Housing: Underoccupancy Charge

Lord Jenkin of Roding Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, we have a range of meetings and interactions with local authorities. In particular, at the moment we now have a £20 million discretionary fund on which they can bid. I am hoping to get as much of that money to them as possible.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding (Con)]

My Lords, the House is becoming very well aware that the party opposite does not approve of the removal of the spare bedroom subsidy. Could the Minister confirm that if the policy were reversed, it might cost as much as £1 billion over the next two years? Would the Opposition not be a little more convincing if they could give us some idea of how they would replace that?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, this is a substantial saving, as my noble friend says. Our central estimate is that we will save £500 million a year on this programme, which makes it an important contributor to the Government’s deficit plan. If the Opposition maintain their policy, they need to look at how to find that money back. Not only that, they will run the risk of having to have a similar policy in the private rented sector.

Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill

Lord Jenkin of Roding Excerpts

Monday 3rd June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

My Lords, I shall come back to the speech of the right reverend Prelate at the end of my remarks. Like all of us, I have had a very large amount of correspondence on this subject, much of it by e-mail. Thanks to the Whitsun Recess, I have been able to reply to a great many of these—not all, but most.

My own starting point is something that I learnt many years ago as an undergraduate faced with what was, for me, a new involvement with people who were not heterosexual. I asked my grandfather, who was an extremely wise lecturer at the Edinburgh medical school, all about it. He said, “My dear boy, it is as foolish to condemn those who have homosexual proclivities as it is to condemn them for having red hair”. I have lived with that all my life and I have always opposed discrimination against homosexuals.

In the exchanges I have had through e-mail and other communications, I have identified three clear lines of argument against the Bill. The first I can deal with very briefly. There have been references to homophobia: I am afraid that some of the messages I have received actually reek of homophobia. I was reminded of some of the arguments advanced when Parliament abolished the criminal liability for homosexual conduct between consenting adults. There were those same dreadful arguments, deeply shaming, and I am very sorry that they still exist.

The second argument is one that has been referred to several times in this debate so far. The question is: does the Bill redefine marriage? It was put to me by one correspondent that:

“The Government’s plans will redefine the marriages of the 24 million married people without their consent”.

Other people have referred to their anniversaries. Last year, my wife and I celebrated our diamond wedding, and I have to say that it has been a marriage with mutual comfort and support. Is this Bill going to redefine that marriage? I cannot see how that could possibly happen. I was grateful to my noble friend on the Front Bench for confirming that nothing in this Bill will redefine our marriage or indeed those of the other 24 million married people in this country. One has to regard that argument as really quite misconceived. As others have said, it is not irrelevant that there is a great deal more support for the Bill among young people who are facing marriage, are about to get married or hope to get married than there is among the population generally. They do not see it like that. One has only to think of the possibility of the following happening. A young man poses the question to his intended, “Will you marry me?” and she replies, “Oh no. This Bill has made it all totally different. It’s for gays and lesbians—I can’t possibly marry you”. That is pure fantasy and I do not think we should pay too much attention to it.

The other argument that I have been rather more impressed by, and which again has been mentioned, is the question of the potential liability and difficulties for people, particularly in the public service, who find themselves, in a sense, implementing the provisions of the Bill in one way or another. A number of people, including some of those who have expressed support for the Bill, have voiced these concerns to me, and that is something that this House will need to look at quite carefully. I was very much comforted by the assurance given to us by my noble friend on the Front Bench that Ministers are considering what more might be done to allay those anxieties. I regard that as very important.

Finally, I return to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester. I hope that he will not feel it is unfair if I call him my “old friend”, as indeed he is. I have come to the firm conclusion that there is nothing to fear in gay marriage and that, indeed, it will be a positive good not just for same-gender unions but for the institution of marriage generally. The effect will be to put right at the centre of marriage the concept of a stable, loving relationship. As a practising Christian, perhaps I may make the point to the Bishops’ Benches, including to the most reverend Primate, that there is every reason why, in time, the Anglican Church should come to accept that, although I recognise that it may take some time. The character of love which marriage reflects—that it is faithful, stable, tough, unselfish and unconditional—is the same character that most Christians see in the love of God. Marriage is therefore holy, not because it is ordained by God, but because it reflects that most important central truth of our religion: the love of God for all of us.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Jenkin of Roding Excerpts

Tuesday 14th May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Freud indicated that one of the subjects for debate this afternoon is energy. Her Majesty’s Speech said that the Government will continue with legislation to update energy infrastructure. That is a short description of what will be a pretty long Bill when we receive it from the other place. I will come to that in a moment.

