Public Duty Costs Allowance

Lord Porter of Spalding Excerpts

Monday 21st November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

Whether to waive such payments is entirely a matter for the ex-Prime Minister involved, as the noble Lord knows only too well. But I applaud Prime Minister Truss for some of the points she made about efficiency. These are important issues and we should not decry her for making such points.

[Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)]

Does my noble friend agree that, given the performance of some sitting Prime Ministers over the last 25 years, paying ex-Prime Ministers could sometimes be seen as better value for the taxpayer than paying serving Prime Ministers?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I do not know how to answer that question. I return to the point I made at the beginning: ex-Prime Ministers have a special position in public life. This is not as it is in other countries, where ex-Prime Ministers often have substantial salaries, houses and things. I have been around the world and noticed that. We have a public duty costs allowance, which is incurred only when the former Prime Minister fulfils public duties linked to their former office. That is carefully reimbursed by the Cabinet Office, when it has evidence that the money has been properly spent.

Social Housing

Lord Porter of Spalding Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the leader of South Holland District Council and the chair of the Local Government Association. I am also a small-scale private landlord, for what it is worth. I thank the Opposition for using their time to control the agenda of the House and use it for this most important of subjects.

It is an undisputable truth that every child in this country deserves to be born in a decent, safe, secure and affordable home. For the vast majority, council-owned or social landlord-owned properties are probably the only way to meet that affordability criteria. As the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said, successive Governments over the past 40 years have fallen out of love with council houses for various reasons. That has not gone well for those of us who believe that safe, secure and affordable homes are best provided through the social sector. We saw at the start of the coalition Government and the recession that the post-war consensus that we would always invest in bricks and mortar was changed to an investment in tenants. That is why we are now spending, or wasting, more than £20 billion a year on housing benefit.

Probably the most reassuring statement from the current Prime Minister was made two years ago at the party conference. She is the first serving Prime Minister that I can recall to have a positive conversation about council houses. She talked about the benefits to children if they are able to grow up in a council house. That is the first time I can remember such a statement. She followed it up at last year’s party conference by doing the one thing that will mark her out as probably one of the best Prime Ministers of the 21st century: she reversed the actions taken by successive Governments to prevent councils borrowing against the assets they already own. Our councils own a few million houses and we should be able to sweat that asset. She is the first Prime Minister to turn this around and she must be remembered for that. However you dress it up, she will be largely responsible for hundreds of thousands of children in this country being able to grow up in decent, safe, secure and affordable homes.

I agree with most of the other comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty. Like him, if I stand up for too long I will rant, so I will add one of my minutes to the four that he has already offered back to the House.

Housing and Planning Bill

Lord Porter of Spalding Excerpts

Monday 25th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

I will intervene because, technically, my Amendment 123E would be pre-empted if Amendment 123D were agreed. I would be very happy if Amendment 123D were agreed and I support it. I am very grateful to my noble friend on the Front Bench for what she said. Unfortunately, I was away from the internet over the weekend and was in the town hall until the House sat. Otherwise, I would have made it clear that I would have been happy for a number of my amendments to be in this group. It would have been more helpful to the House to have one debate. Indeed, we just have, because the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, spoke with great passion to his Amendment 123, which would leave out the whole thing but which is not, technically, before the House. The noble Lord does not need to repeat that speech on the next group, if such a debate happens.

In Committee, I raised a point which I believe to be fundamental, as does the noble Lord, Lord Shipley. I was grateful for the opportunity to discuss it with the Minister and her officials. The planning system must not be seen by the public to be bought. The Minister has said absolutely clearly that the decision must be independent and taken by the local authority, not taken by or influenced by a paid advocate bought and working for one of the parties to an application. As I always say, good policy has to reflect what happens in real life. In real life, a developer will seek a planning application; many people will object to it. We may not agree with those objections but they will be made, so it will come before a planning committee for determination.

I spoke in favour of an experiment with the private sector, as did my noble friend Lord Porter of Spalding. I do not agree with the comminations from the other side, but my noble friend needs to go just one step further. That is reflected in my Amendment 121E, which comes in the next group. As I said in Committee, a report is tabled at a planning committee with a statement recommending permission or rejection. If members of the public, particularly those who are objecting to an application, come to the meeting and see that the recommendation is being made or spoken to by somebody who is paid to do a job by one of the parties to the application, that will be seen as unfair and corrupt, even if it is not.

