Housing Associations

Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts

Thursday 8th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The noble Lord makes a valid point. We are concerned at the way in which certain housebuilders use the viability test to reduce the percentage of homes on their sites for social housing. We are reviewing the viability test with a view to increasing the original intention on these sites to have a fixed percentage of social housing units.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, I refer the House to my relevant interests in the register. Does the Minister agree that the loss of more homes for social rent, as outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, is making a difficult situation even worse, and that as people move into more expensive rental properties the taxpayer ends up paying more for the increased housing benefit bill for those tenants who claim that benefit at the higher cost?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

No, I do not agree, for the reason that I gave a few moments ago. Houses built on affordable rents are available at roughly 20% below market price, and of course housing benefit is available to help those on low incomes to pay the rent. As I said a moment ago, you have a choice to make: you can get either more houses at slightly higher rents or fewer houses at slightly lower rents. We went for the option to build more houses. On the noble Lord’s final point, he keeps reminding us of his connection with Lewisham as an elected councillor of that borough. He might like to know what Sir Steve Bullock, the Mayor of Lewisham, said about our housing policies:

“This specific cash injection for affordable homes will allow the Mayor of London, boroughs and other partners to carry out and extend ambitious plans to properly tackle the capital’s housing crisis”.


I hope the noble Lord agrees with his colleague.

Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies Act 2014 (Amendments to Audit Requirements) Order 2017

Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts

Thursday 1st February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, I have some brief comments in respect of the orders in front of us today. I declare that I am a member of the Co-operative Group and have been a member of the Co-op, as it were, for over 40 years, after starting off in the Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society. I am also a director of the London Mutual Credit Union, one of the biggest credit unions in London. These orders will affect us because its turnover is in excess of the uprated ones here.

The audit requirement is good news, and will certainly help many smaller credit unions in terms of the audit function burdens they have. The point the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, made about ensuring that the organisations are properly accounted for is important as well. These sums of money are owned by members. They should be properly accounted for and any risks taken into account. Where there are problems, people should be alerted to them, and they should be dealt with properly.

I support the building society order, which enables them to join clearing houses. I see from the papers that the Government consulted the large building societies. That is fine, but did they also consult the Building Societies Association, which is the umbrella body for them? I cannot see that there are any views from it in the papers here.

It is a good move to put mutual societies in Northern Ireland under the umbrella of the FCA. The credit union sector in Northern Ireland is very big and much bigger than it is in the rest of the United Kingdom—in fact, the credit union sector is big in the whole island of Ireland. Giving it protection under the umbrella of the FAC is very welcome.

[Lord Mawson (CB)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy. Although I am not sighted on the detail of the co-operative and community benefit societies order, it feels like the right direction of travel. My point is really just a general one. I spend a lot of my life in SMEs and small charities, and at the moment many of them are becoming overwhelmed by the amount of bureaucracy, red tape and other things that are appearing on their desks. My question is really one that the Minister might take back to government. Someone needs to look carefully at what is happening to these small organisations, in terms of the amount of red tape and things that are appearing on their desks, and whether we can create this direction of travel for some of them. It is just a general point and a concern.

I was at a small charity last weekend, with one member of staff and two part-time people working in it, which is doing a great piece of work around education in the local community. The amount of treacle and stuff they were having to deal with was immense and extraordinary. You can feel many good people, who want to do good things in their community, wondering how much longer they can have a role in these kinds of things. They become very fearful of the 92-page document that appears on their desk. It is a general point, but one that needs to go back to government.

Local Government Elections (Referendum) Bill [HL]

Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 15th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, on securing a Second Reading for his Bill. I draw the attention of the House to my entry in the register of interests, in particular as a councillor in the London Borough of Lewisham and a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

The noble Lord made reference to the Co-op in his opening remarks. I have been a member of the Co-op for as long as I have been a member of the Labour Party—39 years last month. Along with my noble friend Lady Hayter of Kentish Town, I sit in this House as a Labour and Co-op Peer, and we form a group of 17 Members of your Lordships’ House.

The Bill focuses on referendums for local government electoral systems and is permissive in its aim. If it is passed into law, as we have heard, it would require the Government to introduce their own Bill to bring into effect the implied intention of this Bill. I am not particularly happy with that sort of procedure as it is fairly cumbersome and uses up parliamentary time unnecessarily—and, for reasons we are aware of, parliamentary time is not in plentiful supply at the moment. If the Bill did in fact become law, we might as well have done what it is requesting that the Government do in the first place. So procedurally it would be better to have a much sharper Bill than the one before us today.

Since 1997, Governments have introduced a variety of voting systems into elections in the United Kingdom. We have a closed list system for the election of Members to the European Parliament; the supplementary vote system for the election of mayors and police and crime commissioners; and additional member closed list systems to introduce an element of proportionality into the election of the London Assembly, Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly. As has been said, the Labour/Liberal Democrat coalition Government in the second Scottish Parliament introduced proportional representation for local government in Scotland. The noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, referred to the fact that we have proportional representation for local government elections in Northern Ireland.

So there are many systems and it could be argued that that itself is a problem. I would certainly favour cutting down the number of systems that are used to elect people to various offices in the United Kingdom. When I cast my vote for the Mayor of London and the London Assembly, I get three ballot papers and vote using three different systems, one for each election. I use supplementary vote for the Mayor of London; first past the post for the constituency member; and I vote for a closed party list for the London-wide members, which are allocated on a proportional basis when the count takes place.

I am aware that the Conservative party made a commitment in its manifesto to replace the supplementary vote system used for mayors and police and crime commissioners with the first past the post system. My own party’s manifesto at the general election was silent on the issue of voting systems, but there was a commitment to establish a constitutional convention—that would certainly have looked at the question of devolution in England outside London and where power is held and used at the present time. If there were to be changes to structures, consideration would have been given to the system of election used at different tiers of government.

