Dormant Assets Bill [HL]

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 16th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, I am very delighted to support this amendment. My colleagues and I are great believers in empowering local communities. Indeed, in my years as an MP, I saw a number of local initiatives, driven by local people and community groups, that did some extremely good work but could not cope with the mutual demands of both providing their services and fundraising, so they were unable to grow to that kind of sustainable point that was so important in the community. It seems to me that the community wealth fund gives opportunities to those new initiatives, driven by local people, targeted very much towards the members of the local community and very much reflecting local need. It would seem ideal to do this under the structure of the dormant assets programme.

I have two other reasons for feeling that this is important. Later on Report, we will address issues of oversight over the kind of programmes funded through dormant assets. But it seems to me that there is no way that that issue can be addressed without recognising that the kind of resources for the detailed scrutiny and monitoring of programmes is in short supply. It seems to me that, when you have small local programmes, a well-structured community wealth fund arrangement can put in place that administrative oversight and make sure that, locally, the funds are well spent, provide value for money and are properly targeted. So that level of administration in fact makes up for a much broader weakness, frankly, within the overall dormant assets structure.

I am also very pleased to look at a pilot approach—this will be a case of trialling, reshaping and refining—because I am concerned to make sure that the money derived from the dormant asset funds is used in addition to the kind of services that ought to be provided, whether by central or local government. It will be really important for an entity such as the community wealth fund to work in tandem with local authorities but not substituting for what they can or should be doing. We do not want duplication of administration or service, and we certainly do not want to give central government an opportunity to further reduce the resources that it provides to local authorities on the grounds that the dormant asset fund and various charitable and local civic societies will do the work in its place and not require the normal support and resource that ought to be provided.

It therefore seems to me that this is very much a win-win approach, and I hope that the Government will take it on board. The Bill is an opportunity to expand what has been a very successful programme in significant additional directions, and this is certainly one of them.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I have my name down in support of this amendment, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, said, builds on one that we debated in Committee. As is always the case, when you come back to the subject, there is a risk of a great deal of repetition, and I do not wish to try the patience of the House with a long exposé. During the debate in Committee, the Minister’s predecessor, my noble friend Lady Barran, raised some significant concerns that the Government had about the way that this might operate. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, has very neatly—if I may say so without sounding patronising—answered some of the points made then.

I will repeat, in four sentences, four reasons why I am attracted to community wealth funds. They are very local and can reflect the often highly idiosyncratic needs of a particular local community. They can provide a physical space—a building—as a focus for presenting and answering those particular needs. Thirdly, they can provide an element of professional help, without which a purely voluntary organisation can struggle. Fourthly—this is most important—they can provide the long-term capital needed to answer and build answers to the very deep-seated challenges that many of these communities face.

However, as my noble friend Lady Barran said—I am sure that if I could see my noble friend’s speaking note I would see that he will repeat it in a minute—this is a new approach and the Community Wealth Fund Alliance is setting out, brimming with confidence, hope and optimism. I certainly wish it well, but there will be difficult days ahead with hard decisions about structure, approach, governance and impact. The noble Baroness will probably raise that last issue in her speech in a minute. It is dangerous if you accept too rigid an approach in primary legislation; if it subsequently turns out to be less than ideal, you are stuck with it. So there is an element of “Be careful what you wish for”.

Then there is the issue of consultation. I think many of us would say that this was a case of putting the cart before the horse. Normally you have a consultation, get the results, draft the legislation and then discuss it in the light of what has been discovered, but that has not happened here and we are going at it the other way around. Whether we like it or not, that is where we are. So I can see why, unsatisfactory though that approach is, in the circumstances, the Government cannot and do not want to pre-empt the results of that consultation.

Conversely, primary legislation, like buses, does not come along very often; the next Bill might be in another five or 10 years—it is 15 years since the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, and I discussed the Charities Act, and we have had probably had one since—but we need to send a signal of our support for community wealth funds. How do we balance those issues? I suggested that if the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, replaced “must” in his original drafting with “may”, that might provide an answer that would not force the Government, the Secretary of State and my noble friend on the Front Bench to set up a community wealth fund but would provide them with an option to do so in light of the consultation when they had the full outcome available. Since the noble Lord was kind enough to make that change, I am delighted to support his amendment.

