Business and Planning Bill

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard) & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 20th July 2020 Lords Chamber

It is extremely important that the need for a set of standards is established before the guidance and mandatory conditions on age verification are amended. Digital age verification must be universally available as a platform, and not to the commercial benefit of one provider or another.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

I call the noble Lord, Lord Naseby. Oh, as he is not there, I will move on to the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey.

[Lord Harris of Haringey [V]]

My Lords, this is a slightly strange group of amendments. We have talked about microbreweries and so on, but most of the debate has focused on Amendment 52 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe. I support what has been said on it. Of course there is no industry standard yet for digital ID; the whole process has been very slow. However, as a number of noble Lords have commented, security technology has been moving very rapidly and there is no doubt that this could be delivered without any great difficulty.

The reality at the moment is that, when young people go out to pubs or bars for an evening of entertainment, they have to take a physical card with them; often, it is a passport or a driving licence. In the nature of things, those physical documents get lost, which brings extra costs and security issues that we should all be wary of. However, people’s ability to safeguard their mobile phone is always very high.

The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, gave us probably more detail than any of us ever wanted to know about this particular topic and the standards being adopted and agreed. However, I think that the approach taken by my noble friend Lord Stevenson of Balmacara is the way forward, and I hope that the Minister can agree something this evening.

I listened with great interest to the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering. She was clearly concerned that if this amendment were to pass tonight, it would somehow favour one or other of the current developers of the technology for digital age verification. However, if you listen to her speech, you will find that she seemed to be defending the right of PASS—a scheme which she chairs, and which has done noble service to age verification over the years—to continue as is for several more months.

I hope that when the Minister looks at this, she can find a way forward along the lines of Amendment 52, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe.

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I feel I have gone on slightly too long, but I hope that noble Lords feel that they have had a fulsome explanation of these amendments, and will feel happy to withdraw or not move them.

[The Deputy Speaker]

My Lords, I have received one request to speak after the Minister. I call on the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, to ask a short question for elucidation.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe [V]]

My Lords, I was a little disappointed by my noble friend the Minister’s response, especially given our shared aspiration to get digital ID to come in. Will she agree to either a meeting or a letter to talk in a little more detail about the timing of digital ID—recognising that there are some difficulties but that she has made some good progress with her call for evidence? We could also discuss whether there is anything to be done on the enforcement of age verification for alcohol during the Covid-19 period, perhaps using an easement of the kind that I mentioned to her has been used by some other departments.

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Amendment 54 not moved.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

We now come to the group consisting of Amendment 55. I remind noble Lords that Members other than the mover and the Minister may speak only once, and that short questions of elucidation are discouraged. Anyone wishing to press this amendment to a Division should make that clear in the debate.

Amendment 55

Moved by

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[Lord Redesdale (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I have added my name to this amendment and I will speak in support of it. I shall be brief, considering the time of night. I am pretty certain that my noble friend will not press this amendment, but I hope that the Minister can give some assurance that, although changes to the legislation will not come about through this amendment, he will agree to meet with representatives of the travel industry to look at how the law can be reformed. The regulations that underpin this area are part of European Union law and, as we leave the EU and start to look at British iterations, this is the perfect time to address the issue. I hope that the Minister can give an assurance that his officials will meet with members of the travel industry to discuss these matters.

[The Deputy Speaker]

I call the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. I think we have a problem with the noble Baroness’s sound, so I suggest we move on to the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox of Newport.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport [V]]

My Lords, this amendment has the noble aim of boosting local tourism and raises questions about the package travel regulations. We are still awaiting the Government review of the package travel rules and I am reluctant to accept the Minister’s previous suggestion that we cannot consider this issue until we have left the EU. The Government should do whatever is possible to support the domestic tourism industry through this tough time, so I would welcome it if the Minister were able to expand on what support they will offer.

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Amendment 55 withdrawn.

[The Deputy Speaker]

We now come to the group beginning with Amendment 56. I remind noble Lords that Members, other than the mover and the Minister, may speak only once and that short questions of elucidation are discouraged. Anyone wishing to press this, or anything else in this group, to a Division should make that clear in debate.

Clause 16: Modification of conditions relating to construction working hours

Amendment 56

Moved by

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[Lord Campbell of Pittenweem (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I propose to speak only to Amendment 56, tabled by my noble friend Lady Pinnock and to which I have added my name. It is approximately seven hours since this stage of proceedings began. Throughout, I have been reminded endlessly of two lines of a poem by Robert Frost:

“But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep.”

