Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill

Lord Tope Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 5th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, and others in this group. Local transport authorities ought to be able to deal with particular problems that arise.

We have a problem in Eastbourne, surprisingly enough, with high levels of particulates—seemingly related to the geography of the place. The local authority therefore wishes that we should be able to reduce them. We do not have a motorway. My noble friend Lord Young said that service centres had not yet been defined. I should be interested to know how the Government are thinking of defining service centres. In Eastbourne and, I should think, most metropolitan areas, we have a petrol station as part of a large, shared area where there is a lot of parking and a lot of other retail. Will this be defined as a service centre? It is as close as we get to a service centre. That would enable the benefits of Clause 10 to extend to an area such as ours and, if the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, is accepted, we might even get the full benefits of Clause 10. As that is clearly a direction in which our community wishes to move, I would very much like the Bill to give it the power to do so.

[Lord Tope (LD)]

My Lords, I need to begin by declaring an interest that I did not have in Committee, because I think that this morning I was elected co-president of London Councils. No one has confirmed that yet and, as a Liberal Democrat, I know only too well not to take things for granted but, just in case I was successful in an unopposed election, I declare an interest as co-president of London Councils.

When we debated this in Committee, there was considerable concern about the apparent slow progress of London boroughs in acting on rapid charging units. It is therefore only fair that I put on record a response, although I do not want to dwell on it. I am told:

“The TfL transformation has impacted heavily on their ability to engage efficiently and consistently with the London boroughs and other stakeholders. We have been told by a number of boroughs that they had identified and submitted numerous locations for rapid charging points to TfL, only for the engagement to end, in some cases for months, with little or no information provided to the borough on whether the plans are progressing. In many cases local authorities have done all that is necessary and are waiting for TfL to complete the installation”.


I thought it was fair to put that on record, but I really do not want to get into the blame game—none of us do; we want rapid progress to rapid charging points. To that end, now that the London borough elections are out of the way as well, I am pleased to know that discussions have taken place and continue to take place between the GLA, TfL and London Councils. I think that I mentioned in Committee that London Councils had already established a sub-group of members to deal rapidly with these issues, and I am pleased to say that that is now progressing. As a consequence, I understand, TfL has said that it will not pursue its wish for permitted development rights—and that is welcome to the boroughs and to me, having had some considerable experience as a member of the GLA and as a London borough councillor. So far, all that is good.

I turn to Amendment 29. I seek clarification; I think that I understood the Minister in moving the amendment to say that the government intention was that it would apply only to large fuel retailers and service area operators—and the Minister nods in agreement with that statement. That is not what the amendment actually says. It could certainly be interpreted—and indeed I think that it says this—as relating to all roads in the key route network. Anyone reading the Bill would take that as applying to all roads in the key route network—and, indeed, the other amendments apply it to all other roads. I understand that the Government intend to come back with a further amendment on that.

I think that the Minister has clarified this issue in moving the amendment and in nodding in assent to my interpretation of it. However, if the Government are bringing back further amendments in respect of what is before us—Amendments 30A, 31 and 33A—would it not be better also to take back Amendment 29 and rewrite it clarifying what the Government want it to mean: that it applies specifically to those two areas, to area operators and large fuel retailers, rather than to all roads on the route network? That seems to me a very sensible thing to do, given that we are going to come back to the issue anyway at Third Reading next week.

Those are my points. I went through in Committee at some stage as to why it is not a good idea to give metro mayors the power over things which, certainly in London’s case, are properly the matter for the borough councils as both parking authorities and highway authorities. I do not need to repeat that; I could give many instances of how that has not worked and does not work—but I hope that we are not going to go down that route and that TfL is not going to pursue that route, as I hope is nobody else. When we come back to Third Reading, I hope that the Government will bring before us amendments that make the situation absolutely clear, and we can progress to actually getting on and installing rapid charging points.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, we may not be in the blame game, but the noble Lord has actually made a strong statement there about the response of TfL to the boroughs. I reserve my comments until, perhaps, we have had a response from those who almost stand in the dock—and perhaps I can raise my comments on Third Reading.

Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill

Lord Tope Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Thursday 17th May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, I wonder if I might take the Committee back to some elementary aspects here. Under my apartment in London, there is a garage and in the bay next to me there is a plug in the wall, with a wire leading into a motor car. It is an electric car being charged. On the previous amendment, I argued the need for the Government to be far more open about the question of taxation in future, in substitute for the revenue loss arising from less reliance on the fuels of today. We cannot raise revenue in conditions where people simply stick a plug in the wall. There has to be a meter.

Amendment 76 goes on to refer to regulations. I presume it is implied that these are building regulations. I am not sure but I think that is the suggestion. Perhaps in placing this requirement in the building regulations, we should set a requirement to fit a meter even though it will not be raising revenue in the early years. The reason I say that is only because of my experience over smart meters. Are we not changing the rules in some ways on those, because we have learned? We are almost in a period of regret, as we have been discussing in Committee in recent weeks. We think, “If only we’d known that a few years ago, we might have done it in a different way”.

All I am suggesting is that in the event that we were to introduce regulations—building regulations, I presume—we should be thinking at that stage in terms of a meter. You would not just have your plug and socket; you would have a plug, a meter and a socket, but in the early stages the meter would be registering only for your information. The other advantage of it is this. In the event that you have a meter of that nature, with a particular socket, you can be sure that you can raise the revenue by charging a higher rate for the metered electricity than the rate charged for electricity going generally into the residence. There would have to be a differential rate to ensure that you could raise the revenue and you would have to have the equipment. I say: let us go from our experience with smart meters in another context.

Perhaps I may move on to Amendment 74, which has just been spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington. Can I express a reservation, since she asked for comments, on subsection (2) of that proposed new clause? It says:

“Any leaseholder who pays for a charge point to be installed as in subsection (1) retains ownership of the charge point”—


they retain ownership of it—

“and all the associated works that the leaseholder has paid for when the lease ends, but the landlord may acquire ownership of them by paying the leaseholder one sixtieth of their cost for each month that remains of the five years since they were installed”.

What happens if you are in a small block with a shared freehold, and someone puts in a meter? Are we saying that the balance of the freeholders have to pay to the person who installed a meter money to compensate them for the fact that they have left the lease at an earlier stage? That would be an unfair imposition on the balance of the leaseholders—if they have a share of the freehold, they are basically leaseholders. They might have 99-year leases but they are leaseholders. If I might say so, that provision is wrong. I think that if you have put in the equipment, you do so at your risk and if you leave, you lose.

I have a suspicion about what would happen. In the flat that I own near to the property of the noble Lord, Lord Young, we have a committee arrangement and I can imagine circumstances in which some members of that committee might say, “I’m sorry but we don’t want to pay to compensate you when you leave for equipment you’ve put in”. I do not know whether it might cost hundreds or thousands of pounds. All I am saying is: let us be a little careful about that provision. I do not want to rubbish the noble Baroness’s amendment because the rest of it is excellent but I would enter that minor concern.

[Lord Tope (LD)]

My Lords, as this is my first contribution to the Bill, I should say that my knowledge of, and interest in, electric vehicles is more limited than most of the Committee here. However, I suspect that I might have been the first to drive an electric vehicle when I drove from this House back to the London Borough of Sutton, at least 20 or 25 years ago, and came last in a race with our two MPs. One was riding a bicycle and the other was travelling by public transport. The reason for that was nothing to do with electric vehicles; it was to do with traffic on a Friday, which affects electric vehicles as much as every other car. Nevertheless I caused great amusement by arriving some time after our two Members of Parliament.