[The Lord Bishop of Ely]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, is correct that my friend the Bishop of Newcastle has made her valedictory speech, but I have been permitted to speak on her behalf. Noble Lords may have noticed a certain discrepancy in height and volume between me and the Bishop of Newcastle but she is living proof that stature has nothing to do with size. I applaud my friend for her significant role as a Lord Spiritual and a community leader in Newcastle; the city has honoured her with the freedom of the city in recognition of her work.

In support of the amendment, we would like to say that the creation of community wealth funds, as the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, has said, will strengthen community life in left-behind communities, including many in the diocese of Newcastle. Levelling-up investment, while welcome, has been largely about hard infrastructure but we want to see more investment in social infrastructure so that our communities can flourish. It is precisely that social infrastructure which could be provided by the community wealth funds, so they are already creating confidence in communities even if the consultation is yet to happen.

One of the key founder members of the Community Wealth Fund Alliance is a local trust that administers the Big Local programme, a programme that has inspired this community wealth fund proposal. The Big Local programme has been operating for 10 years and has generated considerable learning and evidence that could inform the design of the new pilot fund or funds that the amendment would enable.

The Big Local programme supports 150 neighbourhoods across the country that have each received just over £1 million in funding from the National Lottery Community Fund. That funding is placed directly into the hands of local residents, giving them the ability to make decisions about how to improve their neighbourhoods and their quality of life. Areas were selected on the basis that they suffered from higher-than-average levels of deprivation and had previously missed out on their fair share of lottery or other public funding.

An in-depth evaluation of 15 of the 150 Big Local areas half way through the programme outlined the benefits for individuals, groups and organisations and charted wider community change as a result of the funding and support offered. The benefits are considerable, including increased employment and access to employment opportunities, increased confidence and aspiration and reduced social isolation. The programme has also increased people’s sense of agency and belief in their own ability to make things happen.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, my name is attached to Amendment 4 and I would gladly support Amendment 5. Government Amendment 3 is definitely an improvement on the previous situation, which was unclear; the Government were sure they would have a public consultation but were not really required to do so.

When the original Dormant Assets Bill was passed, the purposes for which dormant assets could be used were on the face of the Bill in primary legislation. Consultation, now that the Secretary of State is in a position to expand that range significantly, is absolutely vital. In Amendment 4, we reflect some of my ongoing frustrations with consultation after consultation: they fall to the attention of the usual suspects and, indeed, the responses of the usual suspects are very often taken into serious consideration, but they never get out into the wider world. When there are lots of diverse views, perhaps supported or mentioned by only small handfuls of people because they have never occurred to others, those tend to go into the “dismiss” bucket almost immediately.

I know how difficult it is to structure a consultation that really does consult. I say that from the position of having been a Minister during the coalition years, when I wanted to use a consultation to bring in new ideas as well as to get people’s responses to possible avenues that we might go down. It was a sheer battle with my own staff to devise such a consultation and questionnaire and to leave space for open responses and gather them in. It is not the norm; I am very well aware of that. I do want to press the Minister, because this should be going to a much wider range of groups than might normally keep an eye open for a consultation —the wide range of social enterprises and charities that go out to various communities, particularly deprived communities. Those communities tend to be the least alert to the fact that there is a government consultation happening or to knowing how to respond to it.

Then there is Parliament. Most of us understand that secondary legislation is not worth the paper it is written on in terms of getting parliamentary opinion or any potential for amendment, so it is important that the relevant committees of Parliament are engaged with something as significant as this. I press the Minister: we understand that he has moved some way, but we need quality. The style is perhaps there but there is no quality or content behind it to give us full reassurance. If he will not accept Amendments 4 and 5, can he at least give us a verbal assurance of the kind of quality that we want within the consultation itself?

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I have put my name to Amendment 5 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. I was reassured by my noble friend’s introductory speech and the deal that has been hacked out between him and the noble Lord, Lord Bassam of Brighton. The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, has, in part, shot my fox because I wanted to talk about the usual suspects, which she referred to. That is the danger, although I say to the signatories to Amendment 4 that it looks to me like a pretty good list of usual suspects in that amendment. I was not sure that we were not just going back down the track that we were trying to avoid going down.

