Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 14th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Hannan in his opposition to Clause 1 standing part of this Bill and support the amendment to Clause 2. I apologise for not being present at Second Reading. Fatherly duties in visiting prospective universities intervened, which I could not put off.

We have today a much-improved Bill and a very sensible and pragmatic British compromise. I pay tribute to the flexibility and pragmatism of the noble Baroness, Lady Burt of Solihull, and thank my noble friends Lady Noakes and Lord Moylan for their work in this respect. I was very concerned at the outset of this Bill that we were seeing legislation by anecdote, which is never a good thing. However, we have reached a position which is mutually beneficial.

I was concerned particularly about Clause 1 because I thought that it had a pernicious and consequential chilling effect on free speech. Of course, we all deprecate incivility, discrimination and sexual and other harassment, but this was not the right vehicle for addressing those very significant societal issues.

I accept that the honourable Member for Bath sought in good faith to address some of those concerns through a very narrow exemption tabled in Committee or on Report in the other place but, to me, this was insufficient to safeguard free speech and guard against the very real dangers in the Bill of damaging and divisive litigation. Clause 1 as it now stands—if kept in the Bill—would have an impact that would surely lead to regulatory overreach and a new compliance culture in business and commerce, especially in the hospitality and leisure industries, at huge, avoidable cost to entrepreneurs and business owners. It would change the relationship between businesses and their customers and, I believe, would be illiberal and draconian in policing everyday interactions between staff, customers and business owners, as well as making vexatious complaints hugely more likely.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 15th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mann (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I support this amendment and reiterate my perplexity at how the politician loves to know better than the people. The higher the politician goes, the more that politician loves to think that they know better than everybody else. That is not a powerful model of democracy. The idea that somehow jumbling around boundaries and structures, and who has which powers, will advance anything positively for society, or for the people, is a perplexing notion.

Some people have kindly suggested that I might want to stand for mayor of some body called Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. I cannot think of anything more appalling than being stuck in some office, trying to influence an incoherent geographical structure that, if anything, thrives on its rivalry rather than on what brings it together. It is a nonsense. The notion that bigger is best for how to change things in society, whatever the Government’s agenda, is a nonsense.

I cite one example, referring, as I have before, to where I live. In neighbourhood planning, planning for rail and community planning, which district council has more such plans in place than any other? I know the answer: Bassetlaw has the most. Why does it have the most? I take a little personal credit for going out and spending many, many weeks—probably months—persuading local people that this was a good idea. It originated under a Labour Government but was put into practice with enthusiasm by coalition and Conservative Governments. I went out and sold that model to people: “Here, you can determine, at the most local level, what should happen in your area”—and people love it. The Government’s objective, which they hid away—I was more up front—was to bring forward more housing. Strangely, when local people decided what happened in their local area, they said, “Here’s where it should go” and, “That would be good”. There was not just small consent but huge consent behind it. There were remarkably high levels of agreement.

This modest amendment is on the same principle. Of course district councils have some flaws; for example, in their ability to recruit the highest grade of staff in a very competitive market. If they have someone brilliant, but it is a small unit, that person can easily be poached by a larger unit and paid more. There are some inherent weaknesses but not in the principle of where democracy lies. I would say that, across the country, the overwhelming majority of lifelong Conservative Party voters would wholeheartedly endorse this amendment, as would many more people who support other parties whole- heartedly or whose votes would float all over the place. However, if the Government do not listen to this, they are hitting their own heartland in the heart, which is not a very clever move.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I shall briefly respond to the cogent arguments made by the noble Lords, Lord Hunt and Lord Mann. They made me almost sentimental for our time in the other place and I was taken back to the comments and speeches there from the noble Lord, Lord Mann.

Although, superficially, I can see the merit of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, he does not take the concept of subsidiarity into account. This is what district councils are best at doing and it is at the lower level, although the functions are important. The purpose of the Bill is to leverage funding for strategic economic benefit. It is about inward investment, strategic transport and returns to scale from, for instance, police forces and fire services working together. It is not about diminishing the role, heritage and historical legacy of district councils.