I am here to speak, in particular, to Amendments 54 and 57. I agree with much of what the noble Lord, Lord Borwick, said about his amendment, and very much with the sentiments behind the amendment spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington. My interest in this—and, indeed, the reason why I was driving the electric car—is that for the 13 years that London was without a strategic authority I was leader of a London borough council, and therefore actively involved in trying to run Greater London without a strategic authority. After 13 years I stepped down as leader—voluntarily, I might add—to stand for election to the Greater London Authority, then about to come into being, and spent eight years as a member of that authority.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Worthington]

Transport for London and the GLA have been actively trying to consult the boroughs on this issue over a six-month period. I emphasise the fact that we are talking about rapid chargers here, not slow and fast charging. That needs a strategic overview, because those are what enable people to travel long distances and recharge on their journeys, so they are more akin to motorway infrastructure than to charging at home, or at destinations where cars are parked for long periods. This requires a citywide strategy, which is why TfL is so interested in getting one for that particular class of charger.

[Lord Tope]

I well understand the difference here, and the fact that we are talking about rapid charging. If I misspoke, I am sorry: I am referring to the amendment and the proposal to give TfL permitted development rights. I think that the noble Baroness is referring to the mayor’s draft transport strategy, which was indeed widely consulted on and widely welcomed, in work with the boroughs.

Be that as it may, the fact is that the 32 London boroughs and London Councils are strongly opposed to giving TFL permitted development rights. This is a very bad way to start on what we all want to achieve, which is the rapid implementation of rapid charging points. If it is to work effectively, it has to be a co-operative partnership between the GLA, TFL and the London boroughs.

I quote from what I believe is a public letter dated 29 March from the chair of London Councils’ transport and environment committee to the Mayor of London. He begins:

“London boroughs share your enthusiasm and urgency to tackle the poor air quality experienced by Londoners and therefore look to ensure that there is an efficient and effective network electric vehicle charging infrastructure to aid this”.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Can we clarify the position? Are they opposing rapid charging arrangements?

[Lord Tope]

No, not they are not opposing rapid charging points at all. Quite the opposite—they are very enthusiastic supporters of them. This is my view, not one that has been expressed to me, but one reason that there has been so little installation is that most of the resources that come to boroughs for this comes through what is known as LIP funding which, if I remember rightly, stands for “local implementation strategy”. All the funding comes from the Mayor of London and there has been no provision in my borough and, I think, many others, for the installation of rapid charging points. But we are getting into more detail than I wanted to at this stage, because I know we are moving quickly, and I want us to move on.

I go back to the letter that I was quoting from London Councils. The chair goes on to say:

“We recognise that engagement between TFL and the boroughs on rapid chargers has not been as effective as it could be and are eager to address this issue collaboratively to enable better delivery”.


He goes on to speak about one measure taken, which was to establish,

“a cross party sub-committee solely focused on rapid charging infrastructure. Its task is to enhance the provision of rapid charging points in London across boroughs”,

and to work together with TfL, the GLA and other interested parties. He concludes:

“Collaboration between boroughs, TfL and the GLA is what will deliver an effective and efficient network of charging infrastructure in London”.


I wholly endorse that sentiment, and I hope that all of us on all sides who wish for success here will also endorse it.

[Baroness Worthington]

I think we all have the same objective in mind, but does the noble Lord concede that 10 weeks to get permission for installation of charging, working with boroughs, is not exactly the swiftest of processes? The amendment that the GLA and TfL seek is merely to take a power to enable that collaboration to be given a bit of a supercharge, because different boroughs will have different speeds and different priorities and it seems sensible to be able to have a citywide strategy. It could help out boroughs which are insufficiently staffed to do this quickly. Ten weeks seems like a long time, no?

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, we must recognise, first, that there is a resource problem for TfL, boroughs and everyone in the public sector. That is possibly the greatest inhibition to rapid implementation. I must say that, in my experience, giving permitted development rights to TfL, while it would be intended to speed things up, would in practice have exactly the opposite effect, because it simply cannot have—this is not a criticism but a statement—detailed local knowledge. I could cite the example of proposing to put a charging point in a parking bay reserved for hearses for the local church—but we can get into too much detail here.

