Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Debate between Lord Hope of Craighead and Lord Lucas

Report stage
Monday 15th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, this quite short group of amendments is concerned with Clause 16. It is a very worrying clause, for various reasons. My amendment seeks to tie the power of the relevant national authority to exercise the regulation-making power under this clause to the provisions of Part 3 of Schedule 4.

My Amendment 76, which we have already discussed, relates to Part 3 of Schedule 4. The point is to make sure that the regulation-making power is subject to parliamentary scrutiny. That is true not only of the UK Parliament; it applies also to the Senedd in Wales and the Northern Ireland Assembly. The Scottish decision has been that the power should remain with Ministers, and that is a matter that can be left to them.

The really important point is to make sure that the regulation power is subject to Amendment 76, which I am seeking to make on Wednesday. I do not think I need to say any more about this because the more important amendment is Clause 16 stand part. I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, will make clear the position regarding the defects in the clause that gave rise to her amendment. She will do that far better than me so I shall simply leave it at that. I beg to move.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I have Amendment 41A in this group. We discussed this issue in Committee. I said, “If the Government want to go down the route of keeping in Clause 16(5), why don’t they promise the same about the environment?” After all, the Government made the same set of promises regarding environmental legislation—that they would not do anything to damage the protection that the current regulations offered—while here in Clause 16(5) they are saying they will not do anything to increase the regulatory burden.

The Government wisely said they did not want to put in the Bill the promise that they would not damage environmental regulation. I had rather hoped that meant they would take out Clause 16(5), because to my mind that subsection offers nothing but uncertainty. How is it to be interpreted by the courts if the Government propose to use the clause and someone challenges its use in the courts, saying, “This subsection says ‘in relation to a particular subject area’. Has that been reasonably chosen and correctly defined? What is the overall effect of the changes?”? They will have to look at every piece of legislation that has passed in relation to that particular subject area. How are they to be weighed up? There is no mechanism here providing for them to be weighed.

The courts are going to be asked how one bit of legislation should be weighed against another with regard to the changes that it makes and the regulatory burden. How do you weigh one bit of regulatory burden against another if one bit of regulation imposes something on one group and the next regulation imposes something on another? How do you weigh those two things together? It seems to be asking the absolute impossible. It means that any bit of legislation passed under Clause 16 will be open to all sorts of challenges in the courts, and there will be no way of knowing what the outcome will be, because nothing in this subsection, or elsewhere in the clause, tells you how to parse it. So I hope the Government will see the good sense they had when they chose not to adopt my suggestion of doing this for environmental legislation and take Clause 16(5) and (6) out of the Bill.

Non-Domestic Rating (Public Lavatories) Bill

Debate between Lord Hope of Craighead and Lord Lucas

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 24th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB) [V]]

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[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB) [V]]

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

Non-Domestic Rating (Public Lavatories) Bill

Debate between Lord Hope of Craighead and Lord Lucas

Wednesday 24th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, as I said at Second Reading, I welcome the Bill. That the Government have chosen to encourage the provision of public lavatories is a great public good, because adequate lavatory provision is a liberation for many millions of people, for whom the thought of not finding one when they go out is a significant restriction on their participation in society as a whole. There are said to be some 14 million people in this country with bowel or bladder problems. That is a very large proportion of the population who are worried about being able to access a public lavatory when they go out.

I really encourage the Government, perhaps not immediately but during the progress of the legislation, to look at opportunities to extend its reach. An obvious example is lavatories in stations, which everyone regards as public lavatories. Victoria station is very well used. It is only in a very peripheral way a part of any other hereditament. The same applies to lavatories in other public buildings, and to push in the direction which is being opened by Amendment 1 is thoroughly worth while.

There is no obvious need for a public lavatory to be a separate building. It seems, given the attractiveness of public lavatories, that having them in a building encourages other uses of that building too, and that their integration into public buildings should be encouraged. If we can find a way round it over the next few years, we should not be privileging just those public lavatories which are free standing.

