Levelling-up Report

Lord Newby Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

As someone who spent 16 years in local government, I am obviously a great fan of devolution. But it is very clear that, by 2030, every part of the United Kingdom that wants a devolution deal with powers will be offered one. That will be the highest level of devolution we have ever had in this country, and that is certainly a step forward.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to hear what the Minister has just said about every region getting the degree of devolution that it requires. The noble Lord will be aware of the One Yorkshire committee, of which the leaders of Conservative councils in Yorkshire are members. All of them believe that there should be a single devolved authority for the whole of the great county of Yorkshire. Does the Minister concur with that ambition?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

I know that there is a strong Yorkshire lobby here. When I look at a map of Yorkshire, I see that it seems to have engulfed most of the north of England these days. But we are devolving into parts of Yorkshire, essentially, with strong mayoral figures. I am sure that they have opportunities to collaborate with their fellow Yorkshire colleagues. But I think that we have moved on from the one Yorkshire idea.

Building and Fire Safety: Leaseholders

Lord Newby Excerpts

Monday 14th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

I thank the right reverend Prelate, who has also been a consistent campaigner. As a Government we are very much aware of the impact this has on, say, pensioners, where property is their primary pension asset and the annuity from those properties effectively pays for their pensions. As I say, I ask the right reverend Prelate please to wait until we bring forward further amendments on Report, but we are very alive to this issue.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister reminds us that the Government propose that leaseholders should pay no more than £15,000—in London. Does he accept that, if you live in London and are facing very heavy costs, including rapidly rising energy bills, for many people who will be faced with a bill of £15,000, that is not nothing or little—it is a crippling amount? Does he accept that limiting it to £15,000 does not relieve the pressure on many people who simply cannot afford £15,000?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, there is no doubt that £15,000, paid over five years, is a substantial sum, but the reality is that some poor leaseholders who are victims have paid far more than that on interim measures before a single bit of remediation has been done. Having a cap on leaseholder costs ensures that they are no longer fleeced through Section 20 notices to pay for mistakes for which they are not responsible. That is what that protection achieved and, through regulation, we can broaden the impact to protect those with the very narrowest of shoulders.

North Yorkshire (Structural Changes) Order 2022

Lord Newby Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, following earlier discussions about errors in statutory instruments, when I worked for Customs and Excise, there was a VAT instrument in which I had a passing interest which had one word wrong. The view was taken that the Under-Secretary whose responsibility it was would never be promoted again as a result. Sadly, he never was, although there may have been more fundamental reasons for that. I am sure that will not be the fate of the Minister.

My interest in this is that I am a resident of Ripon, which is affected by this change. From looking at the two orders we have so far discussed, the similarities and the differences strike me. North Yorkshire is bigger than Cumbria in every way. Cumbria has a population of 498,000; North Yorkshire’s population is 602,000. Cumbria is 60 miles long from north to south; Scarborough to Bentham is 108 miles or three hours’ drive. This is a big place and even some of the wards are huge. I draw the Minister’s attention to Upper Dales, which has Hawes, High Abbotside, Upper Swaledale, Lower Swaledale and Arkengarthdale, and is 20 miles long. It would take you at least 40 minutes to drive from one end to the other and for a fair bit of winter it is impassable, because you have to go over from Wensleydale to Swaledale. This is a very different type of country, as is Cumbria, to much of the rest of England and the rest of the United Kingdom.

As the noble Lord will be aware, whether this is the best proposal was the subject of a massive amount of in-fighting in his party, and a lack of consensus in my party and every other party, about which is the best way forward, because getting it right is extremely complex. I shall not argue the toss about whether there should be a division down the A1, which was highly supported in some places. There was also no effective consultation. People may have responded to an online petition but, having done some canvassing in Ripon, I know that nobody knows it is happening, and far less have they expressed a view.

Although this is nominally the creation of a unitary authority, it will work only if there are two tiers of local government, and the second tier is different from the district. It will be the local. At the moment, Ripon is part of Harrogate district and North Yorkshire county, and there is huge resentment to being part of Harrogate. I knocked on a door and a man answered who was not a natural Liberal Democrat. He made that clear by ripping up the leaflet that I was attempting to give him. I asked him who he was supporting and he said, “I am supporting UKIP because, if UKIP were in here, we would have had our independence from Harrogate by now.” This sort of parochialism is rampant in far-flung parts of North Yorkshire.