My own area, Peterborough, in 1968 was a small, semi-rural, cathedral market town. No one imagined that it was ready to become a new town and have the significant growth that it saw between then, when it was designated a new town, and the 1990s. There was massive residential housing growth, big industries coming and the expansion of Perkins Engines, Thomas Cook, et cetera. My point is that, when it was a small district council, Peterborough could not have brought that economic powerhouse and growth itself; it had to work with other agencies and the Peterborough Development Corporation.

I am not arguing for a reconfiguration of development corporations, although the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, knows a lot about how they benefited Stevenage. My point is that you have to work with these larger bodies, which are below national but above small district council level. Take another example from the county of Suffolk. Local authorities, such as St Edmundsbury and Forest Heath were tiny; they could not deliver the core functions, in a globalised world, to bring jobs, opportunities, apprenticeships and new businesses to their areas. That is the point of this legislation; it is not about diminishing the role of district councils, but about helping them better fulfil their roles and responsibilities.

I can imagine the noble Lord, Lord Mann, becoming the mayor of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. I cannot think of a better candidate and am sure he would stand a good chance.

Oxford is a slightly strange example because it is, in effect, a world city. Three or four of our universities are in the world top 10, and Oxford is at the very heart of the success story of British academic repute. So Oxford is not a good example, but it obviously functions as a very important part of the greater Thames Valley, as an area of economic regeneration.

Having been a local councillor for eight years, albeit for a London borough, my heart is with the points of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, but I think that the Government’s endeavours go in the right direction. Only if we can think big, work together and collaborate can we generate the economic activity, jobs and skills that will, eventually, we hope, regenerate local government and complement central government.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, it has been an interesting debate and I am grateful for noble Lords’ contributions. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, made very clear the key part that district councils play, in particular in local communities but also in the bigger architecture of local government outside the big cities. It is an argument that the noble Lord and these Benches have advanced before and we support it.

I like the noble Lord’s amendment, of course, but I want to move on to what the noble Lord, Lord Mann, had to say. He was, I think, claiming credit for neighbourhood plans. I am delighted to hear that, because I usually claim credit for them and I know a number of Conservatives who always claim credit for them as well. They have been remarkably successful and have done just what they said on the tin. I have a tip for the Government; it is one that I keep making but they keep forgetting. Neighbourhood plans have been so successful that they have designated more housing sites than the local plans that they supersede in their areas. Rather than some of the gimmicks that flow through Whitehall and get into Acts of Parliament, neighbourhood plans have actually done the job and filled the gaps. I hope that that point will be registered strongly.

The noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, made a sound point about economic development. It is clearly very important, but that brings me to my criticism of the Government’s intentions as far as it is concerned. Economic development is one of the core functions of district councils. If they are not going to be seen as an important component in delivering it, something has been missed out of the system. Clause 86(2) says that

“regard is to be had to … the development plan, and … any national development management policies.”

It would make an alteration to a preceding Act; the addition is

“any national development management policies.”

My point is that the development plan is there. If you want development, it is going to be in the development plan. Who is responsible for that? It is the district council.

We have a situation where the development plan is in the gift of the local planning authority, which is the district council in two-tier areas. The district council has statutory responsibility for housing, economic planning and, for that matter, the location of social infrastructure such as clinics, schools, colleges and so on. They are in fact integral to delivering levelling up. I cannot understand—I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us this—what the architecture is for the delivery of the national development management plans, which, as far as Clause 86 is concerned, clearly sit bang alongside the local plans of the district council.

On the face of it, the CCAs are completely bypassed. They do not have a role in deciding what the national plan is, nor in deciding what the local plan is. The connection is straight between the local planning authorities and district councils, not CCAs, when it comes to those planning decisions.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

Would not the noble Lord concede that a large number of functions at the district council level, such as environmental health and planning, are delivered through the collaboration of district councils together for the reason that individual district councils do not have the resources in staffing or money to deliver them on their own? Therefore, a complex district plan being delivered by just one local authority may have been the case in the past but is not necessarily happening at the moment.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