As has been said, I really hope that the Government look on this as an opportunity, over time, to encourage facilities that are needed for the general public enjoyment of public facilities by extending the rather narrow rating release in the Bill to the many other deserving facilities that are provided at public expense and otherwise, and without which we will find ourselves rather too often caught short.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I have a great deal of sympathy for what the noble Lords, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, Lord Greaves and Lord Lucas, have said in support of these amendments. For some people, venturing into parts of our urban communities where they cannot be sure of access to a public lavatory is a risk that they dare not take. The physical conditions that create this problem can affect all ages. One thinks especially of the elderly, but there are also visitors to the area and others who depend on the uncertainties of public transport to get home. Whoever they are, they need to be provided for.

My interest in this subject, as I have mentioned before, is a professional one. I am interested in whether the amendments to test alternative solutions to those which the Government are suggesting are capable of being put into effect. The valuation of buildings for rating was one of my specialist subjects when I was in practice at the Scottish Bar. The valuation process itself was not for me; that was the job of chartered surveyors. The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, is a distinguished member of that profession, with years of experience in the practice of that art, and I am very sorry that for other reasons he is unable to take part in this debate.

However, valuation for rating is not just about facts and figures. There are some legal rules too, and that is where I come in. The non-domestic rating system is the product of a listing process. Every non-domestic hereditament that is capable of separate occupation must be entered in the valuation list and given a value. A single building may contain within it a number of properties that are in separate occupation. If so, one would expect each of them to be the subject of a separate entry and a separate value, but where one finds a building in a single occupation, the consequence is that the entire building is treated as a separate hereditament and valued accordingly.

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[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB) [V]]

My Lords, the formula proposed by this group of amendments raises an interesting practical question. I support what the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, said on Amendment 6 about the desire to provide for Changing Places facilities where required, but my interest is in a more practical question: whether what is proposed here works with the normal principles of rating and valuation law.

I understand that it is proposed to extend the relief to the more usual situation where there is a public lavatory, or perhaps more than one, within a larger building which is not accessible from outside—the situation contemplated by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, in Amendment 9, which we considered earlier. This being so, these amendments correctly assume that a value has been given to the building as a whole; they seek to extract from that value the amount attributable to the public lavatory or lavatories by asking for it or them to be valued separately and the value given to the building as a whole reduced accordingly. As I said earlier, I am not and never was a valuer, but I fear that the exercise that the amendment contemplates is not nearly as simple as it might seem. The noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, touched on this earlier.

The problem is one that a valuer would readily identify. First, it is not normal for individual elements in a building, such as public lavatories, to be given values in the course of making up the value for the hereditament as a whole, so a valuation exercise would have to be undertaken which is not normally—indeed, probably never has been—undertaken in the course of the valuations we have today. There is also a consequence for the other part of the building that does not consist of these lavatories—the effect of extracting the value and whether the value attributable to the remainder can be properly sustained without some kind of examination. I suspect that this approach runs into quite difficult valuation problems which a valuer would need to explore with the Minister to see whether they could be resolved.

There may be an alternative solution. I mentioned earlier the example of charitable relief; this time I will take another. Rather than engaging in the rather difficult exercise I have hinted at, it might be worth considering applying a derating formula across the board to all hereditaments comprising public lavatories. There is precedent for that approach in a statute introduced in the 1920s to provide relief for industrial hereditaments. These were hereditaments that were shown to be occupied and used as a mine, factory or workshop. The details are to be found in the Rating and Valuation (Apportionment) Act 1928. Hereditaments which met the tests for being treated as subjects of that kind were entitled to a reduction of half their annual value. The aim was to deal with the acute problems of unemployment and to stimulate the economy by encouraging the development of subjects for industrial use. Of course, an enormous problem was being addressed there that was shared across the economy as a whole, and one can well understand the measure and the extent of the relief that derating provided. I should mention that that statute was repealed some years ago so does not apply today.

A 50% reduction would be out of all proportion to what we are talking about when considering the public lavatories element in the overall hereditament, but that does not affect the principle on which the relief was given in these cases: that it is possible, without getting embroiled in detailed valuation exercises, simply to introduce a form of derating for a desirable purpose to encourage whatever one seeks to encourage. If the Minister is not willing to accept these amendments, the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, might find it worth considering a 1% or 2% deduction from the overall figure, perhaps adjustable by statutory instrument in the light of experience, as an alternative to the rather complicated valuation exercises that this group of amendments contemplates.

