High Streets (Designation, Review and Improvement Plan) Bill

Lord Evans of Rainow Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 17th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, I should begin by mentioning that I am a current member of the Built Environment Committee, which is engaged in considering the state of Britain’s high streets.

The Bill that we are discussing today has excellent intentions and I strongly support it. It proposes that local authorities should have a watching brief over the health and development of a high street in their area and that they should have a development plan that should be reviewed at least every five years. At the best of times, this requirement should serve to reaffirm the good practices that one would expect well-run local authorities to be adopting as a matter of course. However, nowadays is not the best of times, and the authorities will struggle to fulfil the injunctions of the Bill in meaningful ways. Many of them lack the personnel to conduct proper appraisals of local problems and to formulate plans to address them.

There was a time when local authorities could be expected to react with enthusiasm to this Bill. They were endowed with planning departments that typically contained a full complement of architects, surveyors, town planners and other professionals, and they were responsible for, among other concerns, overseeing the stock of council housing and adding to it. Such housing provided shelter for a large proportion of the population.

The policy that gave the right to buy to council tenants was initiated in 1982 during the Thatcher era. It divested the authorities of much of this housing stock, and they were prevented from replenishing it. The planning departments lost much of their personnel and their sense of initiative.

The present Government have aimed numerous poorly funded initiatives at addressing the decline of the town centres and high streets. Many of these fall under the so-called levelling-up agenda. The current web page of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, which is from July 2023, lists a bewildering variety of funds aimed at urban regeneration. I have counted 15 of them. The overview on the web page states:

“In the Levelling Up White Paper, the government committed to setting out a plan for simplifying and streamlining the funding landscape and to help local stakeholders navigate funding opportunities”.


This testifies to the difficulties and expenses incurred by local authorities in making applications for funding.

A common testimony of local authorities is that insufficient resources are available for developing a bid, which may be accompanied by a judgment that it is not worth their while to do so. Even if these impediments were overcome and if the money for regeneration were amply available, a more fundamental impediment could block the progress. Local authorities lack sufficient influence over the activities in high streets to address the problems of urban regeneration.

Few occupants of commercial town centre properties are also their owners. A figure of 12.8% has been cited for the proportion of private individual landlords and owner-occupiers. The ownership of the majority of properties resides in the portfolios of real estate investment trusts and other private interest companies, such as insurance and pension funds, where individual properties feature as lines on a spreadsheet.

The rent payable to owners places a heavy burden on the retailers. The burden is heaviest in times of economic recession when the income from trading is reduced; it may force the retailers into bankruptcy. There is little direct engagement of the property owners with the tenants. Although both parties are charged with the upkeep of the properties, there is little incentive to enhance them since much of the benefit from doing so will accrue to the other party. When properties fall vacant, there seems to be little urgency on the part of owners to find new occupants, and there may be good reason for this. The principal characteristic of a property from the point of view of an investment fund is its capital value, which is tied to its rent. To reduce the rent in an attempt quickly to attract a tenant will destroy that value.

Short-term letting to independent retailers may be unprofitable. Among the inducements to a new tenant there are liable to be deferments of rent and contributions to fitting-out costs, which cannot be afforded easily by small independent retailers. Whereas, in the past, retail leases could be for as long as 20 years, they are now expected to be of a limited duration. Moreover, the high rates of failure among small start-up enterprises deters property owners from accepting such tenants.

The planning departments of local authorities face an intractable problem in motivating a collection of remote and disengaged agents to co-operate in any plans they might have for urban renewal and regeneration. Matters were quite different in the early post-war years, when urban reconstruction was an urgent priority. Much of our modern environment was created in that era. One can conjure up an image of a post-war architect or planning officer airily waving their hand over a tabletop model corresponding to a large derelict area that was set for redevelopment. The tabletop would be covered with small, white rectilinear boxes representing buildings in the modernist style. The person demonstrating the plan might have been dressed in an imitation of the sartorial style of the Swiss-French architect Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, known commonly by the pseudonym Le Corbusier.

We have come to regret the depredations of the cheap modern architecture that accompanied this post-war redevelopment; we should remember its vigour and ambition, which we might wish to recapture. We look for contemporary examples of such enterprise, but they are rare. Some of them are the result of private sector initiatives. The Built Environment Committee has witnessed one such example recently, which is from a firm that began working on town centre redevelopment some 30 years ago. The firm is based in the Sheffield area of South Yorkshire. A typical example of what the firm has achieved has been the redevelopment of an extensive site of a derelict steelworks. This degree of enterprise is rare and it cannot be relied upon to achieve the reconstruction that is called for. Only by engendering the same spirit of enterprise within many local authorities can a major transformation be achieved. It is appropriate to remember that once, in the not-so-distant past, they did embody such a spirit.

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

My Lords, I remind the House that it is an advisory five minutes.

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

It is advisory, presumably, but not mandatory.

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

It is advisory, which means you do not need to go to five minutes; you can go shorter than that. Every one of the previous speakers was below five minutes. It is not mandatory but I remind the House that we have speakers who will speak later on this afternoon, when other Members who have already spoken will be at home.

