Local Government Finance
Lord Greaves Excerpts(6 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Greaves (LD)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, on initiating this debate, which is very timely. I declare an interest as a member and deputy leader of Pendle Borough Council and various other local government interests. Talking of Pendle, I am reminded of a time, a very long time ago, when the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, visited Pendle—in fact, it was two occasions—when he was a junior Housing Minister in a Conservative Government. He gained a reputation in Pendle which one or two people still remember him for. He came and we told him why we wanted more housing money and all the rest of the things that we do when Ministers come—we showed him lots of good things and tried to hide all the bad things. Fairly soon afterwards—a few days, I think—he was sacked as a Housing Minister and we thought, “That was all a waste of time”. Time passed on and he became a junior Housing Minister again, and yet again came to visit Pendle—at the behest of the man who is now my noble friend Lord Lee of Trafford. We went through the whole rigmarole again. I do not think that he was sacked that time, but he was certainly moved on from being a Housing Minister. The word went out in Pendle: “If we get a government Minister coming, make sure it’s never that man Young”. I have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Young, that he will be very welcome indeed to come to visit Pendle again and I hope we will not have the same effect on him.
I associate myself completely with the comprehensive speech made by my noble friend Lord Shipley, who covered quite a lot of very interesting matters, some of them fundamental. If local government is going to be sorted out, many of those matters are going to have to be tackled.
I want to comment briefly on the goings-on at the moment in two local authorities in my part of the world, in Lancashire and Liverpool, where very strange things are happening. I do not know what the latest information is—it seems to change every hour—and in mentioning it briefly I shall be very careful because it involves criminal investigations. I shall not get involved in those, but some time ago four people were investigated by the police in relation, as I understand it, to goings-on in connection with partnerships between those two councils and BT, Liverpool Direct and One Connect. It may well be that that will be discussed in the future. However, one of those being investigated, a man called Geoff Driver, was released from the investigation. He was leader of Lancashire County Council at the time that is being investigated and is leader again now after an interregnum of four years. On 22 May—these are just facts—all four of these people were arrested, according to the police, “on suspicion of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and witness intimidation”. They were bailed on 19 June and rebailed on 23 August. I do not wish to comment on those investigations in any way. I want to comment on the effect that they are having on these two councils.
In Liverpool, the chief executive, Ged Fitzgerald, one of these four, was suspended and, the press reports, is on paid leave of absence from his £200,000 a year job. However, the significant thing is that the elected mayor, Joe Anderson, the Mayor of Liverpool, has taken over the functions of the chief executive, according to the press, which seems an extraordinary thing to happen. Despite that, according to reports in the newspapers, specifically in the Liverpool Echo of 23 June:
“Liverpool’s arrested chief executive Ged Fitzgerald will continue to ‘guide and advise’ Mayor Joe Anderson while he remains on paid leave as police investigations into his conduct continue”.
What is happening in Liverpool seems unusual, to put it very mildly indeed.
As for Lancashire, Geoff Driver, perfectly properly, was elected as leader of the county council, but he has issued what I can only describe as a quite extraordinary injunction to four senior officials of Lancashire County Council: they are not to attend any briefings at which he is present. In other words, the elected leader of the county council, Geoff Driver, has banned four senior officials—including the chief executive, Jo Turton; Mr Sutton, director of development and corporate services; Ms Lowry, head of internal audit; and Ms Kitto, director of corporate services—from giving the leader any advice, except in writing. They can email and no doubt they can send old-fashioned written communications. This is causing a great deal of concern. The leader of the Labour opposition on Lancashire County Council, Councillor Azhar Ali, has written to the Communities Secretary to ask for a government investigation into what is going on in Lancashire, and I have to say that none of it does Lancashire, or Liverpool, or local government any good whatever, regardless of the ongoing investigations by the police.
It is inevitable in a discussion such as this that current budgets are top of the list; although they are current budgets, they are a symptom, a serious symptom, of the crisis which is hitting local government. I have the exciting task of being what people call the “portfolio holder for finance” on my council and it is not a particularly pleasant job at the moment. This is particularly true, if I may say so, for district councils in two-tier areas, as opposed to county councils, which are lumbered with having to deal with what in the old days, when finance for local authorities was given in blocks, were simply called “other services”. The recent general election and a great deal of speculation now about “the end of austerity” suggests that funding for health, social care, education and transport—high-level public services—might be released. I do not hear anyone saying that the same thing is going to happen for the ordinary local services on which the health and future of communities depend and which people expect to keep going: street sweeping, dustbin collection, recycling, libraries and all that kind of thing. I see no sign at all.
The Local Government Association, of which I am not a vice-president, issued a statement saying:
“Even if councils stopped filling in potholes, maintaining parks and open spaces, closed all children’s centres, libraries, museums, leisure centres, turned off every street light and shut all discretionary bus routes they will not have saved enough money to plug this gap”.
The point is that these are exactly the kinds of services which are discretionary and do not have to be done except at a very low level—and I do not know how long it is going to be before somebody takes a district council to court for not sweeping the streets properly. They are that kind of service. They are in the front line of cuts and, frankly, in a lot of places, they are in the front line to be reduced to a level where they are of no use whatever.
Councils are finding all sorts of wheezes to try to get round these things, and some of them may be desirable in themselves. Apart from everything else, I hold the exciting title of chair of Pendle Borough Council’s transfer of services and facilities to town and parish councils committee. If that sounds like a low-level job, let me tell the House that negotiating with 18 or 19 parish and town councils that are full of people who want to get involved in the detail of everything—because they are very local and that is what they do, and quite rightly too—is such that I could quite easily spend much more of my time and energy on that work than on work in the House of Lords, and perhaps I do. And we are doing it: we, an ordinary district council of 90,000 people, are currently working on transferring, for example, our 11 parks to our town and parish councils. Perhaps that is the right level for those parks to be run at—and I agree with that. The problem is that the town councils will be able to do it only if they put their council tax up. One of the reasons why the councils are doing things like this is that town and parish councils can put their council tax up but the district council cannot. I hope the Government will never stop us doing that, because it is a matter for local decision, but still it does not avoid the need to raise the money. The alternative is to sell off some of the parks, for housing land, perhaps, and use that money to keep the parks going for another 10 years. That is an answer. Another is to close two or three of the parks, to stop cutting the grass very substantially, to stop planting flowers in the park or to stop painting the railings—or whatever it is. Surely local government is not down to that kind of level.
The country as a whole has to have a fundamental rethink about what local government is for and how it is organised. I wish we would stop using the word “government”. What I am interested in is local democracy. At a local democracy level it is not the regions and city regions and the arbitrary amalgamations of local authorities to make combined authorities. People are not interested in that. They do not understand it and they are not particularly bothered about electing mayors or anybody else for towns on the other side of the big city. What people want is the ability to have an influence and to get involved in making sure that basic local services in their local community are there. As far as democracy is concerned, that means coming back to the fundamental building blocks of democracy which, in my view, are towns—big towns, little towns, middling towns, small towns. Towns provide the civic focus—the name gives it away—for people to get involved in running and helping to run them, as well as the accountability that local representatives should have. I believe that towns are the key to the future, and by “towns” I include big cities such as Manchester and a little town such as Earby in Pendle which has 3,000 electors. They are the places that things have to be built on. We have to rebuild our local democracy from the bottom upwards and stop trying to run everything from London, Manchester or Leeds in a top-down way.
Lord Young of Cookham
Well, I hope that the noble Lord’s words of wisdom have fallen on his Front Bench as well as my own. I just make the point that they did revalue in Wales, in 2005; 33% of homes were placed in a higher band and only 8% of homes were placed in a lower band. Two-thirds of the net rises were among homes originally in bands A to C, meaning that in that case revaluation hit the less well-off households the hardest. Therefore, I note the case that was made, but I have to disappoint the noble Lord and say that that is not on the agenda.