My key point is that the way in which to make rapid progress with rapid charging and all the rest of the infrastructure is not to set up something strongly opposed by the London boroughs, which is going to lead inevitably, sadly, to more conflict and disagreement, more objections and less public support—because that is where the objections will come from. That is not the way to go: the way to go is to give a kick-start, or whatever word the noble Baroness used, and say that we want to see greater active co-operation between TfL and the London boroughs. What we would like to see in particular is not an agreement to pursue permitted development rights for TfL but a requirement—or not a requirement, because we cannot require, but a request—that TfL and the London boroughs and councils, if possible, come back to us for Report, which I know is only a few weeks away, with an agreed amendment, if that is necessary, to achieve the objective that we all share. I think that that is a much more positive approach, and one that is far more likely to succeed in achieving the objective, which I think that I share with the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, and everyone else, than the one now, which is being opposed by the people who will actually have to do most of the implementation.

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, as a generality I support the thrust of these amendments, but I worry about whether this is the right place for them. Clearly, there is a case for some overall strategic planning, and there is a need for it to happen everywhere. There is also a possibility that that may require some powers to be provided for TfL. But we are trespassing into dangerous waters, because we are getting into sovereignty—and there is no more delicate area in a sovereignty debate than between an area or regional authority and constituent members. I worry whether this Bill is the place to make such a profound move.

I am genuinely open-minded about whether we should press in this direction, but I join the noble Lord, Lord Tope, in urging the department to do all that it can between now and Report to get a negotiated settlement between the boroughs and TfL that, if necessary, we can put into the Bill.

Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Lord Tope Excerpts

Wednesday 5th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I beg to move Amendment 88 and shall speak also to Amendments 89 to 95 and Amendment 121. Maximising the release of surplus public sector land is critical to supporting the Government’s ambitions to reduce the deficit, increase the number of houses being built and help to drive economic growth. The new public sector land programme from 2015-16 will mean transferring a significant amount of surplus and developable land from government bodies to the Homes and Communities Agency for onward disposal.

Clause 21 is intended to speed up the transfer of land from arm’s-length bodies to the Homes and Communities Agency by allowing sites to transfer directly using a single transfer scheme, rather than transferring first to the parent department in a separate scheme. However, the Homes and Communities Agency no longer has a remit to operate in London without mayoral delegation. The Greater London Authority therefore has a pivotal role in delivering housing and economic growth in the capital, and we have been working with it to consider how its expertise can best be utilised in the disposal of surplus government land. The GLA has been clear that it wishes to carry out the Homes and Communities Agency’s former functions in London with regard to the disposal of developable land. The Greater London Authority Act 1999 allows for the transfer of central government land to the authority but, as with the Homes and Communities Agency, land from arm’s-length bodies can transfer only via the parent department and not directly in a single scheme.

In Committee, my noble friend Lady Kramer agreed to consider an opposition amendment to enable direct transfers of land from arm’s-length bodies to the GLA. Following our constructive dialogue with the GLA over the past few months, we are now satisfied that there is strong potential for the GLA to have a role in disposing of surplus government land in London. This amendment, which will allow land to be transferred directly to the GLA and its subsidiaries, will help to reduce bureaucracy in the longer term. We are therefore tabling a government amendment to effect this change. Our amendment adds three new sections to the Greater London Authority Act 1999 to allow schemes to be made transferring land to the GLA and for regulations to be made naming the bodies which will be able to transfer land and setting out the tax position for transfers.

We introduced Clause 22 to ensure that appropriate development may happen quickly by bringing the powers of purchasers of land from the Homes and Communities Agency, the Greater London Authority and mayoral development corporations into line with those presently enjoyed by the purchasers of land from local authorities and other public bodies involved in regeneration and development. We have tabled this amendment to ensure that the powers will be fully available in relation to the GLA.