Unless there is an effective form of very local government, that feeling of distance will inevitably grow because of the increasing distance. Harrogate is just down the road compared with Northallerton if you live in Ripon, so that man and people generally who live in Ripon, who are fed up with what they see as their subordinate position to Harrogate, will be looking for Ripon, which already has a city council having a cathedral which celebrates its 1,350th anniversary this year, to take on more responsibilities, and that poses major problems.

At the moment, Ripon City Council is a modest affair when it comes to doing things. It is very good when it comes to appearing in the cathedral wearing gowns and being proceeded by the macebearer, but the issue which occupies more of the time of that city council at the moment is the provision of Christmas lights. This will not do in future. There needs to be much more devolution of small powers down to Ripon City Council so that the people of Ripon feel that they can have a real say about small things that matter a lot to them.

North Yorkshire has submitted to Ripon and more generally a list of 27 areas of responsibility, which it says it is prepared to discuss in principle with parish councils and town councils, with a view to devolving. They go from running car parks to providing dog wardens and library services and a whole raft of those sorts of minor things. I know there is an appetite in Ripon for those powers to be taken back, but there is no capacity to do it at the moment. The town hall is a wonderful building but there is no space to do it. The people who work for the city council are estimable, but they do not have the scope to take on many of these powers. I cite Knaresborough Council, which has taken the majority of powers that it can exercise under the current arrangements, as an example of already doing this well. It has a very detailed plan about how it can slowly take on more powers and reckons it will take over a decade to build up the capacity to take on all 27 powers that it could conceivably have. I think, having looked at it and talked to the council, that it is probably right.

I have two questions for the Minister. First, if a parish or town council is taking on a power with expenditure attached, can the Government give an assurance that the resources that come with that new devolved power will not be cut and will be the same as they are currently? Secondly, and more importantly, how do the Government plan to empower local parish and town councils to take on the responsibilities that will be essential if this scheme is going to retain public support?

At the moment, there is not the funding for staff, offices and expertise. It seems to me that this is a very big gap. North Yorkshire says positive things about undertaking this process of devolving things down but, in an area the size of North Yorkshire, you will need a lot of new organisations at very local level and even more resources put into existing ones to turn them from worthy but very limited bodies to ones that exercise real authority and responsibility for delivering the majority of those local services. Northallerton, 50 miles east or west, and the people who work in Northallerton are not going to be the best people to manage those 27 local responsibilities that I have discussed.

This is a challenge to everybody involved in politics in North Yorkshire and a real challenge to the Government because, unless they help, we simply will not get the kind of further devolution away from Northallerton that is essential if this new arrangement is to command popular support over the longer term.

[Lord Jopling (Con)]

My Lords, I was intrigued to listen to the noble Lord’s stories about Ripon in his speech. I was born in Ripon and have lived within 10 miles of it my entire life, so am familiar with many of the points that he raised. However, as I said in the previous debate about Cumbria, I have always been an enthusiast for the unitary arrangement and I say that in spite of being a former member of a rural district council at Thirsk.

I was lobbied some months back by Harrogate Borough Council, which asked me to support the east/west arrangement. I tried to look into it and make my own mind up. I came to the conclusion that the unitary body for the whole of North Yorkshire was the best way out, and that, in spite of the reservations of Harrogate and others, I would support what we are considering this evening.

It is a wide area—noble Lords only have to look at a map—but there is a difference between North Yorkshire and Cumbria. Largely it is with regard to the administrative centre. I have heard few, but not very many, complaints about the accessibility from Skipton to Northallerton, but that is in no way as difficult as the problems of travelling from Barrow-in-Furness to Carlisle, which is a much more serious problem of remoteness. Whereas I have heard a good many complaints about remoteness over my days in Cumbria, particularly by people who live on the Furness peninsula, I have heard few similar ones in North Yorkshire.

Now that this proposition has been made by the Government through the Minister, I am told that those early differences that I talked about have now largely been resolved and that all of North Yorkshire’s Members of Parliament support the scheme we are discussing. I am told that the preparations are going well. I have been talking to members of the county council about this, and have asked them particularly about how well it is going. I am told that it is going well, especially with regard to the staff who serve the various local authorities, some of whom are going and others of whom will be expanded.

