Elections Bill

Debate between Lord Stunell and Lord Kerslake

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Thursday 17th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kerslake (CB)]

My Lords, I will keep my remarks on this group to a minimum, because I have a similar amendment coming up on which I will say more. But I did not want to let this debate pass without saying how problematic this clause is. It is a serious issue that must be addressed. I think the noble Lord, Lord Collins, has set it out very comprehensively and clearly.

Put simply, the clause is unnecessary. Nobody has defined a problem that needs solving by this clause. Secondly, it is unquestionably partisan in its impact; it is absolutely clear that it will affect one party more than the others. That should be a guiding test for this House; we do not do that. We do not introduce legislation that is purportedly even-handed but is anything but. That should not be what we are about in this House. We need to recognise that. I worry a bit that the debate becomes one between the political parties when I think that this side of the House should be as concerned about the constitutional impacts of this legislation as anyone else.

The third issue has just been brilliantly set out by the noble Lord, Lord Mann: there will be a whole series of unintended consequences from the proposal in this clause. But, for me, the worst and most unintended consequence is the chilling effect. It is what will not happen because this is in legislation. People will err on the side of caution; they will not want to get caught up in major legal battles, so they will not campaign on issues that they feel strongly they should campaign on. Effectively, that is a silencing of their voice. All of us, whatever side of the House we are on, should be very concerned about that.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords—

Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Lord Stunell and Lord Kerslake

Monday 14th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kerslake]

My Lords, I support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Best. I will also speak to Amendment 81A, which I supported, and 81B, which I put forward and lead on. These amendments go to the fundamental question for local authorities of whether the costs they will incur will be properly recognised within the arrangements. As has been well put by the noble Lord, Lord Best, in some instances the costs may make the whole policy not worth putting in. In fact, we may find—depending on the outcome of all this—that the costs will raise a question about the whole policy. However, at the very least, in different housing markets it most certainly will raise questions. Therefore, it is absolutely right to say that in circumstances where it clearly does not make sense to implement the policy in terms of costs and benefits, there is provision to not proceed with it.

The other two amendments seek to be very clear that administrative costs will be covered. I speak specifically to Amendment 81B. Within the draft Bill, it says the Minister “may provide for deductions” to cover costs. In other words, it is a permissive choice for Ministers whether or not they make these deductions. It seems inconsistent with the intent of Government and therefore the amendment does something very simple, which is to change the “may” to a “must”, to put it beyond doubt that, as this is a government policy which local authorities are being asked to implement, they must properly provide for the costs of implementing that policy.

This is the key. First, in order to access the information about incomes, the net has to be cast wide—effectively ask all tenants to secure information about less than 10% of the tenants. That is the first point. Secondly, if this is operated in a fair way there will be complexity. There is no doubt about that. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, very precisely pointed to one of the issues of fairness: if people’s income changes, in the interest of administrative simplicity you might say, “We won’t change the rent”, but that would be extraordinarily unfair if people have lost jobs or changed roles and their income has changed significantly.

As we know, in the labour market that we work in, people can see their incomes as householders change very rapidly indeed—from one week to the next, as I said earlier. Therefore, you have complexity. You have complexity about the different benefits within the system, about the makeup of families, and about how you assess who the higher earners are within those families. With that complexity comes cost. It is an absolutely logical consequence of seeking to introduce a fair system.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

Does the noble Lord agree that with complexity also comes error? Some of us who, when at the other end of the building, spent a lot of time helping constituents deal with housing benefit queries and difficulties are well aware of the delays and problems in that system and foresee something at least comparable when this system is brought into play.

[Lord Kerslake]

The noble Lord makes a very powerful point. With any new system—or indeed with very mature systems, such as housing benefit—there are huge risks of error and cost in correcting it. I have run a housing benefit system and know just how easy it is to run into difficulties with it. I also know how costly it is to run because of the complexity of individual circumstances. We are here creating a whole new parallel system of assessment that sits alongside those for universal credit, housing benefit and so on. It will be new, and we will not establish a lot of the detail until we have run it. That, by the way, is why I still feel strongly that a pilot to test the operation of the system would be very valuable, not least because it would tell us how much cost is involved and what are the potential error rates.

It is essential, first, that we recognise that this may not be worth doing nationally, and certainly not locally. Secondly, we must give comfort in the Bill to local authorities that their costs will be covered. Thirdly, we must recognise that if this is to be a genuinely fair system, it will come with complexity and significant cost.

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 75A, to which my noble friend Lord Stoneham has added his name, and Amendment 81A, to which I have added my name. Earlier, we debated at great length the cost to local authorities of administering pay to stay. The system appears disproportionately bureaucratic and, as we are uncertain how implementation will work, it will be extremely costly to sort out.

Housing, revenue and benefits officers are already working to full capacity. I have yet to ask the officers on my council just how many more of them they think they will need to administer this system. As we have heard, the absence of any detail means that no one can be sure that the additional rental income will cover the cost of administration. Local authorities should not be out of pocket. There is very little detail on the scheme and no transparency, and it seems that the Government are just transferring costs to local authorities.

