Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Lord Newton of Braintree and Lord Greaves

Monday 23rd January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, I had not intended to speak again, having had my say earlier, and will not repeat what I said, although I cleave to the view that this is not a sensible way to deal with these problems; they should be dealt with in secondary legislation. In that, I embrace the comments made by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, about people taking in other people's children and the need to be sensitive to issues that could arise there. Indeed, I remember noticing while I was in not another place but another location during the first week of discussion on the Bill that a lady in Huntingdon, I think, was reported to have taken in five children of friends of hers, both of whom had died in a short space of time. Others may have noticed the story. Such a case, and others raised in an amendment by the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, need consideration in detail, but we cannot do that on the Floor of the House in discussing amendments to primary legislation.

I need no encouragement in willingness to hold Ministers’ feet to the fire about addressing some of those detailed problems, but I question whether it can be done in this way. My noble friend Lord Kirkwood is a real friend. I cannot remember the last time that I disagreed with him. He is clearly out to be more reverend than the Bishops’ Bench in his defence of no benefit cap at all. He makes his case. He suggests that it is not incompatible with his support for universal credit. Fundamentally, his position is hostile to the intention of universal credit, which is to diminish the number of people who cannot afford to work.

I must say to the right reverend Prelate that the basic point about the amendment is that it raises the level of the benefit cap. There may be an argument for that, but that is what it does. There is a knock-on effect of that. It must increase the number of people who cannot afford to work. That is a matter of logic. It must do. The more children you have, the less likely it is that you will be able to afford to work, because you will not necessarily be able to command earnings which will replace the benefit. That is the core of the problem that we are seeking to address.

The right reverend Prelates may want to do that; they may think that it is right; but it needs to be straightforwardly stated, in the context in which many people have said—I do not make a judgment on this—that the worst thing that can happen to children is to be trapped in a household which cannot afford to work, in which they have never known anyone in the household in work. Keith Joseph used to have a phrase for that: the cycle of deprivation. We are not free of it. We need to take account of it. People can draw their own conclusions about the right level, but we need to know what we are doing.

As I said, I hesitate to challenge the right reverend Prelates, but they are making life easier for some in financial terms but worse in what I would regard as a sensible way to approach social policy. They may have put figures on that; they may not; but that is my view.

[Lord Greaves]

Does my noble friend accept that the logic of what he is saying is that child benefit should be abolished for everybody who does not have a job?

Localism Bill

Debate between Lord Newton of Braintree and Lord Greaves

Wednesday 12th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on showing signs of becoming the second free radical on the Government Benches in these matters. He is a better informed free radical than I am but I welcome his addition to the ranks. Secondly, I confirm, having connections with both counties, that Essex and Suffolk do not always do things in the same way. I will not judge which is best because I would be dead in one county or the other if I did, but they are certainly different.

Thirdly, I will show that I am an uninformed free radical on this occasion by saying that what is mystifying me, especially in the wake of the non-pressing of the amendment that appeared to be trying to define sustainability a few minutes ago is whether there is a definition of sustainability in the Bill. I cannot find it. If it is in the Bill, where is it? If it is not, what is it?

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, my noble friend has missed a little of the discussion this afternoon. I have to confess that I always thought that Essex was in East Anglia and I claim to be a geographer. I stand corrected and I will never make that mistake again. All I know is that all those places in that easterly bulge in the country are deplorably flat.

The serious point that I want to make on these amendments is simply to lend my support to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, and the noble Lord, Lord Deben. It would be good for the Government to use “development” and “sustainable development” in a rather more rigorous manner and not confuse them with each other quite so much.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, being from Essex, albeit from Braintree and not Basildon, I am a bit hesitant, as my noble friend will probably understand, to follow him down the path of the issue that he has raised. I have to say that it was a brave speech and I have considerable sympathy with the approach that appeared to underlie it.

I want to come in on a different aspect of this, which is emboldened by the speech of the noble Lord from the Cross Benches. My concern in this field is that the more you go for localism and devolve decisions downwards, the more you will risk people saying, “We don’t want this in our back yard. Put it in somebody else’s”. As regards affordable housing, we need to recognise that even in the smallest units, which are not always recognised by villagers in some quite small villages—I live in a fairly large village in Essex—or the most articulate and active people, there is a need to provide houses for the families and young people who are perhaps not so comfortably off but who are essential to the overall life and social structure of the village or the neighbourhood, as it is defined in this Bill.

