Councils: Funding

Debate between Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Young of Cookham

Thursday 4th July 2019 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In doing so, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, the Government recognise the vital work that councils do to support their communities. That is why the 2019-20 settlement confirmed that councils’ core spending power will increase by 2.8% in cash terms, including an additional £650 million for social care. This is a real-terms increase in resources to support critical services. The department is preparing actively for the spending review, which is the right place to take long-term funding decisions.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

My Lords, the research just published by the Conservative-led Local Government Association—referred to in my Question—shows that one-third of local authorities fear they are going to run out of funds by 2022-23, rising to two-thirds of councils by 2024-25. In the light of this disturbing and sombre news, does the Minister have any words of encouragement, hope—something—for hard-pressed local councils and their civic leaderships as they end their conference today in Bournemouth?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

Local councillors and local government officials have done remarkably well to maintain, and in some cases improve, the quality of the services they provide despite, since 2010, a reduction in grant until recently, which was necessary to balance the national accounts. I recognise that they have done that without excessive rate increases. Looking forward, I have seen the report to which the noble Lord refers and welcome the Local Government Association’s attempt to quantify the pressure on resources. That information will be used by Ministers to feed into the spending review to make the case for a proper settlement for local government.

Affordable Housing

Debate between Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Young of Cookham

Wednesday 3rd July 2019 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, and in doing so refer the House to my relevant registered interest.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, it is government policy to increase the number of homes being built, including affordable homes. As far as possible, any impediments to selling government land and accelerating new house-building have been—and are being—removed. Guidance issued by the Treasury indicates that decisions should take account of wider social costs and benefits in the public interest, and it may be appropriate to choose an option that does not generate the highest Exchequer receipt.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

I thank the noble Lord for that response. Making publicly held land available for the provision of social housing, encouraging below-value sales, would go a long way towards delivering on the Government’s pledges to fix our broken housing market, and have many other benefits. Can he tell us the likelihood of that happening?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I agree. Until quite recently the policy on the disposal of government surplus land was that the best price should be secured—in the interests of the taxpayer, who is the ultimate owner. That money went into a central coffer and was then disposed of according to the Government’s priorities. There was a presumption against short-circuiting that process and disposing of land at less than best value. Two years ago that policy was amended, following a meeting of the housing implementation task force and, as I said in my reply, it is now possible to take the wider social costs and benefits and the public interest into account and to make the housing land available directly. A recent example of that was a site that was made available to the Government, initially to the homes agency—the Housing Corporation as was—and then passed on to Wolverhampton Council for £1. Now, 450 homes are being built on that land. That is a good example of what the noble Lord has asked for, and I hope that we see much more of it.

European Parliament Elections: Non-UK EU Citizens

Debate between Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Young of Cookham

Wednesday 5th June 2019 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, I join the noble Lord in thanking returning officers and electoral staff for all that they do, and obviously I make my usual declaration as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. Does the noble Lord accept that this is a very unsatisfactory situation where people were denied their right to vote? Is it not another example of why we urgently need to review, amend and update all the laws on elections, electoral registration, campaigning and, of course, the functions and purpose of the Electoral Commission?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his response. I am sorry if anybody who had done the right thing was thereafter denied the right to vote. As he knows, the Electoral Commission will undertake its normal inquiry into this election, as with any other election, and of course we will reflect on the results.

On the noble Lord’s general point, I repeat what I have said on an earlier occasion—probably in response to a question from him—that we have an analogue system in a digital age. We are taking some steps: for example, imprints on digital communications; and the Electoral Commission is issuing statutory guidance to distinguish between candidate expenditure and national expenditure. But I repeat my acceptance of an offer that he made earlier to have an all-party meeting with the Minister for the Constitution to see whether we can find a consensual way forward to make sure that we have an electoral system fit for the digital age and fit for purpose.

Electoral Commission: Referendums and Elections Spending

Debate between Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Young of Cookham

Thursday 23rd May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

On the last point that the noble Lord raised, there was a court case relevant to this. The Electoral Commission is now in the process of issuing guidance which will give clarity to what scores against the local candidate’s expenditure and what should score against the party’s national expenditure. I hope the noble Lord welcomes that. I was relieved to hear that my party now finds it so much easier to raise money than any other party; this will come as welcome news to the party treasurer. So far as donations to the party are concerned, my party tries to stick rigorously to the rules—as I am sure all parties do. If an impermissible donation is presented, we are obliged to return it within 30 days.

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

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for offering yesterday to speak to the Minister for the Constitution to seek another meeting to discuss these important matters further. Could the noble Lord also consider the need for a thorough review of the powers, functions and purpose of the Electoral Commission? Maybe that could be part of our future discussions.

Political Parties: Donation Rules

Debate between Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Young of Cookham

Wednesday 22nd May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to review the donation rules for political parties.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, on 5 May the Government announced a consultation on safeguarding UK elections. Recommendations for closing loopholes on foreign spending in elections and preventing shell companies sidestepping the current rules on political finance could be addressed in the consultation. The Government will take the views of interested groups such as the Parliamentary Parties Panel and the Electoral Commission to better understand the problems that we could seek to address in the consultation.

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

I thank the noble Lord for that Answer. He is highly respected in this House and, more importantly in this case, in his party. The Government often come out with consultations but we really have a problem in this country with our electoral law, with law governing political parties, with donations, loans and everything else in this area. Can he give an assurance to the House that, despite other problems, he will do everything in his power to make sure that we address this urgently?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I am grateful for the consensual approach adopted by the noble Lord. Quite recently he attended a meeting with me, the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, my noble friend Lord Hayward, the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, and, I believe, the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, at which we sought to see whether there was a consensus on some of the challenges facing the electoral system. Subsequently, a meeting was held with the Electoral Commission. I would be more than happy to contact the Minister for the Constitution, who was also at that meeting, to see whether it would be helpful to have another round-table discussion to identify areas of consensus and to see whether we can make progress in developing a rigid and credible electoral system.

Non-Domestic Rating (Rates Retention and Levy and Safety Net) (Amendment) and (Levy Account Basis of Distribution) Regulations 2019

Debate between Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Young of Cookham

Monday 18th March 2019 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, as the Minister said, the regulations are technical and in that sense I am happy to support them as they stand. I concur with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and my noble friend Lord Beecham and I am sure the Minister will respond to the points raised.

The only issue I want to raise concerns Northamptonshire being in the list of council areas that are involved in this scheme. I know the county council is the precept authority, or the collecting authority, but equally it is a council in crisis. The local government reorganisation is happening because the county council has effectively almost gone broke. Is the Minister confident that we should be doing this in this area, in view of the problems that have been widely reported over the past year? That said, I am very happy to support the regulations.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

My Lords, I am grateful for the contributions of all three noble Lords. As the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, said, this is the first non-Brexit SI, although I noticed it emptied the House as I rose to my feet. He mentioned that the announcement of £180 million going back would be popular with local government. We are always seeking to court popularity with local government, although we do not always achieve it. I am grateful to hear that on this occasion, we have.

The noble Lords, Lord Shipley and Lord Beecham, raised slightly broader issues about the pressures confronting local authorities, which I recognise. We have had to take difficult decisions on public expenditure over recent years, and they have impacted on local authorities and government departments. There will be an opportunity to discuss that.

Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, mentioned Northamptonshire. The change in Northamptonshire is relatively minor and switches responsibility for one service from A to B. I do not think it detracts from the more structural changes that are now having to take place in that county.