However, noble Lords should not be apprehensive, because I hope only to make some comments in addition to those of my noble friend, to underline what I believe is the very strong case for this amendment.

At Second Reading and again in Committee, I raised the question of the impact on amenity of extending construction hours. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, will forgive me if I say that I have been a little disappointed in the responses, both from him and his noble friend the Minister who has dealt with other parts of the Bill. It is worth reminding ourselves that an extension could go on until 1 April 2021, could be seven days a week and could extend to a whole day. It does not take much to realise that there is considerable potential for impact on the amenity of households, churches, hotels, hospitals and care homes.

It is helpful to ask why planning authorities imposed conditions for working hours. As my noble friend has already indicated, the purpose is to provide a balance, and part of that balance is the protection of amenity. In every instance, an authority will have been required to reach a judgment about how that balance should be constructed. It seems to me that it follows logically that any increase in hours will tilt that balance against amenity and in favour of the applicant.

The difficulty with what we are considering is that we do not know to what extent that may occur on any one of the occasions in which an extension is sought. That is why I believe it is a matter of necessity to require applicants to produce an impact study to the planning authority, together with plans for mitigation. I believe it can reasonably be argued that that is in the interests of both the planning authority and the applicant. First of all, the planning authority is working against a very tight timetable, and, so far as the applicant is concerned, it is obviously in their interest that as much information as possible can be provided to the planning authority. I believe therefore that an impact study is a necessity.

Indeed, I go further than that: the decision of the planning authority is an administrative one, and any administrative decision of this kind could be subject to judicial review. It would be much easier to resist any such application for judicial review if it could be demonstrated that the applicant had produced the impact assessment to which I have referred and that the planning authority had taken it into its considerations.

[The Deputy Speaker]

The noble Baronesses, Lady Kennedy of Cradley and Lady Neville-Rolfe, have withdrawn from the list. I call the next speaker, the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer.

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[Lord Balfe [V]]

This legislation, which we are almost at the end of, is caused by the Covid crisis. It is, in many ways, a panic Bill, since we are trying to write things we may or may not succeed in.

I make two points. First, please let us not throw away environmental gains which mean a lot to communities, and particularly to residents. Many of them have fought for years to get decent standards for starting and ending developments and ending working days. Secondly, please keep it temporary: make sure that the provisions that we are told will lapse will do so in due course. I support what my noble friend Lord Lansley is doing, but I hope the criticisms aimed at local authorities for their slowness, often wrongly, are also taken on board by developers, who are sitting on massive land banks and need to get on with things. They did not need this legislation; they had been able to build hundreds of thousands of houses, but have not managed it, so let us keep a sense of perspective, and not throw the proverbial baby out with the legislative bathwater.

[The Deputy Speaker]

The noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, has withdrawn from the list, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Shipley.

Coronavirus Bill

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 25th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords, I too am very keen to support these amendments, particularly Amendment 1. Any form of monitoring has to be valued. It is important that we keep on top of those who might be suffering, particularly the most vulnerable. A new word in our dictionary is “intersectionality”. The situation is most problematic where people have multiple disadvantages and I want to mention a number of them.

I am particularly concerned about the healthcare that might be available in our prisons. I am concerned for staff and prisoners. Only this morning it was announced that a number of people in our prison system have the virus and are becoming ill. In many prisons they are being kept in isolation because of overcrowding. That means that there will be mental health issues, which many of our prisoners already have. Therefore, I strongly advise making mobile phones available to everyone in their cells, so that they can make contact with their relatives and have the opportunity to speak and get support.

I am also very keen that we think about releasing large numbers of prisoners. Those awaiting trial should be allowed to have bail and, if necessary, have ankle bracelets fitted. We should certainly let out the pregnant women in prison referred to this morning. We should also think about elderly prisoners—those over the age of 65—as well as those with underlying health issues.

This is a population invisible to us. Therefore, I ask that, in monitoring, we take account of that too. We have to find ways of making sure that our prisons do not erupt into a source of serious disease and serious unrest, as that makes for a double punishment.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, first, I strongly support the very sensible amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton. As I think we all know, and as the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, said so eloquently yesterday, myriad people are very worried about what is going on and are concerned that things will happen to them but their voice will not be heard. The Government have enough to worry about, so, from their point of view, it seems very sensible to have a review process in which an organisation such as the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations acts as a sort of funnel, pulling together all the myriad concerns that many of us seek to represent today through a single forum which can communicate regularly with the Government —it would be a two-way process. It seems eminently sensible to make sure that the people who are most worried feel that they are being heard and that there is a dialogue.

