Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Kerslake Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued) & Report stage & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 5th October 2020 Lords Chamber

EU citizens living in this country deserve to be treated in exactly the same way. Surely EU citizens are equally entitled, in the words of the Minister, to benefit from the gradual introduction of changes that builds confidence for users just like everybody else. For this reason, I am pleased to support this amendment.

[Lord Kerslake (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I am pleased to add my name to this amendment, and again thank the noble Lord, Lord Oates, for his diligent pursuit of this issue. Unfortunately, I was not able to join the debate in Committee on 14 September, but I have read the record of the debate. The case for providing access to physical records has been so compellingly made by the noble Lord and other Peers across the Chamber that I do not feel the need to repeat it tonight.

The question I have reflected on is why on earth the Government would not be willing to agree to this. It does not cut across a manifesto commitment, set an unwelcome precedent, or involve major cost or administrative difficulty. As other noble Lords have pointed out, we already have such physical proof available for non-EEA citizens. Having read through the records, I think that the only arguments put forward by the Government are that they are committed to the path of digital, and that it is not necessary.

On the first of these arguments, nothing in this amendment implies that the Government should divert from the path of increasing the use of digital technology —this is really important. It simply says that in the particular circumstances we are dealing with here, the opportunity to also have physical proof is a very important, indeed vital, reassurance. On the second argument, the3million group and the individual representations have provided very good evidence that it is seen as necessary by those affected. However, if it is not necessary, we can expect the take-up to be very small, and there would be an opportunity in the future for the Government to revisit the issue. This is a straightforward and deliverable change to the Bill that would be widely welcomed by a group of people caught up in this process through no fault of their own. It is a small bit of humanity and common sense.

If the Minister is so sure of her ground—of the certainty that the systems will work exactly as intended, without error—she may hold on to her position and I hope that it goes to a vote. But I ask her to think again, because none of us can give that level of certainty to something that is so vital to people’s lives.

[Lord McNicol of West Kilbride (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Oates, has, in his opening contribution, clearly outlined many of the arguments why this simple, short amendment on physical documentation should be accepted by Her Majesty’s Government. It is only five lines long, but within those five lines, so much future heartache and pain could be averted—averted for the most vulnerable in society.

As we have heard, this amendment is tempered and moderate. The words

“and who request such proof”

in subsection (1) show how measured this cross-party amendment, proposed by a grouping of the noble Lords, Lord Oates, Lord Polak, Lord Kerslake and me, is an attempt to be. I hope that the Minister can be as accommodating as we have been.

There have been calls under previous amendments for physical documentation to be automatically provided for all. I have sympathy with that call but, in the hope that we can get to a position where our amendment could be accepted by the Minister and Her Majesty’s Government, the words

“and who request such proof”

have been added. It would be a very sad day if the Minister cannot accept this short and sensible amendment.

In rereading the Commons Committee debate and previous debates on this amendment in your Lordships’ House, like others, I am still at a loss to understand why the Minister feels she cannot accept or support it. The arguments against have been, at best, vague. When responding on 14 September, the Minister said, when referring to the Home Office letter:

“I must say, it is not proof; it is confirmation. This should reassure individuals about their status when dealing with the Home Office in the future”—[Official Report, 14/9/20; col. 1094.]


Well, no. It is the issuing of the physical proof that is vital and will give those individuals the reassurance they need. We all heard the noble Lord, Lord Russell, in his contribution on Amendment 16 talking about the issues surrounding the Home Office. It is vital for so many reasons—for work, for housing, for the feeling of belonging.

Like many others who spoke earlier, I fully support the digitisation and the move to online processing and ordering, but there are issues and concerns with the only form of access to proof being digital and online. We have heard some of those. What happens if the online systems fail—like our voting system last Wednesday, when it was critically and crucially needed? Only this weekend, we have seen the failures in relation to Covid testing and the errors that have occurred with the digitisation there. But it is not just the errors: there are also those who are not digitally literate. What support will the Government offer to them, if they will not accept the amendment?

I hope that, with the cross-party support of this simple, short amendment, it can be accepted and introduced.

North of England: Transport

Lord Kerslake Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kerslake (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as president-elect of the Local Government Association. My other interests are as recorded in the register.

First, I welcome the fact that we are having this debate and the significant transport investment that is planned. Good connectivity between London and the north, and between the cities in the north, is critical to realising the north’s economic potential. Transport connectivity alone will not create the northern powerhouse, but it is a vital component.

I will talk today, though, about one specific issue referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Woolmer, which is the location of the HS2 station in the Sheffield city region. For reasons that I will come on to, this is not just a technical issue but a vital decision for HS2 and the Sheffield city region. It must be got right. I fear that as things stand, the wrong decision will be taken and that that will seriously undermine the long-term contribution of the Sheffield city region to the future prosperity of the north.

The city regions of Leeds, Manchester and Sheffield together add up to roughly 80% of the population of London. However, they amount to only 40% of London’s economic output. The response to this is, of course, not to curb London, which must continue to succeed as a global city, but to make the north more competitive. To compete globally the northern cities need scale and critical mass. No northern city—not even Manchester—can compete globally on its own; they are simply not big enough.