As I said at the start of my remarks, the proposals in the Bill are a fairly cumbersome procedure. If we want to do what is implied in the Bill, I would be clearer and more direct and seek to bring about the change with the Bill before us today. There are a few issues with the Bill, some of which have been referred to by other noble Lords. In Clause 1(2), I am not sure whether another electoral system would be helpful in areas that are not unitary. As I said earlier, we need to reduce the number of systems. I would also prefer that, if we are going down this route, we should be clear about what system to introduce. An ever-expanding patchwork of different systems, with different systems side by side and at different levels in the same area, does not give us the clarity that is important.

In Clause 1(3)(a) the petition should not be coming to the Government or Parliament: it should be presented and checked by the local authority where the petition seeks to change the electoral system. That has happened for the election of mayors and also for referendums to abolish them. In Clause 1(3)(b) there is a double lock that requires the local government body to vote for the referendum by passing a resolution, having received a petition that meets the 10% threshold. That may or may not be right; it is certainly an effective blocking mechanism that could result in very few, if any, referendums taking place. The noble Lords, Lord Lipsey and Lord Tope, both referred to this.

This Bill needs a day or two in Committee to see how it can be improved before making progress and leaving this House. As I always say when speaking on Private Members’ Bills on a Friday, this can be done very effectively in the Moses Room—but the Government insist on a commitment Motion to a Committee of the Whole House rather than a Grand Committee, effectively making it difficult for all but the few Private Members’ Bills which they support to make any meaningful progress. They are caught in a log-jam and that is a real shame. The Bills that do make progress often originate in the other place, sponsored by Back-Bench Conservative MPs and may well be from the off-the- shelf collection of Private Members’ Bills which the Government are happy to see passed into law but for which they do not want to, or cannot, provide government parliamentary time at the moment.

However, that is not to say that the noble Lord’s Bill does not highlight that, in some parts of the country, things have become polarised, resulting in a situation where effective opposition is no longer evident in many of our town halls. I firmly believe that it is important to have effective challenge and opposition at every level of government; and where that is not possible because of the result of an election, it can be a problem. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, referred to such situations in her remarks. Some local authorities have sought to make some provision for opposition by allowing sole opposition councillors to table motions without a seconder or by agreeing to always formally second motions from a sole opposition councillor to enable a debate to take place. That is welcome and I congratulate the councils that do it.

I would not like to see the direct link between councillors and the electorate broken because it is one of the benefits of the first past the post system. But perhaps a think tank or some other organisation should look at what can be done to address the issue of effective opposition and challenge in our town halls. Perhaps options such as an additional member list could be thought through. Such a system could be triggered if the combined number of all opposition members is less than 10% of the total, and used to bring the opposition parties up to at least 10% of the total membership of the council by providing additional members elected on an area-wide basis. That would allow motions to be voted on, alternative budgets to be proposed, actions of the majority party to be condemned as an outrage to local democracy, and all the other things that should happen in a local council meeting. That is just a thought, not a policy, but it might be useful to look at along with other ideas.

I can tell the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, that I will think carefully about his Bill and its proposals. It is very likely that I will table amendments to bring about what I see as improvements to the current Bill. This has been an interesting and useful debate, and it is surely about to get even better with the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham.

Grenfell Tower

Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts

Thursday 14th December 2017 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to ensure that survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire do not spend Christmas and New Year in temporary accommodation.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, the Government are supporting the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in rehousing survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire as quickly as possible. Rehousing must proceed at a pace that respects the needs, wants and situations of survivors, but bureaucratic inertia must not add to delay. In line with the recent task force report, I expect the council to do whatever is necessary to ensure that households can move into settled homes as swiftly as possible.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, today is six months since the tragedy at Grenfell Tower, and we remember the victims and survivors of that terrible night. I pay tribute to the emergency service workers, the public sector staff, the voluntary sector and the faith communities for working up to this very moment to get the community back on its feet. Six months is a very long time in these circumstances, and to be living in hotel accommodation, vulnerable, unsettled and traumatised, is no way to spend Christmas. Can the Minister tell the House what specific action the Government are taking to get these families into accommodation in the new year? On the anniversary of this terrible tragedy, we want to be talking about going forward, not still talking about housing families in permanent accommodation. Despite what the noble Lord has said, the situation today for the majority of these families is just unacceptable.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I endorse what the noble Lord said about the response of the fire service—it was on the scene within six minutes—and about the community response. The most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury paid tribute to and spoke very movingly about that response on the “Today” programme.

To bring the House up to date: 151 homes were lost in the fire; some of those homes were overcrowded and others had multi-generational households which now wish to divide, so 210 households that formerly lived in Grenfell Tower and Grenfell Walk need to be rehoused. One hundred and forty-four households have accepted an offer of either temporary or permanent accommodation; 99 have moved in—54 into temporary housing and 45 into permanent housing—and 111 are in emergency accommodation, of whom 66 are yet to accept an offer of either permanent or temporary accommodation.

The noble Lord asks, quite rightly, what action is being taken. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea plans, by Christmas, to have acquired 300 homes, set against the 210 that are needed. It is acquiring two homes a day. I quite agree that Christmas is no time to spend in emergency accommodation; the Government are acutely aware of that. In the four hotels where most of the families are, specific arrangements have been made for the families to have space of their own to meet each other and to entertain their wider families, if they want to. A lot of services are being put on by voluntary or faith groups over the Christmas period to help and support those families.