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[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

I, too, forgot to remind the House that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I was a vice-president of a preceding local government association, but I was expelled when I introduced rate capping.

Representation of the People (Election Expenses Exclusion) (Amendment) Order 2019

Debate between Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Young of Cookham

Thursday 14th February 2019 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, I am very happy to give the order my full support. I was glad that the noble Lord mentioned the political parties panel, because I was going to ask him about it. There is no mention of political parties at all in the consultation referred to in the Explanatory Memorandum. I know that the noble Lord mentioned it in his contribution, because I was going to ask him about it. The bodies listed in the Explanatory Memorandum do not pay election expenses and do not fill out election returns. I am glad that he covered that point. It is important that we keep the political parties informed on all these matters. They can often inform the Government’s thinking in a positive and helpful way. Since the noble Lord answered my question, that is fine. I am very happy to support the order.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

My Lords, I have had a remarkably easy time—oh, I am sorry.

Election Expenditure

Debate between Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Young of Cookham

Wednesday 13th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I entirely agree with the principle that the noble Lord has just enunciated. I was looking at the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Prevention Act 1883, which enshrined the principle to which he referred. The preamble states that,

“if its provisions are honestly carried out, the length of a man’s purse will not, as now, be such an important factor”.

I am afraid that a woman’s purse did not get a mention, it being 1883. The text continued,

“and the way will be opened for many men of talent, with small means, to take part in the government of the country, who have been hitherto deterred from seeking a seat in the House of Commons by the great expense which a contest entails”.

That principle is timeless, even if the language may not be.

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

My Lords, does the Minister agree that while guidance, codes and statutory instruments may deliver some of the change we need, it is only through primary legislation that we will get the electoral law fit for purpose?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

That is why, in my Answer, I said that in the first instance, the code of practice will provide greater clarity for those taking part in our democratic process. At the meeting attended by the noble Lord and six other noble Lords yesterday, the point was made that there may be some inconsistency in the primary legislation, which may need addressing. What I have said does not preclude a more radical look at primary legislation, as the noble Lord suggested.

Verify: Digital Identity System

Debate between Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Young of Cookham

Monday 26th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I would not describe the service in quite the terms that the noble Lord has just used. Progress is being made towards the target of 25 million users by 2020. It is not the case that HMRC is not using Verify. Noble Lords who want to can upload their self-assessment tax return using Verify, and if they so wish they can check their income tax account using Verify. More and more government services are now subscribing to Verify; the MoD recently added an additional service, and some 18 services are now available. It is not the case that we are abdicating the whole thing to the private sector. Verify, which is a government service, will continue to provide a digital identity service to the public sector, and it is talking to the NHS and to local government in order to continue to broaden the base.

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

My Lords, can the Minister tell the House clearly what went wrong?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I challenge the premise on which the noble Lord based his question. Verify was launched in 2016 and, as I said in my initial reply, now has 3 million subscribers who have completed 8 million transactions. I signed up to Verify over the weekend and, if noble Lords have not, I suggest that they make themselves familiar with this new and innovative service.

Tenant Fees Bill

Debate between Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Young of Cookham

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 20th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

My Lords, the Countess of Lytton is clearly even more formidable than the noble Earl.

I too have a lot of sympathy with these amendments, but I believe there are already sufficient existing protections—not in this Bill but in other legislation—which address the concerns raised by noble Lords. Landlords who resell energy to their tenants for domestic use are governed by maximum resale price provisions set by Ofgem under Section 44 of the Electricity Act 1989 and Section 37 of the Gas Act 1986. This prevents landlords from overcharging tenants; they cannot charge the tenant more than the landlord has paid. If the landlord does overcharge, the tenant is entitled to have the charge lowered and overpayments refunded. The tenant can also bring a claim against their landlord to the small claims court for the amount that has been overcharged plus interest. In addition, on other utilities, landlords are prohibited from overcharging tenants for the resale of water under the maximum resale price provisions set out in the Water Resale Order 2006. If the landlord does overcharge, the tenant can take legal action through the small claims court to recover any overpayment and the tenant is eligible to recover interest at a rate of twice the average base interest rate of the Bank of England for the period they have been overcharged.

Amendment 31 would specifically require landlords to review any contract held for the provision of utilities and to consider switching provider if this would be beneficial to the tenant. In the majority of cases, tenants will be responsible for paying their own energy bills; they will pay them direct to the supplier and not to the landlord. So in most cases, tenants will already have the right to choose their own supplier. The tenancy agreement will set out who is responsible for paying these charges. Where the landlord is responsible for paying the bills, they may seek to recover these costs through the rent or directly from the tenant but, as I have already explained, they are already prevented from overcharging for this for energy and water.

Through, for example, the How to Rent guide, we encourage tenants to speak to their landlord or agent if they think their utilities payments are too high or if they want to request a change of supplier. In many cases, it may be in the interest of the landlord to move to a more competitive supplier as that may help to market their property in the future.

In addition, the Government’s Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Bill received Royal Assent on 19 July. This requires Ofgem to implement a price cap on standard variable and default tariffs, which will guarantee protection for the 11 million households currently on the highest energy tariffs.

Against that background, I hope the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendments.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this short debate, and particularly the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, for his very helpful response. I will withdraw my amendment shortly, but I would like to check something. He helpfully set out the legislation which will prevent people from being overcharged by landlords, but I cannot recall off the top of my head whether this will be clearly laid out in the guidance so that people will be very much aware of their rights and obligations. That would go some way to allaying the fears that are behind these amendments.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

Before the noble Lord sits down I would like to say that that is a very helpful suggestion. We will indeed look at the guidance to see whether that suggestion can be incorporated.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

In that case, I am happy to withdraw the amendment.

Tenant Fees Bill

Debate between Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Young of Cookham

Monday 5th November 2018 Grand Committee

[Lord Young of Cookham]

As my noble friend the Minister said a few moments ago, the Bill covers assured shortholds and other lettings. It does not cover the sorts of lettings that concern my noble friend Lady Gardner and which are offered by Airbnb and other agencies. My noble friend has raised an issue that has been the subject of many exchanges in Questions. Our answer is that we believe that local authorities have enough powers to take action where a nuisance is caused by these activities. In many cases, it is up to the manging agents to enforce the terms of the lease.

As I have said on many occasions in the Chamber, many leases specifically preclude the letting of a property for periods of less than six months, and it is up to the managing agents of the block to ensure that the provisions of the lease are met. Again, I say to my noble friend that I have quoted from the action taken by one managing agent when they discovered that a flat in the block for which they were the managing agent was being advertised on Airbnb; that immediately stopped the letting of that flat and any other flats in that block. So the short answer—I fear it was a long one—is that we believe that powers are already available without giving local authorities the additional powers that my noble friend has asked for.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

Before I withdraw my amendment, can the Minister tell me something about the amount of money provided? On the face of it, £500,000 seems a lot of money but how many councils is that actually for? I do not know off the top of my head, but I think it is for at least a few hundred of them. What sum will each council get? Will it be £2,000 or £3,000 each? When it is broken down like that, it could be quite a small sum of money in terms of an overall council budget.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

About 152 trading standards offices could potentially be eligible for this. It would be wrong to assume that £500,000 would be divided among them so that they each get a small sum. There are other models for providing the initial help. For example, a team from the department could go out to help the trading standards agencies set up the necessary skills and training to take forward the measure after year one. At the moment, we are discussing with the LGA exactly how best to spend the £500,000. Although one option would be to divide it up, that is not the only option; others are being explored. Before the Bill becomes an Act, we hope to find a way forward on how the money should be spent.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

I thank the Minister for that answer. I accept that the money may not necessarily be divided up. I am just trying to understand the number of authorities and the amount of money available. Looking at things like that, it is not a huge sum of money at all.

