Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Lord Campbell-Savours and Baroness Hollis of Heigham(8 years, 7 months ago)
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Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, I wonder whether the Minister can help me understand a little more what she proposes with this swap from “high” to “higher”. I quite understand that going for “higher” rather than “high” will protect some authorities—largely London, but maybe Oxford, Cambridge, Winchester and so on—from seeing most of their stock disappear because, on the national level, they have a “disproportionate” number of high-value properties. We all understand what “higher” means: possibly the top decile or the top 20% of house prices in this country. Obviously, they would then respond to a redistribution across the country, which the Minister, if she wished, could control by having local, district, regional or county controls on that redistribution.
I have a worry, which I hope the Minister can allay, that “higher” will be anything above the median, which effectively means that every local authority in the country will have some high-value stock above the median and some lower-value stock below the median, even though that area may be very poor. Does this mean that the Minister and her officials will determine for each local authority what proportion of housing it must be expected to sell because it is higher than the median? We can tell her now that that will be some 49% in Oldham or Great Yarmouth.
I can see why the Minister is trying to move away from a situation where she redistributes from a few very high-value authorities across the country, but she can address that issue by containing the area within which that redistribution occurs. Instead, by going for “higher”, at the moment, based on my understanding of the English language, she opens up the potential for every local authority to lose up to 49% of its stock because it is “higher”—not “high”, but “higher”—and therefore above the median. That would be utterly perverse.
Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)
I follow that point with a very brief intervention. Does it mean that a local authority will be told by the Government what percentage of its stock should be sold off—in other words, that there will be a target cap beyond which there is no expectation, but below which the local authority will be allowed to sell up to that cap? In other words, Westminster might be told that 60% of its stock is the cap, Camden might be told 50%, or Cambridge 20%. Is that how this will work in practice?
Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Lord Campbell-Savours and Baroness Hollis of Heigham
Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)
My Lords, before the noble Baroness moves on, I say thank you for the firm proposal. Whatever our views about the Bill—and they are very divided—the one thing that we all want is, as far as possible, to build abuse out of the system. I am glad that the noble Baroness had the chance to see the “Dispatches” programme, which confirmed some of our worst fears. Many of us have had similar experiences to boot. I am very pleased that the Minister has responded to that, and I hope that with the help of the noble Lord, Lord Porter, she will be getting together a really strong group to do exactly as she suggests.
Lord Campbell-Savours
On that matter, what happens if the working group comes up with conclusions which we are unable to resolve during the course of Committee or Report because the group reports after the Bill becomes law? What happens in those circumstances? That is my first question.
My second question is this. The Minister may recall that we were given an undertaking—two weeks ago now, I think—that we would receive information on starter home demand figures in the various parts of the United Kingdom. Despite repeated references to them in the Chamber by me and others, we have simply not received them yet.
Lord Campbell-Savours
We need to know which one it is because it directly affects people’s incomes. Will the Minister not intervene at this stage and give us the information that will help us in the debate?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
I would suggest that the noble Baroness should do that because otherwise an awful lot of speeches could be made on false assumptions.
Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Lord Campbell-Savours and Baroness Hollis of Heigham
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, tenants on housing benefit may have that benefit administered by Capita, Serco or Liberata. When those tenants seek housing benefit, they know that their finances will be scrutinised. I have never known it to happen that HMRC information is needed to do that. But when instead you are dealing with pay to stay, you have got to go to HMRC to get reliable information. What that means is that people who move between HB and pay to stay or those who are claiming UC with HB at some points and at other points not will be moving between both the private companies collecting information and local authorities which, as the Minister has said, will exclusively hold HMRC data. It cannot work.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I am not sure that I entirely follow the noble Baroness, but that may be my deficiency rather than hers. Local authorities hold vast swathes of data about various things. I know also that the holding of data is tightly controlled, particularly in terms of sharing. I would say therefore to noble Lords that to share data more broadly than is allowed is already a criminal offence.
Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Lord Campbell-Savours and Baroness Hollis of Heigham
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The most important part of this is that discussions with your Lordships and local authorities will inform the regulations.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
If the Government are placing crucial policy decisions beyond the possibility of amendment in this House, because instead of being embedded in primary legislation they are going to be carried by SIs, any attempt to amend them in whatever form will produce synthetic outrage down the other end, and we will be told we should accept them whether we like it or not. This will not do. I absolutely understand that the Minister cannot be happy at the position in which she has been placed: she is essentially being asked to bring forward framework legislation, yet again, in which the heavy lifting will be carried out by SIs, which this House—which is supposed to scrutinise those SIs—cannot touch. Issues which could have been amendable in the appropriate way in primary legislation will be put beyond our reach.