Secondly, I support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Scriven. The variety of powers that local authorities will be required to have—particularly in relation to children in care, children going through adoption or fostering, and child carers—is incredibly important. If they are worried, think what that is doing to the people they are caring for. Therefore, I feel that clarification in that respect would be enormously helpful.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Bethell) (Con)]

My Lords, I start by welcoming this amendment, which in its spirit and intention is utterly sensible, thoughtful and right. I would like to speak on it in a way that reassures the House that the intention of the amendment and the many speeches in the Chamber today are exactly aligned with the way government is thinking and in which we have sought to build the Bill.

I also echo the many noble Lords who have mentioned the speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. Who could not have been moved by both the emotional way in which she explained herself and the very real and tangible anxiety of people—particularly in the disabled community, but anyone who depends on local authority services—who must feel incredibly vulnerable and worried that their affairs may not be given the priority they deserve, and may feel exposed and anxious about the future? That testimony was incredibly powerful and moving. It was taken to heart.

I also say a big thank you to all those who have engaged with us as we have drafted the Bill at pace, both at a senior level from major organisations such as the LGA and smaller ones and stakeholders. I assure the House that we absolutely are listening to groups that have concerns about provisions for their stakeholders. We have our ears open. The Government’s whole “protect life” strategy is shaped around an absolute priority of trying to save the lives, affairs and futures of the most vulnerable in our society. These provisions are here not because we want to leave anyone behind but because we want to enable local authorities to make the decisions they need to in order to make a fair, pragmatic and sensible distribution and prioritisation. It is our hope that these provisions will never come into play and that the commitment of resources we have made into the local authority area will see a generous and sensible provision for all those most vulnerable in society.

I will take just a moment to outline a few provisions that are in place, to reassure the House that we are not in any way removing all safeguards. For instance, I assure noble Lords that the Care Quality Commission will continue to provide independent expert regulation of health and care providers. It has already announced arrangements for a proportionate approach to ensuring standards of care over the coming period. We have published an ethical framework to provide support to ongoing response planning and decision-making. This sets out a clear set of principles and behaviours when challenging decisions on how to redirect resources where they are most needed and how to prioritise individual care.

We are working closely with the sector on additional guidance to ensure that procedures and prioritisation of needs operate in the best way possible during this period. The emergency Coronavirus Bill also contains provisions allowing the Secretary of State to direct local authorities to comply with the guidance we issue.

Legislation underpinning our crucial safeguarding arrangements to protect vulnerable people from neglect or abuse remains in place. That was a point that many noble Lords made very well yesterday. We are leaving all statutory duties relating to deprivation of liberty safeguards fully in place.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Hussein-Ece, Lady Thornton and Lady Uddin, all raised the question of carers. I assure the House that we totally agree with the intent of the amendment. We need to ensure that users and carers retain a clear voice in the coming period and are able to make their concerns known. Our guidance on the Care Act changes will cover this. A national steering group is leading the sector’s preparations for Covid-19; it includes both user and carer representatives.

The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, quite rightly raised the question of commitment to democracy and oversight. I assure the House that we absolutely embrace the ongoing functioning of Parliament. While I cannot speak for the House authorities and their arrangements for Parliament, I can speak for the health department. We are introducing technology there, such as video data and home-working, at pace. We are seeing a generational transformation in working practices in the last fortnight. These arrangements have been embraced, and I expect them to be embraced in other parts of the workings of the House.

We will also continue to report on the eight-weekly cycle. The noble Baroness, Lady Watkins, and others emphasised the importance of monitoring. We will put in place structures for providing the correct kind of monitoring.

The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, rightly emphasised the importance of civil society, which is absolutely key, while the noble Lord, Lord Hain, emphasised the importance of volunteers. I reassure the House that the Bill contains extensive arrangements for a volunteer army to be recruited in a safe, orderly and accountable way and for funding to be put in place for volunteers. The Chancellor has announced generous and important provisions for charities; the noble Lord, Lord Hain, is entirely right that they have seen their donations dry up. They need support and provision if they are to play an important role against this contagion.

I completely understand the intent of the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Scriven. We have spoken offline about his concerns, which I have taken back. I reassure him that we have worked closely with the LGA and, in its dialogue with us, its emphasis has been on financial commitment rather than changes in the law. We have made a substantial £1.6 billion commitment but we will keep the question of legal changes under review.