The Government think that this will be funded by fines and other fees, so it will be self-financing in that sense. I am conscious that local government will say, “Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they?”. Local government often says that the Government do not provide enough funding for various things. How was this figure arrived at? Where did it come from? Did the Government use some formula or methodology, or was is just a case of, “Oh, we’ve got a spare half a million knocking around and we can make it available”? I do not know. I want to understand how that figure came about. Again, I am sure that local government will say that it is nowhere near enough, as it would say about other things. I am thinking particularly of the Homelessness Reduction Act, where there is the risk of a very good piece of legislation being affected by the amount of money provided by the Government.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I hope the noble Lord will accept that, unlike other occasions when new responsibilities have been imposed on local authorities, in this case we are actually offering to help them with some pump-priming finance before the revenue stream comes on board. I hope he will accept that this is a welcome step forward from other initiatives taken by Governments of all complexions, where local authorities have been asked to do things with no resources at all and no opportunity of self-funding downstream. I can only repeat what I read out a few moments ago: the Government estimate that local authorities will incur a new burden in respect of enforcement of £500,000. I will make detailed inquiries to see if we can shed more light on exactly where that sum came from and will write to the noble Lord, with copies to other Members who have shown an interest. I will do that before Report.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I am happy to give the noble Lord the assurance that he seeks that the money will be reimbursed to the relevant section of the local authority that enforces this legislation and other related legislation dealing with rogue landlords.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

I thank the Minister for his response, and all other noble Lords who spoke in the debate. At this stage, I am happy to withdraw the amendment.

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[Lord Deben (Con)]

I wonder whether my noble friend will address the point raised by the noble Baroness when she referred to the number of letting agents that did not obey the law on their websites. I have found that in many areas—including modern slavery, an issue I am particularly interested in—a number of people just do not obey the law. It seems to me that it would be odd if we left it to the local trading standards officers. What is the arrangement? If you find such a case, who in government is supposed to enforce it? This also is a piece that might be dealt with in this legislation. If it is true—I assume that it is—that 17% of letting agents do not even obey the law of having to say what their fees are, that is outrageous.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. The Bill proposes a number of enforcement measures that offer a strong deterrent to irresponsible agents and landlords. It also makes provisions to enable tenants and other relevant people to recover unlawfully charged fees, if other attempts have failed, by going to the First-tier Tribunal, which will order reimbursement to the tenant of money that should not have been paid. Of course, tenants should get back any unlawful payments in full, whether that is direct from the landlord or agent, via their enforcement authority or through an order of the First-tier Tribunal. However, in certain instances, we think it is also appropriate for the landlord or agent to be issued with a financial penalty, as well as ensuring that the tenant receives their money back. This is to deter future non-compliance.

Amendment 6 prevents an enforcement authority imposing a financial penalty under Section 12 if the tenant has got their money back. We think that giving a power to impose financial penalties for breaches of the legislation is an important tool for enforcement authorities. Therefore, we cannot accept Amendment 6. However, the enforcement guidance will stress that enforcement authorities should take account of the landlord’s and agent’s conduct and past behaviour when considering the level of financial penalty to charge, if any. This includes whether the landlord or agent has reimbursed the tenant quickly when asked to do so.

Turning to Amendments 7 and 8, while we think it is right that agents and landlords should be issued with a financial penalty, we do not think it is appropriate for the tenant to receive further compensation in addition to repayment of the money owed. To add compensation risks penalising agents and landlords multiple times for the same breach, which we do not believe is fair; for example, it would not be right to ask a landlord who has been fined up to £5,000 for an initial breach to also pay three times the amount of a prohibited payment to a tenant. This would in effect be two financial penalties for the same breach. The deterrent effect, mentioned by the noble Baroness in her opening remarks, would of course be secured by the fines under the Act.

It is also worth noting that Clause 17 already provides further protection to tenants by preventing landlords recovering their property via the Section 21 procedure in the Housing Act 1988 until they have repaid any unlawfully charged fees. This approach is in line with legislation that already applies; for example, where the How to Rent guide has not been provided or where a landlord has not secured the required licence for a house in multiple occupation. Further, Clause 4 ensures that any clause in the tenancy seeking to charge a prohibited fee is not binding on the tenant.

We do not consider that further provision is needed along the lines proposed by Amendment 8. For example, it is not fair if a landlord who appeals against the imposition of a financial penalty, and this appeal is upheld, is then restricted from using the no-fault eviction process for six months. Under the noble Lord’s amendment, this would be the case—although that may not be what he intended. We firmly believe that our existing approach restricting a landlord’s ability to serve a Section 21 notice strikes the right balance and offers a serious deterrent to non-compliance. I hope the noble Lord will not move his amendment.

I suspect the short answer to the questions raised by my noble friend Lord Deben is: the trading standards officer. I would like to write to my noble friend setting out in more detail what is being proposed, under both this and existing legislation, to prevent misleading information appearing on websites and tenants being misled.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

My Lords, I was a little surprised at the Minister’s response on the question of compensation. We would have a situation where a tenant is illegally charged a prohibited payment—it is against the law, and they have been wronged. The Minister says that, in those cases, compensation would not be appropriate. I do not understand that. Surely, as we have highlighted in other areas, it is totally reasonable that, if somebody has done someone a wrong—they have committed an offence, overcharged somebody—that person should be able to seek some sort of redress and have compensation paid to them. I do not see how the Minister can say that would not be fair.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The noble Lord has a choice. He can have either a situation where the tenant gets the compensation and there are no financial penalties imposed under the Bill, or the situation we suggest where the tenant gets his money back, the fine is imposed and the money goes to the local authority. What the noble Lord wants is for the landlord, in effect, to be penalised twice: first by paying compensation up to three times, and secondly by paying a fine up to £5,000. The Government’s position is that you can have one or the other, but doing both is not fair.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

I think the Minister will find that, in other areas, people can be fined and be required to pay compensation as well, so I do not see the logic. Clearly, if it is an issue of amounts, that can be looked at. We are not going to agree on this, clearly. The principle that you can be fined and be required to pay compensation clearly is the case elsewhere. It is very unfair that the tenant—the victim, the person who has been out of pocket, ripped off and treated badly—should be thankful just to get their money back. It does not seem to be a very good place. Clearly, we are not going to agree on that at this stage.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

On my Amendment 8, if somebody has gone to a tribunal and the landlord has won then fair enough, they should be protected, but I am trying to get to an example where someone has enforced their rights. This poor tenant cannot get compensation but they get their money back, then the next day a Section 21 notice is served on them. That is the issue I want to deal with. It is really unfair for the tenants in these situations—proved right in a court of law, then given a notice to leave the next day. Without this, that could still happen.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The defect in the noble Lord’s amendment is that, if the landlord won the appeal, he would still be banned. As I said, that may not have been the noble Lord’s intention, but it is what the amendment would do.

I say in response to the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, that I detect in the Committee enthusiasm for the two-track approach to penalties, for both the tenant and the local authorities recouping fines. That message has come through. Without giving any commitment, I will have another look at this, in view of the strength of feeling on the matter. I am happy to accept the noble Baroness’s offer.