Lord Campbell-Savours
That will put some of us in a very difficult position. Some of us always refuse to vote on fatal Motions, but we will have no option but to do so because of the whole way this Bill has been handled.
Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Lord Campbell-Savours and Baroness Hollis of Heigham
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
On top of that, the taxpayer will then go on, in appropriate circumstances, to pay the housing benefit on rents that have doubled or tripled.
Lord Campbell-Savours
And on top of that, some people object to the fact that people can sell in London a council flat—for which they have perhaps paid a low rent for a number of years—leave London, retire to the countryside and live off the income that was gained simply by selling what was essentially public property. Sometimes—it gets worse—they move abroad. People from abroad, who are not even British citizens, buy this property and then live abroad on the rental income gained from tenants who are overpaying within the United Kingdom. The whole thing is ludicrous.
Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Lord Campbell-Savours and Baroness Hollis of Heigham
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, I also support these amendments. As a child and as a teenager, I was brought up in a village in south Devon of what we used to call “150 souls”. For some time in the 1970s and 1980s I was a parliamentary candidate in a constituency with a large number of rural villages. As we went round from village to village, there were half a dozen council houses here and half a dozen there—hopefully and usually, but not always, having Labour stickers in their windows. Every one of them has gone. What is left are housing association villages. Obviously housing associations are on a voluntary basis but, as the noble Baroness will know, we are going to have a somewhat similar debate over the problems of rural exception sites with right to buy. There will then be the question of whether there is a portable discount, as opposed to the sale of those particular houses, because government recognises that stripping out affordable rented housing from villages or ensuring that new housing is not of that sort will kill those villages.
It is worth reminding ourselves of how poor, how low and how modest some incomes are in such areas. In much of the parts of rural Norfolk that are not occupied by retirees from Essex, by second home owners from Islington or by reasonably new purchasers on the outskirts of Norwich, incomes are exceedingly low. As the noble Lord, Lord Deben, said, many of the people connected to the agricultural and food processing industries, some manual public sector and building and construction workers—and they are mostly men here—will be lucky if they are taking home £20,000 a year before tax. What about their wives and partners? I was checking when we were doing amendments on previous Bills and found that women in those situations, because they did not have a car, were dependent on their locality and were lucky to piece together an income of £5,000 a year. From what? They cleaned caravans, boats and houses. They picked mushrooms and, occasionally, in summer, they might pick fruit. They amplified that with bar work in the local pub on a weekend. If they could take home £5,000 or £6,000 in total in the course of the year, they regarded themselves as fortunate.
Such people will never buy. What they would like to do is to enjoy an attractive home in which they can keep their roots; where the children can go to the local schools and all of the community virtues, values and emphases that the noble Lord, Lord Cameron and the noble Lord, Deben, have expressed so well are continued. The Government seem to have a conflict of issues here. I am sure that they respect and support the need for communities—particularly viable communities—in more rural areas. The Government also support the philanthropy of landowners, as we all do. At the same time, the Government are also calling for social mobility—for people who actually want to stay, put down roots and make their community thrive. This is inconsistent with the philosophy of starter homes, where you keep your discounts, sell on and make those houses unaffordable to the local community, but you are none the less allowed to buy your next home up the ladder.
I think the Government have to accept that small rural communities are different from the cities, where you have a choice of housing, a choice of occupation and can, to some extent, construct your income. If the Minister does not understand—which I am sure she does—the physical and social immobility and, to some extent, the mental immobility by virtue of family connection, then those villages will die. Certainly, in Norfolk, they are already dying. If all new developments are increasingly monopolised by starter homes and we find, as a result, landowners drying up their donations, particularly to housing associations, then this Government will have the honour of seeing the death of so many of our villages.
