European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Porter of Spalding and Lord Shipley

Committee: 8th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 19th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I remind the House that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association. Amendment 227 derives from two problems. The first is the fact that consultation with local authorities has been inadequate in the planning of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. Secondly, the absence to date of any mechanism in domestic law to replicate the advisory role conferred on local authorities by the European Committee of the Regions after exit day is becoming a matter of increasing concern.

Local government has in the past been told that there would be a seat at the table for it. That has not been fulfilled. It is not enough for the Government to have occasional informal discussions with some elected mayors in England and dress that up as proper consultation. The Minister will be aware that the devolved legislatures of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as the Mayor of London, have had detailed consultative involvement in recent months. However, similar involvement has been missing in England and I fear that this results from Whitehall seeing itself as representing all of England as well as the UK as a whole. I have concluded that we need a proper consultative structure for all parts of the UK—the nations, the regions, the sub-regions and the local authorities, right across the United Kingdom.

I accept that, in England, regions and sub-regions may have very different governance arrangements from each other. Nevertheless, we need representative bodies reflecting natural geographies to meet regularly with Ministers. It is very strange that UK Core Cities has found it easier to meet with Monsieur Barnier in Brussels than with UK Government Ministers in London.

There are several very big strategic problems that need resolution if Brexit is to proceed. First there is the replacement of the EU funding streams that currently provide some £8.4 billion in structural funds—mostly ERDF and ESF in the UK—between 2014 and 2020. The aim of the funding streams is to create jobs, support business growth, improve skills and reduce comparative deprivation in poorer areas. The question arises as to how this will be continued if Brexit happens.

Secondly, there are serious issues around workforce planning, particularly in high-tech industries where, for example, graduate retention of international students in our university cities matters profoundly. The immigration and trade Bills must recognise this and I hope that the Minister will be able to confirm shortly that they will.

Thirdly, we need structures to permit discussion of exactly those matters that the Committee of the Regions helped to establish across national borders, such as extremist prevention strategies, protection of our steel industry and community energy supply projects. Talking within the EU across national boundaries has produced better legislation for the United Kingdom.

Finally, we should remember that one reason for the Brexit vote was the serious inequalities that have emerged over the past 20 years across the United Kingdom. A lot of places have felt left behind, and justifiably so. But Brexit must not result in those places feeling even more left behind. We have to ensure inclusive growth for all and so I hope that the industrial strategy and the planned shared prosperity fund will help to deliver that. To achieve it will require a structure for shared discussion of the issues by the regions, the sub-regions and local government generally, and I hope that the Minister agrees. I beg to move.

[Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to speak in support of the spirit of the amendment, but first I need to put on the record that I am the chairman of the Local Government Association and the leader of South Holland District Council. Obviously that is South Holland in Lincolnshire, not south Holland in the Netherlands.

Secure Tenancies (Victims of Domestic Abuse) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Porter of Spalding and Lord Shipley

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 24th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shipley]

My Lords, I support this amendment and I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, that it is a probing amendment. I will ask the Minister a specific question about the obligations of housing associations. In a message on 19 January the Minister said:

“In a housing association property the tenancy standard protects social tenants who had a lifetime tenancy granted before April 2012 by requiring that they must be given a further lifetime tenancy if they move to another social rented home”.


The meaning of that is clear. However, what is the position for those granted a housing association tenancy after April 2012 who may be victims of domestic abuse? If they move to a local authority home, again, the situation is clear. But what advice will the Government give to housing associations which will not have the same obligation to give a lifetime tenancy if a tenant moves to another housing association property?

[Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as chairman of the Local Government Association and as the leader of South Holland District Council. I put on record my personal support and the wider sector’s support for the Bill. I am not aware of any council in the country that would want to resist any of the good proposals in the Bill. However, as the Minister said earlier on the previous set of amendments, and as the noble Lord opposite just raised, there is an anomaly between types of landlord. While the Government may not be able to compel registered social landlords to offer like-for-like tenancies, given that most registered social landlords use taxpayers’ money to build those homes in the first place, perhaps the Minister could find a form of words that would give some form of encouragement to anybody who is expecting to get taxpayer-funded properties of the expectation that they would voluntarily put their properties into a scheme that allowed secure tenancies for victims of domestic abuse if they should happen to flee to an area where the council is not the primary landlord.

Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Lord Porter of Spalding and Lord Shipley

Wednesday 27th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, now that we are at Third Reading, I declare my vice-presidency of the Local Government Association. I support Amendment 6, the case for which has been so well put by the noble Lords, Lord Kerslake and Lord Best, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville. The noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, said that Amendment 6 goes to the heart of the issues in the Bill. I agree entirely. The amendment contains a crucial matter of principle about the need to have social homes built for rent. It is a reasonable and important amendment.

Government Amendment 2 reminds us:

“Where the agreement is with a local housing authority outside Greater London, it must include terms and conditions requiring the authority to ensure that at least one new affordable home is provided for each old dwelling”.

As we pointed out during earlier stages of the Bill, the terms of that amendment could be met by building starter homes for sale rather than social homes for rent, since in Clause 158 the Bill amends the definition of “affordable homes” to include starter homes for sale. That is why we should support Amendment 6: because it would make it clear in the Bill that a replacement home should be let as social housing on terms similar to those on which the old dwelling was let, where there is a demonstrated need.

Given that many households now renting could never aspire to a starter home even with a 20% discount, we really have an obligation to protect the needs of low-income households by ensuring a new supply of social homes for rent. The amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, would do that, while the Government’s Amendment 2 on its own does not. If the noble Lord is minded to test the opinion of the House, he therefore should be supported in that.

I noted that in opening the debate on this group of amendments the Minister used a particular phrase: I think she said that the Government could not accept Amendment 6 “at this stage”. I noticed those three words and wondered at which stage the Government might decide that they could accept the amendment or something extremely close to it. I hope the Minister might explain that to us.

Lastly, the noble Lord, Lord Best, has quoted from the Conservative Party’s manifesto. I remind the Minister that another part of that manifesto states that the party would require,

“local authorities to manage their housing assets more efficiently, with the most expensive properties sold off and replaced as they fall vacant”.

The implication of that to a neutral reader is that they are going to be replaced with something very similar. Replacing them with starter homes with a 20% discount for owner-occupation—that is now in Clause 158 as part of the definition of “affordable housing”—seems to miss the crucial point that there is a crying need to build social homes for rent in this country. I wonder whether the Minister understands that. If the blockage here lies with the Treasury, I hope very much that your Lordships can demonstrate a deep strength of feeling on this issue. Otherwise, those who depend upon renting are going to find it increasingly difficult to rent at levels they can afford.

[Lord Porter of Spalding]

My Lords, if noble Lords will excuse me, I have a note here because I intend to quote a few people and I do not want to get any of the quotes wrong. Before I start, I refer noble Lords to my interests in the register. Specifically, I am the leader of South Holland district council and the chairman of the Local Government Association.

I am not going to support the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Kerslake, as I said last time, because it restricts some of what I would like to see in the Bill, and I cannot support the noble Baroness’s amendment because, again, it restricts something that we are doing. Noble Lords may not know this but we are in negotiation with the Government to allow the capital receipts from right-to-buy sales of our own properties to be spent across more than just our own area, and I would like the flexibility of being able to spend the money that we retain across other areas if that is how we, as local government, determine that it would best be used. That could be on the basis of interest-free loans to our friends next door who might not necessarily be in the same housing market area. For that reason I think that it is restrictive and I cannot support it.

It is worth pointing out that we have had this Bill for about a month now and it is better than when we started. If we had it for about two years it would probably be perfect. But we have not got two years and I have already been told to speed up so I am going to speed up a little bit—but not completely.

The Minister confirmed last week that we would be sticking to our manifesto commitment about how we dealt with the capital receipts from these buildings and I said last week that I would probably offer to sell all of the council homes that I have in South Holland on the basis that the capital receipts would be greater than the sum of money that I would need to be able to replace those units and therefore I would be able to put money towards the Government’s noble aim of freeing up social mobility and allowing more people to buy their own property and at the same time replace my own housing stock, most of which was built between the 1930s and the 1950s, with brand-new units and therefore save my housing revenue account money.