I am particularly pleased that there will be area constituency committees based on parliamentary constituency boundaries. That seems a sensible and constructive idea. I hope this will remove accusations of remoteness and demonstrate that local concerns and problems are being heard and dealt with. I certainly welcome the way in which the various councils at the two levels are co-operating to create the new level. As I ended my remarks on the Cumbria discussion, I wish it well.

Buildings: Cladding

Lord Newby Excerpts

Thursday 28th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, we have not made any further announcements about the details of the way we want to support leaseholders in medium-rise blocks. The new Secretary of State is looking very closely at how we can best protect leaseholders in these buildings from unaffordable costs. In the vast number of buildings, there is no need for wholesale, expensive remediation, as the recent expert committee, led by Dame Judith Hackitt, pointed out.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, last week the Minister said that details of the residential property developer tax would be announced yesterday, and that the figure he had given—the receipt of £2 billion over 10 years—was the absolute minimum. Yesterday, the Chancellor announced a rate of tax, but I am unaware that he gave an estimate of how much money would be raised. Could the Minister say what the Government’s current estimate is of the amount that that tax will raise? Secondly, the Chancellor said yesterday that the tax will be used to fund the £5.1 billion of which the Minister is so proud. Is it really the case that this tax will not benefit a single additional leaseholder?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, we recognise the need to get those who contributed greatly to the crisis that we find ourselves in to make a contribution. This is just one of the ways we are doing this. It was announced that the residential property developer tax would be levied on developers with profits over £25 million, at a rate of 4%. The estimates from the Treasury are that that will bring in at least £2 billion. That is the commitment over 10 years. We also have the gateway 2 levy, which will raise funding as well. This will also contribute towards the situation that leaseholders find themselves in.

Fire Safety Bill

Lord Newby Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Wednesday 28th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Rochester]

My Lords, the right reverend Prelates the Bishop of St Albans and the Bishop of London have both been involved in earlier stages on the Bill and, regretfully, neither is able to be in your Lordships’ House this evening. However, I come with my own background and interests, as a former board member of various housing associations over 25 years and as the former chair of the charity Housing Justice.

As noted by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans has been heavily involved in this matter and has been persistent. He said yesterday that none of us wanted to be in this position at this stage. But while so much of the Bill is welcome—not least the £5 billion which has been referred to—there are continuing and serious concerns, some of which have already been expressed in the debate this evening, about the position of leaseholders and tenants, and particularly certain groups of leaseholders and tenants.

Yes, remediation is a complex matter, but I am sure that it is not so complex that it cannot be worked out. I want to believe that Her Majesty’s Government are sincere in the express desire to protect leaseholders and tenants. The proposed amendments, including one here tonight, are designed to provide time for the Government to bring forward their own statutory scheme. It is the absence of clarity about that scheme and the timetable for it which is the cause of continuing regret on these Benches. Mention has been made already of the loan scheme in relation to buildings under 18 metres and the fact that that is likely to come forward in the context of another Bill. But, of course, that leaves open the questions of the detail and timescale and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, has just observed, there are leaseholders facing those bills today.

We have heard many tragic stories of people with unpayable bills and crippling insurance and service charges. One concern of Members of these Benches is the effect of all that on people’s health and well-being, as well as on their financial capacity. These are important matters; they affect people’s daily lives, mental state and financial futures. While the Bill tackles a number of really important things, it leaves open some others which leave people facing uncertainty and potentially very significant liabilities.

Whatever happens this evening, I know that many in this place and elsewhere will continue to make the cause, because this issue will not go away. I dare to hope that if the Bill does pass this evening, Her Majesty’s Government will bring forward their proposals as soon as possible in the new Session to remove the uncertainty from those who are finding it really difficult to live with. These Benches continue to hold out hope for a more empathetic attitude towards leaseholders.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, I begin by declaring my interest as a leaseholder affected by fire safety remediation costs.