We need to recognise that with the disappearance of pressures from above—that is, the spatial strategy—on local authorities to build this, that or the other number of houses, we slightly strengthen the ability of everyone to say, “Yes, we all know that a lot of houses are needed but not here, thank you”. We may need to do something to correct that. The thrust of the point of the noble Lord on the Front Bench opposite, although not the wording particularly, is probably well made, and I hope that it will receive an understanding response.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, if I understand it correctly, the purpose of these amendments is to make sure that a proper assessment and evidence base for housing needs is incorporated into the work on the local plan. The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, spoke about the immediate crisis in housing. Of course, these amendments will not solve the problem in the short term. The problem of why houses are not being built is far more to do with the financial situation, and the lack of availability of finance for building houses and of mortgages for people buying them. It is nothing to do with the planning system per se but the points he is making are very valid in the longer term.

However, the argument comes down to whether this kind of requirement on local planning authorities should be in this Bill in primary legislation or should be provided in guidance. I have no doubt that the Minister will point out that the draft national planning policy framework, with which we all live and sleep at the moment, has a great deal in it about this. For example, on page 30, under the heading “Significantly increasing supply of housing”, paragraph 109 reads:

“To boost the supply of housing, local planning authorities should … use an evidence-base to ensure that their Local Plan meets the full requirements for market and affordable housing in the housing market area, including identifying key sites which are critical to the delivery of the housing strategy over the plan period”.

Paragraph 111 is rather longer, and therefore I will not read it all out, but it requires that,

“local planning authorities should … plan for a mix of housing based on current and future demographic trends”,

which I think was a point made very eloquently by the noble Lord. I suspect that there is not a great deal of difference between what the noble Lord is putting forward and what the Government want to happen, and that it is simply a matter of where the requirement should be and whether it is necessary to be in the Bill.

Localism Bill

Debate between Lord Newton of Braintree and Lord Greaves

Wednesday 14th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I have one amendment in this group, Amendment 170A, to which I shall speak in a minute. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, on his extraordinarily good presentation of the issues that lie behind his amendments. Like other members of the Liberal Democrats here I fully support them. I also thank the Minister and his colleagues, as well as the Bill team, for the amount of time and commitment that they have given to discussions—certainly with us and, I think, right around the House—on this and other issues, in order to try to find a compromise and a way forward that satisfies the wish of the Government to dismantle the national bureaucracy of the Standards Board for England. We all want that to happen without compromising the fundamental principles behind standards in public life in local government that the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, has ably set forward.

My amendment, which I shall speak to briefly, is about parish and town councils. The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, will follow up to talk about them also. I have not seen any statistics but all the anecdotal evidence from areas with a lot of parish and town councils is that standards problems at that level of local government take up a remarkably large proportion of the time of, and the cases that come to, local standards committees. The reasons are obvious: a lot of parish councils are only small, they have clerks who are very much part-time and they simply do not have the expertise or, very often, the authority to deal with what are sometimes leading local personalities who do not take kindly to being told what to do and how to do it. Whatever the reason—and I do not think that it is through a lack of willingness by parish councils to deal with this problem and to cope with it; the issue is their ability or competence to do so—they take up a lot of time and a high proportion of the time of standards committees. The proposals as put forward by the Government simply do not seem to recognise this, because they suggest that parish and town councils can simply look after their own standards regime and their own standards system as a freestanding authority. Unfortunately the truth is that this will simply lead to a collapse of any proper standards system in a large proportion of these councils. It may be that large town councils will, in many cases, be able to cope—and some others will cope—but there will be a serious problem.

