English Devolution

Lord Porter of Spalding Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for his support for the overall programme. London already has a devolution arrangement, but I am assured by colleagues that we will look at the GLA and how it works. I am sure that we will take account of his comments about the City of London in that programme.

[Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)]

I bring Members’ attention to my registered interests, and I thank the Minister for the briefing yesterday. Can she confirm, now that we are in a public session, that the intention for 500,000 as a guide size for reorganisation is not a hard and fast rule but that some bids with a population under 500,000 will be allowed? Can she confirm that authorities already in the unitary system with populations of less than 500,000—all the councils in this country, bar 11, will be in scope—are also in scope for the reorganisation conversation? This is not an attack just on the Conservative-majority controlled two-tier areas; this is for the whole of the local government sector to be a representative size of approximately 500,000. That means that most of the boroughs of London are in scope and not excluded. Finally, I have a word of advice. If the Government are going to try to stick to a 500,000 unit, I tell them to forget about the number and the size of the council when they go to Rutland, because the Government have previously had some very bad experience of trying to remove Rutland.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his advice on Rutland. I am happy to confirm that. On the 500,000 number, it is very strange: ever since July, people have been saying repeatedly that we need a guideline number, but when we give a guideline number, they say, “No, not that number. That is not the right number”. I hope that was not how the Conservatives did the accounting, because that would be a problem.

The 500,000 figure is intended as a guideline; it is what works best for local areas. I imagine that some sort of de minimis size will be incorporated in the Minister’s thinking as we go through this programme. We feel that 500,000 is around the right size to get the effectiveness and efficiency of delivery and the scale of managing the strategic requirements in a local area; that is why we have said 500,000. We are looking for councils to come forward with their own proposals about how this works for their local areas. On the other question, this is intended to cover all areas of England, so they are all welcome to come forward with proposals—including Rutland.

Provisional Local Government Finance Settlement

Lord Porter of Spalding Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank the noble and right reverend Lord for the important work he has done on this. I hope the Government have demonstrated in these early days, by bringing forward a new Employment Rights Bill, that not just what people are paid but the way they are treated at work are of primary importance to us. I apologise if I said the national minimum wage; I should have said the national living wage. In local government, we have always welcomed it, and we celebrate the work our workforce does; they do an amazing job in difficult circumstances. The noble Lord, Lord Jackson, mentioned Covid. I want to reflect on that period and how comforting it was to residents across the country to see local government teams still going out and doing their job in spite of the very difficult circumstances they were in. They should be properly paid for what they do and have proper working conditions. I welcome the findings of the Living Wage Commission.

[Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)]

I draw the attention of the House to my interest, as set out in the register, as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

I have nothing but sympathy for the Minister. She is having to do a very difficult job in very difficult circumstances, and to put a shine on something that we know is not worthy of being shined at the moment. I wish her good luck in her attempt to resolve the local government funding settlement battles she will face over the next couple of years. The same Treasury people who made the decisions last year will almost certainly be making the decisions next year, so the reality is that she will not have a bigger cake to cut. If she is going to choose to divide that cake slightly differently, she will have to make sure that she at least says sorry to the people who are going to lose.

It is quite obvious that stopping the rural services delivery grant in this settlement is £110 million of essential money for a lot of councils. On the back of it, people will almost certainly be getting “at risk” notices in the new year, until the Government come up with some sort of compensation for taking that money away, if nothing else. When you go to the new homes bonus the year after next, a lot of people will be put at risk because many small, underpaid councils rely on that payment to pay staff wages.

Housing (Right to Buy) (Limits on Discount) (England) Order 2024

Lord Porter of Spalding Excerpts

Tuesday 10th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, until May, I was the leader of a council for 17 years. Under my leadership, every single home lost to right to buy was replaced, and then some. We delivered 1% of the entire national affordable housing stock each year through the 2010s. That needs an authority that is organised and ambitious, and a clear idea of what the state is for. Did we sit there moaning about right to buy? No, we did not; we just got on with it. We struck hard bargains with landowners and developers. We recycled capital receipts. We built new homes for rent, of different tenures and different types, in both towns and villages, but mainly for social rent. That income kept council tax down for everyone. It can be done.