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, I wonder if I might intervene again. In some ways I find myself at odds with much of this debate. I do not think that people understand what happens with Section 52 agreements. The noble Lord, Lord Deben, understands them, but I think he was in the department when they were brought in. The effect of a Section 52 agreement is that the smaller the locality that applies to a particular planning permission, the lower the demand for the property, which affects the price. Therefore you can have a house in a village which is free of any restriction that is identical to a house which is covered by a Section 52 agreement, where the locals-only agreement is so containing that it might cover only a few hundred yards, depending on the parish, and one house might be half the price of the other.
I thought that the objective of the people behind this amendment was to ensure that local people were provided for long term in property within their community. I would be a little concerned if we concentrated on development in villages which was simply about rental. I have no problem at all with people buying in villages as long as they do not come in as outsiders and inflate the market, driving up the price. However, if you can create an arrangement whereby, because of Section 52-type agreements, the price is contained within very restricted localities, you can then contain the price and stop huge price inflation bringing in the very people to which some Members of the Committee have taken exception during this debate.
Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Lord Campbell-Savours and Baroness Hollis of Heigham
Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)
My Lords, the thrust of these amendments, as I read them, is to try to deal with potential abuse of the system. I had thought of giving notice of my opposition to the clause as a way of dealing with these matters, but I think that I should deal with a number of issues on the back of these amendments because all my comments basically deal with the potential for abuse.
Perhaps I may go through some of the figures, because it seems that there are substantial profits to be made out of this scheme. Let us take as an example the starter price of £450,000 for a house or flat in London, which will probably be at the lower end of the market. I know that the Government say that there will be cheaper properties than that available in London but I certainly do not believe it from what I have seen recently of the property market in London. The market price of that property will actually be £560,000 but it will be sold for £450,000. Working out the figures on the basis of a 4% increase per annum, over five years there would be a 25% increase. I say that because the latest survey from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors predicts a 25% increase in prices over the next five years. An increase of 4% per annum compounded gives £582,000 in the first year, £605,000 in the second year, £631,000 in the third year, £656,000 in the fourth year and £682,000 in the fifth year. In other words, you buy a house for £450,000 and, at the end of five years, you make a profit of £232,000 on the back of the people, because essentially this is funded by the people.
Let us take a starter price of £250,000 outside London. The actual market price of such a property is £310,000. It is worth £322,000 after the first year, £335,000 after the second year, and it goes up to £377,000 in year 5. So if you buy a £250,000 house, you will sell it with a profit of £127,000 on the basis of the RICS valuation. I think that these valuations are very low. It is quite possible that in London the prices will go up substantially more than that and we will see far greater capital gains. The same obviously applies to the £150,000 purchase that we talked about the other day. The market price of that property would be £187,000 and you would end up with a £78,000 profit on the basis of a 4% increase per year. I was doing these calculations in bed last night at one o’clock in the morning and I think they are fairly accurate.
Substantial profits are available under this scheme, and we all know what happens when a lot of profit is available, particularly in schemes where the Government are involved. People very often will organise their private affairs to maximise the profit that they can make. Therefore, in the regulatory arrangements that are introduced we have to be absolutely sure that we have covered all the potential arrangements that might be introduced, and I will just give one or two of them.
A qualifying person is set out in Section 57AA(2) of the Finance Act 2003 as a person who has not acquired freehold or leasehold residential property in the United Kingdom or elsewhere in the world. In other words, it is their first home. What happens when the beneficiary to a will inherits a £40,000 house in, let us say, the area where the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, is a councillor? That is the price of a house in Colne or other parts of Lancashire. Does it mean that the person who inherits that house—effectively, they have acquired it, which is what it says in the 2003 Act—loses the right to buy a starter home? They would already have acquired a house through their inheritance, and the Act does not say “purchased”, it says “acquired”. What would happen in that particular case? Would they still retain the right to buy a starter home, having already inherited that £40,000 terraced house in Lancashire?
What about the cash purchaser who the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, referred to? The noble Lord argued that cash purchases should not be allowed in these circumstances. He said that we should be sure that these houses are purchased under mortgage arrangements. However, someone could buy a house under a mortgage arrangement but it is the scale of the mortgage that matters. In other words, if we are to preclude cash purchasers, the regulations have to define how much of the purchase price of the house can be cash if there is a requirement to have a mortgage on the house. Will the Minister answer that? Again, that should be set out in the regulations.
What about a sham mortgage followed by a cash payment? Someone could take out a mortgage but then, three months later, pay cash; they always intended to pay cash but knew that the only way round the scheme was to take out a mortgage. Again, that has to be set out in the regulations.
