in their own eye, if I may say so, on this issue. The Government understand very well that, when they make senior appointments to different institutions, they want to attract talent from all over the world. Indeed, they boast of their ability to do that and of their willingness to make appointments of non-Brits to high places in this country in a way that most other countries would not in the case of foreigners. They paid vast sums of money to attract a redoubtable Canadian to run the Bank of England—about four times what the president of the Federal Reserve gets, they were so anxious to attract his talents to this country. Another very talented Canadian—paid rather less, actually—is at the head of the Royal Mail. There are many other examples, I am happy to say, of talented people being attracted by the Government to contribute to the British economy.

The Government understand perfectly well the importance of attracting the best people to run British institutions, and they should be commended for their lack of chauvinism in that regard, but that is also true of universities. If universities cannot continue to attract the best talent from all over the world, that will seriously damage their ability to continue to contribute as much as they do to the British economy. As my noble friend Lord Cormack, said, those who stay after graduation are often the people who contribute the most to academic research, industrial start-ups or the businesses they build up. Those are all factors which I feel that the Government have overlooked in this rather ill-conceived measure.