I was encouraged to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, say that she has three energetic candidates waiting to fight in her ward. I will make it my mission to ensure that they are opposed by three equally energetic, dynamic and motivated candidates from my party so that we have a proper contest in whatever part of Southwark she may live in.
The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, raised the point about local authorities investing in property. Like him, I saw the article and made some inquiries following the leader in the Times on Tuesday about local authority property investments betting with taxpayers’ money. There are strong checks and balances in place to protect taxpayers’ money, and local authorities are required to ensure that they have the right skills and commercial expertise to make investment decisions. However, we are actively monitoring the nature and scale of local authority commercial activity, working closely with the sector to ensure that the governance framework continues to be appropriate.
Yes, we have to do more on housing; I recognise that. I have some briefing here on housing, explaining how we are building more council houses than the Labour Party. I will not read this out because I am short of time, but I agree with one of the thrusts of this debate that we need to raise our game on housing.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, that it says here that you should not comment on an ongoing police investigation, so I will not.
Lord Greaves
I was very careful not to comment on the ongoing police investigation. I commented on what is happening in Liverpool council and Lancashire council, which is alarming.
Lord Young of Cookham
I will be even more careful by moving quickly on.
The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, made the interesting proposal that we should somehow topslice DVLA proceeds and VAT and give it to the local authorities. However, they would not then have the certainty that they have at the moment, because they would not know how much they would raise. Local government would be out of pocket because it would have kept the money and we might simply reduce the RSG to that local authority by the amount that it was going to get from the VAT, so actually you would be back where you started. I note that in the many reviews of local government finance that proposal has not found favour.
In conclusion, local government has met some major challenges recently. It has faced immediate demands from emergencies: terrorist attacks in London and Manchester and the fire at Grenfell Tower. It is dealing with these emergencies against a background of rising demand for services in key areas such as adult social care. It has shown willingness and ability to work together across boundaries of all kinds, not just geographic boundaries but social and political ones as well, to best support the communities it represents.
Despite such challenging conditions, councils continue to deliver, and council tax is expected to be lower in real terms in 2019-20 than it was in 2010-11. Councils have embraced innovation and transformed the way they work to deliver services for their local areas. We must create the conditions for strong local public services to serve our communities. This will support the important work that our public sector workers do in ensuring that all our citizens are provided with high-quality public services at local and national level at every stage of their lives.
Electoral Fraud
Lord Greaves Excerpts(7 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Greaves
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to prevent electoral fraud in the local elections on 4 May.
Electoral Fraud
Lord Greaves Excerpts(7 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Young of Cookham
With respect, I did give those assurances yesterday. I remind the noble Lord that there is a record number of people on the electoral register at the moment, notwithstanding the removal of all the ghost entries when we moved over to IER. I also outlined yesterday a number of initiatives that we are undertaking to drive up registration among exactly those groups the noble Lord has just referred to. We have a specific pack aimed, for example, at social tenants. We are undertaking initiatives with students, and we have a whole range of packs for young people, including one called Rock Enrol!. We are anxious to do all we can to increase the numbers of those who register and then increase the turnout at elections.
Lord Greaves (LD)
My Lords, if people are going to have to provide documentation at polling stations, including documents with photo ID, do the Government realise that quite a few people do not possess any photo-ID documents? The electoral registration authorities will therefore have to provide a document on request for such people. Can the Government guarantee that that will be provided free of charge?
Lord Young of Cookham
The noble Lord is right. Most people will have some form of identification—a bank card, a bus pass, a railcard or an NUS card—but we recognise that some people may have none. That is why, in our response to Sir Eric Pickles, referring to the pilot, we said:
“We intend to invite local authorities to apply to pilot a number of schemes that involve both photographic and non-photographic identification”.
Parliament and Central Government: Relocation
Lord Greaves Excerpts(7 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Greaves
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the case for moving Parliament and central departments to the north of England.
Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)
The Government have made no assessment of moving Parliament to the north of England. This is a matter for Parliament to decide. Government departments determine their workforce requirements and the Civil Service has a significant UK-wide presence, including in the north of England.
Lord Greaves (LD)
My Lords, the British economy is ever more unbalanced, as most growth and investment are dragged into the already congested hothouse of London and the south-east. Meanwhile, the so-called northern powerhouse amounts to little more than a few new railway lines and roads, welcome though they will be. Does the Minister not agree that in order to rebalance this country we need a real new vision, in which a wholly new capital city is built somewhere near—
Lord Greaves
—the geographical centre of the country, in the Midlands or the north? That would provide a new centre of government for the country, taking power to the powerhouse out of this congested place we are in, together with a new home for Parliament. Only by something as radical and visionary as this will we ever tackle the problem of imbalance that so affects us all.
Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen
Well, my Lords, this is a radical suggestion. I feel that Parliament should really be in the capital city but your Lordships will be relieved to hear that it is not up to me. Indeed, it is not even up to the Government to decide. It is a decision for both Houses following recommendations from the Joint Committee. The House of Commons Commission and the House of Lords made the decision in 2012 that the Palace of Westminster should remain where it is.
Housing and Planning Bill
Lord Greaves Excerpts(8 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Greaves
“Limitations on planning obligations
Regulation 123 of the Community Infrastructure Levy Regulations 2010 (further limitations on use of planning regulations) is repealed.”
Lord Greaves (LD)
My Lords, this is a small issue, in a sense. It is a kite-flying amendment not directly related to what is in the Bill, like many other amendments we have been discussing. However, it is an important issue for local authorities that are affected by it. Regulation 123 of the Community Infrastructure Levy Regulations refers to Section 106 agreements. When the CIL regulations were brought in, it was tagged on to them, almost without anybody noticing—although I complained about the regulation when it came to be approved by this House.
I am challenging not the regulation as such but the bit of Regulation 123(3)(b) that restricts the number of Section 106 agreements within the area of one local planning authority to five,
“which provide for the funding or provision of that … type of infrastructure”.
That means that a local planning authority can have only five Section 106 agreements in place anywhere within its area for one particular type of infrastructure. I hope that the Minister will understand the very specific point I am making. I will come to it in a minute.
I want to be clear that I am not objecting to the requirements of Section 106, which nowadays have to be site specific. It used to be that you could have a planning application at one end of an authority and get some money for a playground miles away at the other end of the authority. That was quite rightly stopped. Agreements have to be site specific—in other words, related to the particular planning application or piece of land, as the Minister said earlier. I am not objecting to the restrictions on pooling Section 106 contributions to build up a pot for large schemes, and there is a limit to how far that can be done. It is just ordinary, small Section 106 contributions that are typically connected to retail developments, housing developments and so on. Again, I am not talking about the affordable housing things that we were talking about this morning.
The limit to five schemes is not logical for four reasons. First, there may well be more than five separate schemes that are relevant or appropriate to particular developments, even though they are of the same type. For example, it may be that Section 106 contributions are being used to support a local bus service—the kind of bus service which is subsidised or supported by the local highways authority under the Transport Act—and a contribution may be made in order to extend the route to serve a particular housing estate or so that it serves the supermarket or whatever. I have had a lot of experience in past decades of helping to support local bus services through this means, at the same time providing public transport to new housing developments or new supermarkets.
It may well be that a Section 106 agreement is required for a public open space, and it is silly to say that you can have only five open spaces if you have seven developments that would benefit from this provision. So there is no logic to it. It came in as part of the restrictions on making Section 106 agreements site specific and stopping people building up big pots, but it is not now necessary.
The second reason is that, because Section 106 agreements are now site specific, there is no reason to limit the number. Logic says that the number should be determined by the number of appropriate developments and appropriate schemes. Thirdly—and here I am talking to some extent against a small authority such as my own—the limit applies per local planning authority, however big or small. So it is five for a huge area such as Northumberland or Cornwall, five for a little authority such as Rutland, five for small district councils and five for big cities. It is an arbitrary number and there is no sense to it.