I am not going to read all this now. I was going to read what the Prime Minister said but noble Lords will all have read our manifesto, which is really good. People voted for it so we are going to stick to it, which is what we said we were going to do. That is why I disagreed with my noble friend Lord Lansley and the noble Baroness, who argued about the tenure. The tenure is not important; the important part of this is that the Government allow councils to keep sufficient capital receipts to build replacement units.

The tenure needs to be decided locally: whether we need rented units or starter homes. In South Holland I would do a mixture because if I build starter homes I will keep all the capital receipts when I sell them. A starter home built for £80,000 and sold for £110,000 will increase the sum of money that I have to build more council houses. Noble Lords probably will not know this but South Holland got back into building council houses in 2006 when the party opposite was in charge of the Government and the noble Lord, Lord Prescott, who is not in his place, issued a challenge to build those homes. So I am pro-council housing but I am also pro-social mobility and the only part of this discussion that I do not like is the fact that the capital receipts are going to go to RSLs. I begrudge giving any of that money away but it is clear that the Government are not going to give way on that, so I am not going to keep banging on about it.

Let us not lose sight of the fact that this is not going to be about us selling high-value homes; it is about a new form of levy being put on councils with council stock. All I want is for us to be able to minimise the size of that levy and maximise the amount of capital we have to spend in our own areas. Neither of the amendments tabled do that. The Government have a clear manifesto commitment to do something about it and I am prepared to challenge them to make sure that at some point, when we do this ping-pong thing that I am not yet familiar with, the Bill comes back even better than it currently is. I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, will press his amendment to a Division and I will be going through on the Government’s side.

Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Lord Porter of Spalding and Lord Shipley

Tuesday 22nd March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I agree with what has been said so far in this debate. I want to emphasise that this is an extremely important amendment because it underpins so much of what follows. It provides the framework within which individual policies can be devised to secure sustainable development and sustainable place-making, and it is important that we have something in the Bill that emphasises that importance of planning.

Two years ago I chaired the University of Birmingham’s policy commission on future urban living. As we took evidence, it became very clear that it was going to be very difficult to make significant change without an enhanced planning system to lead it and a better understanding of why it matters. We concluded that planners must not be seen simply as regulators. That is increasingly the way in which the role of the planning profession in local government has gone. Planners have to be seen as part of a senior management team of a council with a specific role in achieving long-term sustainable development and long-term sustainable place-making. I use that phrase because it is the one that is in common parlance when discussing planning.

It is very important that officers of councils have a broader responsibility in planning than simply regulation. Achieving all this requires a radical upgrade in the importance of planning to attract back the multidisciplinary creative talent that was once prevalent in planning departments. For that reason, the objectives of this amendment are very important because they explain the role of planning as a multidisciplinary function in the local authority. As the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, said, in recent years we have lost sight of the importance of planning. I agree absolutely with that. I think it is a very important statement.

As the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, has just pointed out—I think I am quoting him correctly—it is important that we capture land-use planning. This is very important, and it is absolutely right that we should.

[Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)]

My Lords, I remind everyone that I declared a bunch of interests at the start of the debates. I am going to add another one now, seeing that the NPPF has been mentioned. I was one of the four practitioners who wrote the original draft of the NPPF, and I confirm that it is not necessary to add this set of words to the Bill, because that is what the NPPF already does. It is about sustainable development, and that will be determined individually by each council with each application in its area. Putting something in the Bill will limit the ability of councils to deliver what we need to deliver.

Unlike noble Lords who have spoken before, looking through rose-tinted glasses, about what the world has become since 1947 and the planning Act, I remind noble Lords that the tower blocks that we have started to knock down were once seen as iconic buildings of the 1947 Act. I am not sure that we want to go back to that world. Probably my final statement on this will be that this fantastic building that we all have the privilege of operating from would not have been built under the 1947 Act.