My amendment simply suggests—and it is designed to fit into the Bill as it exists at the moment, unamended—that whatever system there is within a district or unitary authority should also apply to the town and parish councils within that area, which is the present system. That may not be the best way to solve the town and parish council problem, but a solution has to be found before the Bill leaves this House. I understand that the Minister will promise more discussions on parish councils, in particular, before Third Reading and if that is the case, I do not want to say anything more today, but it has to be sorted out and a solution found which will work in all town and parish councils, which vary from quite large town councils of, perhaps, 10,000, 20,000 or 30,000 people right down to little parishes of 200 or 300 electors. I have nothing more to say about that; I look forward to discussions that the Minister is going to offer us at the end of this debate.

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, I have two possible speeches, upon which I thought I might seek the opinion of the House. One is the two-hour, scripted version and the other is the two-minute, unscripted version. I do not think that I need to seek the opinion of the House before I know which they would prefer, and it will be the shorter one.

My name is on this amendment and not by accident. I feel quite strongly about it, I support it, I agree with every word that the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, has said in favour of it. However, a number of little birds have whispered to me during the last few days that there has been a lot of talking behind the scenes—indeed, one or two people have even spoken to me—and I share my noble friend Lord Greaves’s understanding that there is a willingness to undertake discussions across the whole range of issues, including whether there should be a code, what machinery there should be and some of the detail and the nature of the points on the criminal offence. In those circumstances, I would not wish to make trouble tonight.

I very much hope, therefore, that my noble friend on the Front Bench will indeed offer such discussions on a wide-ranging basis, covering the whole breadth of the issue, bearing in mind that we are not looking for confrontation; we are looking for a satisfactory outcome without shutting off the possibility of raising matters at Third Reading should we find it not possible to achieve a reasonable agreement. If my noble friend responds in that spirit, I shall go quietly, certainly for tonight. If he does not, I am aware that I am slightly burning my boats because I shall not be able to speak again, but I can tell him that I will do my best to make life hell for him in his winding-up speech. I look forward to his conciliatory gesture in quick order.

Localism Bill

Debate between Lord Newton of Braintree and Lord Greaves

Tuesday 5th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

Prompted again by what I have heard—I hope that this is not out of order, because it raises a point about the clause with which we have just finished—this is the first reference I have seen to town councils as distinct from parish councils. Town councils are not specified as relevant bodies in the previous clause; they are included in the new clause. What is the position of town councils under the Bill?

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, legally, town councils are parish councils. I think that is the answer the Minister will give. It is true, anyway. The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, is poised to come in again. A town council is a parish council that has passed a resolution under about three lines of the Local Government Act 1972 to call itself a town council. It can have a town mayor if it wishes, but it does not have to. I think that is all there is to say about it, but the noble Earl might have other things to say.

I strongly support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. It is ridiculous if a parish council can put in a lot of time and effort to consider taking over local services, has to do it through the expression of interest procedure and can then be outbid by other people. There is no sense in that. The Minister might say that it is unnecessary because if the district, unitary, county or whatever council agrees to it, it can happen anyway. My experience is of a borough council that tries to offload things to the parishes such as public conveniences when the parishes do not want to take them on, but that is a different matter. Throughout local government, there is a culture of conservatism and fear of taking on and doing more things. Changing that culture is the most important thing that we have to do. The amendment would be a very useful addition to the Bill.

[The Earl of Lytton]

My Lords, there is nothing like the words “parish council” to get me out of my seat. Noble Lords will know of my interest in parish and town councils. To answer the first question, the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, is right: fundamentally, structurally, parish and town councils are effectively synonymous. The differences are in the way in which they operate, but structurally in their clerks, membership and rules of engagement with which they have to comply, you can more or less say that the term is synonymous one with the other, except that one happens to apply to a town. It is an area where we have great difficulty with what we might call the family of parish and town councils, because town councils such as Weston-super-Mare have huge budgets and are on a principal authority scale, whereas many tiny rural parishes, although they may have quality parish council status, are extremely small. That lack of consistency makes it very difficult to deal with parishes as a cohesive whole.

I say straight away that I have not conferred with the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. I am very pleased that he has moved this amendment. There are some extremely good examples of where principal authorities have felt that they had the confidence to pass on to a parish or town council a function that they knew could be dealt with readily, cost-effectively and which was well within the capacity of the town or parish council concerned. But I am bound to say that nationally, the track record of passing things down to the lower tier has been fairly poor, taking things as a whole. That is one of the issues that lies behind localism. We need to get that straight.