The bulk of GLA land is held and managed by GLA Land and Property Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of the authority. We need to make sure that the amended powers will apply to land which the subsidiary holds or disposes of in the same way as they will apply to land which the HCA, GLA or an MDC hold or dispose of. These amendments clarify that the powers will be available in relation to land which the subsidiary owns or disposes of, provided that it has been carrying out housing and regeneration functions for the GLA in relation to that land.

Amendment 121 refers to new subsection (12) of Clause 22. Clause 40 is concerned with the territorial extent of provisions. Although Clause 22 is effective in England only, there is only one legal system covering England and Wales, and that system will operate in relation to Clause 22. The legal systems in Scotland and Northern Ireland will not operate in relation to the clause. I beg to move.

[Lord Tope (LD)]

My Lords, Amendment 93A is in my name. In speaking to his amendments, the Minister referred to an opposition amendment in Committee. The amendment was in my name and, while I understand that the Minister may occasionally feel that I am in opposition, I mostly support the Government in this House and therefore perhaps we could correct that. It was not an opposition amendment; it was an amendment on behalf of the Greater London Authority, moved by a Liberal Democrat Member on the government side of the House.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, for the record, I fully acknowledge my noble friend’s contribution in that regard.

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, I am grateful and my pride is restored. When I received the open-door response from my noble friend Lady Kramer on that occasion, I think I predicted that the two-word amendment which I moved in Committee would come back at this stage of the Bill as a two-page amendment. I did not anticipate that it would run to eight or nine amendments over five pages, but I am grateful to the Minister and his officials for their work to try to correct what we all recognise was an anomaly.

The Greater London Authority is happy with the amendments to Clause 21 and with Clause 21 when amended, but there are still concerns about Clause 22. The Government’s proposals are welcome, but they do not go quite as far as they need to in order to correct what the Government intend. That is because the protection afforded by the new clause does not completely cover historic disposals. We are trying to correct an omission from the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008. It is the view of the GLA that to be legally robust and clear to prevent unnecessary blocking of planned strategically important developments, the legal operation of the changes made by Clause 22 needs to be retrospective and to cover historic disposals. My Amendment 93A to Clause 22(11) would ensure that the changes in the clause cover relevant developments in London from the time that Section 11 of and Schedule 3 to the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008 came into force, which was 1 December 2008. That would mean that all relevant land left unprotected by the defective provisions of that Schedule 3 would be covered by the corrections made by this amended Clause 22. It would also cover the appropriate corresponding provision that applied to the London Development Agency prior to its abolition.

That is entirely consistent with the Government’s intentions. I hope that the Minister will be in a position today to accept Amendment 93A. If he is not in a position to do so today, I hope that he will give a commitment to look at this point, which the Greater London Authority rightly feels to be important, and to correct it at a later stage, preferably at Third Reading in this House so that I can tie up the loose ends, but if that is too quick, then at a further stage of the Bill.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, we are grateful for the explanation provided by the Minister today and in the letter of 30 October. It follows a commitment made by the Minister when we discussed an amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Tope, which called for the GLA to perform the role of disposal agency in London. This parallels the role designated for the HCA outside London, whereby land from arm’s-length bodies can be transferred directly rather than via the parent department. We support these amendments.

We also support the amendment just spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Tope, about the cut-off point and the date from which these provisions apply. That anomaly was pointed out in Committee. I hope that the Minister is able to give a positive response.

In Committee, we also probed the prospect of one or more local authorities adopting a similar role, particularly given the prospect of releasing substantial sums of publicly owned land to support housing development. This appeared to find some approval from the Minister, who undertook to explore further. Given that we do not have an amendment from the Government on this point, is this issue still under active consideration?

Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Lord Tope Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2014 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Tope]

84: Clause 21, page 22, line 21, at end insert “or GLA”

[Lord Tope (LD)]

Before I move the amendment, I wonder whether it would be appropriate to offer congratulations, in absentia, to the Minister who I thought would be replying to me today. We congratulate her on her escape from the Infrastructure Bill, even though she will no doubt miss all its excitement. It is a particular pleasure for me to welcome, rather unexpectedly, the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, to answer here today, particularly in view of this amendment, which relates to the Greater London Authority, of which she has considerable knowledge and experience. I look forward to an even more favourable response than I was expecting.