One part of what the noble Lord says is certainly true, because a lot of local plans are not happening at the moment. All I say is that the Bill restates that development plans are a key lever, together with national development management plans. Those are in the custodianship of district councils, albeit that they may well work alongside other district councils or, for that matter, in combination with the county. I am simply making the point that the legal architecture in Clause 86 links district councils’ local plans to the national development plans, while the CCAs are not in the picture. Clearly, CCAs are intended to be the absolute economic driver for levelling up; that point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Jackson. It seems odd that the principal vehicle at the local level for setting that scene—the development plan—will be outside the grip of the CCAs, for better or worse, and that the people who do the district plans will be outside the CCAs. There is a disconnect there that, frankly, disables the whole process. There I am completely with the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. Surely they should be at the heart of the process and, by the logic of that, should have the capacity to at least put forward a proposal, which would still be subject to the Secretary of State’s decision about how it might develop.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I want to make a brief contribution to this debate, because it goes to the heart of the discussion about whether we believe in decentralisation and about the role of local government in a decentralised country.

The levelling up White Paper says:

“We’ll usher in a revolution in local democracy.”


Later on, it states that local leaders in other countries have

“much greater revenue-raising powers”,

a point that the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, has just made. As I said at Second Reading, there is nothing about greater revenue-raising powers in the Bill, and the probing amendment that we have just heard moved puts that right by initiating a broader discussion.

I welcome some of the announcements in the Budget about devolving more powers to mayoral authorities and allowing local authorities to retain more of the business rates, but devolving greater ability to spend central government money and keeping more of their own money is not actually the move towards a more self-sufficient, independent and confident local government that many of us would like to see.

I take this opportunity to briefly restate a suggestion that I made in January. Over the next 10 years, some £25 billion in fuel duty will disappear as we all buy electric vehicles, and the revenue foregone will be met by road pricing, now made possible by in-car technology —a transition that successive Governments have ducked but, I suspect, will not be able to duck much longer. However, that revenue from road pricing should not go to the Treasury or central government; it should complement the existing revenue from parking and congestion charges, where it would logically sit, and go to the larger units of local government which we have been debating today. That would give local government greater autonomy and a sounder basis for local taxation than the increasingly discredited and out-of-date council tax.

There are other ways of raising local revenue, and the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, touched on a few. However, in replying to this debate, I wonder whether my noble friend can show just a little bit of ankle on the Government’s thinking—whether they are really interested in empowering genuine local democracy by giving the sort of powers implied in this amendment.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I wish to speak briefly to this very good and interesting probing amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, and it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Young, who I know has great expertise in local government. We represented different parts of the London Borough of Ealing in different capacities over many years.

The noble Lord, Lord Scriven, has not compared apples with apples but apples with pears. We are a unitary state—we are not a federal state like Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy or France, where they have regional government and a culture of accretion of power to the local level. Therefore, we have to have some central sanction and control of the disbursal of funds. So I do not think that the noble Lord is necessarily comparing the situation that we are in wholly accurately.

However, the noble Lord makes a very astute point about the hoarding of power, particularly financial power, by the Treasury. Any Minister will tell you that, over the years, the Treasury has not wanted to give power away and has wanted to bring in power. The noble Lord is absolutely right that far too much of the funding of core local services is in effect subject to the begging-bowl approach, as enunciated by Andy Street, the executive mayor of the West Midlands.

The problem with the situation that we now have—the disparity of local councils being responsible to their electorate for decisions, in effect, taken centrally—is that central government of whatever party is in power gets the income in and can make those judgments based on its manifesto, but it is local councillors and officers who are accountable and often take the brickbats for failures. For instance, many people have argued for many years about residential real estate investment trusts leveraging private sector money to provide new, good-quality housing for young people in particular. The Treasury has never really advanced that properly, and local government could be very much involved in it. Social care is another area. All Governments should look at tax breaks for providing extra care facilities—in terms of nutrition, housing, exercise and so on—for old people from the age of 60 all the way through to death, as many countries have across the world. That is an example of a central government policy that could also help local government.

I have great sympathy for the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Scriven. I hope there is further debate on it. It cannot be right that we cannot follow other modern liberal democracies such as the United States where local authorities and mayors have the capacity, for instance, to raise funds for the issuance of bonds, local infrastructure and capital projects. We have very restrictive financial and legal rules in this country that prevent us doing the same. On that basis, we have begun a good debate and I look to my noble friends on the Front Bench to run with it and, as my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham said, show some ankle, as it is long overdue.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, we have begun the debate. That is the intention of this probing amendment, because we must have it.

