High Streets (Designation, Review and Improvement Plan) Bill

Lord Razzall Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 17th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Razzall (LD)]

My Lords, it is common ground across your Lordships’ House that many of our high streets are in a mess. Whether this is symptomatic of our rundown country, who of course knows? We see boarded-up shops and closed pubs and post offices—and, obviously, the sub-post offices have not been helped by the Horizon scandal. We now see often an excess of estate agents and—dare I say it?—antiques shops.

I cannot compete with the noble Lord, Lord Horam, and the Champs-Élysées, but I can say that not every high street is in a mess. My own high street in Tisbury still has a thriving butcher and bread shop as well as a small supermarket and a hardware store and two thriving pubs—so all is not lost in Tisbury.

Our high streets have continued to deteriorate over the past 20 years, despite a number of initiatives by the Government. It was as long ago as 2011 that Mary Portas came up with her 25 recommendations to deal with the problems of our high streets. If you look at the list of recommendations, you will be hard pushed to say how many of them have been effectively implemented. As the noble Lord, Lord Whitby, indicated, and the noble Lord, Lord Mair, touched on, a number of funds have been established: the future high streets fund, the town centre fund and the local growth fund—to name but three. Have they really done anything significantly to improve the status of our high streets?

Rather like the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and the Labour Benches, my party will not oppose the Bill, but it fails to address, as a number of noble Lords have indicated, the two key problems. First, there is the planning system, which the noble Lord, Lord Mair, touched on. There have been successive extensions to permitted development rights, which are a serious block to local people’s abilities to create the sorts of communities in high streets that they want. The noble Lord, Lord Mair, referred to the continuous changes to and increased use of the national use class order, which again restricts the ability to control the content of the high street. As he indicated, class E buildings can now be redeveloped as residential properties in the high street without any resort to the planning situation.

Secondly, we have the issue of council expenditure. As noble Lords have indicated, the Government are allocating the money to develop and draw up the plans, but not to implement them. All the speakers on the Bill have reservations as to whether this will produce any actual implementation. This is in the context of the overall shortage that local authorities are currently looking at—I think the LGA indicates that there will be a £4 billion shortfall for local authorities over the next one or two years. Inevitably, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, indicated, that will lead to cuts in street cleaning and maintenance because, increasingly, local authorities are able to focus their finances only on essential services, which those do not count as.

So, as I have said, we on these Benches are not opposing the Bill. It is a very small step indeed to deal with a very large problem. I might say cynically that perhaps that is why the Government are supporting it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Whitby (Con)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have participated in today’s important debate. Each contribution has underlined our collective passion for preserving and developing our high streets. If I may, I will make an observation or two.

Before I came here, my life, the journey I had made and my political contribution to society was through local government. To me, it is the essence of a democracy. My intellectual and philosophical journey throughout has been about devolving down to the people you are looking after and are concerned about. The noble Baroness, Lady Green, I believe, mentioned the interference of a top-heavy state. All I would say—

[Lord Razzall (LD)]

It is her party, not her name.

[Lord Whitby (Con)]

I apologise—a rose by any other name.

However, the point made about top-down interference is something I understand, as the leader of a metropolitan borough. I was the leader during Tony Blair’s period, and I liaised with him regularly. I was the leader while Gordon Brown and then David Cameron were Prime Minister. I share with noble Lords the frustration over the evolution of devolution. I know at what pace it goes, and I know how we aspire to accelerate that.

What I believe that this Private Member’s Bill introduces to that debate—I welcome this because all noble Lords have appreciated it—is a move in the right direction, even though it may only be an incremental movement to what we might perceive as utopia. To me, it is a tacit understanding that the Government realise that the movement is bottom-up, through the guidance that we will inform and the consultation that everyone ought to have. The Bill aims to align the munificence of the Government—I think it is almost £15 billion-worth of money through a whole plethora of pots—with the aspirations of local communities, which is what we all believe in.

I thank all noble Lords for expressing tacit support. I am sure that the observations that they have made will inform the guidance that the Government and the Secretary of State will write. We are happy to work with noble Lords and other stakeholders as we develop the guidance. As it is a Private Member’s Bill, an amendment would have killed the Bill, so I thank noble Lords again for their support.

I reiterate my thanks to the honourable Jack Brereton for both selecting me to take the Bill through the House and his leadership in the other place. I also thank my noble friend the Minister and her ministerial colleague Jacob Young in the other place for all their hard work on the Bill, as well as all the DLUHC officers for their work on it. I look forward to taking the Bill through the remaining stages. I beg to move.