What about the circumstances where a parent or relative, or even a friend, purchases in the name of the legitimate purchaser and then takes a charge on the property to take out a proportion of the profit at the end of the five years? In other words, the purchaser in fact was not the person whose name is on the deed and, by way of some charge, the actual purchaser is able to take the profit out of the deal at the end of the five-year period. Some might say that I am going a bit over the top by suggesting that these things might happen. However, there is a lot of profit in this and a lot of people will see great advantage in getting involved in these deals to take out the profit at the end of the five-year period. So again, we must ensure that the regulations cover the circumstances in which something like that might happen.
What happens if people acquire by purchase another property during the five-year period; in other words, they now have two homes? They have the home which has been subsidised with its vast profit potential and then they buy another home during that period. Whereas at the moment it is the second home which is subject to capital gains tax, in those special circumstances it might be that the first home should be subject to it. If someone can afford to buy a second home, having bought the first home under a subsidised arrangement, surely the starter home should be treated as the second home and be subject to some sort of tax gain to the Exchequer.
I move on to the question of the developer. How do we know that the developer will not inflate the price? The developer is supposed to offer the property at 25% less than market value—
Lord Campbell-Savours
I am sorry, 20%. Having done that, the developer might simply inflate the starter price. Who will determine what the real market price is of that property? Again we are going to need some pretty subtle guidance here because, when I talked this morning to some local authority people in Bristol, it was made clear to me that one of the great flaws in this legislation is over the valuation of starter home properties. Although I do not have the quote with me, I understand that Jones Lang LaSalle, a firm that will be well known to Members of this House with an interest in this area, has expressed grave concern about the question of inflated prices by developers.
Further, how can we prevent developers charging excessive ground rents on the leasehold properties they sell? We have noticed over recent years that, when there is a boom in the market, the length of leases on flats in London invariably seems to shrink down to 99 or 125 years, but when the market is bad very often the same blocks, at new-build stage, are sold on 999-year leases. Developers may sell properties on shorter leases with high ground rents and then even with truncated review periods, whereby instead of the review being made every 21 years it might be every 10 years. The reason they do that is simple. When it comes to the enfranchisement of the lease, developers will secure a higher price when the leaseholder buys the freehold, because of course the sale of the lease is dependent on the annual ground rent for the property. In my view the law should provide that such properties cannot be sold with less than 999-year leases and regulations should define the review period for ground rents. I do not know how it would be done, but it might be sensible to set up an arrangement whereby even ground rent maximums can be defined. Some might say that the only properties that could be sold should be freehold or share of freehold to avoid the problems I am talking about.
We keep hearing references to repayable discounts. In my discussions this morning, no one understands them to be repayable at all. I keep being told that what is happening is that annually the property is simply sold at a discounted rate further down the line up to five years. I am finding it hard to work out how that will happen. We need at this stage an explanation of how the discount system is actually going to work on resales within the first five years, because as yet no one has given me a satisfactory explanation. Moreover, what happens in a declining market? The market dropped in 1973, 1981 and 1992, with a minor drop in 2008. I know, because I have lived long enough to have experienced those falls on all four occasions. The discount on a £150,000 property is £37,000, on a £250,000 property it is £60,000, and on one worth £450,000 it is £110,000. What happens to those discounts in a declining market? Since I do not understand how the system works in terms of preserving the discounts during the first five-year period, I cannot work out what would happen in relation to those discounts. Is there some calculation which proportionately affects the amount of discount which has to be allowed on the subsequent sale of the property?
I think that I have dealt with most of what came to mind overnight when I was thinking about these things. What I am basically saying is that this system will be abused by people who want to make a lot of profit very fast—they will regard it as very fast—over a five-year period. Under this scheme, if people can build it into an investment, they can make a 50% return over five years. That will be very attractive to a lot of people. It invites abuse. Therefore, the regulatory arrangements that govern the scheme have to be sophisticated enough to ensure that that abuse does not take place and that taxpayers’ interests are protected.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
It would be really helpful if the Minister could assure the House—we really do need this—that proposed draft regulations will be before this House before we get to Report. If not, we will have major problems in this and other areas. It is not too much to ask. The Bill started in the other place last autumn, so there has been abundant time for the Government to determine what their policy intent is behind these “anything goes” powers for the Secretary of State. We must know, otherwise some of us will seek the House’s authority to defer consideration until we have those regulations. We cannot do our job of scrutiny when so much of the information that we need is absent.
