European Council

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Monday 2nd July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

As my noble friend knows, we are very confident that we will be able to reach a good deal with the EU—but he is absolutely right, we are also preparing for all contingencies. That is what any responsible Government should do and that is what this Government are doing. We are advancing our no-deal planning; that is happening across government and across departments and I can assure him that it is on track. We hope it will not be necessary to use it.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

The noble Baroness the Leader of the House agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Howell, that we really should not worry about when an agreement is going to be reached, because it is going to be reached right at the end. Does that mean that the Government have given up on the target of reaching agreement at the October summit? If so, how much time is Parliament going to have to consider the terms of any agreement?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

No, the Prime Minister has reiterated, as have our European partners, that we are looking to secure agreement in October. That is what we are working towards. We will accelerate progress, we will be publishing our White Paper next week and we are confident that we all want to achieve the same thing and that that is still the aim.

Salisbury Incident Update

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Monday 12th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I thank my noble friend, and I entirely agree. Indeed, the action that we have taken on sanctions, for instance, has presented a clear united western position to Russia. We will be discussing this with our allies and working out what action needs to be taken, both in the UK and internationally.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, when I did a review two years ago into London’s preparedness for a major terrorist incident, I was informed that the number of emergency service staff, particularly in the ambulance service, trained and equipped to deal with CBRN incidents had reduced substantially in recent years, partly because of a change in the assessment of the intelligence of the risk of such an attack but also because of new ways of dealing with such incidents. Are the Government satisfied with the number of staff who are equipped with the appropriate suits to deal with such incidents in the event of something occurring in future?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

Once again, I pay tribute to all those involved. We believe that there are resources. Obviously, we have pulled in experts from all different areas and different parts of the emergency services, and we feel that we are managing to respond to this adequately. However, we will also always be mindful and learn lessons from this going forward.

G20 Summit

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

Of course Parliament will have a role in making sure that we find the best way forward and the Department for Exiting the European Union will consider the detailed arrangements for that. The referendum result was a clear sign that the majority of the British people wish to see Parliament’s sovereignty strengthened, so throughout this process Parliament will be regularly informed, updated and engaged.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

The noble Baroness the Leader of the House elided—inadvertently, I am sure—over the question asked by my noble friend Lord Darling. When can we expect to see a definitive statement from Her Majesty’s Government setting out their vision of what a post-EU future for this country will be like, and what they intend will be the prime objectives in their negotiations? When will Parliament see that in a White Paper and when will the British people see it?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

As I have said on a number of occasions during these questions, our priority is to regain control of the number of people who come here from Europe but also to allow British companies to trade with a single market in goods and services. We will not give a running commentary on negotiations.

Housing and Planning Bill

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Wednesday 13th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, I also would like to support this amendment. I do not mean to be impertinent to the Minister, but I think that she owes us this—and I will say why, if I may. There have been considerable worries around the House as to just how “skeleton” this Bill is. We have been promised regulations which, although they may now be affirmative thanks to the good efforts of our colleagues on the Cross Benches, will none the less come in after the Bill has become law because the consultation exercises on which they are based started two-thirds of the way through the parliamentary process. We all know that they should have been concluded before the parliamentary process, so that they could have shaped the form of the Bill and thus been amended in an appropriate way.

In area after area we do not know what is going to happen. We do not know what is going to happen with starter homes, with the potential take-up or with the priority order of the money from local authority sales. We do not know what number of properties will have to be sold and levied to meet that, or how the sums are going to add up. We could make a shopping list of the things we should know and the Government should know, but that we have not been told. I think that that is because the Government do not know. All this work should have been done, in my view, long before this Bill took shape. This is the result of having, in the first year of a Government, a Bill that should have been delayed, as a Member of the Benches opposite said, for at least a year while some of this evidence was collected. We could then have had a more informed and sensible debate in the long hours of Committee and now at Report.

At Report, the Minister and the Secretary of State are beginning to respond to a lot of the arguments raised in Committee, and we are very appreciative of that. However, the Government could and should have foreseen those arguments at the Commons stages; they could and should have foreseen them at Second Reading; and they could and should have had answers in Committee. What we are now getting are promises at Report. We will come to Third Reading and, if those responses are not adequate, we will have to go into questions and the consideration of ping-pong, which will then put a question mark over the whole timetable of the Bill.