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I am attracted to the idea that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, has just advanced. After Second Reading, I had a very long and entertaining conversation with the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, on the technical subject of valuation. Some of it may have stuck in my brain, but the overall impression that this was not a simple matter certainly stuck there—in particular, the idea that the uplift in rateable value that comes from having a toilet can be quite substantial. It makes, for instance, the upper floors of a department store much more attractive than one might think. So there are considerable complications underlying the process, and if a toilet was subtracted from the whole, the question of how that whole would be valued fairly—when a toilet is available but it is not being rated—becomes quite complicated. At least, that is the strong impression that I was left with after my conversation.

Intellectual Property (Unjustified Threats) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Hope of Craighead and Lord Lucas

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 23rd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, perhaps I may take this opportunity to say on behalf of my noble and learned friend Lord Saville of Newdigate, who chaired the Special Public Bill Committee, how much he regrets that he is not able to be present at this stage of the Bill. He has authorised me to say that he, having read all the amendments, fully supports them. The fact that they have been brought before the House in this way indicates the hard work that the committee did, and the Bill will no doubt be greatly improved by their being moved.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, we had some extraordinary things on this committee: a Saville committee that ran to time and a Minister who listened, took her conclusions back to her department and the Law Commission, and achieved a most satisfactory series of amendments. That is an achievement that ranks with the dervishes breaking a British square. That the Law Commission should have given in to suggestions from the House of Lords really shows what a fine Minister we have and what a fine job she has done on this Bill. All of us who sat through the committee—who thought we might be doing it all to achieve nothing—are enormously grateful to her.

Children and Families Bill

Debate between Lord Hope of Craighead and Lord Lucas

Tuesday 28th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, I would like to add a brief word of my own in support of the amendment. It is a feature of the amendment, as noble Lords will have noticed, that it places important duties on Ofcom. In fact, the position that Ofcom occupies in the structure has been designed to give a robust nature to the system that is being set up: Ofcom will play a vital part in setting standards, issuing codes and so on. It is worth noting that the proposal fits very well with the structure of the Communications Act 2003, which places duties on Ofcom itself. It also provides that Ofcom shall have such other functions as may be conferred on it by any other enactment, which is what this amendment seeks to do.

Among the duties set out in the 2003 Act is the duty,

“to further the interests of citizens in relation to communications matters”—

a very broad duty. In performing those duties, the Act also says that Ofcom must have regard to,

“the vulnerability of children and of others whose circumstances appear to OFCOM to put them in need of special protection”.

The system that is being devised, therefore, is very much in keeping with the structure that was set some 10 years ago for Ofcom. For that reason, among others, I strongly support the amendment and, in particular, the detail built into it.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, while I share the concerns of the noble Baroness—particularly as I have an 11 year-old daughter—I do not think that her amendment achieves anything. It asks ISPs to do something that is impossible. How can they provide subscribers with an internet access service that excludes adult content? People can use proxy servers; they can link across to their parents’ computers if they have set their parents’ computers up right; they can use sites that are newly created every day and whose URLs are spread by e-mail; they can indulge in these things through chat programmes, where there is nothing about the site that tells you what it is being used for. There are so many ways in which the nasty side of the internet can spread. It is utterly impossible for ISPs to block; there is no technology that would enable them to perform the functions set out here. How does a little ISP know which sites in this swiftly moving internet are offering the content which offends this amendment that were not doing so yesterday and may not do so tomorrow? They get passed around by kids and are designed to be fast moving. I cannot see how there is anything in this approach of requiring individual ISPs to do things that has any hope of success or of producing a law that is feasible and possible for individual companies to do.

If we were to approach this, perhaps, on a national level by asking our friends in Cheltenham—who, presumably, already read most of this stuff—to put a stopper on the stuff that would offend, perhaps we would have some hope of keeping up with the pace of the avoidance mechanisms that are out there. Unless we do it in a co-ordinated way like that, we really have no hope of achieving exclusion. I therefore beg the noble Baroness to think again and to look rather at enabling parents to exercise proper jurisdiction over what their children are doing. It is really quite hard to find good programmes that you can put on your children’s machines that will tell you what they have been doing and enable you to share with them what they have been seeing and experiencing on the internet and to educate and guide them. By and large, those programmes are not available on ISPs’ websites. Individual parental responsibility has a much better hope of looking after our children than pretending that we can block something when we cannot.