Subterranean Development Bill [HL]
Lord Selsdon Excerpts(12 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Selsdon
My Lords, I am in something of a difficulty because I heard before this Second Reading today that it was set up entirely to extend the time of the House. I entered into a strange party-wall agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Steel. I said that we would probably need, if we were dealing with the Bill fairly, an hour and a half maximum, and that I would speak for 10 minutes and ask other people to confine themselves to six. The debate seems to be rather dominated by these Benches. This is because the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, who was going to speak, is off sorting out the railways, because he has some considerable experience in that field.
I want to go back to the beginning. The beginning for me is 1927. It was rather a difficult time, with a recession afoot, and my grandfather had just finished his period as the chief civil commissioner for the general strike. The financial world was in a state and then one day Commercial Union collapsed and brought down Lloyds Bank. This was a very serious issue. It was not a financial collapse. Commercial Union had dug too big a hole in the ground and the buildings had effectively collapsed.
This was the start of what was called the Pyramus & Thisbe Club, the name being based on Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”—two lovers on either side of a party wall, and I today represent the chink. I am the chink in the armour of those party-wall surveyors who expect to earn large amounts of money by way of more and more complex legislation.
The beginning was not 1927; it was probably 1066. The original party wall had to be three feet wide and 16 feet tall, and it was between two properties. It had to be connected to the roof and on top of it there was a gutter. This was to collect the rain which should be shared between two parties. What came out was called “eavesdropping”, which is the origin of the phone hacking problem that we have today.
Party-wall businesses go back into the mists of time. The mists of time, of course, are related to that great statue outside here, of Richard I. His mother, if I remember rightly, was Eleanor of Aquitaine, who owned the house that was later my mother’s family house. This has nothing to with what I am about to come on to, but it makes a point.
Time immemorial, therefore, was before anybody could remember and that, to some extent, was case history. If you had always walked to the church across somebody’s field for as long as anybody could remember, that was time immemorial. Garter and his team acknowledged that the origin of this was 1066.
This is a Bill which I to some extent drafted. The Pyramus & Thisbe Club of experts tried to pull it apart. It is a Bill that should not really be necessary because of past tradition, but when you come to people digging underground and disturbing and disrupting their neighbours, it becomes a social issue. The problem here does not lie necessarily in the construction—the damage you do to subterranean water flows and things of that sort—but it comes to organisation and proper controls. Although I shall deal first with smaller houses, my concern goes beyond that.
As your Lordships know, this great Palace is built on rafts of wood—it was on a place called Thorney Island—and the wood packed itself together with the clay and gravel and made an adequate substructure. As the right reverend Prelates will know, I was at school at Winchester, and Winchester itself and the cathedral are on rafts of wood and clay. That is all right, but once they start to move or the waters erode the subsoil, there can be movement as we have here. I am very worried about Downing Street. Downing Street, as your Lordships know, is built on faggots, which are bits of middle-sized wood packed together with smaller pieces. Throughout London, the footings or foundations are in general no more than three courses of brick or, as I said in the brief that I wrote, the height of a proverbial pint of Guinness. Does this matter? It probably does not if the structure that was built on it is not added to and there is not too much development without adequate foundations.
What is the subterranean situation in London? Your Lordships will know that there are many rivers. I apologise in the brief to my noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding, because the Roding is a river that I missed out, and I am not quite sure where it goes to. Of these rivers, one will think of the Fleet, the Wandle and the Westbourne. The Westbourne moves near me. I should declare an interest in that I have over the past few years written to the council about a development on behalf of many neighbours and others in London—who seem to think that I know something about it—asking whether it will co-operate. The council has said that it is technically a permitted small development underground and that if we oppose it we may be sued and are bound to lose, and we cannot afford it.