Electoral Commission Strategy and Policy Statement

Lord Evans of Rainow Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord was not in his place at the beginning of this debate—not by a very long way. I do not think it appropriate for him to speak in the debate.

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

My Lords, through the usual channels we agreed that the noble Lord can speak.

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, I apologise to the House for my slight delay in getting here; there was an emergency that I had to deal with. I thank the Minister for her introduction and for meeting me and my noble friend Lady Taylor of Stevenage ahead of this debate.

I point to the fundamental issue sitting at the heart of this debate. We have tabled the amendment because this statement is unnecessary and the Government have provided no evidence for why it is needed. Unfortunately, nothing we have heard from the Ministers in the other place or here today proves otherwise. I pay tribute to the much-missed Lord Judge for his work in this area during the passage of the Elections Act. He tabled amendments seeking to remove Clauses 15 and 16, which provided for the policy statement we are discussing today. The amendment enjoyed overwhelming support. There was cross-party agreement that the commission’s independence is vital to the health of our democracy. In moving the vote, Lord Judge said:

“I really do not think that anyone in your Lordships’ House can have the slightest doubt about the constitutional imperative that the Electoral Commission should be politically independent—independent of all political influence, whether direct or indirect, over the electoral process”.—[Official Report, 25/4/22; col. 23.]


Clauses 15 and 16, now Sections 16 and 17, are repugnant to that foundational principle. They require the commission to have regard to—at the very lowest, to pay close attention to—the strategy and policy principles and to follow the guidance of the Government of the day. The House benefited hugely from Lord Judge’s wisdom and expertise on this issue, and we are poorer for not having his thoughts in today’s debate.

Following the passage of the Elections Act, the Government’s strategy and policy statement has been the subject of consultation. This includes statutory consultation with the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Select Committee, the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission and the Electoral Commission itself. The Select Committee found that the statement assumes that

“Government priorities must automatically also be Commission priorities, and for the most part reads as though the Commission was an arm of Government”.

The Speaker’s Committee reported that the

“uncertainty, confusion, and new legal risks”

being introduced

“are likely to reduce the Commission’s … effectiveness, in return for no material benefit to the democratic process”.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Evans of Rainow Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 13th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

The noble Lord, Lord Deben, is not an easy act to follow, but I shall try.

We were lied to in this House. Our Government promised us repeatedly that there would be no lessening of environmental protection at any time. They promised us that and they lied. As a result of Brexit, we are now almost unprotected. Loads of us knew at the time that they were lying.

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness knows full well that parliamentary rules do not allow her to use those words, so we would be grateful to her if she could withdraw them.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

Deputy Speaker, is that right?

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

The noble Baroness knows full well the words that she has just used, and we would be most grateful to her if she could withdraw those words.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I genuinely did not know that I could not say that in this House. I know that in the other place we cannot say it. It is very difficult for me to withdraw words that I know are the truth, but I will withdraw them.

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

If the noble Baroness looks at the Companion, she will see that it is very clear on parliamentary language. So, I respectfully point to the Companion—and if she could read that and withdraw those words.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I withdraw them.

We were told repeatedly during the passage of the Environment Bill that there would be no lowering of environmental standards in the post-Brexit legislation. That clearly has happened; environmental standards are down. I suppose that it was obvious, because the Government promised, but they refused to put it in that Bill; they absolutely refused, when we kept asking them. This is the same package of obfuscation as their refusal to guarantee post-Brexit workers’ rights or food standards—it is all part of the same thing.

--- Later in debate ---

Amendment 247YYDA not moved.

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for my intervention earlier, which was incorrect—and I apologise to the House for misleading it.

Amendment 247YYE

Moved by

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Evans of Rainow Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 6th September 2023 Lords Chamber

Amendments 199 and 200 not moved.

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

My Lords, it is with great pleasure that I beg that further consideration on Report be now adjourned until after the further business of the House is completed.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Evans of Rainow Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 6th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

My Lords, before making a point about the amendment, I acknowledge that my noble friend on the Front Bench rightly feels a little blindsided by it. I apologise to her for that. I am a newbie on the Back Benches and I clearly have much to learn about the process here. In my defence, I shared my plans and the wording of the amendment with my friend the Secretary of State who, I am pleased to say, was excited by much of the contents, although not all of it.

I will be brief because this proposal is relatively simple and, in many respects, speaks for itself. Before I describe it, I will heap praise and thanks on a campaigner who is simply formidable. I am pleased that she is in the Gallery today, probably holding a swift box. Hannah Bourne-Taylor has single-handedly made what for many people appears to be a niche concern into a national campaign—not least by walking naked through London painted as a swift and causing quite a stir, as noble Lords can imagine. She has turned this into a national cause. It is because of her that this amendment exists.