We very much hope that by June next year everyone will have moved into permanent accommodation, but families need to move in their own time. Some who are in emergency accommodation do not want to move into temporary accommodation because they might have to move twice. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is doing intensive work alongside the families, finding out what accommodation they need and where they need it, and seeking to match that with the 300 houses that it is acquiring. I very much hope that by June everybody will have been offered and accepted permanent accommodation.

Combined Authorities (Mayoral Elections) (Amendment) Order 2017

Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts

Wednesday 6th December 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, has just referred to improving the integrity of the ballot. That is precisely what was behind the debates we had some years ago on electoral registration, which I opposed most vigorously, as indeed did some of my noble and honourable friends. The reason was quite simple. We are wasting millions of pounds on electoral registration when in fact we should be doing what the noble Baroness herself said. We should be concentrating our efforts on where the real fraud lies, and that is in selected areas. I remember moving an amendment to do something precisely to that effect in this place. We had a Labour Government at the time but they rejected it. We should not have been wasting money on a national scheme; we should have concentrated our efforts on those areas with a real problem. We knew that where there was a problem, local authorities themselves would ask for additional resources to sort out the issues. Of course that is why we still have some fraud in the system.

I want to go a little wider on this. The noble Baroness referred, I think, to polling cards. Again, there is an inconsistency because she wants to enforce some kind of system to make sure that ID works. Well, why not go the whole hog and have ID cards, which would sort out the whole problem? In those circumstances we could do away with electoral registration. We would go down exactly the same route as I did the other day with the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Young, at the Dispatch Box, because he knows that the ID card is the way to sort this problem out.

I want to turn to something else regarding the nomination form because there has been some discussion about nomination papers. I have always believed that when a candidate stands for public office, there should be a declaration of interest. Why should there not be a full declaration of interest on the nomination form which is published by the local authority, whether it be a candidate for a parish council, Parliament or whatever? The public would then know the interests of the person standing. The problems with these people standing for public office often arise out of the fact that they have an interest which subsequently turns out to have compromised the positions that they are taking within their respective authorities. I put that to the Minister—I do not expect an answer today. However, let us now consider the whole question of declaration of interests by candidates being published at elections where everyone can see them.

Lastly, I raise the whole question of the voting system. One of the great—I suppose it was minor—contributions I have made in my modest political career was to devise the supplementary vote system. I named it in my house, brought it here, and in the end it was adopted by the Labour Government and is still in operation in mayoral elections. I would like to see an audit on how effective it has been, because there is still some criticism of the supplementary vote. My view is that it works. When you check through the election results over the year in the various authorities, whether that is in police authorities or whatever, and you look at where it has worked, it has worked in some interesting areas. Have the Government done an audit of how it operates, and how effectively?

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, I will make only a few brief remarks on the order and the regulations. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, I refer the House to my interests as a councillor—in the London Borough of Lewisham—and as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

In general I am supportive of the order and the regulations—I have no problem with them as such. However, there are some issues. As we have heard, one of the themes in the review is fraud. Issues of fraud have been reported far and wide over a number of years in the media and there have been a number of court cases in which people have, quite rightly, been prosecuted and some sent to prison, deservedly so. I think we all agree that we want to make sure that fraud is driven out of our electoral system, and if these go some way towards helping to do that, that is well and good and I support it.

We have had a number of pilots in this area of policy over a number of years—I certainly remember that the Labour Government, and particularly Jack Straw, loved pilots. I just hope that if we have these pilots, we will make a decision on them and move them along a little. I am all for pilots but I want a conclusion as well. If they are seen to improve the electoral system, we should go ahead with them.

On the nomination papers, obviously that is fine. I am surprised that we need to do that, but I am happy that we agree those nomination papers.

I may have heard the Minister say that we consult the people we normally consult, which is the Electoral Commission and the Association of Electoral Administrators—two fine bodies. I have certainly made the point—if not to the Minister then to other Ministers sitting in that position on behalf of the Government—that the one group that is always missed out is the political parties. We have some experts in these areas. I was a member of the Parliamentary Parties Panel, which is the statutory body that the commission consults, and I then became an electoral commissioner, so I sat on the Electoral Commission. I can tell your Lordships that at no point did these bodies consult on these issues with the political parties. They do not. They might say that they do, but they do not, and it is a shame. They might say that we do not need to on this one, because these are purely technical matters. There are people from all parties—we all know some of them very well— who are expert in these areas and can give valuable information, insight and experience. It is a shame; the Government should as a matter of course add in the political parties and formally consult them as well. It would not be a great problem for the Government to do that. We should certainly not rely on the Electoral Commission. As I said, it is a good body and great people—and great commissioners—work there, but I do not want it to consult, because it will not. It does not; it will talk to the administrators, and as this is a technical issue and not a campaign it will not involve the parties. Maybe we should think about that.

My noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours makes a valid point about ID cards and fraud. That certainly would have dealt with the issue. The issue is of course that some people do not have ID or what is acceptable ID when you go along to the polling station—what would be acceptable? Everyone has a passport or a driving licence, so what will not be acceptable? That is an issue to deal with. Also, Northern Ireland has a little electoral card, which is very popular, especially among young people, because they say, “It gets us into pubs and clubs because it proves we’re 18”. It is not an ID card but an electoral card provided by the Chief Electoral Officer for Northern Ireland.

My noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours mentioned the supplementary vote. All these systems are interesting and useful. I prefer the alternative vote, because it spreads the vote around more evenly than the supplementary vote, but other systems are definitely worth looking at.

Having said that, I support these measures as far as they go. I look forward to the noble Lord’s response.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in this short debate, all of whom have indicated their broad support for the measures before the Committee but have raised a number of other issues. A number of those who have spoken are vice-presidents of the Local Government Association. I am not, but I was a vice-president of a predecessor body called the AMA. I was expelled either for rate-capping or for abolishing the GLC, which may well be spent convictions.