Finally, it causes particular problems where a local authority has no CIL contributions. Where the level of CIL has been assessed as zero, it cannot be levied. The kinds of councils I keep talking about during this Bill, including my own in Lancashire and lots of other councils in Lancashire and the north of England, cannot levy a CIL because if you levy a CIL, it takes developments completely over the border into being unviable. In areas where developments are only marginally viable on the best greenfield sites, you cannot levy a CIL.
Therefore, the contributions for local infrastructure that come from a CIL are not available in areas of that kind, and those areas are by their very nature probably poorer in different ways than the more prosperous parts of the country that can levy a CIL. So poorer areas do not get the infrastructure levy. Therefore we have to rely on what we can get from Section 106, and this restriction on Section 106 is arbitrary and illogical. I hope that the Government will take it away and have a look at it. They do not have to bring it back in this Bill; they can simply make a minor change to the CIL regulations. I beg to move.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for his amendment. The Government introduced the pooling restriction in Regulation 123 of the Community Infrastructure Levy Regulations 2010 in order to ensure that planning obligations are used appropriately. The regulations have encouraged 107 charging authorities to bring forward the levy, which provides greater certainty for developers about the cost of developments and helps those authorities provide certainty to their communities about how their infrastructure needs can be met.
Pooling restrictions limit the use of Section 106 to no more than five for a specific infrastructure levy type or project, as the noble Lord said, but this has helped to incentive the adoption of the levy. Adoption nearly trebled in the year prior to the pooling restriction taking effect in April 2015, and it has continued to grow since. While acknowledging that Section 106 still has a role to play in site-specific infrastructure, the Government launched a review of the levy last year to ensure that it provides an effective mechanism for funding infrastructure. The review is considering, among other matters, the relationship between the levy and Section 106 planning obligations. I shall be happy to ensure that the panel is aware of the noble Lord’s thoughts on the repeal of the regulation. With that in mind, I hope that he will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Greaves
I am grateful for the last sentence of that reply. I am talking not about pooling Section 106 contributions for bigger projects but about the limit on the number of small projects that can be funded directly linked in a site-specific way to particular developments. The perfectly justifiable intentions of the Government to stop Section106 being an alternative to CIL has caught the small schemes and small contributions in a way that was not intended. That specific point ought to be looked at.
Having said that, the other point is that it is okay having lots of incentives to levy CIL—but not if the consequence of levying CIL is that no development at all takes place. Remember, I come from an authority where getting into three figures of new starts or completions a year is proving very difficult indeed. In one recent year it was in single figures and that is not for the lack of trying to build as far as the authority is concerned. Indeed, in one recent year when 50 or 60 completions took place, they were almost all built by the authority. The private market hardly exists—or has hardly existed in the last few years.
Lord Greaves
Lord Greaves
My Lords, we now move on to the part of the Bill that is about housing development linked to applications for development control under the 2008 Act for nationally significant infrastructure projects. This series of amendments probes the provisions which will take the housing element of such projects—where they are linked to infrastructure projects—out of the hands of local authorities and allow people to make the application for development consent under the infrastructure system and to include the housing provision within that application.
The purpose of tabling these amendments is to ask some related questions. A very useful briefing note from the Department for Communities and Local Government, called the Housing and Planning Bill: Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects and Housing, does answer some of the questions I had in my mind when I tabled these amendments. Nevertheless, some questions remain, and one fundamental issue has a big question mark against it.
Amendment 102CA would name the housing projects which are linked with the infrastructure projects “subsidiary”, which seems to me an appropriate word. It is important that they be seen to be subsidiary or ancillary and not a major part—even if they are 30% or 40% of the reason for the development. Housing ought not to be the reason for the development. Infrastructure projects are the reason for the development.
Amendment 102CC, to new subsection (4B) of Section 115 of the Planning Act 2008, states:
“‘Related housing development’ means development which … (a) consists of or includes the construction or extension of one or more”,
new dwellings. I take it that “consists of” is okay—it “consists of” housing or “includes” housing. What else is there? That is the question. I take it that the “what else” is not the infrastructure, but something else. Therefore, why do things other than housing need to be included?
Amendments 102CF and 102CG challenge the geographical reason for allowing people to include housing in an application for development consent. The briefing note on page five sets out clearly that the Government intend that there will be two reasons for allowing housing development. The functional need ought to be allowed. Paragraph 17 states that:
“Where housing is being provided on the basis of a functional need”,
the limit for the number of houses can be up to 500, which seems rather a lot, even for a functional need. Perhaps the Government can tell us under what circumstances an infrastructure development might also require 500 houses. But paragraph 16 states:
“Where housing is being provided on the basis of geographic proximity to an infrastructure project, the maximum amount of permanent housing that could be granted consent”,
is also 500 houses. I do not understand why the Government are going to allow a national infrastructure project to be put forward with up to 500 houses when the only connection between those houses and the project is geographical proximity: either adjacent or, as my Amendment 102CD puts it, “close to”—the briefing note says up to a mile away.
It seems that the planning permission for new housing estates of up to 500 houses—perhaps most are smaller—is being taken out of the hands of local planning authorities just because the estate in question is next to, or within a mile or so of, a new infrastructure project. I cannot understand the logic of this. I can understand why landowners might want to link them together and perhaps fund one out of the other. Five hundred houses, by any standards, is a big new housing development. It ought to be in the hands of the local planning authority. The guidance sets out that the Secretary of State, in making his decision on the application for development consent, will have to take account of the local plan and the national planning policy framework, and whether it is in a national park or ecologically significant, for example. All these things will need to be taken account of. Local planning authorities do that all the time. However, issues such as design, the relationship between the new development and the existing communities, local highways issues, access, or even Section 106 agreements for new bus services ought to be in the hands of the democratically elected local planning authorities, not put into the hands of the Secretary of State.
There are very good reasons why the national infrastructure planning system exists for national infrastructure projects. There are reasons that I can understand for housing being part of the project—when it is directly related to those projects because it is for people who are going to work there—and it is sensible to put in a planning application for development consent. However, I see no reason at all why local authorities should have this decision seized from them by the Secretary of State simply because a project is next to a new national infrastructure project, even if none of the people living in those houses is going to be associated with, connected with or working at the new development. It seems to be a step too far in the centralisation of the local planning functions of local authorities, and yet another move away from localism to centralism. I beg to move.
Lord Shipley (LD)
My Lords, my name is associated with Clause 144 stand part, and I agree entirely with what my noble friend Lord Greaves has said. I regard this as a very important issue because it effectively cuts out local authorities from the planning process on a nationally important infrastructure decision. Simply permitting an applicant to go straight to the Secretary of State to secure approval seems to me to be the wrong approach. What my noble friend said helps us to solve the problem.
Lord Greaves
I am grateful to the Minister for explaining the Government’s position in great detail. Having heard it again, I am even more sure that it is wrong. Sorry about that, but when you find out what things actually mean, sometimes you think they are okay but sometimes it confirms your view that they are wrong. The idea that 500 houses are a minor part of a development, in any area, is nonsense. In terms of their impact on a community and how it operates, 500 houses anywhere are a lot of houses. I accept that if such a development is directly associated with the infrastructure scheme and required for it in a functional way, it is reasonable for one application to take place. However, the only real argument that has been put forward is that it is a good idea to build next to a new infrastructure because new roads and access will be put in. In planning terms, it might be a good idea, or it might not be. In planning terms, it might be a very bad idea because of the disadvantages of living next to whatever the new infrastructure is. Or it might be a very good idea. That is a decision that ought to be taken by the local planning authority. It just seems unnecessary to say that 500 houses that are not related to the infrastructure scheme at all, but are simply next to it, ought to be taken away from the decision-making of the local authority. The only argument that I can think of is that it is again just more convenient and easy for the developers. That is the second time today that I have said that too much of this Bill seems to be about making life easier for developers and blow the consequences for everybody else. I am unhappy as I think it is the wrong decision. We might bring it back on Report; but for now, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Greaves
“( ) A local planning authority may only be specified under subsection (1) if it so consents.”