Throughout the 2010s, it helped that there was a 25% new homes bonus kicker for the delivery of new homes under social rent. It certainly helped when the last Government changed the rules so that we got to keep all the money to reinvest in new homes rather than see it go to the Treasury, particularly for temporary and short-term accommodation, where the need has become suddenly greater following Covid.

I can tolerate restrictions on right to buy on brand new homes, but I cannot abide those who stand in the way of a family cherishing an older property that could be brought into their ownership, the money for which would allow a new, much more modern and cheaper to run home to be built. For too long, blaming right to buy has been an excuse for inaction on house- building by councils. It has been a case of blaming the Government rather than rolling up your sleeves.

I am disappointed that the Government are diluting the incentive for families to take the plunge to seek more security and a stake in society. I particularly regret that the statutory instruments committee had to drag the full extent of these regressive proposals out of the Government, who did not want to show how many families would be disadvantaged by this proposal.

This is a moment to realise that right to buy has been one of this country’s most transformative policies and has done more to drive social mobility and give families a stake in society. That is something everyone in public life should aspire to promote, but perhaps that is asking too much from a Government who are putting limits on aspiration in so many walks of life, not driving it forward.

[Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)]

I rise briefly to take part in this debate. Before doing so, I draw Members’ attention to my register of interest: I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association and a director of a fully privately funded affordable housing provider that actively encourages its tenants to buy their homes after five, 10, 15 or 20 years. It is called Rentplus and it does what it says on the tin: you rent at a discounted price and you buy at a discounted price. I work for somebody in the private sector who preaches the possibility that home ownership should be within everybody’s reach.

I will support my noble friend by going through the Division Lobby with him when he chooses to divide, but I will not agree on the reason. My reason is not that the Government are being unreasonable in setting the numbers they have chosen. Putting numbers on a piece of paper is a big mistake when talking about property markets; they are so varied in so many places for so many different reasons that it is better to put a percentage figure. I disagreed with what the last Government did by increasing the discounts to such a level that only really rewarded avaricious grandchildren, not the hard-working tenants who had occupied their homes for a long time. A number of elderly people were pressured into buying their houses for a capital sum that would go to their grandchildren. That should not have happened unless that grandchild had lived with those grandparents.

But, as my noble friend Lord Fuller said, right to buy is probably the single biggest piece of social mobility legislation enacted since the war. It enabled a million families to gain access to capital who never had done in the history of their families. I do not think anybody has done any work, but somebody should do, on how many businesses were set up in this country by people who could leverage capital they had not previously had access to. For a number of reasons—I think about our care sector, as people need access to capital to be able to pay to have care nowadays—this country would fall apart without it.

We should not lose sight of the fact that just over a million homes were lost to councils through right to buy, but 2 million homes were lost to councils through propositions put forward by the Tony Blair Government. Out of the 4 million homes that used to be in council ownership pre-1980, 1 million, so 25%, were lost through right to buy and 2 million—50%—were lost through LSVT. Councils such as my own were summoned to the Government Offices for the Regions to explain why they were not transferring their homes out. So this is not a tribal issue between the red team and the blue team; it is a proposition about whether we believe most people in this country aspire to be home owners. Clearly we do—I think all of us across the Chamber believe that—but do we also believe that people should be able to live in a safe, secure, decent, affordable home even if their financial circumstances mean that they are unable to do that completely unaided at the time they need it?

Right to buy is a good thing, but the right to build is the most important thing, and I agree that the Labour Government are right this time round to allow councils to keep 100% of the receipts, which would otherwise have been lost to the Treasury. Who wants to give money to the Treasury? It is much better for it to be spent locally. If the Labour Government had said that the discounts would be set at a local level by local councils to stimulate demand but not to reward avaricious grandchildren, I would not be going through the Division Lobbies tonight. But that is not what they have said; they have said, “Whitehall knows best. We’ll set an arbitrary figure that’ll have no bearing to the marketplace in a year or two’s time”.