I do not intend to press my amendments; I am quite happy not to move Amendment 121E if the Minister can say that the assurance she has given will also apply to advice to planning committees—that it should be perceived as independent and not given by a paid advocate who tables a report to members saying they should give permission. If she can, a lot of the objections would potentially fall away. Amendment 122A would be otiose, because it is designed only to ensure that if someone is paid to give advice, they should be made to declare that they are a paid advocate, rather than independent. We could then part happily. I might be interested in taking part in these experiments. I hope the Minister will also take heed of what the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, said: there should be variety. My own authority, for example, is going into a shared management arrangement with another local authority. Inventive local authorities should be given the opportunity to suggest forms of experiment. That was an interesting proposal and I hope the Minister will be ready to listen to it.

Having been led to speak on the basis that one of my amendments would be pre-empted, I am essentially asking my noble friend to go one step further and say that the public who turn up will not hear or see a report saying “recommend” from somebody who is paid. If she can, much of the need for the amendments I have tabled would fall away.

If the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, is going to lead a frontal assault, I certainly would not want my Amendment 124A to be grouped with his because I shall be voting against his proposal. However, how the fee arrangements would actually work needs further clarification; we have heard little from the Front Bench. My noble friend Lady Williams said that there would be no two-tier system. That needs clarification, but provided there could be assurance of further consideration of that point, when the time comes I would be prepared not to move my Amendment 124A.

[Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 120A and 121. I was going to try to stick to the proper script but, given that everybody before me has left the running order and spoken about the things they are really interested in, I am going to do the same. First, I thank my noble friend the Minister for listening to what was said last week and to what local government has been saying for a number of weeks, and for clarifying how some of this pilot stuff will work.

Since I am on my feet, I am going to speak to fees. I am in favour of private sector competition on the basis that I honestly believe it will drive fees up. It is the first time I can recall having private sector competition to drive up the cost of a service, but I think this will do it. At the moment, we are spending about £150 million a year as taxpayers subsidising the planning system, and we have spent £450 million over the past three years doing it. Clearly, the fee structure does not recoup the full costs. If the private sector is going to come in and compete against us, it is going to want at least to cover its costs. Even if it is doing it for a few years as a loss leader, it is not going to want to lose a lot of money, so local government should be able to get its fees set at a much higher rate. That will allow us to staff our planning departments to a much more suitable level, given the demand that will be coming through, and that will allow local government to win the competition hands down because the public will trust what we are delivering and any sensible developer will want to go through an established route rather than risk competition in the private sector.

The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, said that an impact assessment had said that competition reduced the cost of refuse collection by about 20%. Ours has been brought back in-house since I have been leader and that has saved 20%. While private sector competition should be encouraged, it is not always the route that the final decision should go down.

[Lord Beecham]

On a point of clarification, when the noble Lord talks about council fees increasing in the way that he has described, is he suggesting to the Government that they should change the position and no longer fix the fees that councils should charge? That would be a necessary precondition of that occurring.

[Lord Porter of Spalding]

If we are truly about competition, the people in the competition should be the people setting the charges for that competition. Local government will set appropriate fees. All the Government need to say is, “This is the maximum profit you can make”, and we will all stick to those rules. I am sure local government will be able to drive down costs while putting fees up. As my noble friend Lord True said, we will be doing more shared management, and such arrangements will save some margin, but that will still not be enough to cover the full costs of the planning application. If we are able to put our fees up to recoup the full costs, so be it—bring on the competition. Like my noble friend Lord True, I will probably volunteer to pilot a rural competition.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

My Lords, I hope I gave a full explanation in my opening remarks of our approach to the DPRRC’s recommendations—where we have accepted and taken on board its comments, as well as those of your Lordships—and why we believe that Amendments 121CA and 135D are impractical. Amendment 121G repeats a provision that we have already laid.

The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, talked about the figures on outsourcing and shared services in the impact assessment. The key point is that, in many services, local authorities have undertaken significant reform and shown significant cost reductions. Some examples are set out in the impact assessment. However, in respect of planning services, authorities have been slow to do such reform, which is why we want to go forward with these pilots.

Amendment 123B in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, proposes an alternative pilot to test fee flexibility alongside the competition pilot scheme. I cannot accept this amendment because we already have the necessary powers and are already taking forward the proposal with the intention of evaluating its effectiveness. Section 303 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 allows us, through regulations, to set different fees for different local planning authorities, although Clause 141 of this Bill will make such an approach easier.