The idea is simply to introduce certain rules and regulations. I will explain why they might be necessary in the broader plan. For example, the River Westbourne starts up at Westbourne Terrace. It then comes down and once went into the Serpentine, but the bathers got a bit upset and decided to divert it. It was diverted into a sewer or tunnel that became known as the Ranelagh sewer. It then crossed Knightsbridge—at the knights’ bridge—with a regular flow of water that is probably subterranean but still there today, and continued down. It was a great blessing to those of your Lordships’ House who owned bog land, such as the Cadogans at Westminster, because the Westbourne drained those bogs and then went on down to the Thames. You also have the Wandle at Wandsworth. When, in ancient times, we had steam engines, a mass of water was taken out of the ground, as it was by the breweries. There is a member of the House of the Lords staff who well remembers that when they shut the brewery at Wandsworth she had to wear Wellingtons for three weeks to go to work.
This is all by way of background. The Bill says, “Don’t dig down more than a certain area and a certain space without permission”. I have said that we should look at the normal developments of this sort: terraced houses or terraced mews houses in the London area. To some extent, as the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, will point out, it also happens in Sandbanks near Poole and maybe a little in Liverpool, but it is not a national problem at the moment—it is a London one.
The Bill says, “Look, if you are allowed to put in a garret room above your top floor, why should you not be allowed to put extra space down below, provided always that it is no bigger or wider than the footprint of the house and no deeper than 12 feet or four metres?”. Of course, if you go underground, it is not habitable accommodation unless you have external air. That is difficult because people make these developments and put beds down there. When the council inspectors come, the beds have miraculously disappeared. You have what could be called amenity accommodation but not necessarily residential accommodation. While some of the problems that will be raised are structural, internal problems include that if you have water down below you need to pump it out. If you have sewage or lavatories down below, you need to pump them out. One pump is not necessarily sufficient in case it breaks down so you may need two pumps. You also have air handling problems. Many of these things can to some extent be overlooked. The Bill says that if you follow certain rules and procedures it is perfectly all right to dig down below your own house in the footprint.
Here we come to the arguments. This is not about just accommodation but also money and added value. If you take a three-storey house with 700 square feet of floor and you add 700 square feet down below in the basement, you increase the size of that house, the footprint and the volume, by a third. That increases the value of that property—not by a third but probably two-fifths. That is quite significant. This is where we get the rules. Some genuinely want more accommodation for themselves but other people in the same terraced streets want to know that they have the same rights. The Bill says that there should be a code of conduct. This is fairly simple to impose for any development that is on the same footprint down below, excluding the gardens. The biggest that I could find was a garage that had three Ferraris, two Bentleys, a couple of Rolls-Royces and a Range Rover. It was of course to be slightly smaller than the proposed gymnasium, museum and swimming pool. Those sorts of development need careful control because they could create an interruption to subterranean areas.
Over the last few years, health and safety have identified problems—and they had a cause. They found that roughly 40 per cent of developments underground did not conform to health and safety standards. There were two deaths and plenty of other injuries and problems that were hushed up. There is no problem if these things are done properly and the Bill sets out a code of conduct that the Pyramus & Thisbe gang worked out. I suggest that the Bill becomes an example of what it is possible to do reasonably. [Interruption.] Having been in the Navy as a signalman, I know that that is the signal for an emergency situation and I have only half a minute left. I suggest that noble Lords look at the Bill, enjoy it and think, “How could it possibly be helpful that we ignore the problems of these vast subterranean developments that need proper control?”. I beg to move.
Lord Selsdon
My Lords, no one could have received better support than I have received for the Bill. However, the credit belongs to all the people outside the House who have been concerned—so concerned that I set up a second e-mail address because I was receiving so many complaints and proposals. The Minister's response was just what I hoped for, as was the response from the noble Lord opposite. I am grateful to all my noble friends who spoke. I regret that we have gone seven minutes over the time specified in my party-wall agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Steel, but I think it may have been helpful.