Today’s Budget decentralises—but does not devolve—some powers, although not fiscal ones, to combined authorities, which is welcome but comparatively minor. In other words, if a combined authority was able to adjust a block grant and make different decisions on how to commit expenditure from it, that would be welcome. However, it is not a fiscal policy. As the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, said, it would be helpful if the Government could explain their thinking on devolving real fiscal powers.

I would pick up the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, on one statement. He said that we are not a unitary state. That would be hard to explain in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, and it goes to the heart of the problem as I see it. Substantial devolved powers, including fiscal ones, reside in Scotland, Wales and, theoretically, Northern Ireland that do not apply in England. Yet England is a country of 56 million people. It is far too big to operate out of centralised control in Whitehall, but there is a very strong argument for saying that, in terms of Treasury control and the Government’s desire to do things on a hub and spoke model in which all the financial resources are controlled in London, England is a unitary state.

I want to add one thing to the excellent contribution from my noble friend Lord Scriven and the other contributions from the noble Lords, Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Jackson of Peterborough, which I really appreciated. Can the Government explain why Scotland and Wales can have fiscal powers but no constituent part of England is permitted to have them? That is the nub of the problem, and it is why starting the debate on this issue is very important.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

The noble Baroness is making a very good point, but she will no doubt agree with me that sometimes things go wrong— for instance in the recent experiences in Slough and Thurrock —with inappropriate spending or error. In the absence of the Audit Commission, which I remind noble Lords on the Liberal Democrat Benches was abolished under the coalition Government, surely there must be some sanction at central government for inappropriate expenditure. It may be just incompetence, and not even at a criminal level. In the absence of an equivalent to the National Audit Office for local government, there must be ways for Ministers to exercise discretion on financial issues in local government on behalf of taxpayers.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I do not disagree that audit is required. We debated that earlier on the Bill. The authorities mentioned are Conservative authorities, as in Northampton, where my good friends in Corby lost their council because of the actions of a council of another political persuasion. That is a political point, which I probably should not make here.

A proper consideration of the role of further fiscal powers, with full engagement of local government— I am not suggesting that this is done to us because it would go against all the principles that we are talking about—could provide the basis for an empowered, innovative and dynamic shift for CCAs and their constituent members, sitting alongside the completion of the fair funding review, which has been outstanding for years now and which we have discussed previously.

Voter Identification

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd February 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Scott of Bybrook) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government stood on a manifesto commitment to introduce voter identification in Great Britain, and we are delivering on that promise. Voter identification is not a new concept; it has been in place in Northern Ireland for 20 years, where it is seen as increasing the security of the ballot.

According to government research, 98% of the electorate already have accepted photographic ID from a wide list available under legislation. For those who do not, the voter authority certificate can be applied for today free of charge. The rollout of these measures is progressing well, and it is now incumbent on all of us to prepare. I urge noble Lords to support their local authorities in raising awareness and ensuring the successful implementation of this important safeguard for our democracy.

It is inexcusable for anybody to cast another person’s vote in a polling station. We must be alert to any weaknesses in our processes which may undermine the strength of our democratic processes. Deception within a polling station is exactly that: deception. You cannot count it because you do not necessarily know it is happening. We need to be sure, as many others have told us we should be, in order to be more secure in those polling stations.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, this is about protecting the integrity of the electoral system. It is welcomed by those of us who previously represented areas which have been bedevilled by electoral fraud—in my case, Peterborough, where we had a very famous case of personation in 2004. I would like to bring the attention of the House in more detail to the research in May 2021 from IFF Research, which found that 98% of voters have access to voter ID and that there was no difference across young and old, black and minority-ethnic people, and the general voter cohort. I ask my noble friend the Minister this: if it has been good enough for Northern Ireland since 2003, and it is good enough for Switzerland, Italy, France, Germany and Canada, then why is it not good enough for the rest of the United Kingdom?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My noble friend is absolutely right. It is good enough for Northern Ireland—which is part of the United Kingdom, and we should be following it—as it is for many other countries across the world. That is why we are rolling it out and why it will be successful.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 17th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, it is an honour and a privilege to address your Lordships’ House for the first time. I do so with some humility and not a little nervous anticipation.