What the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, suggested was a sort of localism-light in the sense of trying to avoid a bureaucratic and procedurally-driven process. On the whole I would welcome that as well. At Second Reading, I said that these things have to be rendered down to a localism scale—a community scale, not based on the sort of procedures and checks and balances that perhaps apply to the much more senior aspects that must be rightly dealt with by principal authorities.

I give one example. In my own parish council in Shipley in West Sussex, which is one of the largest geographically but has one of the smallest populations in the whole of West Sussex, a parish councillor commented some time ago on the problem the parish council was having with verges. People were encroaching on road-side verges by extending their gardens, filling-in road-side ditches, and doing all sorts of things that might include impairing forward visibility along the road. They were planting things, and so on and so forth. The verges, in so far as they were part of the highway, would have been vested in the highway authority, which in that instance is the county council. We know that all county councils are subject to cost constraints, and certainly West Sussex where I live is no stranger to that and has introduced some commendable measures to try to square the circle, so to speak. But it cannot be in all places at all times and it cannot police those verges. Such things should be preserved in the generality of the public interest—they are assets of community value in many cases but they are often orphan pieces of land. They may historically have been part of an enclosure plan or something like that which attached them to a particular estate or riparian owner, but over time, and with the process of land registration, that link has been lost. The boundary may have been drawn to an ordnance survey boundary that was set back from the hard edge of the road, so you end up with orphan strips.

Parish and town councils in some instances—I am not saying in every instance as they may not have the facility to do it—would like to get hold of those to manage them properly and make sure, in particular, that they are not filched by neighbouring householders or have things dumped on them where nobody seems to be responsible. They may get driven over because it happens to be a convenient place to pull off for dog walking, as happens in my part of the parish. That is just one example of something that could be of benefit.

In general, I support the amendment but there is a caveat. The words,

“net additional expenditure or net reduced revenue”

is a proviso that the noble Lord wants to insert under subsection (3)(a). There is a problem with activities, services and things being passed to parish councils shorn of any resource to deal with it. That is the classic thing that we refer to in parish and town council circles as double taxation. The parish then has to raise by precept a means of funding that expenditure because the principal authority has said, “Yes, you can have this but there is no funding to go with it”. I therefore enter a caveat on that. On subsection (4), I would flag up that it might be extremely difficult to verify, knowing what little I know about local government finance, to deal with the matters that the noble Lord is trying to cover there. I well understand his reasons for putting them in, but I do not know how you would prove it. However, in general I support the direction of travel of the amendment.

Localism Bill

Debate between Lord Newton of Braintree and Lord Greaves

Thursday 30th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves]

Before my noble friend decides whether or not to divide the House, I should say that these are extremely important matters and we do not believe that the Government have given them the importance that they merit. Whether we like it or not they are all about the possibility for graft and corruption—perhaps not at the same level as for an election itself, but nevertheless graft and corruption over an important matter. If they are not important matters, why are we spending all this money having these referendums?

I just want to make two very brief points. First, within electoral law for elections there is a clear and well understood distinction between paying canvassers and paying people for doing other things, such as delivering leaflets, manning committee rooms, or whatever. You can pay helpers in elections but you are not allowed to pay canvassers. There is a growing area between the two but the distinction is well understood and by and large adhered to.

My second point, which is more fundamental, is the point I made about joint campaigns. It is inconceivable that there will not be joint campaigns of trying to get someone to vote for or against a referendum and an election campaign at the same time, with joint literature, posters and other things that money is spent on. Unless the regulations referring to the referendum are similar to those referring to the election, it will drive a coach and horses through the limits on election expenditure. There must be the same rules for the same two things if people are campaigning for the two things together in the same place at the same time. That is common sense otherwise it is a recipe for a huge amount of misunderstanding and chaos, and as I said, driving a coach and horses through some of the local election rules, not least on the limits on expenditure. That question needs a bit more thought by the Government.