Finally, I will declare a couple of interests. I wrote everything that I wanted to say. I typed every word in the Bill and used up government cartridges. That is probably acceptable, but two cartridges is practically the cost of a new printer. Talking to my noble friend here, who is a great surveyor, I learnt that he had been in the Department of the Environment. My mother was the first lady to be Lord Mayor of Westminster. She had a House in Tufton Street. This problem started with a hairline crack on the top floor, which got bigger and bigger until you could put your hand into it. Some people called it heave and hump. I was told that it was probably the responsibility of the Department of the Environment for building an enormous building nearby. I wonder whether, if I wrote the Minister a letter, we might be able to make a retrospective claim for damages.
I have referred to the first part of the Bill. In the brief, I referred to the impact that the Thames tunnel may have. I declare an interest here. Noble Lords may not know that I started my life in water and sewerage. I also got very worried about cholera when I worked in a research company in Broadwick Street, which was the source of the original cholera outbreak. I went to Egypt and got gyppy tummy. I wrote to the Egyptians and to the Prime Minister. She kindly gave me £50 million and other people gave me £2 billion. We set up British Waste Water to do the greater Cairo waste water project. It was the biggest subterranean development ever in the world. I did not want to put that before your Lordships earlier because the surveyors would have pulled me apart.
The details of the Bill are on the website of Pyramus & Thisbe, who are a really great gang. I have said everything I can. I hope that we can now have a period of consultation. In Committee noble Lords will be able to let off steam and take the heat out of the argument. We will produce yellow jackets and hats for any noble Lords who may wish to go and conduct inspections. I will probably have an argument with the Clerks about whether we can have our symbol on the hat. The idea is to get rid of sheet piling and make people take everything out by hand. If the heat can be taken out of the argument, we will get a long way.
House of Lords Reform Bill [HL]
Lord Selsdon Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Lady Saltoun of Abernethy
I said that I agree that the topping-up system is a farce, but it could easily become not a farce if the electorate were all the Peers in the party, not just the hereditary Peers in the party.
Lord Selsdon
My Lords, I have been in your Lordships' House for a period of time, and I refer you to Standing Order No. 8. The problem with your Lordships is that you have very little knowledge of Standing Orders or precedents within the House. I am an elected hereditary Peer under an Act of Parliament, as are others. It has been quite convenient for people over a long period of time to drop the word “elected”, but it was an election. That was an agreement binding in honour on Privy Council terms, and should anyone in your Lordships' House wish to know the background, please just send me an e-mail or letter and I will give you a copy of all the submissions I have made over the past 10 or 20 years. We also take precedence according to the ancienty of our degree. Therefore, I can give way to the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, because he is slightly more ancient than me in the date of his Letters Patent.
There was an attempt for a long period of time to ignore the fact that there was an election. I do not support the replacement of current people by the proposed system. What I suggested was that all those hereditary Peers who would like to enter the House should have their names submitted to the Appointments Commission for consideration not as a hereditary Peer but as someone who might make a good contribution in future.
I did not really approve of the election process, but I have to admit I was wrong because the quality of the people who have come into this House as a result of those elections is very high. They have a great knowledge, and they make a great contribution. They become what your Lordships will understand to be working Peers although, as I have pointed out in this House on previous occasions, there is no such thing as a working Peer. A Peer sits here not with a job, other than the 10 who are paid, but with a duty and a responsibility. Certain hereditary elements put upon you a greater feeling of duty. Of course I am here because my grandfather was Postmaster-General. It does not matter; that was the way, indirectly, when my father died, but all my family have been in public life. Those of us who have been in public life have a feeling of duty which overwhelms everything else. I do not approve of the Steel Bill. I believe that we should still wait for the government proposals, and I will support all those proposals.