Our recent consultation paper included a proposal to test the provision of greater flexibility in fee setting, on top of our proposals for national increases in fees linked to inflation, where local authorities come forward with ambitious plans for reforms and improved performance. The noble Lord raised concerns that our proposals in the consultation are too narrow. The reference to a fast-track service was one example. We will explore a range of options for fee flexibility with areas and have started to have those conversations in some areas.

Housing and Planning Bill

Lord Porter of Spalding Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I support everything that has been said on this side so far and, in particular, Amendment 102D in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Borwick. I suspect that I will be supporting every amendment that comes forward on Report but this particular amendment adds value. Personally, I would like to scrap the whole Bill—it can be consigned to my wood burner any time. However, if that is not an option, at least we should clarify things as much as possible. As a former councillor, I understand that this tiny amendment is crucial in order to save an awful lot of stress, argument and anxiety down the line. Therefore, I urge the Government to accept it.

[Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)]

My Lords, I refer the Committee to my pre-declared bunch of interests. I do not know whether I have to declare them again—someone will have to explain the rules to me.

I am sure that noble Lords will be surprised to hear that I am not that bothered whether local government has to face competition in dealing with planning decisions. On the basis that they already cost local government a fortune, I would be very surprised if, under the current fee structure, anybody from the private sector came anywhere near them. So I see this part of the Bill as a chance to get value for money for councils and, if the private sector does get anywhere near it, we will be able to get an increase in planning fees. Therefore, from a councillor’s point of view, I welcome the competition because it can only drive prices up, not down, and in this case I am happy with that.

I should point out that the comments of my noble friend Lord Carrington about those producing the planning report being involved only in the mechanics of the process does not give the whole picture. There is a presumption in favour of development, so somebody will have to recommend to the committee either that the application complies with a presumption in favour and therefore it must be granted, leaving the matter to be democratically argued, or that it should be rejected because it is not sustainable development. Whoever prepares the report, whether they are independent or council-based, must come forward with a recommendation to either grant or refuse, but the final decision must be made by politicians who are accountable to the affected community, and something needs to be put in the Bill to make sure that that is explicit. I am not sure whether these amendments do that but the Government will need to ensure that it is done somewhere.

I am making a brave step out, as I am going to try to take on one of the big beasts for a bit of sport. My noble friend Lord Deben talked about attaching farm fields to gardens not being a problem and being fairly straightforward. It would be fairly straightforward if gardens did not then become previously developed land and thus brownfield, leaving them more susceptible to development in areas where that might not necessarily be sustainable. Before anyone on the other side laughs, they need to remember that under the brownfield policy vaunted by the previous Labour Government, 60% of the brownfield land that they managed to develop during their time in office was reclaimed garden land. So there is a good reason why councils are very cautious about changing use from farm fields to garden land.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I recognise that it is late in the day to be contributing to this amendment but I have put my name to an amendment in the very last group, so I am simply delaying myself getting home. I want to remind the Committee about the findings of the Select Committee on the Built Environment, on which I have the privilege to sit, and the very worrying evidence that we heard from planning departments across the country about their ability to recruit experienced professional planning staff and about their viability for the future.

I absolutely support the concerns about this proposal, and I think that Amendment 102D is well worth supporting as a safeguard in terms of the moral hazard issue, but I think that we also need to take account of the fact that at the moment there is a real shortage of suitably skilled and experienced planning staff. If we set up alternative economies in a commercial planning capability, we will find that local authorities are rapidly hollowed out in terms of their planning capacity. It is very close to that at the moment. They have next to no specialist planning skills in heritage, environment and other areas. They are finding it difficult to afford planning staff of their own. So in this proposition we need to take account of the viability of planning departments for the future if skilled and experienced staff are likely to be attracted towards a commercial planning capacity in a competitive sense.

We also need to think about whether we are trying to solve the right problem. There is a real issue about the quality and capacity of planning departments across the country. We saw in our work with the Select Committee impressive alternative models. Local authorities gathered together to create more critical mass and to allow themselves to maintain a range of specialist planning officers. These authorities had voluntarily contracted out their planning support to commercial organisations.

Importantly—and here I disagree violently with the noble Lord, Lord Deben, a rare event in my experience—the planning authority was very much in the driving seat. The worry I have about these proposals is that if you are paying a fee to a commercial provider of planning-support services you will expect them to be on your side. They will be professional and I hope that a quality-assurance process will be put in place to ensure that professional standards are maintained.