Lord Greaves
My Lords, at last we arrive at perhaps the remaining flashpoint in the Bill. I rise to move Amendment 102CL and speak to my other amendments in the group. There are two other very useful amendments from noble Lords in the group.
Clause 145 is a major, very controversial innovation. It may be the first step towards the privatisation of development management and yet it was dumped on the Commons on Report. There was a very short explanation by the Minister, one speech by Clive Betts MP at 1 am and the Minister refused to answer his questions—there was no reply from the Minister.
Here we are in the Lords at the very end of the Bill, at the end of the afternoon on day nine of nine, and we must try at least to give it some intelligent consideration. I have no doubt that the issue will come back on Report anyhow. The Government are saying that this is intended to be a pilot, but the Bill appears to give the Secretary of State untrammelled powers to introduce this provision to any extent he or she wishes at any time in the future, so the question of how it can be limited is an issue that the Committee ought to look at.
Lord Deben (Con)
My Lords, I do not wish to repeat the concerns I have had for some time over the amount of information that is available about this Bill, the regulations and the like. We are debating the Bill in these circumstances and therefore I remind the House what the planning system is for. It is a disagreeable necessity. We have to have it because you cannot have a circumstance in which the unlimited, private ownership of land has an effect on neighbours and communities. It is not about land owned by the local authority. The owner owns the land. Whenever I hear planning discussed by the parties opposite, I am fascinated because you might think it was owned by the local authority and that it should come back to the fact that this is a local authority matter.
The House has to recognise that there is an international agreement on human rights in which property is a basic human right—not only under the United Nations, but under the European Union of which I am sure we shall remain a full and active member, even though there is such nonsense spoken about it by the Brexit people. I am not getting on to that, of course. Even if they do not like the European Union, they are stuck with the United Nations human rights declaration, which we signed.
I happen to care about the right to property. It is basic in a community. It is basic for democracy. If you want to destroy democracy, the first thing you destroy is the right to property because it gives people independence. It enables them to stand up against government; it enables them to put two fingers up to a local authority if that is what it thinks. Yet, when I hear a debate like this, I understand precisely why I am on these Benches. Very often I find myself arguing not entirely on the side of the Government. However, I have been very much reassured, by the speeches of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, and particularly of the noble Lord, Lord Foster, and I understand why I am not a Liberal Democrat. It is because they are neither liberal nor democratic. That is the reality.
All the Government are suggesting is that it would do local authorities a lot of good to recognise that this is not a little bit of business which they do themselves in the way they want to do it. It is something which should be open to public concern and public alternatives. Of course, we can produce all sorts of scare tactics about what might happen and what people could do and all the things that might arise. What we are really arguing in the amendment is that we should not try anything else—there should be no opportunity for alternatives and no one ought to deal with this. Why? Because local authorities do not like it and because that well-known organ of democracy, in which I declare an interest as an honorary vice-president, the TCPA, does not hold with it.
The TCPA does not hold with a lot of things, mainly because it is still burdened by the memory of that dreadful old man, Ebenezer Howard—still thinking in the past, not understanding that we are in a world in which people do not expect there to be one provider or just one lot of people to go to. Today people expect that we test it all the time. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, went through a whole list of things, but in every one of those cases the nationalised provider is a lot better because there is an alternative. There are better prisons because they do not all have to be done in one way. Even when you have failures, the fact that there is an alternative is crucial in a democracy and crucial for the efficiency of the national system.
I come to the nature of planning. I cannot believe that there is anyone in this House who thinks that the planning system works well. That does not mean to say that an alternative would be better; sometimes planning may be thought of as Churchill thought of democracy—that it is a thoroughly bad system, but there is not a better one. Sometimes I think that that is the best definition of planning that we have. I have declared my interest and my pastimes; although I shall certainly not be involved in anything that may come out of this, I try to help people to produce sustainable buildings. One business with which I have an association tries to make buildings better, more sustainable and energy efficient. But in the course of that, I have to deal with planners, and we have very great difficulties sometimes. There was the lady who said to one of my constituents who wanted to have the next-door very small, knobbly and unimportant field as part of his garden, “You don’t need a bigger garden—therefore you won’t get the right to use it as a garden”. That is ludicrous, to have to ask planning permission to turn a field into a garden. I can think of nothing more ridiculous than telling people that they have to get planning permission to do with their own land what most of us would like them to do, which is to turn it into a garden. But no—that is one of the things, because at some stage some local authority thought that it would be better telling people what to do with their land than people can do themselves.
Lord Greaves
The noble Lord is very entertaining although I am not sure what his speech has to do with this Bill. But if a local authority requires planning permission for the conversion of a piece of a field into a garden, that is precisely because government regulations in the general development order, or whatever it is now called, require that to happen. If the planning system is not working well—and every time I get a chance to debate planning anywhere, including in your Lordships’ House, I announce it to be bust, because I believe that it is bust—it is almost entirely the fault of the national Government and detailed national rules and regulations, which tie the whole thing down.
Lord Deben
I am so pleased that I tempted the noble Lord to intervene at that stage, because I can now tell him that I tried to change the law on that when I was the Minister, and who opposed me? Every blooming local authority—they were the ones who demanded to keep this power and said that it was so important. So I want us to come back to what the Government are asking. This is entirely relevant. I am glad that it is amusing to the noble Lord, but I believe it to be central to the amendment. The Government propose that we give the Secretary of State the power to see whether there are alternative ways in which to handle something that, in the noble Lord’s words, is in many ways bust. That is what he says, but if it is bust, would not it be a good idea to see whether there are ways of unbusting it? This is one of the suggestions.
What do we get? Not a series of suggestions about how we might refine it, improve it, make the tests rather better or come forward with various suggestions about how the various pilots might be carried through. Instead, we get an onslaught on the basis that the only people who can do this are local authorities or public bodies. The Government have produced something which is worth trying. If it does not work, we have not done anything bad. If it does work, we have learned something. The worst thing in politics is to say that we cannot do something because we have not done it before, that we cannot do something because it will not work or that we cannot do something because we do not want to try. This is the moment when we ought to say that we may be a very old House and many of us in it may be very old, but at least we are young enough to recognise that it would be a good thing to have a go at something different.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
I have given the noble Lord the answer that I can. I am sorry that he is unhappy with it. I will go back and have a look to see whether I can provide him with any other information.
The noble Lord will also not be happy with my response to his question on the DPRRC report. I am afraid that it depends on what time the House rises as to whether noble Lords get it before we rise, but they will get it today. On that basis, I ask noble Lords not to press their amendments.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, there is a lot there to look at, read and think about. In the last argument there was some confusion between compulsory outsourcing and being forced to be subject to competition. Those are different things. I think the Government are saying that some authorities may have a designated person or persons forced on them in their area, but some clarification would be very helpful. The Bill certainly says that that is possible.
I thank everybody who took part in the discussion. Some were more entertaining than others. The noble Lord, Lord True, took us into the details of planning committees, which some of us have spent far too much time in our lives chairing, being members of or whatever. On the point about the relationship between the committee and its planning officer regarding applications where the committee may overturn the recommendation of the officer, there are applications where it is obvious which way they will go: that they will be rejected, or passed. While people may argue one way or the other, there are no sensible reasons and it is a fairly cut-and-dried case. But in most cases where recommendations are overturned, they are arguable both ways. If the planning committee overturns cases where it is not arguable both ways, it is not a very good committee. It is behaving pretty irresponsibly, really.
Under those circumstances, the reports written by planning officers are balanced. They will put forward the reasons an application has been made and the arguments for it; they will put forward the objections to it and the reasons it might be turned down; then they will come down on one side or the other. If the committee takes a different view and it then goes to appeal, a sensible inspector will look at all the original reports and everything else and he will come to the view that it was a perfectly reasonable decision by the committee.