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[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

My Lords, Amendment 11 seeks to put a new clause into the Bill. If agreed, it would require the Secretary of State to report to Parliament within 12 months, then every four years after that. The report would provide valuable information on the number of breaches, financial penalties levied and criminal prosecutions in each 12-month period. It must also consider the points as listed in proposed new subsection (2), which are important when looking at the impact of the Act on the sector. I suspect that the amendment will not be greeted with great enthusiasm from the Minister, but can he tell the Committee whether any of the information referred to in the amendment would be collected by the department anyway? I may have a few more questions for the Minister after listening to his response. I beg to move.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for his amendment. I assure him that we plan to monitor the implementation of the Bill through continual engagement with key stakeholder groups, represented landlords, agents, tenants and those in housing need, as well as through wider intelligence from agencies such as the lead enforcement authority and trading standards, which will enforce the requirements of the Bill.

I have no difficulty with the objectives of the noble Lord’s proposed new clause. However, bits of it are impractical. We will not be able to identify all the breaches of Clauses 1 and 2 as set out in proposed new paragraph (a) because we will be encouraging tenants to challenge their landlords and agency with a view to rectifying breaches if they have been charged prohibited fees. The enforcement authorities would not be involved if the breach were resolved between the tenant and the landlord, so it would not be possible to record every time that this happens.

However, owing to the reporting requirements set out in the Bill under Clause 14, information on the number of financial penalties and criminal convictions under the ban will be captured by the lead enforcement authority. In the light of what the noble Lord suggested, we will consider how best to share this information with Parliament. Both agents and landlords that are banned from operating will be captured on the rogue landlord database; the Prime Minister made it clear that we plan to make this information public. Local housing authorities also have powers to include persons convicted of a breach of the fees ban on that database, as well as including persons who received two or more financial penalties in a year for any banning order offence committed at a time when the person was a residential landlord or a property agent.

Further, Clause 23 places a duty on the lead enforcement authority to keep under review social and commercial development relating to the letting sector and the operation of relevant letting agency legislation, as well as to advise the Secretary of State about it from time to time. I hope this reassures the noble Lord that we will track and review the effectiveness and enforcement of the ban and its impact on the private rented sector. I hope that will we achieve what his amendment wants but we do not think it necessary to prescribe further reporting requirements in the Bill. As I said, we will consider how best to make this information available in the light of the debate.

We will also, as the noble Lord may know, review the legislation within five years in line with normal practice and submit that review to the appropriate Select Committee in the other place. We do not intend to review the Bill in isolation. Recently a number of legislative changes have been made to the lettings industry with more planned related to the regulation of letting agents. These changes, along with the Bill, support and deliver on our commitment to rebalance the relationship between tenants and landlords and to make renting fairer. We will keep all of these issues under review. With those assurances, I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

I thank the noble Lord for that response and I am pleased with some of the commitments that he has made. At this point I am happy to withdraw the amendment.

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[Baroness Grender]

My Lords, I support these amendments. I have already raised my considerable concern about the timings. As the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, said, the Government announced this measure in the autumn of 2016, at the same time as my Private Member’s Bill was progressing through the House, and I was absolutely delighted at their announcement. However, it feels as though it is taking a very long time. I know that the Ministers concerned are not responsible for that—they have worked very hard to push this through.

When the Government first started consulting on this issue, they rightly changed their mind and agreed to take a look at it. The consultation showed that the poorest tenants are being ripped off time and again, and that will not stop. If anything, it will get worse in the intervening period before this legislation is introduced. I am hugely in support of the legislation being introduced as quickly as possible. Generation Rent was talking to me about this only this morning. It is receiving evidence that letting agents are becoming more assertive over their administration fees to make up for what they believe to be a shortfall.

As I said at Second Reading, other organisations are playing a significant role in this matter. OpenRent, which I will mention in later arguments, started in 2012 and is now the largest letting agent in England and Wales. It has made a profitable model on the basis of never charging fees to tenants. Therefore, it is perfectly possible for an industry to be ahead of the legislation. However, with the exceptions that I have described, this particular industry is not ahead of the legislation, although it has been warned again and again. There has been working group after working group on this issue.

I was absolutely delighted that the Government decided, very wisely, in the Autumn Budget Statement of 2016 to flex their muscles and get on with this, but we need to do it. I would find any further delay, or suggestion of it, in the Bill extremely worrying, which is why I support the amendment.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I am grateful to noble Lords for taking part in the debate. They have made their impatience over the date of commencement absolutely clear. We agree that we want this legislation to come into force as soon as possible, not least to protect the tenants referred to by noble Lords.

However, we need to strike a fair balance between protecting tenants and allowing landlords and letting agents time to become compliant with the legislation. The ban is not about unfairly penalising landlords and letting agents or driving them out of business. We have said that implementation will not be before April 2019; we intend it to be as soon as possible after that. Of course, at the moment we do not know when it might get Royal Assent. I understand that but we believe that there needs to be a reasonable gap between it reaching the statute book and it being implemented.

Turning to Amendment 13, the transitional provisions in Clause 28 provide that for the period of a year, the ban will not apply to tenancies whose terms were agreed prior to commencement. Similar transitional provisions are made for agents’ agreements with tenants. The amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, seeks to reduce the period in which a landlord or agent could accept a payment prohibited by Clause 1 from one year to six months. We have already sought to give tenants greater clarity and protection with respect to the commencement date. Crucially, we have revised our position from that in the draft Bill, where there was no end date by which fees could be charged in pre-commencement tenancies. There has been a considerable shift towards protecting those who have already signed their contracts.

The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, recognised that a transition period is necessary—his amendment proposes a slightly shorter one—because although most fees are charged at the outset of a tenancy, some landlords and agents will have agreed that tenants should pay other fees, such as a check-out inventory fee, at a later stage. Tenants will have signed contracts accordingly; we need to allow time for landlords and agents to renegotiate them to ensure that the legislation does not have a significant retrospective effect.

Our view is that 12 months is fair for the transition period. Data from the English Housing Survey shows that 45% of tenants had an initial tenancy of 12 months and 36% had one of six months. Reducing the period in which a landlord or agent could accept a payment prohibited by Clause 1 would mean that more landlords and agents with pre-commencement tenancies would be at risk of not being able to renegotiate their contracts and would not receive fees that the tenant had previously agreed to pay. Again, we do not believe that this would be fair.

We recognise the importance of having a clear point where the fees ban applies to all tenancies. As drafted, the transitional provisions mean that all tenants will receive the benefits of the fees ban one year after it comes into force; as I said earlier, initially there was no such arrangement. Unlike the proposed amendment, the provisions ensure that agents and landlords will not be significantly impacted on financially and will have the opportunity to review their contracts during the transitional year. I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment against the background of that explanation.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

I thank the noble Lord for responding to the debate. I suppose that we will not agree, which is disappointing. It is a shame that although there is a lot of good stuff in this legislation that we can support, things take such a long time, as I said in my introduction. That is a recurring theme with the noble Lord’s department, which I have raised many times in other consultations and discussions on this. It often seems like we are pulling teeth to get things moving along. So we are frustrated at the length of time these things take, and that is why we have taken a stand on this.