Lord Campbell-Savours
May I ask one question? We were told on Monday, I think, that there were so many hundred thousand people listed as wanting starter homes. Is there any information available on where these people are located—which counties and local authorities—and could we have that information quite early, perhaps even today? It might help us in our debates.
Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Lord Campbell-Savours and Baroness Hollis of Heigham
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, this is a particularly important amendment, as I read it. I am sorry that I slightly misinterpreted the wording in the legislation on this whole question of abandonment. It seems to me that this provision as it stands is wide open to abuse. Clause 58 has a reinstatement principle, which I suppose is a sort of appeal, but many landlords will believe that this is an open door for them to bring a tenancy to an end by simply asserting the fact that they believe the property to be abandoned.
I cannot see how it is possible to reject the amendment that has been tabled by my noble friend Lord Kennedy of Southwark, which says that the “local housing authority” has to respond,
“to a request by the landlord confirming that they suspect the property to be abandoned”.
In other words, the local authority has to give the seal of approval before the landlord can bring the tenancy to an end.
I hope that the Minister will not simply follow what is in her brief, assuming it says, “Reject”, but will perhaps put this back to people in her department. It is a perfectly sensible and reasonable amendment. It would provide a checking arrangement to make sure that landlords do not abuse their position and I hope that it will be supported by the House.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, I also support my noble friend’s amendment. I understand from briefings from Crisis and other organisations that this is quite a small problem. There are approximately 1.4 million landlords and I think the Government believe that only about 1,750 tenancies are abandoned every year, which is less than 0.5% of private rented households. However, the problem is that there does not seem to be enough security or protection for tenants against greedy or rogue landlords speeding up the process—whether someone is on holiday, is in hospital or has other problems with the landlord and has gone to stay with friends while work that should be done is not being done. There seems to be no way for the local authority—unless the Minister can assure me otherwise—to guarantee that the property has been properly abandoned, rather than it being a case of the rogue landlord using this as a short cut to regain possession. What is needed is an authoritative checking device—for which the local authority, the environmental health officer, the housing officer, or whoever, is best placed—to ensure that the keys have been handed in, the furniture has been removed, the tenant has moved away and the children are no longer there. That is the sort of evidence we want, not the landlord’s hope that because the tenant has not been seen for eight weeks—which might be because they are in hospital, or have gone back to a family home elsewhere in the continent for the summer—they can gain speedy possession that is not legitimate.
Lord Campbell-Savours
I can tell noble Lords what it would lead to. In the event that the rogue landlord manages to get the tenant out for these spurious reasons, the local authority will be picking up the bill, and may end up having to house the people concerned. So it is better at least to have a checking mechanism in place, to ensure that the local authority is not placed in that very difficult position.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
Doing some quick mental arithmetic, I suspect that we are talking about four to five instances per housing authority per year; compared to the responsibilities of local authorities for fitness standards, inspection of houses in multiple occupation, electrical safety and the like, this is trivial. As an ex-local authority person myself, I absolutely understand why the noble Lord is concerned, but we are dealing with a very small number, and probably the same landlords who are already well-known to local authority housing officers or environmental health officers as being too often on the wrong side of the law.
Lord Campbell-Savours
Before we finish on this amendment, does the Minister understand that very often we are talking about very vulnerable people who simply will not understand this process? We can almost foresee the circumstances in which this is going to go wrong. I wonder whether the Minister will go away and consider the position and how this will affect the vulnerable. It is a very important issue.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, already social housing landlords—housing associations and so on—are beginning to deal with universal credit tenants. I am not confident of my figures, but I understand that something like 60% of them are in arrears and seeking alternative payment arrangements. Social landlords —local authorities or housing associations—are scrupulous in trying to ensure that vulnerable tenants who are finding it difficult to manage their money or whatever are not at risk of losing their home.
I fear that I have no such faith in the interest of private landlords. I am sure that many of them would seek to keep a vulnerable tenant afloat—but they are running a business, they cannot afford not to have rent payments and, as a result, given the changes that are now happening with universal credit for the private sector and the social sector, such tenants, vulnerable tenants in particular, will be more exposed to bad behaviour by landlords seeking a shortcut to rid themselves of an uncomfortable tenant.
Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Lord Campbell-Savours and Baroness Hollis of Heigham
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, and my noble friend Lord Judd have set out in graphic detail the nature of the problem. I want to say a few words on one of the tangential benefits of this annual report being produced. I suspect that the Minister will say at the Dispatch Box, “No way; you’re not going to have your annual report”. I presume that the Minister’s notes will contain the instruction “resist the amendment and say no”. But there is another benefit of all this that Ministers might wish to take into account. With all this talk about buy to let, people throughout the country are being led into a world where they believe that quick profits are to be made out of rental income. However, a lot of people are deluding themselves. As I said before, a lot of these buy-to-let tenancies have been let as a result of pressure from television programmes, friends at dinner parties or whatever. A lot of buy-to-let tenants are in arrears and are suffering.
I am sure many noble Lords will know of people who are in arrears. I know of two properties where people moved in only recently and received notice letters directed to the previous tenants. In both cases, the tenants were being referred to the courts for being in debt. There is a huge booming problem out there of rising debt arising out of rent arrears. This measure is one way of indicating to the world that there really is a problem. So this is not just about health in the way set out in the amendment; it is about providing a way of indicating that in the real world there are problems to do with arrears that people who are led mistakenly into this market have to recognise before they take foolish decisions which they can ill afford.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)
My Lords, I also support this amendment. Earlier today we finished Third Reading of the Welfare Reform and Work Bill. I wonder whether the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, has talked to the noble Lord, Lord Freud, about the interlocking of this amendment with one of the issues that we were discussing on the Welfare Reform and Work Bill. I rather suspect that it may not have happened because of one of the two defeats of the Government on the Welfare Reform and Work Bill, as opposed to very welcome movements they made towards a common consensual ground around this House, which we very much appreciated, as, indeed, we did on kinship care, guardians, carers and so on. However, one of the two issues on which the Government were defeated fairly early on in the Welfare Reform and Work Bill was child poverty indicators. As the Minister may or may not know, the previous Labour Government had four poverty indicators: absolute poverty, relative poverty, persistent poverty and material deprivation. The Government proposed to replace this with indicators of life chances from the DWP. It is perfectly proper to track those life chances but we argued that that must include poverty as well.
I remind the Minister that the Government’s agenda on poverty was debated on the Welfare Reform and Work Bill. The Government wanted to assess life-chance risks, which would include a parent being unable to work, addiction and mental health problems, being unqualified, being without work and being unemployed. The other one was unmanageable personal debt, which was classified as being behind on rent, or needing alternative payment arrangements in universal credit. We know that both these things are happening. We know therefore that the Government recognise, or believe—I think, possibly, falsely—that this is a driver of poverty and not just a consequence of it. If the Government believe that it is a driver of poverty, they need to know what is happening if they are to know as a Government at what point they intervene and what levers to press to address it. Therefore, we need this information. The problem for all Governments, including my own, is that we tend to do the things that are easy. We do things we can count, not the things we need to assess. For example, you know, if you are doing key performance indicators in any measurement, that if you put in, “The telephone has to be answered in fewer than eight rings”, people will do that because it is easy. You count it and you can put the numbers in and you will get your 90% performance target. If you suggest something such as assessing what is happening to health and well-being, they will not touch it, because it is qualitative and therefore regarded as less real, being less quantifiable than telephone rings.
The DWP, in a parallel development, is seeking to address the issue of unmanageable personal debt as a driver of poverty. If there are implications for mental health and well-being, as this amendment suggests, it will be crucial for DCLG to investigate what is happening in this area, which is not about housing benefit but about housing policy, including rent arrears and all the other issues that the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, has raised tonight. I hope the Minister takes this very seriously, because if she does not, the two government departments will be pulling in diametrically opposed directions. I am sure the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, would not wish that to happen.
Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [HL]
Debate between Lord Campbell-Savours and Baroness Hollis of Heigham
Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)
My Lords, I have developed huge respect for the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, over the years following the work that he did in Liverpool Toxteth and his overseeing of that very significant project, which I was able to visit some 25 years ago. But I want to speak specifically to the wording in this amendment because I am unable to understand why the noble Lord takes exception to it. Amendment 3 says:
“The Secretary of State may”—
I stress, may—
“refuse to make an order under subsection (1) if he believes that the proposal made by the appropriate authorities … does not provide sufficient democratic accountability … does not have the support of local authority electors … or … would risk the proper functioning of local government”.