On market rents, we have heard that there will be a flat rate of income. When tenants reach that rate, they will be assessed to pay market rents on a sliding scale. However, we have not heard anything about whether the taper will stop at a lower or higher level of rent. Will the market rent be assessed local authority by local authority, or will it be a flat rate? The Secretary of State has yet to tell us. Will tenants paying additional rent on the taper in the north stop paying at a lower level than those in the south-east, where the taper may carry on for some time, because market rents are much higher?

It is not surprising that local authorities are gaining the impression that the Government do not value them or the contribution that they make to their areas. I am very disappointed that we have so little detail at this stage on this very important clause, and I support the amendments.

Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Lord Stunell and Lord Kerslake

Thursday 10th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stunell]

Is this not actually a back-door way of abolishing stock transfers? There will be no more in the future.

[Lord Kerslake]

The noble Lord makes a very strong point. The stock transfer mechanism has been available to local authorities of all political persuasions as a means of improving the quality of the stock for, and therefore the well-being of, their tenants. It has been a very powerful model for improvement. Indeed, there are plenty of examples of transfers. They are not always appropriate but, where they have gone well, they have resulted in significantly improved stock. The question here is: why would a local authority continue to progress such a transfer when it would carry on paying a substantial levy with no means of financing it? Therefore, the noble Lord makes a very good point.

Local authorities are now in quite challenging circumstances in relation to managing their stock. A number of smaller authorities are asking whether they can sustain the management of their stock, given such things as the rent reductions and the impact those have on the viability of their stock. I know this for certain because I have been in conversation with a number of them. For some local authorities, the logical answer is to deliver a stock transfer. So, not only does it prevent the opportunity of transfer because of the positive benefit to a local authority; it also inhibits the transfer where local authorities have very significant issues that they need to address and that can only really readily be dealt with through a transfer process.

I should emphasise that I am not suggesting local authorities should or must transfer their stock—that must be their decision. What I am saying is that it is a perverse position that those authorities that choose to do that in a year’s time will be subject to a levy that those who chose to do it a year ago will not. I cannot believe that it is fair or reasonable for that to stay in the Bill. Therefore, I suggest that it be taken out.

Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Lord Stunell and Lord Kerslake

Tuesday 8th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kerslake]

The noble Lord’s interpretation is correct. Because there is a third-party asset against the expenditure, it shows as debt on the Government’s balance sheet, but it does not show as deficit spending. That was the means by which the Government were able to rapidly expand the Help to Buy initiative; it does not score as expenditure in the traditional way. If the Government were to fund this initiative, they could either take a view about how much they are likely to spend on Help to Buy—and as I said last time, something like £3.8 billion of the £10 billion has already been committed in terms of Help to Buy, so there is still some headroom there—or, alternatively, they could look at whether they would take additional debt on to the balance sheet. Those are the two choices. We are between a rock and a hard place here. We are tying together two policies which, on the face of it, at best, it is a struggle to add up. The alternative is to go straight on to deficit. That is a third option which allows the Government to deliver the opportunity in a way that does not destroy the Chancellor’s intentions in relation to the deficit.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I support the amendment that the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, put to us and commend to the Minister the devastating critique he made of the Government’s financial options. I invite her to have a good night’s sleep and come back and tell us how she thinks the Government could best respond to it.

I will pick out one particular element of what the noble Lord put to the House: the impact on what he described as richer areas, the probability that high-value homes in the local authority and housing association sectors would be most prevalent in the same place, and that those places would have higher property values in general. As he mentioned, London is the outstanding example, but we need to remember that “high-value areas” is always a relative concept. I come to this House from Stockport, which is one of 10 boroughs in Greater Manchester. As the Minister will be very well aware, it is one which might be described as “well off” among those 10, as would the borough of Trafford.

As a borough, we have a higher proportion of right-to-buy sales because we have more attractive property to sell. We have a waiting list that means that for every remaining council house there is another family waiting to go into it. Anything that reduces that stock and makes a replacement policy more difficult is to be very much regretted and will certainly lead to increasing pressure. If we add on top of that, as the noble Lord outlined, that there is likely to be something not far off forced confiscation of void properties—exceptionally so in Stockport compared with other Greater Manchester boroughs—the impact is increased and multiplied.

As well as the very thorough and detailed rebuttal that the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, gave of the scheme and the various cul-de-sacs into which the financial planning might take it, there are some real additional problems, in particular for what we might describe as the richer areas, or the areas that have higher housing markets relative to those nearby. If one looks at one other aspect of the Government’s plan that is not yet revealed to us—what they mean by “high value”, whether that is within an authority, across Greater Manchester, across the whole of the north-west or across the whole country, and whether it is an absolute or some kind of relative figure—all these things can compound the problems highlighted in this aspect of the plan.

I hope very much that the Minister can respond in a helpful way to the amendment. If she takes some time to do so, fair enough, but a helpful response is essential.

Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Lord Stunell and Lord Kerslake

Tuesday 1st March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kerslake]

To add to that, it is not good enough simply to look at national averages on this issue. You absolutely need to see the figures broken down by region.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

When the Minister writes, can she specifically say how many residents in Stockport, which is the borough in which I live, have the two full-time incomes to which she refers? That would be quite a handy ready reckoner for us as regards assessing the information she intends to give us.