My reason for supporting the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, was to make sure that we would make a big effort to get down to the smaller organisations, which often had unique insights into the problems of a particular area. From my point of view, I rather doubt whether that goes well into legislation, but it is the sort of area where a good strong ministerial Statement, given on the Floor, would reassure a lot of us that there will be words that we can go back to if the consultation does not reach as far, as deep and as wide as some of us think it should.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their recognition of the action the Government have taken on this, even if it is conditional at the outset. I am grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Kramer, Lady Merron and Lady Lister of Burtersett, for the important issues they have raised in tabling Amendment 4. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, my noble friend Lord Hodgson, and the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, for Amendment 5.

We have had a good debate, both in Committee and again today, and I welcome the support shown for securing the widest possible input into determining the future spending priorities for England. I share the desire raised by noble Lords to ensure that the public, beneficiaries, both Houses of Parliament, social enterprises and charities can have their say on the future focus of dormant assets funding; although I disagree about the means and submit that Amendment 3 is a better way to achieve this, we all share the same intent.

As my noble friend and predecessor Lady Barran outlined in Committee, it is our position that everybody who is interested, rather than a collection of predetermined or specified stakeholders, should be consulted. That is why we have chosen to take the broadest approach available in Amendment 3, and why we believe that Amendment 4 is not as inclusive.

Dormant assets funding is not government money; it originates from individuals who have lost or forgotten about their asset and is voluntarily transferred into the scheme by responsible industry participants who, despite their best efforts, have not been able to reunite those moneys with their owners. The scheme is a unique example of collaboration between the public, private and civil society sectors, responding to the imperative to put forgotten money to better use, rather than letting it gather dust in inactive accounts. Because of the wide range of organisations and individuals that are potentially affected by the scheme, we want to avoid at all costs making further specifications in this clause which could imply that certain groups are more important than others that it might be equally appropriate to consult.

The government amendment is sufficiently broad and, in line with common practice, parliamentary committees will continue to be able to consider relevant issues as they see fit in the future. That is why we do not think it is appropriate or necessary explicitly to name parliamentary committees as a consultee. However, we are happy to commit on the record to engaging with relevant and interested parliamentary committees for the first consultation.

As noble Lords have highlighted, the social and environmental focus of the English portion is a significant and important question. The Government agree that the consultation must be open for a proportionate amount of time to allow for considered and good-quality responses. That is why I am happy to place on the record our commitment that the first consultation under this section will last for at least 12 weeks. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and others for their appreciation of that.

I also reassure noble Lords that our intention is to consult widely, taking care to welcome local community voices into the discussion to ensure that we capture as many views as we can, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, my noble friend Lord Hodgson and others rightly pressed.

The Government will continue to consider the most appropriate length of future consultations, in line with Cabinet Office guidance. I hope that our previous conduct in this area has proven we take that seriously and are committed to ensuring fair and open consultations on the dormant assets scheme. The 2020 consultation on its expansion, for example, was extended from 12 to 21 weeks, as requested by voices in the industry in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, to ensure that everybody had the time to contribute meaningfully. I am pleased to say that that was very successful: we received 89 responses, representing over 500 organisations and individuals, which informed the development of this legislation. Given the range of interested parties involved and the complexity of the policy area, we will always ensure that a proportionate length of time is provided for consultation. In order to preserve the integrity and protect the impact of the scheme, we also do not anticipate changing the causes regularly.

The consultation would seek views on what social or environmental causes should be supported with dormant assets funding in England. However, we do not think it is appropriate to specify the scope and content of the consultation in primary legislation, including the extent to which the scheme is meeting some of its underlying policy objectives or what additional assets or operational changes would improve its performance. We believe it would be most appropriate and effective to consider those as part of Amendment 7. We therefore do not support combining aspects of this equally important work with the duty to consult, particularly as the latter relates only to England.

Our commitment to an open, fair and inclusive consultation is also the reason why we cannot accept Amendment 5, from the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, which seeks to require the Government to consult on community wealth funds every time an order on English expenditure is considered. I am conscious that we went into a more detailed discussion of the community wealth fund model in our debate on Amendment 1. Even if I did not convince your Lordships’ House not to support that amendment, I hope I convinced noble Lords that the Government are by no means against the proposals for community wealth funds but maintain that putting them in the Bill, and in the case of this amendment legislating for them to be consulted on every time an order was considered, would be inappropriate.