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

My Lords, I draw Members’ attention to my interests as detailed in the register, including being a councillor in Central Bedfordshire, which has its own housing HRA. I very much support my noble friends’ comments regarding the opportunities that right to buy has given to so many people, but I will highlight the fact that this is an issue not of the sale of council homes but of a complete failure to build.

There are 4.25 million affordable homes—an increase of some 35,000 over the last two years, even with the sale of around 30,000 affordable homes in that period. I am pleased that the last Government had the 100% retention of right-to-buy receipts, which facilitated councils building homes. If we are to build the homes that we need, it is essential to maximise all avenues to building more homes. Allowing tenants to buy their own homes with a reasonable incentive and reinvesting the proceeds in new homes is an opportunity for more, not fewer, homes.

I will give the example of my own council, and I will trump my noble friend Lord Fuller because Central Bedfordshire was at 1.5%, not 1%. I am proud that, as leader of Central Beds, we had a proactive council house building programme. For example, in the period 2021-23 we built 259 homes and acquired a further 76, and we sold 82 under the right-to-buy rules —a net increase of 253. Without the proceeds from right to buy we would have ended up building substantially fewer homes. That would have meant tens of families—possibly even 100—not having a home because we would not have had the right-to-buy proceeds. That is important, because it gives more people the opportunity for an affordable rented home.

I reiterate: the ability to reinvest proceeds from right to buy is an opportunity to provide more, not fewer, homes. The issue is one of getting homes built, which should be the focus, not curtailing opportunity.

Housebuilding: Regional Mayors

Lord Porter of Spalding Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her question. I am passionate about ensuring that we do not have a new generation of homes that have to be retrofitted. I was with the Future Homes Hub yesterday and, early in the new year, we will publish a consultation on the future homes standard to make sure that we build the homes that we need to drive our carbon emissions targets.

[Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)]

My Lords, I draw the attention of the House to my registered interests. It is quite interesting for me to debate this with the Minister, because we used to spend a lot of time arguing about this in our conversations in local government. The 1.5 million target is brilliant, but people do not live in targets. We can change the planning system, but people do not live in plans. They live in homes, and homes are built by bricklayers. We cannot will the outcome of a big target unless we will the means to deliver it. What are the Government doing to make sure that we have the skills, material and finance to achieve 1.5 million homes?

To give the House some assurance, can the Minister tell us—I am sure it will have to be by letter—how many homes will be completed this year and how many will be started this year? If they are not started this year, they will not be completed next year, so the Government will miss their target for two years out of a five-year term, because there are not enough homes in the pipeline.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord but will resist the temptation to explain why we have not delivered the number of homes we wanted to this year, as I think he knows the answer. On skills, the Government have committed to working with regional mayors and industry to ensure that we have high-quality training opportunities across the country and that we build a diverse workforce, fit for the future. The Minister for Housing and Planning held a round table in November and we welcomed the announcement then of £140 million of industry-funded investment in new construction training opportunities.

Grenfell Tower Inquiry Report

Lord Porter of Spalding Excerpts

Friday 22nd November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)]

My Lords, I draw the House’s attention to my register of interests. For the avoidance of any doubt, I was the chairman of the Local Government Association on the morning of the fire, when I was with the Secretary of State. I attended all the COBRA meetings and all the recovery group meetings put on by the Government—which just filtered away until we stopped doing them, even though the problem had not been fixed. I think I am right in saying that I am the only elected politician who was there at the start of that process and was at the end of the line when the Government stopped doing it.

I have not finished reading the report yet, and I do not intend to speak for very long today, but I thought that it was important to make a point of coming to speak, out of respect for the survivors and victims of the fire. To ignore the chance to be part of a debate about the fire would have been disrespectful. I am not sure that I have anything that I can add appropriately at the moment.