I also tabled Amendment 14, which seeks to bring the Act into force on the day on which it is passed. My frustration here is the fact that, even when it is passed, we then have to wait for an SI to be tabled to bring it into force. I have no certainty as to whether it will ever come into force; potentially, it could be left there and might never happen. I am sure that will not be the case, but the Committee will see that there is no certainty as to an agreed date. That is very frustrating, and I may come back to this point on Report. At this stage, however, I am happy to beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Elections: Personation

Debate between Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Young of Cookham

Tuesday 4th September 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

My Lords, the House is grateful for my noble friend’s report, Securing the Ballot, which included some 50 recommendations, nearly all of which are being pursued by the Government, including some that go directly to the issue that he raises: namely, the probity of local government. My noble friend will know better than anyone else that, if the level of corruption in a local authority reaches an unsustainable, unacceptable level, the Government can put in commissioners—which is exactly what my noble friend did with Tower Hamlets.

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

My Lords, why does the Minister think that so few cases have been investigated and so few prosecutions brought? Is there some failure on the part of the authorities, or is it the case that, while we must always remain vigilant and a greater police presence at polling stations is one way to do that, this crime is committed on very few occasions?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The noble Lord is quite correct to say that there are relatively few convictions. According to the Electoral Commission report for the past year there were 200 allegations of personation in the past four years. He asks the good question: why is it difficult to prosecute? If you think about it, if you go to a polling station and try to vote and you find that somebody else has already voted in your name and you are disfranchised, it is quite difficult to find out who voted in your place. That may be one reason why there are relatively few prosecutions in the case of personation. The introduction of voter ID would of course reduce the risk to a minimum.

Electoral Commission

Debate between Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Young of Cookham

Tuesday 17th July 2018 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, on 28 June and on previous occasions in this House, the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, agreed with me that our legislation on elections and referendums was not fit for purpose. But today the Minister has repeated the Answer given in the other place by the Minister for the Constitution. In the fourth paragraph, he said:

“That electoral rules have been breached is rightly a cause for concern, but that does not mean that the rules themselves were flawed”.


Are the Minister and I correct—and I think we are—or is his honourable friend the Member for Norwich North in the other place correct? We cannot both be.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

On several occasions, I have repeated a statement that my party made just over a year ago:

“There is a broad consensus that election law is fragmented, confused and unclear, with two different sets of legislation and poor guidance from the Electoral Commission”.—[Official Report, 7/6/18; col. 1403.]


As the noble Lord knows, a number of inquiries are under way that I do think we need to wait for before we decide how best to legislate. I am aware of the strong views of the Electoral Commission that the current level of sanctions is too low.

There are the DCMS inquiry into fake news, which we need to wait for, and the Intelligence and Security Committee’s inquiry into the activity of the Russians in the referendum and recent elections. There are ongoing investigations by the Electoral Commission into the referendum, and a court case is still pending. We have just had a very interesting report on referendums from UCL. I am not in favour of delay, but it makes sense to have the reports of the various inquiries that I have just referred to before we decide how best to proceed. I make it clear that the Government take extremely seriously what has been reported in the investigation out today.

Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority (Business Rate Supplements Functions) Order 2018

Debate between Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Young of Cookham

Monday 9th July 2018 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, I also draw the attention of the House to the fact that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I am generally happy to support the orders before the House, but there is a point to be made about business rates. I accept that this is a supplement and in that sense it could be subject to a referendum, a plan and stuff, but there is the point about business rates in general and what business has to pay in an area. We have many questions here about the cost to business of further taxation. In the West Midlands, for example, if a further £35 million is raised, what does that do to the economy? Is that the best use of that money?

That then comes back to the whole issue of combined authorities. Where they are established, the funding provided by government is relatively small. I am sure the noble Lord will not agree, but I have made the point before to his noble friend Lord Bourne that we have this rather confusing patchwork of local government emerging in England. We need a clear structure that we will get to. I am all in favour of devolution, but I would like to understand what the plan is. Certain places will potentially have four, five or maybe six authorities, whereas in another place there will be just one. That does not seem to be very good government at all. I am all in favour of devolution, but I am not convinced that the combined authority model is the best way forward.

I am happy to support the orders, as I said. I welcome the fact that the supplementary rates will have to be subject to a ballot. That is good news, but generally there is the whole issue of business rates and the effect on businesses, particularly on the high street.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

My Lords, I am grateful to both noble Lords for their support for the measures before the House. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, that the average increase, if we go ahead with 2p in the pound, is 4% on the business rate bill, but I would like to write to the noble Lord—a generous suggestion that he made—setting out what the highest amount might be in the highest rateable-value property in a particular area.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for his broad support. I know that he finds these differing structures untidy and has complained about them before, but the Government are responding to what local people want, which varies in different parts of the country so different patterns emerge. I am not sure that I can take the debate any further today. Doubtless, when we have future debates on combined authorities, I will make the same point. In the meantime, I commend the orders.

New Towns Act 1981 (Local Authority Oversight) Regulations 2018

Debate between Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Young of Cookham

Monday 9th July 2018 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I am happy to support the regulations before the House and I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Goss Moor, on securing this change to the legislation when the Bill was going through the House. I am very happy that we will provide local authorities with the option of being able to lead on new town developments. That is a good thing and, as other noble Lords said, will allow a level of independence so that they can go forward. Given that, I am happy to support the regulations as they are.

I was pleased that the Government listened to the responses to the consultation on the financial limits; that is very good news. However, the report of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee talks about the length of the consultation. I have mentioned a number of times the question of consultations from the department. This appears to be truncated down to four weeks, whereas ideally it should be six weeks and perhaps even longer. There is also a general point to be made about the consultation itself, in that, whether it produces negative or positive responses, the level of those responses is actually very low. The Government should look at ways of trying to get more people to engage with what they are doing.

I agree strongly with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Goss Moor, about the construction of new towns and bringing the process up to date. Indeed, it is a good intention on the part of the Government to deliver on this. A number of noble Lords observed that new homes must be of sufficient quality, which is extremely important. They must be properly energy efficient, built using the best techniques and set within the right infrastructure. In that way we will have homes in new towns and elsewhere that will be there for many years. If we do not get this right, we will simply create housing problems for future generations. I am conscious that in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, while Governments of all persuasions built a lot of housing, in the end a good deal of it turned out to be of very poor quality. For all the promises, those houses failed the families who had to live in them. Of course, some of the properties are still here today. So it is important that, whatever is built, be it in new towns or elsewhere, quality should underpin it. Hopefully, having a local element in new towns, with local people being fully involved, will help with that. Again, I am happy to support the regulations.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to the debate, in particular the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Goss Moor, for his continuing support and for putting these proposals into an historical context. As the Minister responsible for new towns in the 1980s, I found it rather nostalgic to be taken through the history of the new towns. As he and other noble Lords said, the climate has changed since then. There is more of an appetite for local engagement, and indeed, as the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, said, we now have the proven competence of local authorities to undertake major developments.

The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, said that the introduction of the regulations was a necessary and important step in helping to increase the country’s housing supply. Indeed, I think that there is general agreement on all sides of the House that localising new town development corporation powers will provide local authorities with a new and powerful vehicle for driving forward high-quality new communities at scale. I endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy said about quality. That is why we have written that into the regulations. The Government want the initiative to be a success and we recognise that the change that we have made, with the slightly lighter touch of the Treasury, makes it a more appetising proposition for local authorities.

I shall pick up some of the points that were made. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, asked about the relationship between the oversight authority and the new town development corporation. Prior to agreeing to the establishment of a locally led development corporation, we would expect to see a proposal for governance arrangements that provided appropriate oversight of and independence for the new town development corporation.