I will deal with some of the issues raised. The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, is quite right that there are a range of recommendations in the Pickles report. We are dealing with some of them, such as those on harvesting votes by political parties and behaviour at polling stations. They are being dealt with on a separate track.

Tower Hamlets is piloting postal vote ID, to pick up the point the noble Baroness made, so we will have more information on what the options are for dealing with the issue of potential fraud with postal votes, which she raised. In principle, postal votes are a good thing because they help drive up participation in the democratic process. They are a very convenient way of voting, so I would not want to move away from the system we have of postal votes on demand, but we will discover more from Tower Hamlets about how one can drive up the integrity of the system.

Turning to some of the other points made, I take the point that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, made about trying to target the pilot schemes on particular areas where there are known to be problems. The approach we have adopted at this stage is to invite local authorities to take part in the pilot schemes, rather than be prescriptive, which is the approach he was in favour of. Tower Hamlets, which is an area where there has been some difficulty, is taking part in one of the pilot schemes on postal votes.

So far as declarations of interest are concerned, my experience is that the interests of candidates are widely advertised during the process of the campaign— quite often by their opponents. Putting them on the ballot paper would make the ballot paper very cumbersome. I think the noble Lord’s suggestion was that they might go on the nomination paper. We will look at that in conjunction with the Electoral Commission.

On the supplementary vote, there is a Private Member’s Bill coming up in the name of my noble friend Lord Balfe looking at alternative methods of electing local councillors. He is in favour of some form of PR for local government, so if the noble Lord is free on a Friday, there will be an opportunity for him further to develop his views. The supplementary vote is of course used at the moment, as the noble Lord said, for local mayors, combined authority mayors, the London mayor and the PCCs, so it is already embedded in part of the process. I do not think we have any plans to use it more widely.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

Individual voter registration was introduced, I think with the support of the Opposition, by the last coalition Government. It is now there and it is an improvement—

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

I think the Minister will find that it was initially introduced by the Labour Government, then of course the coalition Government changed the rules when they brought the Act in at the start of that Government.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

But I think there was broad all-party support for individual voter registration, which was the point I was making. So we have a lone voice, which I respect, but it is an improvement on the previous system, where it was up to the householder to put people on the voters’ list. Where we are now is a much better system.

On the issue I was talking about a moment ago, we will have a look at declarations of interest but, as I said, putting it all on the ballot paper would make it more difficult for electors to understand. It could lead to errors and confusion in completing the ballot paper. I also mentioned registration. Changing the registration system has ensured that false names cannot be put on the register to allow ghost voters to cast fraudulent ballots, which had been a significant issue in the past.

The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, raised postal vote fraud. I am advised that there is no evidence of organised postal vote fraud since personal identifiers were introduced in 2007. Tower Hamlets will pilot changes to postal voting. On the Watford pilot, if a poll card is missing, the elector can cancel it and be issued with a new poll card to enable them to vote. Poll cards are one of the types of photo and non-photo IDs being tested in the 2018 pilots and, as she said, not all of them will involve having photo ID. We are addressing 48 of the recommendations in the Pickles review and will consider measures to improve the integrity of the postal vote process. The 2018 Tower Hamlets pilot will shed some light on how to take this further.

On advising the parliamentary parties—so in response to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy—I used to be on a parliamentary panel set up by the Electoral Commission. We had regular meetings with the Electoral Commission and all three parties were represented on that panel. Of course, the political parties are represented on the Electoral Commission itself, so when we consult it I would hope that it might touch base with the political representatives on the commission. If not, they will have read this exchange and I am sure they will change their procedures to take on board that criticism. The noble Lord is right that the political parties should be consulted—of course, they are consulted right at the end, as we are doing at the moment in dealing with these statutory instruments.

The ID card system in Northern Ireland is voluntary. You can either get an ID card or use your passport, or some other system. It is very much a voluntary process.

If I have not dealt with all the questions raised, I will certainly write to noble Lords but I welcome their contributions and I commend these instruments to the Committee.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

I have just a couple of points. My noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours talked about specific areas. When I was a commissioner, people at the commission would always talk about hotspots but it was never very clear about what was meant and where they are. That is part of the problem; they always went on about hotspots and I remember discussing them, but I could not get much progress at all.

On these instruments, yes, the commission does a good job and consults the political parties through the Parliamentary Parties Panel, which I was a member of as an official for many years. I was one of the first four political commissioners on the commission and when we had our board meeting, we would look at broad-brush things such as policy. We were not sitting and looking in detail at such regulations. Something is missing here. It is not intentional but it is missing and it would be useful to get that on the record and at some point to have it looked at. That is not a criticism but something that has fallen through the cracks.

Motion agreed.

Democratic Political Activity (Funding and Expenditure) Bill [HL]

Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 27th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, on securing a Second Reading of his Private Member’s Bill. It raises important matters concerning our democracy and the conduct of elections in the United Kingdom.

Some aspects of the Bill I very much agree with but others I do not. I also think that with the pace of technological change, although some measures outlined in the Bill would be new if they became law, they would not completely have the intended effect—in particular, the clause on the free delivery of candidates’ election addresses and Schedule 3 on election addresses and booklets. Although there is nothing wrong in principle with what is proposed here, I think that the collection and use of data by political parties and third parties is a huge issue that should be addressed by Parliament, and that election addresses and other leaflets are having less and less of an impact. My noble friend Lord Whitty made an important point about data-mining and the worrying trend of the abuse and manipulation of data that we are seeing. The noble Lord, Lord Wrigglesworth, was right when he spoke about the speed of change in technology, which will only get faster, and the fact that our laws are struggling to keep pace with that change.

The noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, may tell us shortly that there is a willingness on the part of the Government to initiate constructive discussion with the parties on these and other matters to see whether agreements can be reached but that they cannot impose consensus. If that is the case, it should happen with all haste, as the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, said. All of us in the House are well aware that the Government are drawn from one political party, so they have more interest in this matter than a statement such as that would suggest—they are not an uninterested, independent observer in these matters. As many noble Lords have said, we are at the start of a Parliament which may well run its full term, so this would be the best time to seek to make progress.

To digress slightly, I was delighted that the noble Lord, Lord True, spoke in the debate. I have not had a chance to speak to him of late but I am conscious that he recently stood down from his role as leader of Richmond council. I just want to pay tribute to him for the work that he has done there. He has been an excellent leader and is well respected throughout London and in local government circles. I suppose that, now that he has left those duties, we will see more of him in this House, which can only be of benefit to us all.

Moving back to the Bill, it is a matter of regret that it risks making slow progress, as do many other Private Members’ Bills. As I have repeatedly brought to the attention of the House, that is because the Government will not allow Private Members’ Bills to have their Committee stage in the Moses Room. I do not know why that is so. If some Bills were sent there, we could make more progress overall, and the business would certainly go through more quickly than at the snail’s pace that we often experience on private Members’ legislation in this House. Many of the Bills are sensible and uncontroversial, and would be beneficial if they reached the statute book. I see the Government Deputy Chief Whip in his place. Perhaps he will take my remarks back to his colleagues.

As I said, I do not agree with all the clauses of the Bill but it is enabling a positive discussion to take place. Prior to the election of the Labour Government in 1997, there was in effect very little legislation in respect of donations to political parties, the regulation of political parties and the regulation of campaign expenditure at a national level. The Labour Government then asked the Committee on Standards in Public Life to look at these areas and, largely out of that, we got the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Bill, which became law in 2000, and the birth of the Electoral Commission.

I was one of the first electoral commissioners to be appointed who had been active in a political party. I and my fellow commissioners from political parties brought to the commission and its discussions a different and, I think, welcome insight into how political parties operate. There then followed other legislation to deal with a variety of issues, including loans to political parties, postal voting and individual electoral registration. Seeking agreement among the parties was always a high priority and, for me, that has to be the way to proceed.

Since then, I am afraid that that has not always been the case. You have only to look at the decision to speed up IER, the reduction in the number of parliamentary seats by 50 and the curtailing of the boundary inquiry process while, at the same time, increasing the number of Members in this House. That latter move was made by the previous Prime Minister and people were shocked by it when they compared it to the number of appointments to this House made by his predecessors, whether they were Labour or Conservative Prime Ministers.

Going through the Bill, I have no objection, in principle, to donation caps, but they have to be done in a way that will not undermine a political party’s funding, as legislation cannot be used to damage one party to the advantage of another. The parties in Britain today that are represented in the House of Commons, devolved institutions and, for the time being, the European Parliament, have evolved over time, with unique histories, funding structures and mechanisms. That must be respected.

I am not sure the figures in the Bill, as set out in Clause 3(3) are correct. They will need to be looked at very carefully. There is a strong case for the donation recording and reporting figures to be looked at and uprated in the present legislation, as they have not been changed for many years. There is no mechanism to take account of inflation, which is a failure of the present legislation. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, could address that point in his response.

An affiliation fee, paid by an individual member of a trade union to a political party, is an individual donation. I have been a member of the GMB union for over 28 years. I pay the political levy; it is my money and the donation to the Labour Party is from me. Trade unions are some of the most regulated organisations in the United Kingdom. Not all trade unions have political funds, and even of those that do, not all are affiliated to the Labour Party. I agree with the comments made by my noble friend Lord Whitty in respect of the Trade Union Act. Some of the regulation is a little overbearing, to say the least. We often hear from the Government about red tape and excessive regulation, although that never seems to apply to trade unions. I would want to look carefully at the parts of the Bill that refer to trade unions, namely Clauses 6, 7, 8 and 9. I would also want to look at them in the round, alongside other legislation on political donations, such as political fund ballots. Such legislation should be looked at during this period as well.

Proposals around match funding for registered supporters and amounts-per-vote schemes have been talked about for many years. Again, I am not against such schemes in principle, but they have to be looked at in the overall context of the cost of politics and the financial situation we find ourselves in as a nation. On the other side of the equation, removing large donations from politics in the United Kingdom—and with that, any suggestion that people who make large donations are seeking some sort of advantage or influence—means that money has to be replaced from elsewhere.

The provisions that refer to enabling Gift Aid to apply to parties that meet the eligible represented registered parties test seem a good idea. That might encourage many more people to make donations of a smaller amount to parties, which is a good thing. More small donations attracted by parties are to be welcomed. One of the problems we have in the United Kingdom is that making donations to political parties is not seen by large sections of the media and others as a good thing. People give to charities to support good causes and they seek to do good with the money they can afford to donate. However, they always run the risk of being attacked if that donation is to a political party—but praised if it is to a charity or another good cause. Healthy, functioning political parties are essential to our democracy. Joining a political party, campaigning for it and donating money to it should be welcomed and encouraged. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Salisbury is right that my successor as director of finance of the Labour Party has dramatically improved its financial situation: the Labour Party is effectively debt-free these days. At the same time, we have had a few other challenges, which have been widely reported in the media. However, as the right reverend Prelate said, political parties are an important part of our national life. We need them to be healthy and functioning.

I would be very happy to end the policy development grants if other measures in the Bill were enacted. Part 2 concerns the control of expenditure for political parties. I understand the intention behind that, but I am not sure if it is the correct way forward. Like it or not, different parties will be able to raise different amounts of money. I suppose that has some correlation to their support in the country, the wealth of their donors and other factors. Often, the Conservative Party seems able to raise more money than other parties, although not always. I am not sure we should be too prescriptive; if we raise money legally, from permissible sources, outside an election, we should be able to make use of that money within legal means. It is not one party’s fault if it raises more money than another.