The victims will not see justice until people are in a criminal court facing manslaughter charges. Only then will the victims get the justice they deserve. It has taken far too long to get to this stage. I honestly believe that, part-way through the inquiry period, the criminal case should have been running in a parallel process, because the people who suffered need to get justice, and the only way that that justice will be delivered is when somebody has their liberty taken away from them.

I heard the Minister say that he was hopeful that we would never have another case like this, but I did not see whether he had his fingers crossed—because that is the only way we would have no chance of another one. Pure luck is stopping another Grenfell happening tomorrow, today or at any point. There are so many unsafe buildings in this country that will not get remediated at any time in my lifetime. There will still be buildings that are dangerous places for people to live in when I am in my wooden box. There will still be people who will live and sleep every night in a building that could end up killing them. We will not get through the remediation process. Every time somebody brings a new piece of work to the table, we find more properties that need fixing. The Government insist that high-rise buildings over 11 metres are the only places to look—but they are not. This is about all buildings that are complicated in terms of who lives in them and how they are constructed.

A big care home was torched and levelled, and we were lucky that nobody died. The only reason nobody died was because it happened during the day and the staff were able to get everybody out. If that had happened at night, when the staff complement had been reduced and the people living in the care home were asleep and harder to move, people would have been victims. I appreciate that everybody is concerned and that everything the Government do takes time, but there does not seem to be the sense of urgency that will be necessary to get this problem dealt with any time soon.

I will probably be seen as “Mr Unpopular” for saying this, but the report is far too long. There are far too many words—across 1,700 pages—and it has errors and omissions. I will describe one omission. A number of the organisations that were found to be culpable were part of the Government’s immediate response afterwards. The Government set up a panel of experts immediately after the fire, and some of the people on that panel were responsible for some of the organisations that have now been criticised in the report. But the report does not criticise the fact that they were the people who the Government went to for expert advice. If we have the wrong people expertly advising the Government on a problem that they have partially created, how will we get to a place where everybody can say that we are content that we have done as much as we can? That is an omission; as far as I am concerned, it should have been in the report.

An error in the report is that the building safety guidance—the stay-put policy—is attributed to the LGA. It was not an LGA policy; it was a government policy. The Government commissioned the work and approved the experts who put the work together and its scope. The LGA was paid to bring those people together and then to host that information on its website. It was commissioned two chairmen before me, so I have no skin in the game with the commissioning. When we realised that the stay-put policy did not work because the compartmentalisation of buildings does not work—it does not exist; the stay-put policy was premised on the idea that you could be safe in a property, but nobody in a high-rise building is safe—we told the Government that we were taking the information down from our website. We took it down. The Government insisted that we put it back up again —and the staff did so. When I found out, I went ballistic at the staff, and we took it back down again. The Government now host that information on a Government-held website. The report should not have criticised the LGA because of that piece of work—that was another failing of another government department.

I will stop, because I might start going into the criminality bit, and I will end up probably doing something wrong by saying the names of some people who certainly should be locked up. The work we did from Smith Square all the way through provided plenty of evidence.

I have worked on a building site for most of my working life. I did a proper job: I was a brickie by trade. If we worked on a building site in the winter and the sand was frozen, which happens in English winters, we would chuck pallets into the sand heap and light them, to help to pour the sand out. We used offcuts of insulation as firestarters—it is solid petrol, so it burns really well. That was not a secret—everybody knew that—yet we were still allowing people to put it on buildings. I will stop before I drop myself in trouble—apologies.

Internal Drainage Boards: Levies

Lord Porter of Spalding Excerpts

Tuesday 21st May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I understand where the noble Baroness is coming from, but that is not what the Government had envisaged. We are looking at the data and those councils that are under the greatest pressure because of the issues of water in their areas. That is how we will continue to do it this year—led by data.

[Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests on the register. Up until May last year—as some noble Lords and certainly the Minister will be aware—when the electorate unceremoniously but quite wisely decided I should have more time in my diary, I used to lead a council that suffered the unfairness of the way the drainage board levies are currently raised. Over 50% of our council tax increases used to go to pay the drainage board and over 50% of council tax in total used to go to pay the drainage board. In the last two years, over 100% of what we collected in council tax increases went to pay the drainage board. Obviously, I do not blame my noble friend’s department for that, but does she agree that this is cost shunting from Defra to DLUHC and that, perhaps, a joint meeting between Defra and DLUHC to get a resolution would probably be best for the sector?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

That is exactly where we are going. As my noble friend said, it is up to DLUHC and Defra—and local authorities—to get together and work out the future of this funding.

Domestic Violence Refuges: Charities and Local Government

Lord Porter of Spalding Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

The noble Lord is absolutely right. I remember that, many years ago when I was in local government, children used to sit in the corner and nobody took any notice of them. Those things have changed. Of course, some victims of domestic abuse are children, in addition to the females—or males, depending on who is being abused.

[Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)]

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the register of interests. Does my noble friend agree that local government needs not so much a duty as praise for what it does? Most councillors across the country take this issue very seriously: it is not something they need to be compelled to do, but something they choose to do. If we are really going to tackle this scourge, we need other parts of government to treat it as seriously as local government does. Such offenders should be dealt with much more heavily, not by the local government team but by people in 2 Marsham Street.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My noble friend is absolutely right, and I thank all local authorities for everything they do. Interestingly, nearly 75% of local authorities say that they are spending more and doing much more than they did a few years ago in this regard. That is great, and I thank them for what they are doing. Yes, we should be supporting them and not always knocking them.

Housing: Modular Construction

Lord Porter of Spalding Excerpts

Thursday 8th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My noble friend is absolutely right. These homes can go up quickly but the long period of time is often in the planning system. That is why the levelling-up Bill is going through, through which we hope to make the planning system simpler and quicker for developers.

[Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as on the register. Is there any evidence to show that planning is actually a barrier to modern methods of construction?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My noble friend would ask that question. I suggest that it is a barrier not just to this method of construction, although the sector needs to consider how it sells itself to the public. There is all this talk about MMC not being proper housing, whereas if anybody goes to see it they can see that it is beautiful housing. It is not ugly and can look like any other traditionally built house. However, the planning system needs to be faster for all types of construction, including MMC.

Housebuilding

Lord Porter of Spalding Excerpts

Wednesday 7th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate (Non-Afl)]

My Lords—

[Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my interests in the register. May I point out to my noble friend that Governments do not build houses—the private sector builds them? The private sector will build only when it thinks there is a market for them. The Bank of England’s crashing of interest rates in its failed policy to drive down inflation is not going to be the solution. My noble friend must remember that the only time this country has ever delivered 300,000 units a year was when councils were freed up to deliver 70,000 or 80,000 units. Her department has removed two of the historic barriers, but will she look at removing the third? We removed the cap on right-to-buy receipts being spent—councils can now spend 100%, which is brilliant—and the cap on councils borrowing against the existing value, but we still need to remove the cap on their ability to set locally determined discounts.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My noble friend is right: it takes a whole government, and many departments of government, to ensure that we have housing supply. DLUHC and the Housing Minister cannot do it on their own, so we need to work across government. As far as local authorities are concerned, my noble friend is right that we are removing the barriers and local authorities are now building houses.

Yorkshire: Devolution

Lord Porter of Spalding Excerpts

Monday 10th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[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.

[Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)]

My Lords, I beseech my noble friend the Minister to make sure that the last of the Yorkshire deals he spoke of, the one that incorporated North and North East Lincolnshire, does not go through? I declare an interest as the leader of South Holland District Council in Lincolnshire, and I still have hopes that one day we will get a deal for Lincolnshire as whole.

[Noble Lords]

Hear, hear!