Through no fault of the Minister, the department has failed to put in the preliminary work on this Bill. There are many people in this House who have been Ministers and taken Bills through it who know how much preparation is needed to have a Bill that is informed with the proposed regulations in draft. The LegCo committee, as was, would not have allowed this Bill to go forward in my day with the regulations as vague as they now appear to be because we are still awaiting the results of the consultation exercise.

At the very least, therefore, we need a proper, evidence-based, data-collected report three years down the line on whether all these offerings, suggestions, proposals and possibilities that we all see and argue for in this Bill actually come to pass or whether, as a result of skeletal scrutiny of a very skeletal Bill, we have missed out major issues which then bear heavily on people who can ill afford to see their housing need pushed ever further back in the queue. I therefore suggest to the Minister in all gentleness that she owes us this amendment.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, think that this amendment is important and I hope that the Minister will be able to accept it. My view is that this Bill is littered with unintended consequences. However, I may be wrong about that; they may be intended consequences. The answer is that we simply do not know, because so much of the Bill has not been brought forward in a way that allows us see what exactly is intended; we do not know what will be in regulations and so on. So we do not know what the consequences will be, whether they are intended or not. That is not a sensible position to be in.

If one takes at face value the objectives the Government have enunciated—what they want to do to address the housing problems that affect many parts of this country—there has to be the opportunity to take stock of the way the changes included in the Bill will work through the system. My noble friend’s amendment would at least enable that to be done. It would of course have been much better if the Bill had been properly produced in the first place after a proper assessment of all the evidence, and if it had been made clear to Parliament what all its various components would be. But given that we are not there, if this amendment is accepted, we could before the next general election have some of that information before Parliament and before government. The Government might even decide that they want to unpick some of what they are trying to do here, or they might recognise that remedial measures are necessary; but in any event there would be a generally and publicly available report so that, near the time of that general election, there could be an understanding of the Bill’s consequences and of how we need to move forward to achieve balanced and adequate housing provision in all parts of the country. I am pretty certain that this Bill, with all its consequences, whether intended or unintended, will not provide us with that; we need the evidence and the information. Indeed, I would have thought that good government, of whatever colour, requires that such data be collected and made available.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, I begin by agreeing with the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, about the intention of government in providing housing, and about people—not usually the tenants themselves, and subsequently the owners—sometimes trying to profit from housing that is intended for an entirely different purpose. I hope the noble Baroness will recall the undertaking I gave in Committee to get a working group together to look at how such fraud can be eliminated from the system. I feel very committed to that. I also take on board her point about the detail perhaps not being ready when noble Lords might want it. I hope that noble Lords will at least give me credit for trying to do that when I can, and in as much detail as I can.

I assure noble Lords that the Government already publish a significant amount of statistical data on the composition, tenure and affordability of housing through various mechanisms such as housing surveys and data collection exercises. For example, as part of the English housing survey, we publish an annual report on households. For 2013-14, this included information about tenure in the social rented sector, the private rented sector and owner-occupation. It compared each of these tenures and looked at how the relative size of each has changed. The report also examined measures of the affordability of social rented accommodation and movements into and out of the social rented sector.

Additionally, the Government publish various housing statistics, giving up-to-date data on a range of issues such as affordable housing supply, dwelling stock estimates, net supply of housing, housebuilding and housing market data. That is very useful information which provides a comprehensive and up-to-date picture of changes in housing stock, tenure and affordability.

With that reassurance about the extensive data—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord is obviously referring to a previous group of amendments. I am not sure whether he was in his place when I said that this data collection exercise is quite extensive— 60 million pieces of data. We always thought it would be a quite a lengthy process, but we will keep noble Lords up to date as and when we can.

Does the noble Lord, Lord Harris, want to add to that?

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

I seek clarification on what the Minister just told us. She outlined all the various data which are collected and published at the moment, but this Government are committed to reducing the burdens of data collection and regulation. We keep having various surveys and various other forms of data, the collection of which is then cancelled. Can the Minister give us an absolute undertaking that none of the data sets she has talked about will stop being collected between now and the end of this Parliament? If it was written into legislation that this report would have to be produced, it would obviously then be very difficult for the Government to resile from their obligation to collect the data.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I hope the noble Lord will understand that I do not have telepathy regarding what might happen in various spending reviews et cetera, but as far as I know such data collection exercises will continue. If that is not the case, I will let the House know.