Combining the cities will not and should not be achieved through an uncontrolled urban expansion across the Pennines. Instead it requires a step change in connectivity similar to that in the Dutch Randstad. Transport for the North, or TransNorth, recognises this and is explicit in its focus on city centre to city centre connectivity. Its ambition is for a 30-minute journey time between Sheffield, Leeds and Manchester city centres to create a single labour market and harness the benefits of scale.

The proposal for HS2, however, is that the Sheffield station should be located not in the centre of Sheffield but in an out-of-town parkway station some four miles from the city centre. Sheffield would face the illogical position that HS2 goes to an out-of-town station while TransNorth goes to the city centre. For me this would be an utter absurdity and a major opportunity lost. One part of government policy would actively undermine another.

It is fair to say that TransNorth and the northern powerhouse have come about after the HS2 route and options were first published. Much further work has been done on this issue, including, of course, the excellent report of this House’s Economic Affairs Committee. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for drawing my attention to the oral evidence by Brigid Simmonds and Jim Steer, which very strongly supported city centres as locations for HS2 stations.

The key question here is: how do we make the most of this massive investment? It is possible to do this only if we rethink this decision, and do so soon. It is not just a question of the connectivity with Leeds and Manchester. Locating the station in the city centre rather than outside would generate substantial economic benefits in its own right. A study by the economic development consultancy, Genecon, for Creative Sheffield, the city’s economic development partnership, has estimated that this would amount to an additional £3 billion to £5 billion over the life of the HS2 business case. This benefit compares with an additional cost of some £680 million, a figure significantly reduced from the original estimate of £1 billion. There would be some impact on journey times but these are now calculated to be only just over two minutes compared with the original calculation of seven. This is a small price to pay for the additional economic benefits and, in any event, the aim of HS2 is not just speed but growth. The city centre option creates more jobs and more passenger trips and has a positive cost-benefit ratio. In short, to use the vernacular, it is a no-brainer.

I spoke in my maiden speech of my hopes that Sheffield city region would be able to make early progress in developing an ambitious devolution deal along the lines of Manchester. There are huge opportunities in the city region from the Advanced Manufacturing Park in Rotherham to the national rail college in Doncaster. Delivering this will clearly require some difficult decisions by the councils involved, in particular on whether they are willing to support the creation of a metro mayor. The location of the HS2 station is one such difficult issue where I know there are differences of views. However, I very much hope that all parties in the city region will get behind the city centre solution.

I understand that the final decision on the station location has not yet been made by the department. Indeed, I further understand that officials from HS2 Ltd were in the city just yesterday to discuss the matter. I very much welcome this. There is still time to get the decision right. I would be grateful, therefore, if the Minister, when he sums up, will respond to the following questions. Will he commit to asking the department and HS2 Ltd to look again at the options for location of the station in the light of the TransNorth proposals and the latest information on costs and benefits? Will he agree to a meeting with those in the city region who passionately believe in the need for an HS2 city centre station to fully realise the economic potential of this once-in-a-generation investment?

Queen’s Speech

Lord Kerslake Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kerslake (CB) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, I want to touch on three issues in my speech today: local government, devolution and housing.

But let me first say how delighted I am to have become a Member of this House. It seems a long journey from the small village primary school in Somerset, where my father was the head teacher. He left school without qualifications and lied about his age in order to join the Royal Air Force and fight in Bomber Command. Subsequently, he trained as a teacher, having caught up on his education in a prisoner-of-war camp. My mother came over from Ireland to train as a nurse and they met at the Royal United in Bath after the war, where my father was being treated for an injury he sustained when he was shot down over Germany—I am in almost every sense a product of the NHS. To use the current in-vogue phrase, my parents were not just aspirational for their children; they were fiercely ambitious. The route to success for them was for their children to make the very most of a good state education. My only sadness is that neither is here today to listen to this speech.

I sit as a Cross-Bencher, having served political Administrations led by all three of the main political parties. Since standing down from the Civil Service, I have taken on a number of new roles, including chair of King’s College Hospital, chair of Peabody housing association and chair of the Centre for Public Scrutiny. I declare these as interests in the debate today.

Let me turn first to local government. By some margin, the biggest issue facing local authorities is the prospect of further significant spending reductions in this Parliament. They will follow on from some of the largest budget reductions experienced by any part of the public sector in the previous Parliament. In my view, local government acquitted itself well during that exceptionally demanding period: staffing was reduced, back-office services were shared and efficiencies were found, but every effort was made to protect front-line services, particularly for the most vulnerable. The temptation for this Government would be to conclude that, because local government performed so well in the previous Parliament, all that is needed is simply to re-run the record. That would be a grave error. The inevitable consequence would be a deterioration in the visible services, such as street cleaning, and massive pressure on the social care budgets, in turn adding to the considerable pressures on the NHS.