Before I refer to the Energy Bill, I want to say how much I admired the speech made on Thursday by my noble friend Lord Fowler. It was superb and I agreed with every word of it. It was of course about the implementation of the Leveson report. Like my noble friend, I hope that the Government will stand firm with their royal charter on press regulation, which was agreed at the end of the previous Session by the leaders of the three main parties represented in Parliament. At the moment we are witnessing some newspaper groups seeking to substitute their own, much weaker charter. That is no less than a very blatant attempt by those newspapers and their proprietors to keep their status in society as over-mighty subjects. Previous Governments have had to deal with over-mighty subjects. They had to face the Whig aristocracy in the 18th century, the Tory mill and factory owners in the 19th century and the trade unions in the 20th century. The Leveson report exposed the press as the over-mighty subjects of the 21st century, believing, like their predecessors, that they were above the law and outwith the surveillance of Parliament. That can be acceptable to no democratic Government. Some newspapers may dislike intensely the prospect of tougher regulation but the way that they are fighting their case is not a pretty sight. I condemn them and hope that the Government will stand firm on that.

Turning to energy, I want to raise three issues. First, I express dismay at the long delay in the negotiations between EDF and the Government on the terms of the proposed contract for difference and strike price. This was supposed to have been announced before Christmas and here we are, half way through May, and as yet nothing. This is the first test of the Government’s proposals for electricity market reform. It is being watched very carefully by not only the participants in the industry but by a number of other countries that are interested in the model that the Government put forward. A failure to agree would be a severe blow to investor confidence and create a real risk of undermining the central objectives of the Energy Bill. It would also strike a serious blow to the Government’s desire to stimulate growth in the economy and create more jobs through a major infrastructure project. I cannot stress too highly the need for an agreement to be reached and announced very soon, the consequences of which would be wholly beneficial.

Secondly, I was dismayed, as many noble Lords were, when in January Cumbria County Council refused to allow the negotiations with local authorities to host a geological disposal facility for nuclear waste to proceed to the next stage. The two district councils, Copeland and Allerdale, agreed to do that but the county council—far away in Carlisle—refused and the Secretary of State, my right honourable friend Ed Davey, said that that ended the negotiations.

Yesterday, DECC announced a new open consultation and has called for evidence on the whole siting process. I welcome that, because what it was doing before has clearly gone seriously wrong. In my view, the main reason for the failure of the negotiations in Cumbria was that nobody—not DECC, not Defra, not the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency, not the Sellafield authorities—seemed to have any duty to counteract the wave of malicious anti-nuclear propaganda that swamped the county in the three months before the decision to withdraw was made. I cannot believe that that is the right way to approach such major infrastructure problems. There needs to be a system of instant rebuttal for every erroneous statement made. Otherwise, the people who come to make the decisions are left with only half the information that they need. It is very sad that it was no one’s job to do that.

My third point is that on 18 February, the regulator, Ofgem, sent a very long letter to all the parties interested in the electricity market—the system operators, the transmission system owners, the generators, the suppliers, the traders and representatives of customers—proposing a new process to review what it described as future trading arrangements, or FTAs. At the end of the letter, it posed three questions: do you agree that Ofgem should launch a project to create a high-level design for the future electricity trading arrangements; what key issues should be examined as part of the work stream in that arrangement; and what form should the process take?

I see that opening up the prospect of a much more effective competition regime in an industry that has become a bit sclerotic and, in some respects, monopolistic in its habits. I am told that the indications are that the big six generators and distributors, who totally dominate the market, oppose that proposal. They fear that it will lead to tougher competition for generating capacity and access to the consumer markets. The new players, whom the Government are anxious to attract into the industry—I have met some of them—are likely to support it, as it could lead to opening up markets to them that have hitherto been the almost exclusive preserve of the big six.

My question to the Government is simple: they have a stated aim of increasing competition in the electricity generation and distribution market. If the big six are opposing a new structure and the new players are supporting it, where do the Government stand? What is the DECC attitude to that? I have heard nothing about that. I cannot reasonably expect answers from my noble friend Lord Howe at the end of the debate, but I hope that what I have said might be studied. I am grateful to see my noble friend Lady Verma on the Front Bench. I hope that it may be drawn to the attention of those concerned with those issues.

Energy: Nuclear Safety

Lord Jenkin of Roding Excerpts

Thursday 11th November 2010 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government when they will lay the proposed Legislative Reform Order to change the status of the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud)]

My Lords, the Government attach great importance to the ongoing robust, effective and efficient regulation of the nuclear energy sector in the UK and expect to make a full announcement on the future of nuclear regulation very shortly.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

I thank my noble friend. He may find himself slightly surprised to be answering questions about nuclear safety, but is he aware that this legislative reform order is essential now if the inspectorate is to meet all the challenges with which it is faced? Is he also aware that this has been going on for months and months and that the order has the full support of the whole industry, the unions and the inspectorate? Forgive my impatience, but how much longer are we going to have to wait?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, as I said, we are hopeful of making a full announcement in the very near future. The two options under consideration for reform of nuclear regulation are, first, for a discrete agency within the Health and Safety Executive, which could be achieved rather rapidly without legislation, or, secondly, for a stand-alone statutory corporation, which could be delivered on a slower timescale either through the drawing up of a legislative reform order or through primary legislation. Both legislative routes offer potential advantages and disadvantages. As I said, I hope to be in a position to announce our decision very shortly.