This afternoon, I decided to listen to the debate on the Bill in another place to see whether I had been missing something, by just hearing debates here, about the Government’s real reasons for not taking any appropriate action. Instead, I found that the key challenges that have been set out by noble Lords this evening were being made most eloquently by Conservative Back-Benchers. Bob Blackman made the key point that leaseholders have no luxury of time to deal with the demands dropping on their doormats today. Sir Robert Neill made the logical and consequential point that bridging provisions to fund remediation were needed, until the Government had put in place measures to recoup the costs from developers and builders—costs to be met, in the interim, by the Government. As a former Minister, he also made the telling point that the Government would have had time to produce their own amendments, if they had put their mind to it.

The response from the Government was from the right honourable Christopher Pincher, who replied with all the empathy and grace of a Victorian miller faced by workers’ demands to install expensive safety equipment on all the machinery. He also put the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, to shame in his ability to ape Sir Humphrey. Unlike the noble Lord, who at least shows a certain lack of conviction in some of his adjectives, Christopher Pincher had none. In describing this amendment, as we have heard before, he mentioned the uncertainty that it would cause, the lack of clarity and the litigation that would flow, which would be voluminous. He had us almost in tears at the prospect of these terrible consequences.

There was not a word of explanation as to why, given that the Government allegedly want to do what is right, in the seven months since this Bill’s Second Reading they have made no progress whatsoever in bringing forward their own proposals to deal with the issues now. There was not a scintilla of a suggestion, from him, of when there would be certainty for leaseholders. He said that the building safety Bill would be brought forward as quickly as possible and that it would protect leaseholders “as far as possible”. Those two statements are of literally no comfort to somebody facing a bill today. We all know that those phrases “as far as possible” or “as quickly as possible” allow the Government to do whatever they want or not very much at all.

He also had the temerity to say that the Bill should now pass,

“so that people can get on with their lives.”

The one thing certain is that, if this Bill passes unamended, hundreds of thousands of people will not be able to get on with their lives, because overwhelming uncertainty will remain over their financial position and their ability, if they wish to do so, to sell the property in which they live.

The truth is that the Government have shown themselves indifferent to the mental and financial anguish faced by these people today, or else they would have made a meaningful commitment to the timetable for lifting the burden of costs and uncertainty from them. In these circumstances, how can we, in all conscience, pack up our tents now and let the Bill sail into the night? We on these Benches will not do so, and I urge Members across the House to vote for my noble friend’s amendment to bring tenants the relief that they so richly deserve.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Lexden) (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, has also indicated a wish to speak, and I call him now.

Fire Safety Bill

Lord Newby Excerpts

Tuesday 20th April 2021 Lords Chamber

I know that there is a lot to tackle, but I want to say to the Government, “You aren’t alone”. This is not a blame game or a party-political issue; it is a case maybe of unintended market failure, and it requires the sort of collective state-backed intervention that we have seen from this Government with issues such as furlough. It needs a bailout or safety net, and the Government are more than capable of doing that. The Government have allies here to come up with creative solutions; here and in the other place, they have heard some fantastic ideas and ways of solving this. If you talk to the rank and file leaseholder groups, they are full of innovative policies that can solve this. But to access those ideas, the Government have to talk to people and to listen. I hope that the Minister listens today and accepts this amendment. I know that the Government mean well, but they are not doing well.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, I begin by declaring my interest as a leaseholder in a block of flats that faces major fire and remediation works.

When we last debated this Bill, I teased the Minister by suggesting that he was behaving like Sir Humphrey in the TV series “Yes, Minister”, by coming up with a series of bureaucratic reasons for not taking any action. After the debate, I was a bit worried that I might have been a bit unfair to him, so I reread his speech just to make sure. I fear that, if anything, I had underestimated the extent to which the Government were hiding behind stock bureaucratic arguments for not doing what they know is required to clear up the scandal. He has repeated some of those arguments today.

Last time around, the Minister, as he has today, accepted that something more was needed. Last time he said that it was

“unacceptable for leaseholders to have to worry about the cost of fixing historic building safety defects.”

He also acknowledged that the Government believed that

“building owners and industry should make buildings safe without passing on costs to leaseholders.”

So far, so good. But when it came to actually dealing with removing that worry, in his response to the amendments from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans and my noble friend Lady Pinnock, at great length and somewhat repetitiously he explained why the Government had no plans to fix the problem.

The reasons were as follows. First, the Minister said,

“it would be impractical and confusing to include remediation measures in the Bill.”