Panama Papers

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Monday 11th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

My Lords, I can tell the right reverend Prelate that the register of beneficial ownership, which will be established in the United Kingdom, will, from June, be available publicly to anybody who wants to access it.

The overseas territories and Crown dependencies have committed to collate the relevant information on beneficial ownership so that our law enforcement agencies are able to access it. That is a step forward and a significant improvement on the current situation. They have not committed to preparing a public register but nor has any other country around the world, so I think we should acknowledge the positive steps that the Crown dependencies and overseas territories are taking. Clearly, we will continue to work with them so that they always look at taking further steps. We will make sure that they are in a strong position by adopting the standards that we would expect of any overseas territory, any Crown dependency or any place associated with the United Kingdom, so that they are chosen as places where those who are respected can invest in a respectful way and so that they, as nations, can prosper from those investments.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, the Prime Minister has set a precedent by publishing his tax arrangements. I gather that others have followed suit, including the Chancellor of the Exchequer and my right honourable friend the leader of the Opposition. Does the noble Baroness the Leader of this House think that this is a precedent that should extend to Members of your Lordships’ House, as it is clearly going to be an inexorable precedent in the other place?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

My Lords, the Prime Minister made clear in his Statement why he thinks it is appropriate for him and the Chancellor, as those responsible for the nation’s finances, to publish their tax returns. He also explained why he does not believe that that should be extended to other public figures. Your Lordships’ House has very clear rules about us all being UK residents and UK domiciled for tax purposes, and those were brought in just before the 2010 election. There is a very clear and robust requirement in terms of the register of interests. I remind noble Lords that a failure to make a declaration or entry in the register is a very serious matter, and any claims of any of us not doing so properly are pursued rigorously. I would always urge anybody who has any information on any of us that they want to see pursued to submit their complaint to the commissioner. We have that strong regime in place but clearly we must always keep under review how our code of conduct works, how we apply it and how it is administered, and that is a matter of course and of routine. However, the Prime Minister has made clear his views on extending the declaration that he has made today and the publication of income tax returns, and at the moment I do not see us going beyond that.

European Council

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Monday 22nd February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

As my noble friend predicted, I do not agree with him. One area that I would point to in order to illustrate my disagreement is what the Prime Minister secured around economic governance. Again, I do not think that it has been properly understood yet how significant the protections that he has secured are—not just for our currency, but for the City of London and our financial services. I assure my noble friend that the other member states, and particularly the French President, were in no way shy about fighting hard to prevent us getting what we wanted, but we secured a good deal for Britain in the end.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

Will the Minister convey to the Prime Minister the relief that we on this side of the House feel—indeed, our sincere congratulations—that he is beginning to put such an unequivocal and clear case for our membership of the European Union? Will she urge him, in the months that lie ahead, to put that case to the whole country, including Labour supporters and people of no party affiliation, and not just to conduct a desperate internal debate inside the Conservative Party?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I can certainly reassure the noble Lord that the Prime Minister will do exactly what he has just outlined. This is not about the Conservative Party; it is about the future of the United Kingdom. What we are doing here is what we believe is in the best interests of the people of this country.

Housing Estates

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Tuesday 9th February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, I will not be sitting on the panel, but I shall certainly bring that point to my noble friend Lord Heseltine. Of course, my noble friend is absolutely right that, the more energy efficient a house is, the cheaper it is to live in and the cheaper the bills are for the tenants or the owners of it. I will certainly bring that point to my noble friend’s attention.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Low of Dalston (CB)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord makes a very important point on the need for those tenants not to feel that this has been imposed on them or that things have been done to them, but that they are very much part of the process that is taking place. I know that that is foremost in the mind of my noble friend Lord Heseltine. It will be a collaborative process with tenants to do the best for them.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

The Minister’s right honourable friend the Prime Minister, when he announced this initiative, talked about bulldozing 100 sink estates. Can the noble Baroness tell us how many families will be living in those sink estates and how far the £140 million will go towards providing them with adequate accommodation? Perhaps she can tell us whether she agrees with the Prime Minister’s terminology in describing those homes as being in sink estates.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, “sink estate” is terminology that conjures up a picture of an estate that has become run-down, in which people feel less safe to live or, indeed, where the standard of accommodation is not what it should be. The £140 million of funding is seed funding for other types of funding to come in both from the public and the private sector. While that regeneration is being done, I do not expect that the tenants will be living in those houses.