If anyone goes on saying that I am not elected, I am far more legitimate than those people appointed by patronage. At the moment, we have an overwhelming number of people who do not know each other, do not know the rules and do not know what to do. We should be asking what the House of Lords as it is today should be doing in the community and what initiatives it should be taking, instead of squabbling among ourselves about the future. We have a major economic crisis, we have a whole range of problems and within this House we have an amazing collection of people who do not know each other’s abilities. As noble Lords may know, I have a background on every Peer. You could not assemble these 830 or 840 people, but we fail again to understand communication. Half of them do not have PCs, and we are in a world of electronic communication. I believe this debate should go on. I would regard the Steel Bill as a White Paper or a Steel paper. When I first met the noble Lord, Lord Steel, on the Council of Europe many years ago, he tried to persuade me to become a Liberal, partly because of my grandfather. I think the noble Lord has done a good job. He is quite a crafty worker, and this is a bit of good craftsmanship, but it is too crafty by half.
Lord Trefgarne
I hope I may be allowed to explain shortly but clearly why I disagree that this clause should remain in the Bill. Back in 1999, the House consisted of some 700 hereditary Peers and 560 or thereabouts life Peers plus the Bishops and the Law Lords, so the vast majority were hereditary Peers. When the Government Bill came forward, it was to remove all those hereditary Peers, each and every one, all the 700. Never in history, surely, was there a Government seeking to remove more than half of one of the Chambers of Parliament by legislation, but the hereditary Peers recognised that there was a case to be made and in the end an arrangement was reached between, as we have heard, my noble friend, now the Marquess of Salisbury, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg. The hereditary Peers did not have to be persuaded by that argument, but they were. The result was that that Bill passed.
Had that agreement not been reached, the Bill would almost certainly not have passed. Indeed, there were a good many life Peers who were not in favour of it. I believe it would not have passed although it could, no doubt, have been forced through with the Parliament Act. However, there is room for more than one respectable view about whether that was possible. The deal that was then done, the arrangements that were agreed between my noble friend and the noble and learned Lord were to the effect that 90 hereditary Peers would remain, re-elected as necessary as they passed on, and two hereditary Peers—the two great officers of state—would come ex officio, so to speak. That was the arrangement, and the arrangement was to remain in place until House of Lords reform was complete. By no stretch of the imagination does this Bill represent complete House of Lords reform. Therefore, in accordance with the undertaking then reached, this clause ought not to be included, and I hope my noble friend Lord Steel will not insist upon it.
Lord Lea of Crondall
Okay, he cannot answer. I did not know that. The Minister has some responsibility for implementing the coalition agreement which has led to the dramatic escalation in the size of the House. By virtue of the ludicrous formula in that agreement, the House has to reflect the voting in the previous election. If we were to take the last election as an example, there would be 1,100 in this House if we did not get rid of anybody. The getting rid of somebody is not to do with age but with this ridiculous formula. In order to reduce the size of the House you may as well say, “Let us get rid of people by lot”, or, “Let us get rid of everyone whose surname begins with L, M, N, O or P”. There is as much sense in this proposal as that.
Lord Selsdon
My Lords, in reference to age, I was put on various committees at a very young age. I was told, “My dear chap, you are far too young for this but we want someone to be alive at the time when something happens”.
Desmond Morris, a friend I admired, wrote The Naked Ape and also wrote on longevity, which is related indirectly to dementia. As you get older, you forget where you have put your car keys or whether you have ordered two glasses of wine in the bar, but your long-term memory gets better and better. Part of his thought process was that what keeps people alive for a long age is using their brains and being active. This we have looked at in dealing with the older population. If there was an attempt to introduce an age of 75 it would mean many Peers leaving this House—I shall not give your Lordships today the scary number, from my figures, of how many would go but it is quite considerable—and we would probably be leading them to an earlier death than would otherwise be the case.
Lord Selsdon
I am not in favour of this at all, due to certain bad experiences in my life. The noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, will recall that we were both joint treasurers of the Conservative Group for Europe when the European referendum took place. I ended up having to raise very substantial amounts of money because, although the referendum went through, it was very difficult to explain to people what this European lark was all about. In general, people were slightly anti-European. The Labour Party was totally anti-European; when the referendum said that we should go into the EU, it refused to send a delegation to the European Parliament.