We should look at how money on things such as the freepost could be used more effectively. For example, the system of using booklets for election addresses has been in place for mayoral elections for many years. I have no real problem with that. Leaflets generally have less effect in elections, in much the same way as we have declining newspaper circulation. They can no longer claim that they were the ones what won it. The Bill’s focus should be directed much more towards the internet, adverts on various platforms and the use of and the manipulation of data, as many noble Lords referred to, and what is and is not acceptable in that regard.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, for bringing the Bill forward. It is a timely piece of legislation. I do not agree with it all, but as I said, in many respects it enables us to have a positive debate and discuss these issues, which the Government will have to return to sometime in this Parliament.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011

Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts

Tuesday 24th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

My noble friend uses language which I would not dream of using at the Dispatch Box, but it is indeed the case that the coalition agreement, which was ratified by Liberal Democrat MPs and the membership of the Liberal Democrat party, committed them to reducing the number of MPs by 50, and that that legislation was taken through the other place by the Deputy Prime Minister, the leader of the Liberal Democrats. I cannot understand why the Liberal Democrats now seek to distance themselves from a measure which their former leader piloted through Parliament.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, we have four parliamentary Boundary Commissions, one for each of the constituent parts of the United Kingdom. Can the Minister confirm that at the conclusion of the reviews, there will be brought before this House and the other place one Motion to approve all four reports, so there is no risk of, say, three reports being approved and one not, and it will be all or nothing, with no risk of cherry-picking the reports we like, as opposed to those we are not so keen on?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I am happy to confirm that the position is exactly as the noble Lord said. The legislation requires the Minister to produce a single order to introduce the reports of all four Boundary Commissions, so there can be no cherry-picking—which would never have occurred to our side, but might conceivably have occurred to others.

Housing: Availability and Affordability

Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts

Thursday 12th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, first, I join other noble Lords in congratulating my noble friend Lord Smith of Leigh on securing this important debate on the availability and affordability of housing. Secondly, as usual in these debates, I refer the House to my declaration of interests, in particular the fact that I am a councillor in the London Borough of Lewisham and a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

It is accepted that we are in the midst of a housing crisis, with people being let down on every front. As the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, said, to lower prices we need to increase supply. We have the lowest levels of home ownership for 30 years, and the homelessness crisis on our streets is a scandal. If you walk to this House from any of the nearby mainline stations such as Charing Cross, Waterloo or Victoria, you will be met with people living on the streets. If you arrive at Westminster Tube station and go to the entrance to the Palace, you will usually be greeted by a rough sleeper. In the fifth-richest country in the world, in one of the richest cities in the world, that is truly shameful.

The Government did put the Homelessness Reduction Act on the statute book before the election, but they have provided completely inadequate sums of money for local government to deliver on its obligations. The cap on housing allowance, and the pressures that brings, means that more and more people are becoming homeless. Councils are housing over 75,000 families in temporary accommodation, including over 118,000 children. The situation is scandalous, and damaging to families and children and their development.

The noble Lord, Lord Bourne, who is not in his place today, has on many occasions expressed his determination to sort out the broken housing market, as have his friends the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and the Prime Minister herself, as did her predecessor. But the actions, no matter how well intentioned, have not delivered on the stated aim of fixing the broken housing market. The Government are clearly under pressure and struggling to find a way forward.

Just look at where we have got to in recent times. The Housing and Planning Act must rank among the worst, most ill-thought-out legislation promoted by any Government in recent years. Some of the more contentious measures were either formally dropped or lost in the department as the reality of implementation dawned: pay to stay and the forced sale of council housing, to name but two. We come then to the housing White Paper, the build-up to and crescendo of which never quite matched the reality. Then there is the recently announced housing Green Paper. It is fair to say that had we started with the Green Paper, the solution would never have been the Housing and Planning Act. We need more homes built across all tenures.

It is a laudable aim to want people to own their own home, but I wonder if there should be greater focus from the Government on building more homes. We need to consider carefully the serious problems with schemes such as Help to Buy, which overheated the market making homes even more expensive, rather than building more homes for sale.

I recall the debates on the Housing and Planning Act with the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford. We could never get a clear idea of the cohort that would benefit from the Starter Home programme. It never appeared to me to benefit the classroom assistant, the nurse, the teacher or the small business person. I agree with many of the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Kirkham, when he called for the building of more homes.

It is not councillors on planning committees or planning departments holding up development, but the problem of land that could be built on not being built on by the developers. Hundreds of thousands of planning permissions have been granted and not a brick has been put down. That highlights the problem, as the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, said. But planning departments are underresourced and action needs to be taken, as nationally set planning fees mean that council tax payers are subsidising planning services. That really needs to end, as my noble friend Lady Young of Old Scone said.

I have told your Lordships before that I grew up in council accommodation. I will always be very grateful to Southwark Council for providing my parents with a council flat, and then a council house, that was warm, safe and dry and at a rent my parents could afford. My parents worked until they retired and they paid their taxes. They did not own a car when we were young, but could afford to take us on holiday every summer and pay for us to go on school trips. We were happy and able to take up the opportunities that were available to us. That was the benefit of council housing. It liberated our family and enabled us to get on. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford referenced this in his remarks. I am the eldest of four children and we are now all home owners.