Well, it would not be confusing if they were clear. Secondly, he said that it was too soon to include comprehensive measures in the Bill. He said that it was

“important to ensure that the practical implications of any legislation are properly worked through, rather than being rushed”.

Well, we would not want the Government to rush to solve the problems of people who are being forced into bankruptcy today, would we?

Thirdly, the Minister said that the amendment was “too narrow” and did not

“take into account remedial works that arise outside the fire risk assessment process”.

He said that the amendment would go beyond “focusing on service charges”.

Fourthly, the Minister said that the amendment was not detailed enough

“and would require extensive drafting of primary legislation”.

It is not that this Government or any other Government fail to know how to draft extensively—look at the length of the statute book. Fifthly, he said that it would delay the implementation of the Bill, which would be highly regrettable. The Minister has spoken at great length about the costs of delay today but, as my noble friend Lady Pinnock pointed out, it would be highly regrettable to the Government but not to people who are going bankrupt, because this Bill does nothing for them.

Sixthly, the Minister said that loose drafting would lead to litigation. How terrible. Seventhly, he said

“the amendments do not reflect the complexity involved in apportioning liability for remedial defects.”—[Official Report, 17/3/21; cols. 323-26.]

Perhaps the amendments did not but, in my experience, owners of blocks of flats are pretty good when it comes to apportioning liability for costs, because we somehow seem to get that job done every year when we get our service charges. Finally, he said that it would be “self-defeating” as landlords could decide simply to walk away.

Sir Humphrey would have been very proud of the Minister’s performance, but leaseholders listening to his arguments would have realised that they amounted to one depressing fact: the Government were not prepared to fashion a legislative response which dealt with their legitimate concerns. In effect, they were simply saying that they would like to resolve the matter but it was too difficult. There was no willingness on the part of the Minister to commission civil servants to do the work necessary to find a workable solution. Some three and three-quarter years after Grenfell, the Government are completely failing to relieve leaseholders of their concerns and failing to find a way in which to require building owners and contractors to make buildings safe without passing on the costs.

The amendments before us today are a further attempt to move the Government towards meeting what they say are their desired outcomes. They have shown no will to do so of their own volition and it therefore falls to your Lordships’ House to insist again that they do the right and decent thing.

Fire Safety Bill

Lord Newby Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments & Lords Hansard
Wednesday 17th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, I begin by declaring an interest. I am a leaseholder in a block where I stay when I am in London during the week which has been found to have major safety defects and in which a waking watch is now in operation. I have therefore been able to see in my own bills but also by talking to people who live in the block what the consequences of the current situation really are. I strongly support the Motions in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans and of my noble friend Lady Pinnock.

This is a scandal of major proportions, and it is a modern one. Most of the buildings we are talking about have been built in recent years. We are not talking about a problem left over from the Victorians or the Edwardians; this is a recent problem of our own times. As we have heard, it is causing great distress, not minor worries, to a large number of people. The scale of the financial consequences of the problems they face affects not just their short-term economic position but every aspect of their lives. The immediate costs in themselves are pretty horrendous for people on modest incomes. In my block, as elsewhere, people in that position are having to take out loans at very high rates of interest to deal even with the ongoing waking watch costs, which are considerable. However, beyond that, people are stuck. They cannot sell their flat or move, even if there were compelling reasons for them to do so. In some cases they feel unable to start a family as they planned, because of the overwhelming financial uncertainties that they face. None of this, as is obviously the case, is their fault at all. The Motion in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans deals with the core of the problem and would remove from them the cloud of the future financial burdens they face. I strongly support it.

For reasons which I fully understand, his Motion does not deal with who should ultimately pay for all this. In my mind, that is pretty straightforward. The principal burden should fall on those who are culpable: the developers. They have made very significant profits over very many years from building substandard accommodation, and they should pay for it. In the case of Barratt Developments, which built the block in which I live, its profits over the past five years alone have been more than £3.5 billion. It can afford to clean up its own mess, and the same applies to other major housebuilders. Exactly how that is done is, I admit, complicated, but this is a challenge for the Government which they have not begun to meet.