Lord Greaves
It is a very constructive point. There is time to discuss this part of the Bill further before Report. We are coming back straight to Report, but I do not imagine we will get to Part 6 for quite a while; for several days, anyway. I ask the Government to convene meetings of people around the House to look at the practicalities. If the Government can persuade us that in a practical sense, this will work, or that it might work—that it is worth trying—we can think about practical, working amendments to it. If they cannot persuade us, some of us will want to remove it all. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Greaves
“( ) The Secretary of State may not designate a person who—(a) provides services in a professional capacity to persons in connection with development proposals or applications for planning permission or is employed by or associated with a company which provides such services,(b) is employed or remunerated, whether on a full-time or part-time basis, by persons or companies which undertake development, or(c) has within the past five years been employed by a local planning authority in any capacity that involved dealing with planning applications.”
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I put this in a separate amendment because I wanted it set out and because it is the fundamental thing that people outside the system are going to complain about with regard to private provision of the processing of planning applications. The potential for conflicts of interest is high. The Government say they will produce regulations to stop that and make sure it does not happen. We will see how they do that.
There is a perception of conflicts of interest in a system that, as was said earlier, is already believed by many people to be utterly biased towards large developers and against ordinary people—rightly or wrongly, there is a widespread belief that that is the case. If, instead of being processed by local government officials, planning applications are processed by private companies, people will look for the links between those private companies and developers putting in applications and, whatever safeguards the Government put in, they will find them. They will find family relationships, school relationships, board memberships and so on—all manner of relationships. It is a huge can of worms.
If the Government are going ahead with these pilots, this is a fundamental issue that they have to tackle and do their very best to get right. I doubt they can get it right but it is at the heart of this proposal. I beg to move.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for putting this unexpected discussion before the Committee. I am conscious that there are 11 more groups, which, in the course of a normal Thursday, would need to be discussed in the next hour and seven minutes. Perhaps I can abuse the fact that I am now standing up to say that it would be very helpful if we could have a statement from the Government Chief Whip in, say, 15 minutes, explaining his intentions for the remainder of Committee. It is clearly unreasonable—to the Minister and the shadow Ministers—to be continuing in this way, making such slow albeit quite proper progress, because these are important issues. It would be extremely helpful if we had a statement from the Government Chief Whip about the Government’s intentions for dealing with the Bill because, frankly, this is not a sensible way for legislation to be properly scrutinised by your Lordships’ House.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
The noble Lord’s Amendment 102DC is excessive, not least because local authorities tell us that it cannot be beyond us to work together to design a robust system of checks and balances to maintain professional standards. As I have said, we believe that the private sector could bring valuable innovation and efficient techniques to processing and managing planning applications. That said, it is entirely reasonable and understandable to ask how we will maintain accountability, integrity and professional standards with private sector involvement. Key to this is who makes the decision—who can be a designated person, what applications designated persons are allowed to process, and legal safeguards in the planning system.
I have been crystal clear that responsibility for deciding planning applications will remain with local planning authorities, and they cannot delegate that to a designated person. A designated person will not be able to decide on a planning application. Notwithstanding a separate amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, Clause 146(1)(b) already allows us to specify circumstances where a local authority could take over a planning application from a designated person, including where it has demonstrable concerns about the designated person’s work. Persons designated by the Secretary of State will be expected to meet high professional standards and have expert planning knowledge that would enable them to operate in pilot areas with unique characteristics. We will expect them to demonstrate the ability to engage with local communities and councillors so that they can operate successfully in these pilot areas. We expect to put in place mechanisms to address any failure in standards and integrity, such as removing a provider’s designation, or, as I said a moment ago, enabling poor work to be redone.
Our engagement work with local authorities and the private sector has also highlighted the obligations of Royal Town Planning Institute membership, which was mentioned by noble Lords during discussion of the previous group of amendments. All members of the RTPI are bound by a code of professional conduct, underpinned by a complaints process, setting out required standards of practice and ethics for chartered and non-chartered members. RTPI members are required to adhere to five core principles: competence; honesty and integrity; independent professional judgment; due care and diligence; and professional behaviour. We will look to build these and similar standards into the selection and performance monitoring of designated persons. Crucially, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, that a designated person must not be allowed to process a planning application in which they have an interest. Furthermore, after extensive dialogue with local authorities, professional bodies and the private sector, we will set out in regulations the actions and procedures that a designated person must follow in processing a planning application.
I also draw the noble Lord’s attention to Section 327A of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, concerning requirements for processing planning applications. A local planning authority must not entertain a planning application where the formal manner in which the application is made, or, crucially, the formal content of any document or other matter which accompanies the application is not compliant with the requirements for processing a planning application. Therefore, an application which has not been appropriately processed by a designated person, or has involved a conflict of interest, could be considered null and void.
I can assure noble Lords that, given the importance of this issue, we will continue this dialogue to ensure that we get the design of the pilots right. I hope that, with this brief overview, the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I will. That was extremely helpful and I will read it carefully. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. I too want to get home tonight, and if helps the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, I shall not move the next group of amendments, because I think that we have more or less finished the debate on this for tonight.
Lord Greaves
“Review of the plan-making process
(1) Not less than six months after the coming into force of this section the Secretary of State must establish a comprehensive review of the procedures, costs, time-scales and efficiency of the plan-making processes under planning legislation (“the plan-making review”).(2) The plan-making review must invite evidence from planning authorities, users of the planning system, and any other persons.(3) The report of the plan-making review must be sent to the Secretary of State and the Secretary of State must arrange for it to be laid before each House of Parliament.”
Lord Greaves
Briefly, my Lords, there were suggestions earlier from the noble Lord, Lord Deben, who is no longer in his place, that the planning system needed an improvement. I apologise for tabling this amendment in a rather strange location in the Bill; that was by accident. I tabled it to suggest that it was time for the Government to pursue an inquiry and reforms to the plan-making system, as opposed to the development control system.
Since then, I have discovered that such an investigation has been taking place. I have a copy of a report which came out a few days ago—I think it was on 16 March—called Local Plans: Report to the Communities Secretary and to the Minister of Housing and Planning from the Local Plans Expert Group. I confess that I have not yet had time to read it, owing to the requirements of research on the Bill, but it is an excellent step forward. I hope that its contents are as good as I am billing them and that we will be able to have a slightly more relaxed debate in your Lordships’ House on this matter, by some mechanism or other, before the end of the Session.
There are defects in the development control system. While nobody is perfect, everybody who gets involved in that system is frustrated by some of the things that have to happen. Nevertheless, it has been my view for a number of years—I have expressed this in your Lordships’ House on a number of occasions—that the main inefficiencies and problems in the planning system are with plan making rather than development control. Plan making is cumbersome, bureaucratic, top-down, top-heavy and not very democratic. Reform is needed, particularly if local plans are to be the basis for planning in principle, so I am delighted by the document that I have received. In order to give the Minister a chance to reply, I beg to move this amendment.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
I thank the noble Lord and I will respond very briefly. We recognise that the process of getting local plans in place can sometimes seem lengthy and complicated, which is why we gave a commitment in the productivity plan to bring forward proposals to streamline them. In September last year, Ministers invited an eight-strong group of experts to examine what measures or reforms might be helpful in ensuring the efficient and effective production of local plans. As the noble Lord rightly said, that group published its report on 16 March. On that basis, I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Skelmersdale (Con)
My Lords, after the last half hour, it goes without saying that we have had a long and exhaustive debate on the Bill, so I shall keep my remarks to an absolute minimum, especially as we now turn from the purely built environment, with which the Bill is chiefly concerned, to a few of the people who live in that environment and the problems that footpaths can cause them.
A tiny fraction of a percentage of the 140,000 miles of public rights of way go through the gardens of private family homes. Unfortunately, once they are recorded on the designated footpath map, it is as though they are set in concrete, and they will of course be at the cut-off point in 2026. Even where councils make a mistake, it seems impossible to change their mind. I know of one case where the council confirmed a footpath going straight through a home owner’s sitting room, subsequently saying that it could not correct its admitted error. That is a clear nonsense.