To avoid this, a much more comprehensive approach will be needed which looks specifically at social care, revisits the distribution of funding between authorities, considers new sources of income and promotes the integration of local public services. Close working with the Local Government Association and the sector will be essential. This will not make the task easy or risk free. The alternative, though, will be a great deal worse.

The greatest opportunity for local government in this Parliament, and my second theme, is the prospect of greater devolution. I have long been a passionate advocate of devolution as a way to promote economic growth and improve public services. Since my time as chief executive of Sheffield City Council, I have also championed the economic potential of our major cities outside London. So for me, the Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill, which received its First Reading in this House last week, is entirely welcome. It provides the opportunity to build on the ground-breaking deal done by the previous Government with Greater Manchester and deliver far-reaching devolution of powers and budgets to boost local growth. I was fortunate to work closely with the new Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Greg Clark, on the city and local growth deals. I saw at first hand the skill, creativity and attention to detail he brought to that and the success he made of that initiative. One of the most striking features of the Minister’s approach was his inclusivity, so that every part of the country benefited from a deal. It is important that this inclusive approach is also followed on devolution, so that the opportunities are not confined just to cities and not just to those city regions that are ready to agree to a metro mayor.

In his foreword to the excellent City Growth Commission report, the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, refers to “ManSheffLeedsPool”—get your mind around that one—as an area of 7 million people that could provide the economic scale to compare with London. I very much hope, therefore, that the Sheffield city region will follow on soon to benefit from the opportunities of this Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Scriven, spoke eloquently about Sheffield in his maiden speech in December. With the brilliant Advanced Manufacturing Park in Rotherham, the new National College for High Speed Rail in Doncaster and the key development sites at Markham Vale and junction 31 of the M1, the area has enormous economic opportunities. It has a well-regarded local enterprise partnership and a combined authority chaired by one of the most experienced and able leaders in local government, Sir Steve Houghton. It is in everyone’s interests that discussions to build on the deal agreed at the end of the previous Parliament begin soon. One important issue that should be revisited as part of these discussions is the location of the HS2 station in Sheffield. The impact on growth, jobs and business rates if this is located in the centre of Sheffield is significantly higher than the alternative of an out-of-town parkway station. It also keeps open the future opportunity to create a genuine economic powerhouse through improved connectivity with Leeds and Manchester.

The third and final area that I want to talk about today is housing. There were a lot of good and productive initiatives in the coalition Government to promote the building of more housing and more affordable homes. It is with great regret, therefore, that I find myself so completely opposed to the Government’s proposals to extend right to buy to housing associations and to force local authorities to sell off their highest-value properties as they become vacant. In its current form, this policy seems to me to be both wrong in principle and wrong in practice. It is wrong in principle because these are not the Government’s assets to sell. Housing associations are private, mostly charitable, bodies. They have built up their housing stock over long periods of time to provide for those who are most in need. Peabody, for example, has been in existence for 153 years, only 40 of which have involved any public subsidy.

To fund the cost of the discounts, local authorities will be compelled to sell their highest-value properties as they become vacant. There is a good case for local authorities being able selectively to sell off some of their high-value properties to reinvest. However, a top-down, one-size-fits-all approach is contrary to the spirit of greater devolution and will bring with it unintended consequences. In London, for example, the top third by value of properties will be concentrated in the central London boroughs of Wandsworth, Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea, which stand to lose nearly two-thirds of their stock over time.

The plans are wrong in practice because they will not advance the Government’s stated aims; indeed, I fear that they will move them backwards. Housing associations have been key players in the delivery of new housing in recent years, accounting for over one-third of all new housing. Many have built not just for rent but for sale. They have developed some excellent and innovative schemes to promote home ownership. These new homes, however, are substantially funded through private borrowing against future rental streams. The proposed RTB policy, combined with changes in benefits, will make housing associations much more cautious about investing in new-build programmes and, crucially, lenders much more cautious about lending. The knock-on consequences of this on new-build and regeneration schemes could be very serious.

There are also real doubts in my mind as to whether the receipts from the sale of high-value local authority properties can simultaneously cover the cost of the discount, the re-provision of new affordable homes and a contribution to the brownfield regeneration fund. At the very least this should be subject to a full independent financial review. What is clear, though, is that there would be a substantial flow of funds out of London, potentially of the order of £5 billion, to other parts of the country to make the numbers balance. The level of sales in London could reach 5,000 a year, which would be almost impossible for the London boroughs to match with new-build affordable homes—a fact borne out by the current experience of the one-for-one policy. This loss of affordable homes and redistribution of funds out of London at a time when its housing needs are so acute seems to be completely counterproductive.

For all these reasons, and for the others set out so well by others, including the noble Lord, Lord Best, I urge the Government to reconsider. They should meet urgently with the sector to discuss how the policy can be amended and its deficiencies addressed. Ultimately, the route to more home ownership, which I support passionately, is to build more homes. There is a real risk that this policy will distract from that vital, urgent task.

These three issues—local government, devolution and housing—are my current passions. In time, no doubt, drawing on my experience from the brilliant King’s College Hospital, I am likely to add health. I look forward to contributing to these debates in future.