As the noble Lord, Lord True, said, the reality is that when you are in front of the jury you will have your man arguing your case, not the local authority’s man helping the local authority’s elected officers take a dispassionate look at what the decision in the public interest should be. As I say, I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Deben. I am a great fan of the planning system, which is one of the last genuinely democratic processes in this country. It is the responsibility of the local authority and the officers who support it to take a decision in the interests of the local community, balancing all the economic, social, environmental and other issues. I fear that if we do not handle this set of changes carefully we will find that we have tipped the balance too far in the direction of the developer.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I am pleased to endorse the comments made by noble Lords from around the Committee on these amendments. The recent floods brought into sharp focus that the damaging effects of climate change are not being matched by our skills in managing increased water flows. Both the Government, through their establishment of the national flood resilience review, and the Environment Agency are being forced to reconsider their flood management strategies.

In the mean time, there are steps that we can take that will make a difference, and we have heard examples this evening. It is now commonly accepted that the removal of trees and hedges has reduced the absorbency of our land. In urban areas, the paving over of gardens and green spaces has left nowhere for excess water to drain. The building of new dwellings connected to the existing sewerage system takes no account of the need for increased capacity. At the same time, it remains literally incredible that housing developers apply to build new homes in areas designated as a flood risk by the Environment Agency, and even more incredible that some local authorities continue to grant planning permission in these circumstances.

So we very much support the concept of sustainable housing development, and these amendments are important in bringing some sanity back into the planning process in this regard. Sustainable drainage systems need to be a core feature of future planning, using green space and natural water features that can mimic the known advantages of natural land drainage and help return water flows to a natural equilibrium.

Whether these principles should be applied cannot be left to local interpretation. Sadly, what we have learned over the past few winters is that inaction in one place can often have a catastrophic effect further downstream, so localised decision-making is not the answer. The rules have to be applied consistently, and this, of course, is what Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act attempted to achieve. It remains inexplicable that the schedule was not enforced in the first place; I hope that the Minister will be able to explain the reasoning behind that. Now is the time to put that matter right.

Amendment 120 is an excellent attempt, once again, to try to rein in the perverse activity of developers building homes on designated flood areas. When this happens and properties subsequently flood, we are all drawn into the net of supporting those communities and helping them turn their lives around, whereas the developers can simply walk away, having pocketed their profit. They do not even have a responsibility to warn potential purchasers of the risk inherent in the purchase of those properties.

This amendment, therefore, puts the responsibility and the financial risk firmly back in the hands of the developers, which is where it belongs. It will hopefully be a tool to encourage more responsible and appropriate housing development in the future. A number of comments have been made this evening on the technicalities of that amendment, and I know that some more work will need to be done on it, but we very much support the thinking behind it.

[Lord Porter of Spalding]

My Lords, I do not know how to add this new interest into the debate, but at some point, I will have another company set up that will put me back into doing small-scale development with my son-in-law. The accountants are working on it now, and I am going to put this in the register as soon as it is done, but noble Lords need to know it now, because I am going to speak specifically from a developer’s point of view—even though, technically, I am not yet a developer. I am also going to speak as the leader of South Holland District Council, which covers an area that, if we were not allowed to build on flood plains, would become a ghost town, because we are on a flood plain. We would build nothing anywhere in my patch if we followed the idea that, notionally, the designation of a flood plain by the Environment Agency was true and accurate.

We have not flooded since 1947; adequate flood management schemes can deal with it. Amendment 120 would create companies set up to build one development that would then go bankrupt—and, as the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, said, on that basis we would have to insure against that, so that would add more expense in some areas disproportionately to others.

If I remember rightly, where we are sitting now is also on a flood plain, so all of the people around this area would also be moved out of town if we applied that. We cannot be frightened by water; we have to manage it properly. We cannot retreat from it. We are people and we can deal with it, and we cannot deal with it just by saying, “You can’t build anything anywhere”, which Amendment 120 would have us do; or create perverse incentives to get people to set up businesses that are going to go out of business every time they earn some money.

[Lord Krebs]

My Lords, perhaps I may respond briefly to that last comment. I do not think that Amendment 120 in any sense precludes building on a flood plain. It simply asks—and provides a possible answer—to the question of who should bear the liability if somebody buys a house that has just been built in a flood-risk area and that house floods. While it might be true that, in the noble Lord’s particular area, there has not been a flood since 1947, that does not mean to say that there will not be a flood next year. The people who bought homes that were built recently in those areas should have some form of protection. That is what the amendment is trying to provide.