When a footpath goes through a garden, however—which is my reason for putting down this amendment—it does not take much imagination to appreciate that this can cause immense hardship for the owners of the property, effectively causing the loss of the normal use of the garden. I know of at least 25 such cases. Would any of your Lordships be comfortable if your children or grandchildren, or indeed pets, were to be left alone in such a garden? Nor is it beyond the wit of a nefarious character to peer into windows to see whether a house is worth burgling. So there are obvious security, safety and privacy issues. Homes whose owners have spent a lifetime paying off the mortgage can become unsaleable and the owner trapped.
Many of these paths are little used and most of the general public have no wish to go through a family garden. However, local government is required by statute to keep these paths open, in some cases even requiring home owners to remove the gates to their gardens. There are examples of bankruptcy, breakdowns and even suicide, and these will become more frequent as the population grows. This cannot be in the public interest and, to my mind anyway, is against the spirit of Article 8 of the Human Rights Act.
The last Government, in last year’s Deregulation Act, pledged to create a presumption in favour of diverting or extinguishing such paths. That is a principle established in, for example, the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003, but this goes way over the top. In agreement with the stakeholder working group, Defra is to produce guidance to local authorities on the subject. A small group of affected people belonging to the Intrusive Footpaths campaign has had meetings with Defra and much time has been invested by all parties in trying to improve this guidance. It strikes me as odd, to say the least, that the stakeholder group the Government consulted apparently also has to approve the guidance, and rumour has it that this guidance is to be less forceful than the original working group agreement. I ask the Minister whether that is true. Whether it is or not, it is the opinion of at least three independent specialist rights of way lawyers that it is a matter of legal fact that, no matter what is in the guidance, it will in most cases be rendered ineffective by existing statutory tests, which are to be found in the Highways Act 1980. Guidance cannot override statute and as such cannot on its own deliver the Government’s declared policy objective. To make matters worse, this guidance is not even statutory, which it certainly should be, overriding such existing law that gets in the way of reducing this undoubted problem.
My amendment, however, goes much further than this. It calls for local councils, backed up by the Secretary of State, automatically to extinguish footpaths or divert them to the curtilage of domestic properties, unless they are satisfied that privacy, safety and security, which are the important points, are not affected by the existence of a footpath, bridleway or byway. Whether this amendment is acceptable or not—and I strongly suspect that it is not—a statutory footing for the Government’s policy is essential. I beg to move.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I declare my interest as the vice-president of the Open Spaces Society, as well as my other outdoor activity interests, which are in the register.
This amendment is a sledgehammer to crack a nut. The noble Lord makes it sound as though the countryside of England is a nightmare. This is absolutely not true. There are perfectly workable procedures for dealing with the kinds of circumstance described by the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale. In particular, Defra has found a mechanism through the stakeholder working group, which represents people from all parts of the countryside, from recreation to landowners and other users. This is a mechanism by which changes in the law take place by agreement and consensus. It has been extremely successful, has worked very well and continues to do so. To drive a coach and horses through that at this or at any stage would be very unwise. I hope that the Minister will explain that, apart from anything else, the amendment really does not belong in this Bill.
Baroness Byford (Con)
My Lords, this amendment has my name attached to it. My noble friend has gone into the detail of it, so I will not repeat that. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, knows that we had quite a long discussion on this issue in considering the Deregulation Act. While he said that on the whole people do not abuse it, trouble is still being caused. He may say that this is not applicable in this Bill, but I think that it is. I shall be referring later to towns and cities as well, so I hope that he will stay with me and forbear my support of this.
It was said at that time by the Open Spaces Society:
“We consider that the discretionary power of moving paths should have low priority and we advocate that councils refuse to consider a path change unless there is a clear public benefit. Otherwise they are using their slim resources on a mere power, to the advantage of owners and occupiers rather than the public, instead of on the duty which benefits everyone”.
This is a very difficult situation. I do not think that the amendment is a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Clearly there are families who are finding this extremely difficult. It was suggested that the working group would get together and that that difficulty would be resolved, and clearly that has not happened. I support my noble friend in raising the issue today.
I move on to a concern—I have given the Minister notice of it—that has been raised with me on existing public paths, as they are, in cities and towns. Public paths that were incorporated into building developments in the 20th century were often acknowledged and placed on a definitive map as part of the planning process. In towns and cities, however, the Edwardian and Victorian developments often included paths to enable easy foot passages from one place to another. The land over which they pass may still belong to the estate upon which the development was constructed, or may have been sold to individual householders, or acquired by the local authority.
The reason that I raise this today is to make sure that, in the enormously important work that we are doing with the Bill, there will not be reflection later on something that we should have spotted at the time. As I said, I have given the Minister notice and it was obvious to me that the issue raised by my noble friend Lord Skelmersdale has not been resolved. I want to ensure that we do not walk into another difficult situation.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I propose to make a minor change to Clause 192, through Amendments 118A and 118B, to enable the power to make regulations in Clause 137 on registers of land to come into force on Royal Assent, rather than two months after Royal Assent. This is a technical amendment that does not alter Clause 137 itself. It means that the power to make implementing regulations could be used sooner after Royal Assent, but the regulations themselves will not come into force until at least two months after Royal Assent. There is no question of local authorities being taken by surprise or being rushed as a consequence of these amendments.
The requirement to hold a register of brownfield sites suitable for housing is linked to our commitment to require local authorities to have registers of what is available, and to ensure that 90% of brownfield sites suitable for housing have planning permission in place by 2020. It makes sense for local authorities to have the tools in place to help them meet this deadline as soon as practicable, and to help them get their registers in place. I beg to move.
Lord Greaves
I think that 70 local authorities are taking part in the pilot scheme. I should declare that one of them is my local authority. Will these regulations apply to that pilot scheme, once they come in, or is that separate?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, the regulations will apply to the pilot schemes.
Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 (Transitional Provisions) Order 2015
Lord Greaves Excerpts(8 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Empey (UUP)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Wills, used the word haste, but this process has been going at a snail’s pace for years. We introduced individual electoral registration in 2002. As my noble friend Lord Lexden pointed out, the solution in dealing with the inevitable groups who tend to be underrepresented on every electoral register is not just to sit back and leave on the register loads of people who may or may not exist; as my noble friend Lord Lexden said, you target those groups. You form a schools initiative and go round the universities and the schools. We had a mobile unit that went round housing estates knocking on doors and to community centres to give people photographic ID cards so that they could use them at the electoral office if they did not have passports or driving licences. You target the people who you know are traditionally not on the registers.
As the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, said, the Electoral Commission is a body that the whole House respects. However, it is not a body that we take instructions from; it is a body that we listen to and consider. Take the Scottish referendum: I do not think that that was a particularly great example of good advice.
Nevertheless, we are talking about a balance of risk: the risk that people who are currently on the register will be denied a vote in the future versus the risk that people will be on the register and constituency boundaries drawn up on the basis of people who are not there at all.
There is another category of person that has not been identified. We talked about a figure of 1.9 million people. But even on the figures that we are getting more recently, that number will have reduced substantially, one way or the other, by the time that we come to December. However, that does not mean that those 1.1 million or 1.2 million people, as it will be by that stage, will not be on the electoral register; it just means that they will not be on the register at the address that they were knocked off it from.
In Belfast, there was a transition period when the process came in, and the register was printed including the names of those who were not individually registered. That is perfectly sensible and reasonable. However, a point came at which we decided to draw the line. At that point, people had to be individually registered or else they were taken off the register. In the Botanic ward in Belfast, near the university—my noble friend Lord Lexden will be very familiar with it—the number of people on the electoral register dropped by 27%. The reason was that the students, nurses, junior doctors and others in the area who occupied many of the dwellings were not there. However, they were registered at their home address in various other parts of the country. Just because a number of people are taken off the register, that does not mean that they are not voting somewhere. That is an issue that has to be taken into account, but which has not been in this debate so far.