Devolution: England

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Morris of Aberavon]

My Lords—

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

My Lords, it is the turn of the Labour Benches, but I urge the noble Lords to decide between themselves whom they would like to give way.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I think others might disagree with my noble friend.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, reminds the House, which the Minister did not, that there was a referendum in London and a two-thirds majority voted in favour of having an elected mayor. That was different from the election of police and crime commissioners, when there was no such referendum. Of course, the date was selected by a shabby deal done inside the coalition with the Liberal Democrats, which meant that we ended up with those elections in November. But why is it not permissible for the new combined authorities to have a referendum on their governance structures and how that process will happen? Surely that would buy in support—as it did in London, for everyone with the exception of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack—for the principle of having a directly elected mayor.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, the Conservative Party made explicit in its manifesto its intention to have mayors for large cities which agreed to that. For that reason, the principle was outlined before the election. The people engaging with the Government are themselves elected members.

Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Monday 14th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, the Intelligence and Security Committee is an extremely important committee and is made up of Members of both Houses of Parliament. Perhaps the Lord Privy Seal can correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding is that it is funded by both Houses of Parliament, yet this House, which I think contributes a very significant proportion of the funding—it would be helpful if the Lord Privy Seal told us what proportion it funds—has only two of the committee’s members. Will the noble Baroness explain the rationale for that? Will she tell us what recommendations or representations she made to the Prime Minister about the Lords representation on this important committee?

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

My Lords, I should like to clarify the position a little more. I understand that the Government intended that the costs should be shared between the two Houses but, because the Government could not find accommodation in the Commons or the Lords for the ISC to sit, it was decided not to go ahead with that arrangement, and now the Government themselves fund the committee’s expenditure. Following upon the original recommendation, though, we were told that serious discussions were going on about the need to increase the Lords representation, perhaps to four members but at least to three. What has happened to those discussions? If they have been derailed, could they now be put back on the agenda?

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

Following the intervention by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, surely it is very important that these appointments be hurried through as quickly as possible, because if there is any delay the new leader of the Labour Party will have a great input into who stands on that committee.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, it is because we on these Benches take the security of the nation so seriously that these points have been raised by Labour Members today.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, is right to say that until the beginning of the previous Parliament in 2010 there was only one Member of your Lordships’ House on the Intelligence and Security Committee. It was David Cameron, as Prime Minister, who thought at the start of the previous Parliament that it was right to extend that to two Members of your Lordships’ House.

When it comes to the breakdown of the ISC’s membership, it is worth me making two points to noble Lords. The first is that the ISC is not a Joint Committee of both Houses in the conventional sense; it is established by statute. It has nine places on it. As is customary, the Prime Minister consulted the Leader of the Opposition in the summer and—again, as is customary—it was the Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition who decided how she, as acting leader, wished to allocate the three places that had been provided for the main opposition party.

Legislative Scrutiny: Digitalisation

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Wednesday 4th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

The point I am trying to make is that new technology allows for access to more Chambers than has been possible before. In an analogue world, there was one television channel that could view only one Chamber at one time. Streaming via the internet, all the Chambers operating in the United Kingdom are accessible to everybody simultaneously.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

The noble Baroness the Leader of the House has told us about the importance of the new role of the digital director for Parliament. I appreciate that we are moving slightly off the core subject of the Question, but does she envisage further elements of co-operation between the two Chambers of Parliament, not just in digital areas but in all sorts of areas? What discussions has she had with her opposite numbers in the House of Commons?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

As for the possibility of greater joint working, the noble Lord may or may not know that one commitment that we have made is for the Clerk of the Parliaments here to explore possibilities with his counterpart in the Commons. Alongside that, if we were to decide to go further down that route, clearly we would need to make sure in due course that we were in a very clear position to negotiate so that this House is never subordinate to the other House.