Local Enterprise Partnerships: Funding

Lord Razzall Excerpts

Monday 11th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

Yes. I also disagree with the noble Lord’s assessment of RDAs. I would be interested to know, if they were such a successful way of delivering local growth, whether they would be re-established under future Labour plans. The Government are focused on empowering local leaders over geographies that make sense in local areas to deliver local economic growth. We are working to integrate the roles of local enterprise partnerships into local areas so that we have the best of both worlds, with local democratic accountability and strong business voices to drive economic growth.

[Lord Razzall (LD)]

My Lords, I well understand the arguments that the Minister made regarding the shifting of LEP funding. To return to the Question, which the questioner rather strayed away from and which is whether the Government are satisfied about the impact on local economic development, is the Minister satisfied that the existing schemes, which are often successful, will not be damaged? I am thinking particularly of the very successful work done by a number of combined LEPs on digital poverty and exclusion.

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I assure the noble Lord that the Government are confident that, in integrating the work done by LEPs into local authority or combined authority areas, we will not lose the benefits of the great work done by LEPs since their establishment. The aim is to integrate that with local democratic accountability. It is part of our broader agenda on devolution and we will continue to see some of that great work delivered over similar areas to now.

Elections: Multiple Voting

Lord Razzall Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Featherstone]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what estimate they have made of the number of electors who vote more than once in an election because they are registered at two separate addresses.

[Lord Razzall (LD)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing on the Order Paper in the name of my noble friend Lady Featherstone.

[The Minister of State, Home Office and Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Lord Greenhalgh) (Con)]

The Government do not hold data on whether individual electors registered at more than one address have voted more than once in an election.

[Lord Razzall (LD)]

My Lords, I assumed that would be the Answer. Does the Minister not agree that it is quite confusing for electors registered in more than one place? They can vote in local elections for both their residences and even in a by-election if it takes place where they are registered. Does he accept that it might be sensible for an indication to be given when you register to vote, either on the form or at the time of registration, that if you are registered in more than one place then you cannot vote twice in a general election?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My understanding is that it is made clear that you cannot vote twice in a general election. Indeed, it carries a criminal offence. You now have to prove your residence as part of the electoral registration process, but I will take that point on board.

Inclusive Society

Lord Razzall Excerpts

Wednesday 14th April 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Razzall (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, rightly wants to build an inclusive society in the post-pandemic world. The Raoul Wallenberg Institute defines the inclusive society as

“empowering and promoting the social, economic, and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion, economic, or other status.”

Noble Lords will know that this reads very like the preamble to the Liberal Democrat constitution, and it touches on the principle of community politics so dear to many of us. Noble Lords have concentrated on different aspects of inclusion—or our current lack of it—from housing to poverty to children’s problems, to name a few. I have three suggestions which will change our lives, increasing inclusiveness, if the Government have the courage to implement them.

First, as the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, said, and the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, implied, we should take power away from Whitehall and transfer it to our communities. When I was first elected to Richmond Council in 1974, 75% of revenue was raised locally and only 25% came from central government. This is now reversed, with inevitable Treasury control over spending and much central funding to local government being ring-fenced. Do we really believe that this trend has meant better government and more inclusivity?

Secondly, if we want to provide proper inclusiveness for the elderly, who, after all, ought to benefit from what we want to achieve, surely we must now have a solution to social care. The Dilnot report was over 10 years ago. The coalition Government legislated before 2015, but those proposals were scrapped when the Tories had an overall majority. Boris Johnson said he had a plan for social care in 2019. Where is it?

Thirdly, nobody has touched on the problems faced by small and medium-sized enterprises in our economy, which are so much the lifeblood of our communities. Destroy SMEs and you destroy the inclusiveness of many of our communities, and Brexit is doing that. The Government say that there will be short-term teething problems in the trade that so many SMEs are trying to do with the European Union. Tell that to the SME selling second-hand combine harvesters, which has to pay inspectors to produce complex certificates for the machines, causing significant costs and delay. Tell that to the SME bike manufacturer struggling to cope with different VAT regimes across 27 countries. Tell that to the Scotch whisky producers; labelling requirements often require small companies to set up a distribution company in Europe, significantly reducing profit. Tell that to the Nottingham company making synthetic hairpieces for cancer patients whose essential just-in-time supply chain in Germany has now collapsed.

These examples are not indicative of teething problems; they are examples of real damage that Brexit has done to many small and medium-sized enterprises without any apparent economic advantage, and of the serious damage done to the inclusiveness of our society in so many of our communities.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Watkins of Tavistock) (CB)]

The noble Lord, Lord Desai, has withdrawn, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Pendry.