Walter Bagehot once remarked rather ungraciously:

“The cure for admiring the House of Lords is to go and look at it.”


I would venture quite the opposite. Having served in the other place, I have only now begun to appreciate the residual wisdom, experience and knowledge which exists among Members of this House as it fulfils its proper constitutional role of scrutiny and oversight of the Commons and the Executive.

I am grateful to the officers of the House and the staff for their warm welcome and professionalism—and not least to the excellent catering staff, who made the celebration luncheon on the day of my introduction such a unique and unforgettable occasion. I wish warmly to thank those noble Lords who did me the honour of introducing me: my noble friend Lady Stroud, who combines intellectual rigour with a principled advocacy of the family, and my noble friend Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton, a man dedicated to the service of his country, both in and out of uniform, over many years. We made our maiden speeches in the Commons on the same day in June 2005—he, no doubt, did so with much more aplomb.

Noble Lords will note that I have taken Peterborough as the geographical part of my title. I am somewhat conflicted, having been dismissed by the electors of that constituency in 2017—what is called “offboarding” in human resources—but I do not bear grudges. Not only is it a fine old city and a new town but, more importantly, it is home to friends and my family, to whom I owe inordinate thanks for their loyalty and support over many years, especially my wife Sarah.

Perhaps I myself am an example of levelling up. My mother was born into poverty in County Wexford as the Second World War broke out, and my father began his work life in the railway coachworks at Wolverton, aged 16. Their faith and encouragement have played a big part in leading me here to your Lordships’ House, as well as a degree of serendipity and luck.

It is natural that I should speak on this Bill, having been a local councillor in London for eight years focusing on housing and planning. I was honoured also to serve as a vice-president of the Local Government Association, and I advocated for elected police and crime commissioners many years before it was fashionable.

The United Kingdom is a deeply divided nation and regional imbalances are long standing, a product of over-centralisation, relatively weak local government, poor infrastructure and investment skewed towards London and the south-east. The gap between the richest and poorest parts of Britain is larger than in any other European country on any empirical measure—GDP, gross value added, regional disposable income or life expectancy, for example. It is a startling fact that, north of the line between the Wash and the Bristol Channel, where 47% of Britons live, people are as poor as those in eastern Germany or the US state of Alabama.

This Bill is an urgent necessity if we value social cohesion and a sense of national unity, as well as wealth creation and prosperity. Levelling up is not merely a slogan but a political ambition with a long pedigree at the heart of Tory thinking, and it should be seen in a wider historical context. Disparities between different parts of the country—regional, geographical, social, economic—have bedevilled us for decades. I would argue that the Brexit vote was, at least in part, a direct reaction to this endemic problem, which all Governments, whether Labour, Conservative, coalition or Liberal, have failed to address. The problem is hardly new.

Disraeli’s Sybil; or, The Two Nations, published in 1845, highlighted the growing gulf between rich and poor. Disraeli’s persuasive analysis was a catalyst for half a century of Conservative social reform, culminating in the 1867 Reform Act but also including slum clearance, public health Acts, a Factory Act and improvements in working-class housing.

I welcome this Bill—its legally binding levelling-up missions, the ambitious commitment to further devolution, practical steps to bring empty residential properties back into use and auctions for commercial properties to regenerate our high streets. But I will conclude on housing, which is my passion. I strongly endorse the Government’s target of building 300,000 new homes in England by 2025. Levelling up is also arguably a catalyst for addressing the worsening issue of inter- generational fairness. That means building affordable homes for young working people. Fewer than a fifth of under-40s now own their own home; 25 years ago, the figure was almost two-thirds. It is a parlous situation for a party that pioneered the right to buy, especially as many local planning authorities are now pausing or abandoning their local plans. I say gently to my erstwhile friends in the other place: be careful what you wish for when you vote to block housing developments. As a party that believes in the free market, it is hard to extol the values of capitalism if you keep voting to prevent your constituents owning capital. A market for votes is a free market too.

Finally, I never expected to end up in this place, but I promise to use my opportunity and good fortune for the common good and to play an active and constructive role in your Lordships’ House for many years to come.