During the lockdown, television channels are showing old series because it has been so difficult to make new ones. Last night, I watched an old episode of “Yes Minister”, which I strongly recommend. It is clear that the Minister here watched it as well because he has used exactly the arguments which Sir Humphrey used to persuade his Minister not to take action: “It’s highly complex. I’m really sorry. We’d love to do it but it’s really quite difficult, you know. Even if we could do it, which we can’t, it’s not appropriate to do it in this Bill. If we can do it—and I’m not sure we can—it may be possible to do it in a future Bill. I’m not sure which Bill; I don’t know when it’s going to come. But because it’s very complicated, you wouldn’t expect me to say further.” That is the Minister’s response to this.

In last night’s “Yes Minister”, what happened was that the Minister in it, completely frustrated by these usual arguments, put his foot down by announcing on national television that something was going to be done, which in effect bounced his Permanent Secretary into doing it. I suggest that the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, takes a leaf out of that Minister’s book and goes on television this very evening to say that he has been so impressed by the debate he has heard that the Government will now act speedily.

The truth is that the reason we are hanging about has everything to do with a lack of political will, and not to do with the technicalities. It is the job of government to deal with difficult things. Most bits of public policy are tricky and difficult. This is no exception but it does not mean that the Government have no policies on anything. It means that they choose what they want to devote time and effort to, and they have decided they are not prepared to put in the time, effort, commitment and funds to deal with this glaring injustice.

The right reverend Prelate’s Motion is a start because it removes the major part of the cloud facing people currently in difficulty and it should be supported. But even when it has been supported, it does not absolve the Government from grappling with this issue and sorting it out properly.

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of the National Housing Federation, the representative body for housing associations in England. Our members house 6 million people in 2.6 million homes, including a significant number of flats in multi-storey, multi-occupied buildings that need remedial work on their external wall system.

Nothing is a greater priority for housing associations than their residents’ safety. Following the awful Grenfell tragedy, they have been leading the way in the past three years by identifying buildings that need urgent work and carrying it out as quickly as possible. In his Motion C1, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans wants to protect leaseholders from huge bills to make their homes safe, and I support him. Leaseholders should not be facing such costs. Other noble Lords have given vivid examples of the impact on leaseholders.

Housing associations are doing what they can to ensure their leaseholders do not have to foot the bill for developers’ mistakes by pursuing the companies that built the buildings, as well as warranty and insurance providers. Sadly, these efforts are not always successful so I applaud a move by this House to provide extra assurance to leaseholders living in these homes.

However, housing associations face a huge dilemma. They exist predominantly to provide social homes to those on lower incomes. The buildings that housing associations need to remediate due to safety concerns will largely be made up of social housing. This welcome move to protect leaseholders must also be coupled with further government funding to pay for the necessary remedial works to all the buildings that need them. While the funding that the Government have made available for remediation costs so far is very welcome, the £1 billion building safety fund and the additional £3.5 billion announced last month are not available to remediate homes in which social tenants live.

Yorkshire: Devolution

Lord Newby Excerpts

Monday 10th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

There is no delay as such. I hope to reassure the noble Baroness by saying that talks and negotiations have been ongoing for some time. Negotiations on West Yorkshire and the Leeds deal continue and are going well. If we look at Bradford, Calderdale, Leeds, Wakefield and Kirklees, good progress is being made, but it is more than that. Discussions are well advanced, for example in North Yorkshire, and early discussions are going on in the East Riding of Yorkshire with the possibility of linking up with North and North East Lincolnshire. The noble Baroness will know that a lot of work is going on, but it is complex.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister says that the balkanisation of Yorkshire is sensible. Is he aware that the only people who think that are the Government, not the people of Yorkshire? Why do the Government think that dividing Yorkshire into four—something that nobody, not even the Romans or the Vikings, has attempted—will succeed, against the wishes of people in Yorkshire?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

The noble Lord will know about the Ridings in Yorkshire, so Yorkshire’s being divided up is a historical fact. We have consistently stated that the idea of a One Yorkshire deal is outwith our criteria for devolution, which aim to ensure that deals can most effectively boost productivity, promote local growth and provide the sharp accountability necessary to deliver the investment that places need. The noble Lord should be aware that, if there were “One Yorkshire”, there would, for example, be one mayor for the whole of Yorkshire, which contains 5.5 million people. That is something he might want to think about.