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

Before anybody says anything else, may I pick up on something which my noble friend Lord Greaves said? I understand that it has not been raised, even though I admit that I have not been here throughout the debate. My question has been illustrated in what my noble friend was saying: what is the position of the party agent in all this? That question has not been specifically addressed. It appears that a lot of these referendum campaigns will be organised by political parties. What is the position then of the party agent who is paid? Who is regarded as paying him? If any member of the association or the Labour Party or whatever is regarded as paying the agent, then it seems to me that if the agent does anything to encourage or assist, he is in danger of falling foul of this clause. What is the answer?

Localism Bill

Debate between Lord Newton of Braintree and Lord Greaves

Monday 20th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves]

I agree entirely, except that I did make changes to the grouping. As a result of this, we are where we are. I attempted to make sense of it, but in the end it did not come out that way. Let me be absolutely clear: I am talking to the two amendments in the group that starts with Amendment 12 as moved by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham. I apologise for the confusion in the numbers, which is entirely in my head and in my notes. I shall attempt to be much clearer.

I am talking now about Amendment 22, which is in the group that we are debating. The amendment, which was tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, and which I entirely support, reflects the analogous condition in Section 3(2)(a) of the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006. This additional safeguard is needed and is not covered by the other conditions—for example, the requirement for proportionality. The reason is that Clause 6(2)(a) refers to the proportionality of the “effect of the provision”, while Amendment 22 relates to the means of achieving that objective. The Secretary of State would have to be satisfied that the particular amendment or repeal proposed is the only way of satisfactorily securing the objective; it would require him to consider whether there were other possibilities—for example, by issuing guidance to local authorities or by amending or repealing a less significant provision. This is an extremely complicated matter. I do not know whether the Minister will be able to give us an answer that can satisfy us all, but again perhaps further discussion, either by letter or in person, can take place.

Amendment 23, which relates to the Human Rights Act and similar Acts, would add a further condition to Clause 6(2). Section 8 of the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006 makes a specific exception for the Human Rights Act. The Minister in the House of Commons stated that Clause 6(2)(e) would preclude the making of an order repealing the Human Rights Act or any part of it, but that paragraph relates to the provision—in other words, what the order proposes to do. This is different from whether the statutory provision itself, which is the subject of the order, is of “constitutional significance”. The point is that the 2006 Act recognises that distinction. The Bill as it stands does not recognise it and the question is why not. Why the change? The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, would restore the distinction, which would be a very sensible thing to do.

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, having already declared my wife as an interest, I will not repeat that. However, in view of the contents of Amendment 14, I should mention that I am in possession of a disabled person’s blue badge and that I chair a mental health trust.

I wanted to join in on this debate partly because of puzzlement and partly because I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, moved his amendments—in particular Amendment 14—with rather more diffidence than I had expected, and certainly with less vigour. By the time you have got through five of these clauses, your mind begins to glaze over, to be honest. However, as I read the provisions as a mere layman, what is being said here is that local authorities can do anything they like, subject to some broad qualifications, and the Secretary of State can allow them to do anything they like if he likes what they want to do; but if he does not like what they want to do, he can do whatever he likes to stop them—and all this with a limited piece of secondary legislation, possibly altering primary legislation, and on the basis of a negative resolution. I think that is it in plain English—I hope that it is, and I see some nods.

At the end of the Public Bodies Bill, I said that I thought that Henry VIII had suffered a major setback but not a terminal defeat and had gone off to regroup somewhere. Well, I now know where—it was in the Department for Communities and Local Government. Here is Henry VIII, on his charger, writ larger than ever before.

I have reservations about this, to put it mildly. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, used a telling figure in the Second Reading debate, that there were over 1,200 pieces of legislation that could be amended by this Bill, using these powers. He has picked out some of them, and I think that he has done us a service, but I want to know the justification for this. If it is secondary legislation that is being changed, I can understand it, but if primary legislation, which has been duly and thoroughly debated and passed by Parliament, can be swept aside in this way, there is a real question about what we are all doing here. I note that safeguards have been written in, but I am not sure that they are on a parallel with the safeguards written into the Public Bodies Bill. At the very least, if the House is expected to acquiesce in these proposals, it needs at least a similar level of safeguard as we have in the Public Bodies Bill. I rest my case for the moment.