The noble Baroness, Lady McDonagh, mentioned PPE, which although it lies to one side of this amendment is of concern to us all. I reassure the Chamber that a massive global procurement programme is in place. Distribution of existing PPE stocks is happening via the Army. A hotline has been issued to all front-line workers in the NHS and social care. We are moving fast and impactfully on that situation.

Lastly, we should not overlook Wales. The Welsh parliament has considered every question of this Bill and has signed off its legislative consent Motion. I am extremely grateful to Vaughan Gething, the Minister for Health and Social Services in the Welsh parliament, for his support.

For those reasons, I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

Media and Lobby Briefings

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I come back to the point I made earlier. Briefings for selected journalists are regular occurrences across government, not just in No. 10, and they have been for many years. Who drew up the list for this briefing, I cannot say.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, may I gently point out to the noble Earl that I do not think this was just a normal selective briefing? My understanding is that one of the reasons that so many journalists were keen to go to this briefing is that, rather than being one of the Prime Minister’s unseen spokesmen, the person who was going to give the briefing was Mr David Frost, the chief negotiator with the European Union, hence the degree of interest.

[Earl Howe]

The noble Lord may be quite right. There probably was a lot of interest, but I say again that this briefing was to selected journalists. Other journalists had every opportunity yesterday at Greenwich and after the Prime Minister’s speech to ask any question they liked through the lobby process.

Brexit: Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, last Saturday, I had the privilege of being the guest speaker at the Italian Medical Society of Great Britain, a group of eminent medics and life sciences researchers who live and work here in the UK. The subject I was asked to speak on was the possible effect of Brexit on Anglo-Italian relationships in education, healthcare, research and science.

To start, I thought I should probably apologise to them, saying that they came here to the UK to live and work expecting to be in a country that would be relatively stable politically, calm economically and a relatively orderly plural society, which is clearly not what we have at the moment. I wondered how could I explain to them in terms that at least I could understand what is going on, so I turned to that great expert on Erskine May and our constitutional history, Monty Python. I spoke about the famous argument between the Judean People’s Front and the People’s Front of Judea, substituting for them leavers and remainers. So, apart from sanitation, medicine, education, human rights, wine, roads, pizza and espresso—it was an Italian audience—what has the EU ever done for us?

The past few days in Parliament have been beyond parody. I was in the other place when the Attorney-General was performing rather like Brian Blessed on steroids. When it comes to some of yesterday’s and today’s speeches in your Lordships’ House, if I closed my eyes I could imagine I was at the annual convention of the Flat Earth Society. The defeats on Tuesday in the other place perhaps demonstrate that Parliament is actually about to take back control.

Why is that so important? I, and many others much better informed than me, have repeatedly pointed out what is blindingly obvious to me at least, which is that the referendum result was not produced on party-political grounds. It maps the ideological and economic seismic fault-lines which run through our society and, particularly, our two largest political parties. The choice of Mrs May and her party to try to respond to a non-political expression of will by the voters by imposing a nakedly party-political approach to implementation has been disastrous. It is aggravated by the uncomfortable truth that both our largest parties are themselves deeply split and are in danger of becoming more so. A recent poll by Sir John Curtice demonstrated that 77% of those who voted, whether leave or remain, say that their views on Brexit outweigh their loyalty and affinity to party.

I have grudging admiration for our Prime Minister and I feel that she has more testosterone than the entire ERG put together. I even recall that Paul Simon dedicated a song to her which encapsulates her dilemma:

“The problem is all inside your head


She said to me

The answer is easy if you

Take it logically

I’d like to help you in your struggle

To be free

There must be”—

Article—

“fifty ways


To leave your lover”.

Of all the 50 ways the Prime Minister could have chosen, she has been triumphantly successful in delivering a deal which apparently pleases nobody.

The referendum result reflected not the will of the people, but the wills—plural—of the people. Those different wills run the gamut or, in a new buzz-phrase from the Front Bench, “across a spectrum” from 19th-century imperialist dreamers to 21st-century technocratic globalists. Today, after Tuesday’s events in another place, Parliament has the opportunity to perform its solemn responsibility and duty, which is to separate those myriad wills and forge a cross-party consensus on an acceptable outcome, a will of the people that their elected representatives are prepared to sign up to, espouse and enact. That would be by far my preferred option, and I agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, that next Tuesday’s Divisions should, ideally, as did the referendum, proceed on a free-vote basis.

I am convinced that this will require new leadership in both our political parties. We need leaders who, unlike the current incumbents, are trusted by the majority of their MPs and have the credibility and moral stature to be listened to and believed by their political opponents. We will not achieve sufficient weight of consensus across the House and, more importantly, across the country without that. If Parliament fails in this task it must, as a last resort and as the evidence of its failure, ask the people to do what its representatives have signally failed to do.