My concern about these matters is that it is very difficult to explain things. I speak in my capacity as a member of the Information Committee. We have a major problem, even though we have the outreach programme, in explaining to the outside world what we actually do. It is easier to explain it to young children than it is to those of teenage or later years. I shall use my grandson as an example. He sums it up very brilliantly, by saying that we work at Big Ben and we make rules. That is easier for people to understand—but what does the House of Lords do? In the outreach programme, when you talk to different people, it is very difficult because they all think that we are a bunch of old fogies who do nothing but sit on our backsides and drink tea. This explanation of what we do is very important if a referendum comes up. At the moment, if you were to have another referendum on the EU, you might have some very interesting results. So I am totally opposed to introducing to this Bill the referendum concept at this stage.
Lord Cormack
My Lords, I am certainly very much opposed to having a referendum on this Bill. This is a series of modest proposals, which is—as my noble friend Lord Steel said, and as the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, accepted—a housekeeping Bill. It is a modest Bill, which would certainly perplex any electorate if put to it for a referendum.
The point made by the noble Viscount, Lord Astor, is entirely different. I have never been a fan of the referendum; indeed, I did not want a referendum in 1975, and made that view quite plain in another place at the time. But we had it, and you cannot uninvent things. We have reached the situation in this country where we have had referenda on a number of major constitutional issues. We had them over devolution; we had one, which I thought was wholly unnecessary, earlier this year about alternative voting. But if you argue that alternative voting is of sufficient importance constitutionally to merit a referendum, you cannot argue that the abolition of a House of Parliament and its replacement by something totally different—because that is what it would be about—is not a fit subject for a referendum. So if by chance there is a proposal that we should have this House replaced by an elected one, there is an unanswerable case for a referendum, particularly if, as my noble friend indicated, the three major parties subscribe to that general ideal in their manifestos. We know that, whatever was said in the manifestos last time, there are a significant number of Liberal Democrats who are unhappy about the concept of an elected House. There is a very much larger number of Labour voters and Members who are unhappy about an elected House, and there is an overwhelming number of Conservative Peers and a very large number—we do not know how many—of Conservative Members of Parliament who are against it. If the hierarchies and leaders of the three parties put this forward in manifestos, that would be all the more reason for a referendum. That would be on the significant and central issue of whether this House was to be replaced by something different.
Here, I slightly disagree with my noble friend Lord Selsdon. I believe that the people of this country are sufficiently mature and adult to understand whether they are being asked to have an assembly of 300 paid, elected party politicians to replace what they have in this House at the moment. If they decide to go down that route, having had the issues thoroughly debated and explained, I would be very sad but so be it. That would certainly be the right subject for a referendum. The noble Baroness’s party is right to have that at the heart of its manifesto commitments on this particular issue. I urge my noble friend Lord Selsdon not to press his amendment as far as the Bill is concerned.
Lord Selsdon
My Lords, my noble friend talked as though we were going to be paid in future. This is quite sensitive. If that was put to the electorate, they would certainly not approve.
Lord Cormack
I entirely agree with my noble friend’s reaction to that proposition but that is what is in the White Paper—the draft Bill. Something very different may come out of the Joint Committee—we know not —but that is what is before us. Incidentally, I am sorry that I said “Lord Selsdon” when I should have said “Lord Caithness”. It is his amendment.
Lord Northbrook
My Lords, I supported my noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway’s referendum amendment to the House of Lords Bill in 1999. I thought that that was a major constitutional change and deserved to be put to the House. Sadly, that was not carried. I agree with my noble friend Lord Astor that this is not an appropriate measure for this particular Bill. I am glad to hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, that her party plans to have a referendum on this, which I would support.