It does not say that the Secretary of State will refuse if the proposal made by the authorities does not provide sufficient democratic accountability. All that is happening here is that the Secretary of State is being given discretion to make a judgment, based on whatever information is brought before them. They are not required to do so because suddenly the electorate in an area are saying, “We demand that this procedure does not take place”. It is for the Secretary of State to make a judgment and to use his or her discretion. If the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, had read the amendment in that light, I would have thought that he may have taken a more flexible view of it.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, would like to support the remarks of my noble friend Lord Beecham and to challenge, with some trepidation, the history of local government over the last 30 or 40 years which was offered to us tonight by the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine. I think I would not be unfair to him if I suggested that he made two main arguments: first, that local government was in disrepute and, secondly—with the implication that this was a consequence of the first point—that there had been increased centralisation because local government could not be trusted or did not have people of sufficient quality or merit to carry out the functions of local government. I remind the noble Lord, although I am sure that he knows this perfectly well, that actually he has it the wrong way round.
What we have had since 1974 is several reorganisations and a poll tax which took millions of people off—and effectively destroyed—the electoral register. Then, within the course of the same Parliament, that was reversed and there was a new form of funding: the council tax, which had its own inadequacies. We have had the effective nationalisation of the business rate—although it was not effective but ineffective, with some seepage back to local authorities on the grounds of “earned autonomy”. I find the arrogance of such a statement appalling. Even in the last five years, we have had our resources cut by some 40%. Then the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, wonders why local government does not have the same effectiveness and high standing in the community that it had in the 1960s and 1970s. We could even go back to Joe Chamberlain in the 1880s and the like. The noble Lord has got it back to front. Central government—my party is guilty as well—has had a campaign, in the name of the sovereignty of a parliamentary, united system, to bring the powers back into central government.
The reason is that whichever Government are in power, over the course of a few years the battle in local government swings to the other party. Then we had Mrs Thatcher telling local government, “Take your tanks off my lawn”. She said it to the universities and the lawyers, and she said it to local government. That political will was matched by the Treasury’s will to turn local government into what were essentially post-boxes—agencies for central government wishes and responsibilities. That is what happened. It is not that we were in disrepute and, as a result, tried to make amendments and take powers to the centre. Since the 1970s, central government has sliced and sliced away at local government’s responsibilities, finance and functions, and its standing in the community. Central government must take responsibility for what it has done. I will give way to the noble Lord although I have not quite finished.
Health and Social Care Bill
Debate between Lord Campbell-Savours and Baroness Hollis of Heigham(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Campbell-Savours
The appeal on the risk register will be held in a tribunal on 5 and 6 March, and therefore there might be an opportunity for Members to raise the issue of the decisions of the tribunal, depending on the dates that the Government actually set for the Report stage. Would he care to comment on that? Further, if there is not too much flexibility, has the noble Earl considered what the Companion says on the admissibility of amendments tabled at Third Reading:
“The principal purposes of amendments on third reading are … to clarify any remaining uncertainties”?
The risk register may well raise issues that constitute “remaining uncertainties”. Can we have an assurance that if it is not possible to raise them on Report, there will be some flexibility at Third Reading under the heading in the Companion that I have just read out to ensure that we can have a debate on any issue arising out of the tribunal’s decisions? I am sorry to have to raise the matter in this way, but this is an opportunity to do so.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, perhaps I may ask a question of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. I ask him as the Leader of the whole House—which I know he is very mindful and respectful of—and not just as the leader of a government coalition party. Whenever we deal with a social security Bill—apart from turning negative regulations into affirmative regulations—that almost inevitably involves expenditure, either increasing it or reducing it. That may also apply to health Bills and transport Bills. If, on any choosing of the Speaker and one of the noble Lord’s right honourable friends at the other end in a position of authority, the claim can be made that that is financial privilege—this is before the Speaker has even ruled on it, so clearly there is a government view so far as I can tell; I stand to be corrected—and if any Bill involving any element of expenditure, including on welfare, pensions, health and education, can at the fiat of the House of Commons be ruled as money and therefore privilege, then, taking the noble Lord’s statement that this House is a part-time House, it will become a very part-time House indeed because we might as well go home.