The Government must do more to support real affordable housing in the public sector at social rents. In London and other cities, the affordable rent product promoted by the Government is unaffordable, as my noble friend Lady Donaghy said. I hope that the Chancellor of the Exchequer will lift the cap on borrowing for local authorities for social housing. It really is needed to help tackle the broken housing market, not just for young families but for older people who want to downsize to a smaller property. There is a looming problem in sheltered and supported housing that the Government need to get a grip of, as my noble friend also said.

The private rented sector works for many people, and there are some excellent private sector landlords who provide homes that people want to live in. But there are also many problems with the rogue elements of the private rented sector, and much more needs to be done to solve this, as my noble friend Lord Smith of Leigh referred to.

I want to pay tribute to the work being done in Newham by the mayor, Sir Robin Wales, and his team. In 2013, Newham became the first local authority in England to require mandatory licensing of all private sector landlords operating in the borough. The scheme expires at the end of December 2017, and Sir Robin and his team applied to the Government for permission to continue it for a further five years. The figures in the first five years are quite startling. Newham has initiated 1,217 criminal prosecutions against landlords, recovered over £3 million in unpaid council tax and banned from operating 28 of the worst landlords. The police have made 745 arrests for a variety of offences during licensing operations, and £300,000 of housing benefit fraud has been detected and stopped. What Sir Robin and his team are doing is making a real difference: tackling rogue landlords, driving up standards, protecting private sector tenants, recovering unpaid council tax and detecting benefit fraud and other criminal activity, including slavery. The Government should be supportive of the excellent work being done by Sir Robin and Newham Council and look at ways that they can support this forward-thinking authority and encourage other local authorities to develop similar schemes. I am not sure if the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, is aware of this scheme or has been to Newham, but I know he would get a very warm welcome there—perhaps we could go together.

There are two other issues affecting the private rented sector that we need to see some action on. The first is client money protection. Following on from the Housing and Planning Act, a working group was set up, chaired by my noble friend Lady Hayter of Kentish Town and the noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill. The consultation closed in October 2016 and the report was published on 27 March 2017. The next day, in reply to a Question from my noble friend, the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, announced that the Government were going to go ahead with a mandatory scheme. That was great news, protecting the money of both tenants and landlords from rogue letting agents.

Secondly, we have the ban on letting agent fees, such as inventory fees, tenancy review fees and agent admin fees. For tenants who are often forced to change homes every year, these charges cost hundreds of pounds of money that they do not have. The CAB reported recently that 42% of renters had to borrow money just to pay their fees, and that is on top of rent deposits. The ban was announced in the Autumn Statement in 2016 by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It then appeared as a pledge in the Conservative Party manifesto and was announced in the Queen’s Speech on 19 June. But since then there has been very little. Those two fairly simple measures, despite reviews, announcements, pledges and commitments, have made very little meaningful progress. No one could accuse the Government of acting in haste in bringing these measures into force.

Our housing association sector, whose very ethos is about people living in decent homes that they can afford, is struggling with a lack of investment in homes for social rent, so it has worked to deliver other forms of ownership and then cross-subsidised those with the lowest rents. The mandatory rent cut has taken £3.9 billion out of the sector business plan so far, as the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham of Droxford, mentioned. The sector needs certainty so that it can develop with confidence and play its part in delivering the homes that we need.

I also fear that the Government operate in silos. Housing benefit is now well over £20 billion a year. The Government find themselves in a perfect storm but refuse—for reasons that I hope the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, will explain when he speaks—to tackle this with the urgent action needed. Home ownership is at an all-time low. Social housing is under pressure. The borrowing cap needs to be lifted so that more homes can be built. There is huge pressure in the private rented sector, with rents in certain areas rocketing, and the market is overheating. Housing associations, housing co-ops and other alternative providers are frustrated by the Government’s failure to allow them to deliver what is needed. There has been a failure to deliver even small things that have been announced by the Government, such as client money protection and the ban on letting agents’ fees.

It could all be so different. Lifting the borrowing cap would enable more homes at a social rent to be built. Whenever we have met the challenge of housing before, the public sector has had to play its part. That would help with the housing benefit bill and it would also take some of the heat out of the private rented sector, which would also help with the housing benefit bill. If the Government switched their strategy and looked at how we can shift some of the vast sums of money we spend on and with individuals into actual bricks and mortar, that would also have a positive effect on the housing benefit bill, as well as on family well-being, enabling families to thrive. That would have a positive effect on the home ownership market too. I very much agreed with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Horam, that we need positive action from the Treasury on these matters.

I grew up in a council house and I rented in the private sector when I was younger. Today, I am a home owner. That is quite a normal aspiration for anyone and a positive outcome and something that government policy should enable to happen. But despite everyone seeing that as a reasonable way to proceed, the Government, for ideological reasons, have to date refused to take the big steps needed.

Local Government Elections

Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for tabling this Question for Short Debate today. He raises an important issue, and the short answer to his Question is of course yes, on both counts: the law on local government elections needs improving and clarifying in many areas.

I agree with almost everything said in the three previous contributions from the noble Lords, Lord Greaves, Lord Rennard and Lord Tyler. They are experts in elections and we should listen to what they say carefully. In his remarks, the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, concentrated on the offence of treating. These are serious matters and I agree that the provisions need urgent updating. As he explained to the Committee, the matter that he referred to has been through the due process and the evidential threshold has been determined not to have been met. But that does not mean that important points have not been raised, and action should be taken on the whole issue of treating and whether the law is adequate. Some disturbing comments were made about curries, and other things, which were not at all good.

The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, made important points about difficulties and problems in various elections. The Labour Party got itself into terrible difficulties in Birmingham over postal vote fraud, and the individuals there were properly prosecuted. That was a shameful episode and people were properly dealt with there.

