Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Stunell Excerpts

3rd reading
Thursday 21st September 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Chichester]

My Lords, I apologise for my misplaced enthusiasm in wanting to add to these thanks. I shall speak briefly on behalf of my right reverend friend the Bishop of Bristol to record her thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, for all the constructive work that is represented in the Bill and to assure the noble Baroness of our continued prayers for her recovery.

In particular, my right reverend friend wanted to note the widespread welcome for clarification on the question of local authorities being permitted to offer financial support to church buildings, including parish churches. I know that the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales and the Methodist Church, which backed an amendment on this topic tabled by my right reverend friend, are also grateful that this grey area in the law has been taken up by the Government. It has been heartening to have the cross-party support of the noble Lords, Lord Cormack and Lord Best, especially, and of the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, for this measure.

Local communities need physical, warm and safe space for many forms of social activities that build community and social cohesion. Worship is just one more example of this, and that in itself prompts the use of church buildings for wider purposes. The clarification of financial support for this from local authorities is helpful to us in England. However, I note that the issue of similar clarification remains of acute concern to churches in Wales, and I hope that the Minister will encourage His Majesty’s Government to bring the matter to the attention of the Welsh Government, with a view to bringing forward an equivalent legislative amendment as soon as possible.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I am happy to take part in this debate simply because it is the last debate on the Bill in this House, at least until after the Conference Recess: we have had 16 days in Committee, eight days on Report and more than 1,000 amendments, skilfully disguised by the suffixes of letters. The noble Earl himself mentioned Amendment 247YYA as an example of how we have these invisible numbers. The Government have of course been a big contributor to the number of amendments, including 55 today. I do not object to those 55; they are a very sensible step forward to improve the Bill even further. Even so, I do not know if it is a record but the Government had, I think, four separate amendments to the Long Title of the Bill, which perhaps emphasises the point that the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, made about the process.

Whatever our criticisms of the Bill, though, it leaves this House much better than it arrived, and I want to thank a wide range of people for helping that to be the case, not least the ministerial team. I add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, for her work in leading the ministerial team, and to the noble Earl and some other Ministers who stepped in at short notice, including the noble Baroness, Lady Swinburne, just last week. In my contact with the officials in the department, they were always polite, considerate and helpful. Catherine Canning last week was a very good and able representative of the Minister’s point of view in our discussions. So, whatever the criticisms of the Bill and the form in which it is now, I just say to the noble Earl that I hope that the ministerial team will work with their colleagues in the subsequent write-rounds and encourage them to the maximum extent possible to accept all of your Lordships’ valuable amendments in the other place, so that they can reduce the amount of ping-pong to the absolute minimum and we can keep the famous table tennis ball on the other side of the net.

I do not want to omit from my thanks the work there has been co-operatively between noble Lords in the Labour Party and ourselves, but also with our Cross-Bench friends and indeed with some of our friends on the Conservative Benches as well. Collectively, we have shown that it is possible to scrutinise thoroughly, to improve legislation and to produce an outcome that we can take some pride in—perhaps muted pride in some parts but, nevertheless, it is a step forward.

Behind the scenes, in our case I have the amazing and redoubtable Sarah Pughe, who has done a fantastic job supporting colleagues here in the Chamber with her drafting skills and her knowledge of parliamentary procedures. So, the Bill goes back to the Commons. I hope that when it comes back to us, it will be as near as possible the same document that we are sending to them.

[The Earl of Lytton (CB)]

My Lords, as it is not customary for anyone on these Benches to speak on their behalf, I just add thanks on my own behalf, which I hope will be shared by colleagues, to the Minister, particularly for his appreciation of the contribution made from these Benches. Of course, I send my best wishes to the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook. Her courtesy throughout has been outstanding and her tenacity to be admired, and I add my best wishes for her restoration to good health as soon as possible. I add my thanks to the Bill team, even if we did not agree on quite a number of points, and to our clerks. I particularly thank the noble Earl’s colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, for the way in which he responded to the question of building preservation notices, to the CLA, of which I am a member, and Historic Houses for their valuable input on that.

On the other matter of interest to me, namely building safety remediation, I am of course sorry that I could not persuade the Government or your Lordships to support a different way forward, but I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to people outside—they know who they are and I will not mention them by name, but they have dedicated their time free and without any benefit to themselves to assist me with their comments and their critique. I also thank the many other experts, and professional and trade bodies, who were willing to share their thoughts with me.

I particularly express thanks to Amanda Walker, a leaseholder, for her courage in coming forward with her story, and the hundreds of other leaseholders who wrote to me with theirs. I thank Jake Fisher for his online petition, which gained 50,000 signatures in 25 days. My focus throughout has been on them and getting fair treatment for affected leaseholders generally, even if my approach has not always been fully understood or appreciated. I do not intend to give up trying.

Finally, I am most grateful for the support across the House for the general principle sitting behind the fact that we all, I think, believe that leaseholders should not pay for construction defects for which they are blameless. There is clearly a lot more work to be done, but I am enormously grateful for the general acceptance across the House of that principle.