On the membership of the development corporation, we want it to have operational independence to get on with the job, but we have required that the board should have a majority of independent members. In response to the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, the appointment of the chair, the deputy chair and the independent board members should be through an open, transparent and publicly advertised process in line with the broader principles for local authority appointments. There has already been some indication of an appetite for these new regulations. The four local authorities that lead the North Essex Garden Communities project have expressed an interest in setting up a locally led new town development corporation.

The regulations provide a vital lever for delivering the transformational housing growth that we need while ensuring that surrounding existing communities will also benefit from well-planned infrastructure and community amenities. I beg to move.

European Union Referendum

Debate between Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Young of Cookham

Wednesday 4th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

Noble Lords had an opportunity to debate and vote on that in the recent EU withdrawal Bill. The notion of a second referendum was not one that found favour in either House. On the rest of the noble Baroness’s question, since the referendum, Parliament has voted to trigger Article 50 and we have passed the EU withdrawal Bill. That gives us a democratic mandate.

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

My Lords, I know the noble Lord agrees that our laws on elections and referendums are not fit for purpose. Will he give an assurance to the House that the Government will act when all these inquiries and investigations are over?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

Yes. On one of the many occasions that we have debated this, I think I quoted a comment made by my party before the last election about the fitness for purpose of the current legislation. It makes sense to await the outcome of the court case, the EC inquiries into the referendum and the elections, and other inquiries. Then we can stand back and look at how the electoral law can best be brought up to date so that we have a digital framework for a digital age.

Elections: Electoral Commission Recommendations

Debate between Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Young of Cookham

Thursday 28th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

My noble friend will know that the Electoral Commission has made requests for legislation, particularly to increase the sanctions that are available to it. He referred to some commission inquiries. Last month, the commission published an inquiry into the activities of Vote Leave during the referendum campaign. He is quite right that there are two outstanding inquiries: one into Better for the Country Ltd and Arron Banks, and one into Vote Leave, Darren Grimes and Veterans for Britain, which commenced in November last year and, as I understand it, will be completed later this year. The Electoral Commission is an independent body so I need to be careful with what I say, but I am sure that Sir John Holmes will read my noble friend’s comments.

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

My Lords, does the Minister agree that our legislation on elections and referendums has not kept pace with technological advances, risks interference from abroad and is generally not fit for purpose?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

Yes; and I refer to the reply that I gave the noble Lord when he asked me the same question a few weeks ago. We have an analogue legislative process in a digital age and we do need to bring it up to date. I think it makes sense to wait for the outstanding court cases that are currently before the courts, the outcome of the DCMS inquiry into the impact of fake news on modern democracy and the reports to which my noble friend just referred into the referendum campaign. Once we have those, we can step back and look at the legislative framework and see how it will best be brought up to date.

Online Material: Identification of Promoters

Debate between Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Young of Cookham

Thursday 7th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The noble Lord is quite right that this was a recommendation by the Electoral Commission some time ago. During the Scottish referendum these requirements were introduced and the commission said that the rules,

“caused some confusion amongst campaigners and the public”.

The commission recommended further consideration on how to make the imprint requirement on online material proportionate and relevant. That is exactly what we are doing with our proposed consultation. In Scotland there was some debate as to whether Facebook and Twitter exchanges needed the imprint if they related to the referendum.

On the noble Lord’s second point, if we did go ahead it would not require primary legislation; it could be done by statutory instrument. On his third point, I am looking forward to the Committee stage of his Bill, which contains an ambitious programme of electoral reform, not all of which may reach the statute book.

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

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, raises a very important issue. Does the Minister agree that the Question highlights that our laws around elections are woefully out of date and unable to provide the necessary framework, and that we urgently need to review, amend and update the legislation to meet the challenges of the digital world?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

Yes, I do agree. The Electoral Commission is currently conducting some inquiries into campaigning irregularities, and the results of those inquiries will be published in the next few months. When we have disposed of current cases before the courts, we will then be in a position to address the important issues raised by the noble Lord.

Legislative Reform (Regulator of Social Housing) (England) Order 2018

Debate between Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Young of Cookham

Wednesday 23rd May 2018 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, I remind the House of my registered interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. The order before the House is one I support. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Best, for reminding us of the history of this and of the bonfire of the quangos—I remember the debates we had in the House about that. Clearly, the phoenix has now risen from the fire and we are back where we started. I am very happy with that and with the explanation that the noble Lord has given us. I am happy to support the order.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

My Lords, I will respond very briefly. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Best, for his nostalgic journey through the history of social housing, its regulation and funding. I pay tribute to the key role he has played in a variety of ways in the development of social housing and the role that he still plays today. If I may say so, he made the case for what is before the House even better than I did. I am grateful to both noble Lords who have spoken in this debate for their support.

Somerset West and Taunton (Local Government Changes) Order 2018

Debate between Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Young of Cookham

Wednesday 23rd May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

That would be an average, dividing the number of electors by the number of councillors. I have not drilled it down to an individual ward basis.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

I thank the Minister for his contribution. I mentioned Scotland and Wales in the previous debate. I think the Minister was in the Cabinet when the Major Government introduced unitary government to both Scotland and Wales in 1996, producing 32 councils in Scotland and 22 in Wales. That has largely stood the test of time. It seems strange, if that was the right thing to do then—it seemed to work well then and carries on to this day—that in England, it is very confused. I accept that the noble Lord has said that is what the policy is, but when we have a unitary council in one place and a district council in another, it all just appears to be a muddle. I recall a discussion with, I think, the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, who described that he had five councils potentially levying council tax and other demands in Cambridgeshire, but in Cornwall there was only one. It certainly seems to me to be very confused.

Bournemouth, Dorset and Poole (Structural Changes) Order 2018

Debate between Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Young of Cookham

Wednesday 23rd May 2018 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, I declare an interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

The order and regulations before the House bring into effect proposals to create two new unitary authorities covering Dorset, Bournemouth and Poole. Generally, I am in favour of the establishment of unitary local government in England. I think that the local government structures in Scotland and Wales are generally more fit for purpose than the patchwork that we have developed in England. In those countries the two-tier approach was abolished at the end of the John Major Government, with 32 unitary authorities in Scotland and 22 unitary authorities in Wales.

On numerous occasions I have raised in this House the issue of how local government reform is evolving in England. Generally, it is confused, with little clarity on the objective, the purpose and how it is right to have four tiers of local government in one area while in a neighbouring county the view is that a unitary authority is best. This lack of clarity does not strike me as very strategic, nor mindful of the council tax payer or the delivery of efficient services.

There is also the issue of consent. Clearly, Christchurch Borough Council has not consented. It has gone further and held a referendum on the issue, where 84% of the borough’s residents—on a 54% turnout—rejected what is being proposed here today. The matter went before the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which highlighted that Ministers will apply the criteria in the round rather than considering whether the criteria should be met in relation to each individual council area. This is all very strange. Perhaps the Minister can clarify what happened during Third Reading of the Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill in the other place. Did the Secretary of State provide assurance that the council would not be abolished without its consent? I do not know the answer, so perhaps he can tell me.

On 9 May, in Grand Committee in the Moses Room, we discussed local government changes in Suffolk. Having at first been quite complimentary about me, the Minister’s noble friend Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth went on to suggest that I was a Stalinist when all I asked for was clarity, certainty and value for money for the council tax payer. He said:

“We have a broad policy of saying these things have got to be locally led … local democracy is the key point”.


I then moved on to Oxfordshire. I was well aware that certain councils there are pushing for a unitary Oxfordshire, which Oxford City Council is opposed to—as I believe are the majority of the citizens who live in that area. I asked the noble Lord, Lord Bourne:

“Do I take it from what the Minister said that if councils do not want things to happen, they will not happen?”