Back in 2002 the British Trust for Ornithology cited the loss of cavity nesting sites as the key factor in the decline of cavity-nesting urban birds. Since then, four species—house martins, starlings, swifts and house sparrows—have been added to the dreaded red list of species of particular concern that, crudely speaking, face extinction. Worst hit among them are house martins. When I was preparing my notes, I was going to say that there has been a 37% decline, but I have since discovered that the figure is even worse at 50%. Swifts too have suffered horrifically; their breeding population declined by 60% between 1995 and 2020. That number continues to sink.

Despite broad agreement, not just in this place or the other place but across the whole country, that the UK—one of the most nature-depleted countries on the planet—requires urgent action or to introduce emergency measures to turn around these trends, the reality is that nothing of any real substance has yet been done. The problem, as noble Lords no doubt know well, is that sites for cavity-nesting creatures such as swifts have simply been lost. It is not because of evil or malign intent but because of repairs, house modernisation and even insulation—something of which we all in this House would like to see much more.

This simple proposal to include swift bricks in new builds is key. It is not just about providing a supporting hand to a species in trouble; it is critical, indeed essential. Modern new-build homes are simply not designed to accommodate nature. Swifts in particular rely completely on cavities, as noble Lords know. Without those, there are no safe or permanent nesting sites for them in Britain. Without manmade cavities in this sense, those birds have no future in this country. It is crazy, and something I learned only recently, that the simple swift brick is not even included in the biodiversity net gains metric.

The amendment that we are here to discuss today could not be much simpler. The swift brick is a zero-maintenance solution. It is just a brick in a wall that can be added to a building as any other brick could. For a refurb or a new build, it is cheap; it costs £30 or thereabouts. We know that they work because, wherever they have been tried and installed, they have worked. Surveys conducted on, for example, the Duchy estates, where swift bricks have been installed in numerous buildings, have resulted in a staggering 96% occupancy rate. Even that number continues to grow.

Obviously, not all the bricks are used by swifts. I have heard that as one of the counterarguments—“What about other creatures using these boxes?”—to which my answer is, “So what?”. Heaven forbid that a house sparrow might decide to use one of these swift boxes. Who would not be filled with joy at the prospect? It just seems to me to be such a non-argument as to almost not merit discussion.

If this amendment is adopted—I really beseech colleagues to support it—and it becomes national policy to ensure installation of these magical, simple, cheap bricks in all new homes, it will not only help counter the tragic loss of cavity-nesting birds but directly help the Government themselves meet what are, let us remember, legally binding targets to halt biodiversity loss by 2030. This measure has unanimous support—not all measures do—from ornithologists, all of whom agree and have gone to great lengths to explain that there is no downside.

By the way, swifts do not eat vegetation; they eat insects. They particularly enjoy mosquitoes and eat mountainous volumes of them, so there is yet another bonus to encouraging swifts in and around our homes. I am told that they also do not leave droppings; there is a reason for that, which I will not go into. I am sure that the expert up in the Gallery will know, but they do not leave droppings underneath their nest boxes. They tidy up—I will tell noble Lords what they do; they eat them, I am afraid, probably to recycle the mineral content. I do not know why, but for whatever reason they remove them. They are very tidy, conscientious and thoughtful creatures.

This amendment is also flexible for developers. Those I have heard from are all supportive. One major housebuilder, Thakeham, has actively appealed for an industry-wide commitment. Very recently the Irish Citizens’ Assembly on Biodiversity Loss voted to include swift bricks in all new builds. In the Netherlands, swift bricks are already installed as a mitigation measure.

There have been suggestions, and I understand where they have come from, that this should be a voluntary measure. I get that; no one wants excessive bureaucracy and mandates. But I am afraid we know that this has not worked. It is not through lack of caring: who does not want to see swifts flying in and around—maybe not in—their homes and gardens? Who does not feel better, frankly, when they have greater proximity to nature?

In fact, a petition that was initiated by Hannah in the Gallery attracted 110,000 signatures—

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

My Lords, noble Lords should not refer to people in the Gallery.

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

As I said, I am a newbie on the Back Benches and that is yet another rule I have learned. I will cease referring to the person in the Gallery. But 110,000 signatures were collected by the person in the Gallery. I think that is pretty impressive, given the subject matter we are talking about.

National legislation is necessary because of the urgency of the situation. We have debated the issue over and over again; we understand that this country is in the midst of a biodiversity collapse. National legislation is necessary because nowhere near enough swift boxes have been installed, despite swift bricks being nationally promoted since 2019, including in guidance in the National Planning Policy Framework. That is not to diss the NPPF; it is a valuable piece of literature, but it has been largely ignored in the context of the issue we are discussing here today. A paltry 20,000 boxes have been installed at best—that is an optimistic assessment. District councillors and the vice-chair of the Association of Local Government Ecologists have all been clear that the current situation is not enough. We are simply not seeing take-up of these swift boxes. Of 455 local planning authorities in England, just nine have planning conditions around swift boxes, so the voluntary approach does not work.

We are asking here for something so small, so simple and so inexpensive, but something that will have a gigantic impact on these irreplaceable, iconic creatures. I really encourage the Government to think again about their opposition to a measure that is wildly popular and would do so much good for this country.