Housebuilding: Regional Mayors
Lord Porter of Spalding Excerpts(1 year, 3 months ago)
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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(1 year, 4 months ago)
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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(1 year, 10 months ago)
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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(2 years ago)
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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(2 years, 9 months ago)
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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(2 years, 9 months ago)
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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(6 years, 1 month ago)
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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
Grenfell Tower Inquiry: Phase 1 Report
Lord Porter of Spalding Excerpts(6 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interests as the vice-chairman of the APPG for fire safety. I am also the Local Government Association’s building safety spokesperson.
I was with some of the families of the victims and a couple of the survivors yesterday morning, and universally they had nothing but good words to say about the report. So Sir Martin has delivered a report in tragic circumstances in a way that has gone down well with the people who are most affected by it. That is the nice thing—but now I will disagree with the order of the reports. We should not be talking about the phase 1 report today but the phase 2 report. Phase 2 should have been first. While phase 1 deals with some serious failings by the bureaucracy that was supposed to look after the welfare of the people the firefighters were trying to protect—and that is important—they are largely lessons for London to learn. We have high-rise buildings at the same risk as Grenfell all over the country. We need to get to the bottom of what that fire was about and understand why that piece of white goods, which was a recalled machine, still burst into flames. Fire safety for white goods in this country does not work properly. There is no accessible national database for the public to see. We should be pushing hard for that.
The cladding seems to be what everybody is focusing on at the moment, but that is not the only part of the problem. The problem is also the insulation that sits behind it. There are lots of other buildings with that insulation but different cladding. The fire breaks that were supposed to be there did not work, so the compartmentalisation was breached from the day the building was renovated. Nobody knew about that until it was too late, but we know about it for other buildings now.
Those are the things that we should be drawing out from this, but the trouble with this report is that it has allowed the public narrative to be about the failings of the fire service. When you say, “fire service”, most people think, “firefighters”. How can we allow a situation in which so many brave men did things on the night that seem insane—going in and out of that building several times and risking their lives—and now we have that whole group of people feeling that they are the butt of the problem? Clearly, they were not; they were real heroes on that night, and this House should make sure that the message that leaves here is that we feel nothing but immense gratitude to the firefighters on that night and to the support staff who worked with them. I cannot imagine how traumatic it must have been for everybody.
If we are really going to do anything about this, we need to insist that the second report is started now, not in the new year, and is done expeditiously, rather than taking two years to deliver. Every single interim finding must be released, as soon as it can be, so that the Government can bring in policies to act on it and try to do something to make people safe when they sleep at night. I know it is a hard thing for the Government to get their head around, but we have to accept the fact that this was caused largely by failures in the system that were beyond the control of any one individual or set of partners. Local councils have a lot to learn from this, as do the Government. I hasten to add that that is not just the current Government; this goes back to when Members on the other side of the House were running what was going on. The seeds of Grenfell started in 2006, I think.
So there is learning that needs to be learned, but it is a bit like being an alcoholic; unless you realise you have a problem, you cannot hope to fix it. We all need to make sure that the Government—of whatever colour after the election—are held to account. They must accept the failings that have gone before and have a clear plan for what to fix. If these reports had been the other way around, we would now have a solid evidence base to start to do that—but at the moment we still do not have it.
I will ask the Minister for two things. First, in summing up, will he make sure that the House’s feelings about the bravery of the firefighters on the night is the main bit that sits in the public record about this report? Secondly, will he urge the department to make sure that the report is done expeditiously and that we get early sight of any recommendations, so that the Government can start to formulate policies that will address some of the safety issues? This goes much wider than just the one building. This is a national problem affecting buildings all over the country, including some with different types of material, not just the type that has been singled out here. Until we get that done, we are letting the real criminals off the hook—and, with some of the things that have gone on with this, they are criminals, almost certainly.