What are the options? A general election could be even more divisive than a referendum, because it will become consumed with confusing and sometimes contradictory party-political posturing. It will also lay bare the deep fault-lines within our two largest parties. I suspect that it would probably result in another hung Parliament.

Is the referendum the last-chance saloon? The last referendum was a disaster. The Government chose not to seek the counsel of or take advice from those with recent, live experience of the dos and don’ts of having a referendum. I know that because I know some of the people who gave that advice and were rebuffed by No. 10 Downing Street. If we are going to do it, we need to do it with proper detailed background research and an articulation of the key issues and pluses and minuses of the potential outcomes.

We are actually in quite a good place today, because that is exactly what we have been doing for the past two and a half years. We have unwillingly and painfully undertaken that research, and I think we understand the magnitude of the choices before us. If we go back to the people, there must be no false promises and no demonising of those with different views. It must be presented on a cross-party basis, with leaders prepared to sit on the same platform as those from a different political persuasion. It must be meticulously planned and we must be straight and painfully honest with our frustrated and long-suffering electorate.

Brexit has proved toxic to our hearts and our emotions. We must not let it infect our heads.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I first arrived in this House in 1981, at the tender age of 29—even younger than the noble Baroness, Lady Smith. Unlike the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, I am actually elected—as an accepted hereditary. It is rather like being the Member for Old Sarum, but I am elected. During that time, one has seen and heard a lot; this is the largest turnout I have ever witnessed. Given my number on the speakers list, I have been listening politely. We got up to 10, 20, 30 and 40 and I thought: “This is wonderful, nobody has made the points that I wish to make”. Then, suddenly, the noble Lord, Lord Alli, stood up. I have not had the pleasure of meeting him but perhaps we should get together and confer more often, since he clearly reads my mind or, in the early hours of the morning, I have been reading his.

Like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, my reputation as a political soothsayer or voter in referenda suffered a bit of a battering in 2016. I got it wrong about the referendum and the US election, so my credit with people who thought I had some political insight is virtually zero. I last spoke in this House in March last year and that seems like a lifetime ago, but here we are. We have an unanticipated outcome and we appear to have had little or no effective scenario planning of options before the event. Now we have a scramble to get our collective heads around it. This was illuminated for me, rather uncomfortably, by a real conversation I had about two months ago with a friend from the north of England who turned out to be very strongly pro-leave—for this evening’s purposes I will call him Nigel. We talked about the reasons for voting to leave for about 10 minutes. At the end of the conversation, we tried to sum it up. I said to Nigel: “I think we are agreeing with each other that the political grandees who were most in favour of our leaving are probably, intellectually and managerially, the least competent to manage our way out of it”. He said: “Yes”. I said: “So, basically, those of us who did not want to leave are going to have to manage our way through this”. He said: “Yes”. I said: “OK: that is where we are, but it does not feel too great”. We moved on. For many of us, that is where we are.

By and large, people did not vote on political grounds. Very large numbers of electors who normally support the Conservative Party or the Labour Party chose not to follow their political leaders but to go in their own direction. Some 37.5% of the total electorate voted to leave and 34.6% chose to remain. While the new US President might regard this gulf between the two percentages as “awesome”, “historic”, “unprecedented” or even “earth shattering”, some of us might choose to differ and recognise that it was really quite close. One of my great-grandfathers had the good sense to be a Conservative politician: his name was Stanley Baldwin. If ever he heard somebody speaking about politicians being “in power”, he would quietly correct them and say: “You misunderstand the basis of being elected. You are elected into office, as much to represent those who did not vote for you—or at all—as those who did vote for you”.

I listened to the passionate arguments and so-called facts and counterfacts being bandied about, and listened with, frankly, visceral distaste to accusations of a lack of patriotism from people who I describe as strangely sore winners. You normally have sore losers but we appear to have sore winners as well. We need cool and measured heads and minds, but we also need political stethoscopes to enable us to listen to our fellow citizens’ hearts. Sore winners and sore losers do not make good negotiators, particularly when they disagree with one another rather thoughtlessly.

Finally, I echo what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Alli. Some in your Lordships’ House, particularly those who have enjoyed a career in another place and have achieved the dizzy heights of being appointed privy counsellors, seem to have forgotten that the courtesies of this House are different and are greatly valued by most of us. Audibly and theatrically disagreeing with others’ views may be meat and drink to the other place but not here.