His response was:

“That is essentially true. These have to be locally led. If they have not got local support, they will not happen … That does not mean that there has to be 100% support”.


He then clarified further:

“Well, for district mergers, there has to be 100% support from the councils. What I am saying is that there does not necessarily have to be 100% support from the local MPs, for example, and that has not been the case”.—[Official Report, 9/5/18; cols. GC 22-23.]


I think that the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, and his department are in some difficulty on this one. His noble friend Lord Bourne made it clear in Grand Committee on 9 May that there has to be 100% support from district councils for mergers to go ahead. Christchurch Borough Council does not agree. Furthermore, it held a referendum and, as I told the House, 84% of the residents of the borough, on a very respectable 54% turnout, did not agree either.

Then we have the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee of your Lordships’ House advising us that Ministers decide these things “in the round”, which it is at complete odds with what the Minister’s noble friend Lord Bourne told us on 9 May. As the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, is well aware and has told the House, the Conservative leader of Christchurch Borough Council, Councillor David Flagg, has begun a judicial review of the actions of the Secretary of State and his department. I think that there are fairly good questions that have to be answered before a judge, because this seems to be a little confused. I respectfully suggest that this is a mess, and the wisest option for the noble Lord’s department would be to withdraw these two statutory instruments, sort it out and get the lines clear in the department to avoid a possible court battle and a waste of public money.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate. I commend the persistence of my former colleague Sir Christopher Chope in garnering support from unlikely quarters to continue his campaign against this merger. I recognise the locus in the area of the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock. Indeed, I remember taking part in the campaign to ensure that she was not elected in the by-election—a campaign in which I and others failed.

Perhaps I may deal with the important issues which the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, raised. She mentioned that Christchurch was debt free—which it is, as are a number of the other local authorities. However, that is only part of the story, because many services provided to Christchurch are provided by the county council, which does have debt. So the people of Christchurch pay council tax on local authority debt, which is at the level of more than £500 per head.

I have just had news from the front. There was a deferred Division in the other place on these statutory instruments. Had the votes gone the other way, I am not sure that there would have been a lot of purpose in continuing our discussions, but I am happy to say that the ayes were 293 against 19 and 294 against 19 on the other instrument, so we can proceed, the other place having done its duty.

On council tax levels, I think that I am right in saying that Christchurch benefits from harmonisation, as its average level of council tax is higher. Therefore, with harmonisation that level will come down.

I say in response to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, that there is a difference between the rules for mergers and those for unitarisation. He is quite right that, where we are talking about a merger, there has to be agreement from the councils being merged. But this is not a merger; it is unitarisation, and the rules for unitarisation are different. I read them out. Proposals have to be judged in the round as commanding a good deal of local support in the area. I quoted from what my noble friend Lady Williams said when the relevant legislation was being debated, which made it clear that there was not a right of veto of any one particular council within the proposed unitary; we had to look at the issues in the round.

The noble Baroness mentioned the poll conducted in Christchurch. There have been some criticisms of the conduct of that poll. Dorset County Council referred in its representations to,

“misleading and inaccurate information being circulated, not validated by the County Council or indeed Christchurch Borough Council. This was both before and while the poll was open and must introduce the question of bias in the process and undermine the validity of the findings”.

Poole Borough Council in its representation stated that the advisory poll in Christchurch,

“was supported by privately promoted information which was factually inaccurate and misleading”.

The borough council asserted that in its view the poll was “wholly unreliable” and asked the Secretary of State to “disregard” it.

None the less, we did have careful regard to the poll and its circumstances—but it did involve only 6% of the population of the whole area and we do not see this poll, for all these reasons, as casting doubt on the evidence that, in the round, across the whole area, the proposition has support. This proposal was locally led, developed and consulted on, and submitted jointly by the Dorset councils. The evidence is that nearly 80% of councillors across the whole area are in favour of the proposal, businesses and key public sector partners overwhelmingly support it, and the representative household survey showed that 65% of the public support it. Seven local Members of Parliament also support the proposal.

I have listened to the objections of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy. I hope that I have addressed them and also dealt with some of the points raised by the noble Baroness.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

That was a very helpful explanation and I thank the Minister, but will he explain a bit further why it is that if you merge two or three district councils, one council can object and veto it, whereas when you have a bigger reorganisation involving the unitarisation of a county, no one has a veto? Potentially, that involves many more services, a bigger area and bigger budgets, yet apparently no one has to be involved in that. Will he explain further, please?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

We made it quite clear that where an area wants to move from where it is now two-tier to unitary, we want to look at the proposal as a whole, and we do not believe it is right for any one component to have a veto. That is different from where two local authorities, as we are about to debate in a moment, want to get together and merge. We think that where they are going to merge—in other words, there is not going to be a wholesale reorganisation—it would be wrong to compel people to merge if they do not want to.

So, locally led proposals for district council mergers are to be assessed against criteria which we announced to Parliament on 7 November 2017, which include both the criterion that to be implemented a proposal should command a good deal of local support in the area and the criterion that the merger is proposed by all the councils to be merged. Locally led proposals for unitarisation are to be assessed against different criteria, announced to the Commons on 28 February 2017, which include the criterion that to be implemented a proposal for an area should, when judged in the round, be assessed as commanding a good deal of local support in the area.

Unlike in the case of mergers, unitarising an area does not need to be proposed by all the councils involved, since that area necessarily includes two tiers of councils, so that even if some councils in the area do not support the proposal, the area of those that do may cover the whole area. I may not have convinced the noble Lord—in fact, I can see that I have not convinced him—but he asked me what the criteria were and I have explained them.

Local Elections: Voter ID

Debate between Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Young of Cookham

Tuesday 24th April 2018 Lords Chamber

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

Ensuring our elections are safe and secure is an important duty, and one which I fully support. Will the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, say a bit more about the evaluation process? I hope that he can confirm that a speedy decision will be taken by the Government after the pilots have been evaluated, as we need simple but effective measures to ensure the integrity of the electoral process and to ensure that we do not get in the way of enabling people to cast their vote, which is the other side of the same coin and an important part of their playing their role as citizens of the UK.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. There will be an independent statutory evaluation of the pilots conducted by the Electoral Commission. That will be published by the end of July, and it will inform the ensuing debate.

Hate Crime

Debate between Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Young of Cookham

Tuesday 13th March 2018 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, these disgusting letters have, quite righty, caused revulsion in our communities and been condemned. I pay tribute to community and faith leaders, charities and others for what they have done. They and others will not let us be divided. Domestic extremism needs to be dealt with. Can the noble Lord reassure us that the Anderson review recommendations to the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre will start to produce the threat assessments for domestic extremism? Can he reassure the House that the police have the resources they need? He will of course be aware that the police got less than half of what they asked for to deal with terrorism.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

On the first question, of course we want to take those recommendations forward, and perhaps I could write in more detail to the noble Lord on that. On the question of police resources, I am aware of the exchanges that took place in the other place yesterday. After speaking to all forces in England and Wales, the Government have provided a comprehensive funding settlement that will increase total investment in the police system by around £450 million in 2018-19. Overall public investment in policing will grow from £11.9 billion in 2015-16 to around £13 billion in 2018-19. We believe that the settlement enables police and crime commissioners to increase their direct funding by up to £270 million. It is then up to chief constables to decide how best to deploy officers in their force to effectively serve and engage their communities and to build trust and confidence. The Government have made it absolutely clear that this is one of the priorities that police forces must engage in as they deploy those resources.