The Act that the Minister has used to bring this provision forward provided him with the opportunity to do so. It could have said “2016”, but it included the provision that it could be brought in earlier. Presumably, therefore, at that stage, the Minister and the House saw circumstances in which there could be a variation in the timing of this process.
As I said to someone rather light-heartedly, even with these measures being introduced, it was lily-livered legislation. For example, it does not deal with the barking mad idea of postal votes on demand. Also, people still need to have photographic ID—there are huge gaps. However, I do not believe in the blood-curdling prognosis that the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, has brought forward as the risk factor here. In a transition from one system to another, there is always risk. It is a question of finding out what the balance is. There is substantial time and still opportunity to do that.
A big push should be made between now and the end of the year for publicity and action at local level. I also believe that the opportunity will still exist after 1 December for people to register. They should do what we did and target groups—it works. We have the proof, in that we got young people on to the register at a very high level. Target the schools, universities and community centres, particularly those in urban areas, because we all accept that the same profile of individual tends to be off the register in most places.
There is also another category of person: those who do not wish to be on the register. That can be for a variety of reasons: they could be “doing the double”, avoiding moneylenders or all sorts of things. People deliberately take themselves off the register. In my view, there is no way that we are going to deal with that, unless we change the law dramatically.
On balance, the risk here is that there are grossly inaccurate registers in certain places. There is no point in persisting and saying, “Well, we’ll keep it going for longer and longer”, because that will not fix anything. If you identify a problem in a particular area, you go and target the area. The local councils know where these areas are. We know where the schools are and where the universities are. Target those places instead of this blunderbuss approach where you just carry on and hope that, over time, it will get it more accurate. It will not.
Lord Greaves (LD)
The noble Lord tells us a story of the wonderful things that have happened in Northern Ireland and the way in which many of these problems have been tackled, but given the present state of local government resources and the view taken of some of these things in England and Wales, does he think that there is a chance at all that in the next six months they will happen here?
Lord Empey
That is a perfectly reasonable and sensible point. I absolutely agree that it does need resources. I understand that there have been some additional funds—my noble friend Lord Lexden mentioned one example, and a further £3 million has been put in—and I would be entirely supportive if the Government felt the need to put more money into local authorities. I do not know what applications there have been from local authorities. Perhaps the Minister can tell the House what responses he has had. As I understand it, although the aid is targeted at certain boroughs, it is open to others to apply. Perhaps the Minister can give the House an assurance that, should the applications outreach the supply, the Government will look at that. That is a very sensible suggestion from the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. All I am saying, from our experience, is that by bringing it to a conclusion you force people to do something. If you combine it with the special measures that I have outlined, together perhaps even with additional resource, we will end up in six months’ time with a very effective register.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, I find it a little difficult to be lectured on political rectitude by the noble Lord on the Liberal Democrat Benches. He has, of course, fought many elections, and so have I. I canvassed in every one since 1959. He is not the only one who understands what is implied. Until a few months ago, the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, was, my noble friend. I was flattered by the quotation which he gave the House and I would not withdraw a single word. At that stage, I was speaking as the Conservative Front Bench spokesman on constitutional affairs in the other place and of course I welcomed the establishment of the Electoral Commission. However, as my noble friend Lord Empey said in a powerful speech, the commission is there to advise. We are not always obliged to take the advice. The commission would be better employed, not just in the next five weeks, but in the months afterwards—because it is possible to register within a very short period—in exhorting and encouraging young people and those of all ages to ensure that they are registered. I am sure that the Minister will give us the appropriate facts and figures, but many reminders have already been delivered to those who have not registered. It is important that we have confidence in the integrity of the electoral register.
I am one of those who has favoured compulsory registration. I have raised this point in the House on many occasions with considerable support from the Benches opposite and, indeed, from many of my noble friends. I would still like to see that. I also agreed emphatically with the noble Lord—
Lord Cormack
Just a moment. I also agreed emphatically with my noble friend Lord Empey when he agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Wills—who made an extremely persuasive and very fine speech—that proof of identity at the polling station is something we could all reasonably demand.
Lord Greaves
I am grateful to the noble Lord and I agree with his last remarks. However, is not registering to vote a legal responsibility and duty, and the problem that, when people do not register, nobody takes any action against those who refuse to do so?
Lord Cormack
Of course, that is entirely true and it is a point I have made in both this House and in another place. I would like to see us get tougher on that. But the fact of the matter is—
Lord Cormack
I will not give way at the moment. I wish to complete what I am saying. What I say to him, very quietly and in a spirit of collegiality, is that they must be a little careful how they use their votes because if they were proportionately represented in this House following the last general election, there would at the most generous estimate be 60 of them and more likely 50. I think 83, 84 and 81 voted in Divisions last night. Had they led by example, practised a self-denying ordinance and put only 55 into the Lobby—that being the difference between 60 and 50—the last Division would have gone in favour of the Government. The previous one would have been very finely balanced. I say to them, please be careful how you overuse the power you have accidently got when you are speaking in the House where you have 104 more Members than in the elected House. That is something everyone in this House should take into account. When we come to address—
Lord Cormack
I just want to complete this. When we come to address the size of the House, which I believe we will do shortly, we will have to bear in mind the numbers of those represented in another place, the number of votes garnered by the parties represented in another place and always preserve that distinguishing feature of this House: the 20% or thereabouts of Cross-Benchers. We should bear in mind that this House should never have an overall majority for any Government, whatever its political complexion. We should address the issue not only of underrepresentation but of overrepresentation. The debate we are having today—
Lord Cormack
I will give way in a second to the noble and impatient Lord. He has already had one go—
Lord Bridges of Headley
My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord will forgive me. A lot has been said this afternoon. It has been an excellent debate, and there have been very good contributions from all sides, although I profoundly disagree with some of what has been said, as I will come on to. It is always nice to be reminded by the noble Lord, Lord Wills, that I have not read my Aristotle. He firmly puts me in my place.
I shall start by taking a step back to make two fundamental points, on which I hope we can all agree. First, we all agree that we want more people to engage in the democratic process and register to vote, but those who are not on the register today will clearly not be affected by the measure we are discussing, which is the removal of ghost entries. Secondly, as my noble friend Lord Lexden said in his excellent speech, nobody will lose their right to vote as a result of the government proposals that we are debating today.
Instead, the core of what we are debating comes down to the accuracy of the new electoral register. Do we keep on the new register ghost entries—entries of people who may have moved house or died or may never have existed in the first place? Are these ghost entries living, breathing voters, as the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, calls them, or hundreds of thousands of database errors which need to be removed ahead of the important elections next year? As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, rightly pointed out—let us not disguise this fact—for the sake of completeness, the Electoral Commission wants to keep those entries on the register, even if this means that the accuracy of the register is undermined. It judges the risk of fraud to be acceptable, and the Government disagree.
First, we believe that after 18 months of transition and more than a decade of waiting, as we enter a year of elections and possibly a referendum on Europe—possibly—the time has come to move fully to the new system. Secondly, we see the risk of fraud as unacceptable. Thirdly, we believe that people have been given ample opportunity to register on the new system. That said, fourthly, we entirely agree with those who want more people to register to vote and participate in the elections, but we do not make the register more complete by stuffing it with inaccurate registrations.
I shall take those points in turn. As the noble Lord, Lord Empey, said, we have been waiting for the full transition to individual electoral registration for more than a decade. As the current chair of the Electoral Commission said:
“This change is something we’ve been calling for since 2003 and is an important step towards a more modern and secure electoral system”.
To give the former Labour Government their due, they legislated to introduce individual electoral registration in 2009. The coalition Government further legislated in 2013 and, finally, in the summer of 2014, the new system was introduced. I remind your Lordships that at the general election, in its manifesto, the Conservative Party committed that:
“Building on our introduction of individual voter registration, we will continue to make our arrangements fair and effective by ensuring the Electoral Commission puts greater priority on tackling fraud”.