I was appointed to my first job in the Labour Party in 1989 by my noble friend Lady Gould of Potternewton. She then promoted me in 1990 and sent me to Coventry to deal with Militant. I remember her telling me in her office: “Just go and get them, Roy”. Off I went, and I hope that I dealt with them quite effectively. When I came into this House seven years ago, my two sponsors were my noble friend Lady Gould of Potternewton—my first boss in the Labour Party—and my noble friend Lady McDonagh, who was my boss many years later. I very much enjoyed working with both of them.

Many years later, as a senior official of the party, I authorised the prosecution of the Conservative Party candidate who had stood for a council election in Slough. When I first got the phone call from the Labour agent there, I was a bit sceptical. The Labour Party had lost the safest Labour ward in Slough to the Conservative Party and that guy wanted to come and see me. I agreed and he came in with a pile of papers to show me all the applications to register to vote. Then he showed me the houses, and most of them were derelict; nobody lived there at all. Of course we had all the ballot papers checked. It ended up in the courts and we were able to show that it was completely fraudulent activity and the people were sent to prison—quite rightly there, too. Again, we were able to show that it was not right. Picking the safest Labour seat in a borough was probably the daftest thing they did.

Going on to more general remarks, yesterday the noble Baroness, Lady Humphreys, asked a Question about the Electoral Commission in terms of the Welsh language. I asked the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, what the Government were going to do in respect of the Law Commission and the work they are doing looking at the law. I am very much of the opinion, as other noble Lords are, that our law in the round needs improving, clarifying, redrafting and consolidating for elections. The Government really must find some parliamentary time in the next couple of years for this.

In many areas, our electoral law is not fit for purpose. We have to deal with that; our democracy is at stake here. The law is spread over various Acts, statutes and codes. It has been bolted together over many years and is in a complete mess. All the parties in this Room have been in government in recent years and we have all contributed to that. We are all to blame in some measure for where we find ourselves today, and it is not a good place. I have other general remarks to make but, as I said, the Government must find some parliamentary time for that. We need consolidated legislation that covers elections, referendums, donations, registration of parties and electoral registration, all in one place so that we all know exactly what is going on. I have no idea how many Acts or parts of Acts are still in force over elections. Perhaps the Minister does. I expect that it is a great many.

If we look at our experience in recent years and at changes in technology and campaigning, we can see that the law is in need of extensive updating and, ideally, future-proofing. I accept that that is much harder to do that than to say. For example, we need to look at the use and manipulation of data in campaigning, which is a huge issue. More should be done to clarify what returning officers should and should not be doing. The Electoral Commission needs looking at again and reforming. It needs more teeth in some areas. It should focus on clearly defined issues and doing things. It should probably do a bit less commenting and voicing opinions, and take a bit more action in certain areas. We need a much tougher focus on getting the electoral registration process right and on having the powers to make sure that the service provided is fit for purpose everywhere and that the EROs and the commission are using the powers they have.

Electoral registration and the desire to get people on the register needs reinforcing. The Government have not always seemed as enthusiastic about doing so as they should. It could be suggested that they have been quite partisan in the recent past. We may hear from the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, that they listened to the advice and guidance of the Electoral Commission, which is very good, but they do not always do so. They certainly did not when they removed a number of voters from the electoral register a couple of years ago in looking at the boundary review. Having mentioned the boundary review, perhaps the Minister can update us on that because all the gossip down the other end of the building is that it is dead in the water. Members of all parties down the corridor are all telling me that the Government are desperately trying to find a way to end this review. It may be that that needs legislation. If it does, let us get on with it because it is a complete waste of public money if in fact the Government intend in some way to end the review and go back to having 650 seats.

I have a few other little comments to make before I finish. The nomination process needs clarifying. There are all sorts of issues there. We have to deal with sham nominations. We may have dealt with the Liberal Democrat problem we had a few years ago but there are still issues with sham nominations. When I was an electoral commissioner, I was one of the first political commissioners. We had an issue with a disgruntled Tory candidate attempting to use the old Tory torch logo. We said, “No, it is not your logo”, and got into a discussion. In the end, we stopped him but he believed he could just walk off with a logo that belonged to the Conservative Party and stand as some sort of independent Conservative. That sort of thing goes on all the time and it was good we did that work there. The sham candidates and imposters need to be dealt with. The rule itself is clearly not quite there.

The polling day process is still not what it should be. We need some clear guidance and a single set of polling rules to apply across all elections. There is also the issue of assisting voters to the polls and actually voting. Very elderly people need to have their vote protected, in being able to get to the poll and vote. Equally, they may need assistance. That is a very hard thing to do properly but it also needs dealing with. I would also like to see some standardised rules in respect of counts. It is not always the case in some of the counts we see across the country. I know that we have electronic counting in London and in the Scottish local elections, but it always amazes me that you can normally go to a count for a council or Parliament and they sit there with pens and paper, and get a result really quickly. In the GLA they were sitting there days later. I do not know how you can deal with it, but counting should be looked at.

I just had those few comments to make. I know that the Minister probably cannot respond to all the points raised here today but I am sure he agrees with many of them. I look forward to his comments and if he cannot respond now, maybe he could do so in writing afterwards.

Electoral Spending Limits: Wales

Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

We hope that between now and then there will be a suitable legislative vehicle to take this reform forward.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, there is a desperate need for the law in its entirety around elections to be reviewed, reformed and consolidated. With the advances in technology, among other things, the law has not kept pace with change. Does the noble Lord agree with that point and, if so, will he impress on others in government that, despite other pressures, this really is something for which the Government should find parliamentary time?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

There is indeed a broad view that our election law is fragmented, at times unclear and, as the noble Lord said, does not always reflect modern changes in communication. We are working with the Law Commission and other interested bodies, such as the Electoral Commission, to see whether we can streamline and clarify our electoral system, but we need to find the legislative time to take these reforms forward.