Cannabis

Debate between Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Young of Cookham

Monday 12th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I am very happy to respond to the noble Lord’s opening question, namely to pass his request on. We are guided in this country by the MHRA, the authority that advises government on whether medicines should have a licence.

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

My Lords, we have a vast number of drugs that are strictly controlled and regulated here in the UK. I have no wish to change the law in respect of the general use of cannabis but I think the noble Lord has heard from around the House that the Government should surely move on it with a bit more speed and look at whether there is a genuine case for the medical use of this drug. I have no idea what the answer is; I will listen to the medical professionals on that matter.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I agree with the noble Lord’s last sentence, that he will listen to the medical evidence. I say to noble Lords that I have listened to the exchanges over the last seven minutes and there is a clear view that we should try to make progress, not on legalising cannabis but on making it easier to prescribe cannabis in certain circumstances where it may have some therapeutic or beneficial value. I am very happy to take that message back to the Home Office and I hope that, next time, somebody more qualified than myself will be able to answer these questions.

Housing Associations

Debate between Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Young of Cookham

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.

Grenfell Tower

Debate between Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Young of Cookham

Thursday 14th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[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

Debate between Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Young of Cookham

Wednesday 6th December 2017 Grand Committee

[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.

Data Protection Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Young of Cookham

Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 15th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

My Lords, the noble Baroness’s clarification of these probing amendments is very helpful. As we have heard, a competent authority in this context of the Bill means a person as specified in Schedule 7, to the extent that the person has functions for law enforcement purposes.

Amendments 124Q and 124R would add useful clarifications that the persons listed in Schedule 7 come under the same classification as “any other person” referred to in Clause 28(1)(b) and the persons listed in Clause 28(3)(b). That would be a useful clarification in the Bill.

I do not support Amendment 124S in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, but support the three government amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Ashton of Hyde. As I say, I do not support Amendment 124S, which makes the case for Amendments 124Q and 124R even more important.

I support the amendment that would add police and crime commissioners to the schedule, and the other amendments in the group which would widen the definitions, as that would be very useful. I look forward to the noble Baroness’s response to the points that have been raised.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

The co-pilot is in charge of this leg of the legislative journey, so there may be some turbulence.

I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for her explanation of these amendments. I particularly welcome what she said at the beginning of her remarks—namely, that these were probing amendments designed to improve the style. We are all in favour of improving style. Having read previous Hansards, I know that there has been broad cross-party support for the Bill’s provisions, particularly this part of it. I know that the Liberal Democrat Benches are particular enthusiasts for enshrining in UK law the provisions of the EU law enforcement directive.

As the noble Baroness has indicated, this group of amendments relates to the definition of various terms used in Part 3, including that of a competent authority and the meaning of “profiling”. I also welcome the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, in support of some of the amendments.

The scope of the law enforcement processing regime is provided for in Part 3 of the Bill. Unlike Part 4, which applies to all processing of personal data by the intelligence services, the scheme in Part 3 is purpose-driven. The Part 3 scheme applies to processing by competent authorities, as defined in Clause 28, for any of the law enforcement purposes, as defined in Clause 29. This approach is clear from a reading of Part 3 as a whole. For example, each of the data protection principles in Clauses 33 to 38 refers to processing for any of the law enforcement purposes.

The definition of a competent authority needs to be viewed in that context. Competent authorities will process personal data under the scheme in Part 3 only where such processing is for one of the law enforcement purposes. If they process data for another purpose, as the noble Baroness indicated—for example, for HR management purposes—the processing would be undertaken under either the GDPR or applied GDPR scheme, as the case may be. That would be the default regime. I am not sure there is a case for yet another regime on top of the two we already have. As paragraph 167 of the Explanatory Notes to the Bill makes clear, a government department will be a competent authority for the purposes of Part 3 only to the extent that it processes personal data for a law enforcement purpose. For example, where DWP processes data in the course of investigating criminal offences linked to benefit fraud, it will do so as a competent authority.

The approach we have taken in Schedule 7 is to list all the principal law enforcement agencies, including police forces, prosecutors and those responsible for offender management, but also to list other office holders and organisations that have law enforcement functions supplementary to their primary function. For example, the list in Schedule 7 includes some significant regulators. We should remember that the definition of “law enforcement purposes” includes the “execution of criminal penalties”, as set out in Clause 29. That being the case, it is entirely appropriate to list contractors providing offender management services. I hope this explanation deals with Amendment 129A. As I explained a moment ago, where such contractors process data for a non-law enforcement purpose—again, an example given by the noble Baroness—they will do so under the GDPR or applied GDPR scheme.

Schedule 7 is not, and is not intended to be, a wholly exhaustive list, and other organisations with incidental law enforcement functions will come within the scope of the definition of a competent authority by virtue of Clause 28(1)(b). Police and crime commissioners, to which Amendment 127A relates, may be a case in point, but if they process personal data for a law enforcement purpose, they will do so as a competent authority by virtue of Clause 28(1)(b). The government amendments in this group should be viewed against that backdrop.

Since the Bill was introduced, we have identified a number of other organisations that it would be appropriate to add to the list in Schedule 7, and Amendments 125, 126, 128 and 129 are directed to that end. Government Amendment 127 modifies the existing entry in respect of the independent office for police conduct in recognition of the fact that under the reforms we are making to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, the director-general will be the data controller of the reformed organisation.

The amendments to Clause 31 all seek to amend the definition of profiling. First, Amendment 129C seeks to include “attributes” in the definition of profiling, which currently refers to “aspects”. The existing wording reflects the terminology used in the LED, which is clear. In any event, the two words do not differ much in substance, so little is gained by the proposed addition.

In Amendment 129B and Amendments 129D to 129F the noble Baroness seeks to widen the definition of profiling so that it is not restricted to “certain” areas of profiling or to the aspects listed. However, the personal aspects itemised in the definition are not intended to act as an exhaustive list, and the inclusion of the words “certain” and “in particular” do not have this effect. The list refers to those aspects considered of most importance to profiling. Again, for these reasons, these amendments are not necessary. I think the noble Baroness conceded that we were simply replicating the existing terminology.

I hope I have been able to reassure her on these points and that she will be content to withdraw her Amendment 124Q and support the government amendments.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011

Debate between Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Young of Cookham

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.

Electoral Spending Limits: Wales

Debate between Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Young of Cookham

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.

Boundary Reviews 2018

Debate between Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Young of Cookham

Monday 26th June 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they intend to introduce legislation amending the provisions relating to the 2018 Boundary Reviews.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, following laws already passed by Parliament, the independent Boundary Commissions are consulting on their proposals to deliver boundary changes. They will submit their final proposals to Parliament in autumn 2018, ensuring fair and equal representation for the voting public across the UK. We have no plans to change this process.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, millions of people have registered to vote who are not taken into account in the present parliamentary boundary review. Will the noble Lord commit the Government to including these people? Would he comment on the general opinion that the present boundary review is dead in the water because the DUP does not want it and that any review approved by Parliament will be on the basis of there being 650 seats in the House of Commons? If that is the Government’s real intention, they should say so quickly and stop wasting any more public money on a review that will not be approved.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

My Lords, the country has already fought two general elections on out-of-date boundaries for reasons that are familiar to the noble Lord. If we followed the noble Lord’s suggestion and started again with a new register, there is a risk of a third general election on boundaries which were set in place in 2000. That would be an affront to democracy.