This Government believe that it is time to finish the process, and finish it now. This decision is not, as the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, said, rash.
Let us consider the progress that has been made. Back in May, 96% of the electorate was successfully registered under the new system. It is the remaining 4%—the so-called “carry forwards”—that the Government believe should be removed from the register at the end of December. It is not the entire register that we are questioning, as the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, seems to suggest; it is the 4%. Then we have to ask ourselves: what do these entries represent; who are they; do they exist? The reality is that neither we nor the Electoral Commission know who they are. They may be people who have moved or have died, or they may never have existed in the first place. However, we have gone the extra mile to find out whether these entries actually are people living at the registered address. Electoral registration officers have been working tirelessly to confirm whether the remaining entries are real people or whether they are merely ghosts.
These people will have first been sent three invitations to register. If they had not done so by last autumn, an electoral registration officer would have visited the address linked to the entry. If this failed to elicit a response, a further letter would have gone to the address earlier this year. Where carry-forward still exists, these addresses will receive three further letters and another visit from an electoral registration officer this autumn. That is the second fact that I would ask noble Lords to remember. These people, if they are people, will have been contacted at least nine times by December. I ask noble Lords to compare that with the number of times people are contacted about renewing their TV licence—four times. These people, if these entries do indeed represent people, have been contacted nine times. On top of this, as the noble Lord, Lord Empey, said, the Government made available to councils up to £3 million of additional funding to support extra efforts targeted specifically at carry-forward entries, and £1.2 million of that was drawn down.
Lord Bridges of Headley
My Lords, I completely agree that we need to get more people on the register. However, let us not confuse apples and oranges—these are two separate things. If people are not on the register, there is absolutely no way they can be taken off the register, which is what we are saying today. I do not understand—maybe I am not explaining it clearly enough. However, I will go on, if I may.
When people move, we should not leave their entries on the register. That increases the risk of not only electoral fraud but benefit and financial fraud. In advance of Northern Ireland moving to a system of individual electoral registration in 2002, the police said that it would,
“go a long way to eliminating the opportunities for fraudsters to commit the offence of personation”.
The noble Baroness, Lady McDonagh, asked about fraud. Let us just remind ourselves that since 2002-03, courts have imposed jail sentences for electoral fraud in Ashford, Blackburn, Bradford, Bristol, Burnley, Coventry, Derby, Guildford, Oldham, Peterborough, Slough and Walsall.
Lord Greaves
Will the Minister agree that in I think all those cases, but certainly in almost all of them, the fraud was linked to postal vote and proxy vote fraud, not registration fraud?
Lord Bridges of Headley
My Lords, it is electoral fraud; we are trying to make sure here that—
Electoral Register
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
Since 1 December, some 700,000 16 to 24 year-olds have applied to register. We do not have an exact figure on what proportion that is because the figures on how many 16 year-olds will be eligible to vote in the election are not exact because we do not have all their birthdays.
Lord Greaves (LD)
My Lords, do the Government have an estimate of the extent to which the reduction in the number on the electoral register as reported last December is due to a reduction in multiple registrations?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, it is highly likely that that is the case, particularly with students not being registered both at home and at university. That is one of many difficulties in assessing the completeness and accuracy of the register.
Ministerial Visits: Travel Costs
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we are all well aware that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, is deeply committed to the idea that a two-party system is the only way to have democratic government. I have just been reading the Spreckley report on the 1974-75 referendum and I simply remind him that the Labour Government suspended ministerial responsibility and collective responsibility because the Cabinet disagreed on it.
Lord Greaves (LD)
My Lords, the whole House will be well aware that a place called Pendle in the north of England is the most wonderful place in Britain. My noble friend the Minister will know that because Saltaire is not very far away. Will the Minister explain why, in recent months, there have been a reported 17 ministerial visits to Pendle? What wonderful gifts are going to come to Pendle as a result of these visits?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I am sure that all Members of this House should be travelling from Pendle through Todmorden to Saltaire. I had occasion, early in this Parliament, to upbraid Vince Cable for visiting the headquarters of Pace Electronics in Salts Mill without informing me in advance. He replied, rather lamely, that he had come from Bradford and was not aware that Salts Mill was in Saltaire.
Deregulation Bill
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I will have to write to the noble Lord about that specific question; I have noted it.
Part of what we are seeing in the rise of self-employment is that the number of people working in their own homes is rising as well; computerisation and all of the information technology developments make that much easier than it was 20 years ago. The noble Lord, Lord Deben, has remarked that inspectors could indeed come around and make sure that they have got their computer screens at the right angle and that they are using the right sort of chair. All of these can indeed be regarded as mild risks to those who are engaged in the activity. Again, however, in the balance between risk and regulation, that seems an acceptable risk to the Government, and one would wish to maintain the degree of independence and autonomy that one could have.
Lord Greaves (LD)
I was very much taken by my noble friend’s example of somebody who is self-employed being hit by a huge pile of books when a bookcase collapsed; I thought, “Yes, I have been there”. Can my noble friend tell me who is responsible from a health and safety point of view if an employed person is working from home, as so many people now do, and there is an accident with equipment for which the employed person is entirely responsible?
Lord Bradshaw
The answer to that is yes, it would. If the driver was able to produce a better car—it may not be a new one—and he went to the local authority and says he has given up using car A and is going to use car B, yes, it would. Local authorities are not, as sometimes painted in your Lordships’ House, absolutely unfeeling and draconian bodies.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, like my noble friend Lord Bradshaw I can see a great deal of merit in these clauses, but like him I hope, since we are at an early stage in the Bill, that the Minister will say some soothing words and agree to consider these matters further. It would be unfortunate to take this to a vote today and simply reject these clauses and not be able to bring things back later. There are really serious concerns here on the part of lots of reputable organisations, and local authorities and their representatives around the country.
I should declare an interest as a member of a taxi licensing authority, Pendle Borough Council. I should also say that taxi licensing and taxi operator licensing is something I keep as far away from as possible because it is one of the biggest cans of worms in local politics, especially in an area such as mine. I do not have direct, hands-on experience of this and I have not prepared anything to say today so I may be wrong in what I am saying. Would the Minister agree with me that there is some confusion about the discussion here?
As I understand it, Clause 11 refers to the licensing of people—either operators or drivers—and not the licensing of the vehicles themselves. Therefore, there are two separate things here. The Minister is nodding, so I shall continue with more confidence than I had when I started my speech. There is the question of whether individuals are sufficiently proper, upstanding and reputable to run a taxi business and whether individuals are appropriate to drive a car in the very intimate circumstances of taking passengers whom they do not otherwise know. That is obviously a situation where people have to be proper and upstanding.
Census 2021
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I think that all Members will recall that we use a field force to go and find the people who are the most difficult to get hold of and those in whom we are most interested. The Office for National Statistics estimates that the last census was some 94% complete. We suspect and fear that the 6% we missed were strongly represented among the most vulnerable elements of the population.
Lord Greaves (LD)
My Lords, the Minister referred to the delay last time between the census and the publication of the first results, and indeed to the further delays for the more detailed results. The forms are not complicated. Putting the information into databases and publishing it should not take 18 months, two years or even more. It is a simple task to get the information from the forms, whether the information is collected digitally or on paper, and then publish it. Can we have an assurance that the Government are looking at making this much more efficient and quick next time?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
It is part of our mission to try to get the information ready for use more rapidly. It is also part of our mission, and the Office for National Statistics and the Public Affairs Select Committee reports both touch on this, to use the administrative data that are available to the Government so that we do not just have a snapshot of where we are every 10 years but, rather, we can have a rolling set of information about what we have. For example, if you want to know how many children there are living in a local authority area, the Government have that information in the form of recipient addresses for those on child benefit.