In moving the amendment, I shall speak also to Amendment 85. They are two fairly simple and straightforward amendments that would add “or GLA”—the Greater London Authority—to this part of the Bill. I have tabled them because under the Localism Act 2011, the Homes and Communities Agency no longer has any remit in Greater London. That responsibility was devolved to the Greater London Authority and it is therefore logical that the powers going to the HCA, which will apply only to the rest of the country and not to London, should in this instance be passed to the GLA—hence my comment about the Minister who is now to reply having some knowledge and experience, not least of one of the major landowning parts of the Greater London Authority, namely Transport for London. Unless we make this amendment, there will be some vacuum in London as to what will happen. It will seem that the powers that the Bill seeks to give to the Homes and Communities Agency simply will not apply in Greater London, which makes no sense at all. Therefore, I genuinely look forward to a sympathetic response.

There is significant surplus public sector land in London, much of it indeed owned and put to good use by the GLA group. However, according to the Government in March this year, there are in London alone 75 surplus National Health Service sites, totalling 80 hectares, which could well be ready for development. I will not say that we are correcting an anomaly—no one would admit to drafting a Bill that contains an anomaly—but I hope we are filling a gap with this amendment, and that we will ensure that the GLA has the powers it needs to continue the very good work that it has done under both Administrations to make much better use of surplus publicly held land for housing. I do not need to stress again today the urgent need in London—perhaps throughout the country but nowhere more so than in London—to make the best possible use of land for additional housing.

In addition, it is the GLA that has the strategic planning role for Greater London, which fits together with this amendment. Finally, there is the issue of democratic oversight, provided by the Greater London Authority itself with its directly elected mayor and the elected London Assembly, but also by the—less well known but equally important in this context—Homes for London Board, which is a joint body with the GLA and the London boroughs and can oversee all this.

The noble Lord, Lord Best, has also put his name to my amendment. He has given me his apologies for being unable to be here today. He has recently been appointed chairman of your Lordships’ Communications Select Committee, which, unfortunately from our point of view, meets every Tuesday afternoon. He understandably feels that, as its newly elected chairman, he should be there. However, he has said to me, for the record:

“I understand the Homes and Communities Agency is not raising any objection to the idea of the GLA taking on this role for London: the HCA no longer operates within Greater London and it seems entirely sensible for the GLA to include this in their wider role—in partnership with the London Boroughs through the Homes for London Board; the housing association sector admires the leadership role which the GLA through the Deputy Mayor for Housing and Planning, Richard Blakeway, is pursuing, not least in arguing for Lifetime Homes accessibility standards, improved space standards and better performance by London’s private rented sector. I think the general view is that the GLA is a highly competent body on the housing scene and would make a success of this extra role”.

I think these amendments are necessary. They are clearly sensible and they future-proof against any further needs. I beg to move.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend will recollect that I raised this point at Second Reading on 18 June at col. 856. I will not repeat what I said on that occasion, or indeed on the very important points that my noble friend Lord Tope has just made.

The Minister was as good as her word and replied to the points that she did not have time for when she responded at Second Reading. She wrote to me on 1 July about the points I had raised, including this one, which she headed “Mayoral Powers”:

“Government officials and the Greater London Authority are in ongoing dialogue to agree suitable ways to transfer public sector land in London. If amendment of legislation is required, we will explore this at an appropriate opportunity in the future”.

It is a long time since I have felt that I was pushing at a door that is not only half open but almost entirely open. I hope my noble friend will be able to give us a little more information this afternoon.

The need for housing, particularly affordable housing, in London is acute. There can be very few couples —potential homeowners—under the age of 35 or thereabouts who feel that without significant parental help, or whatever else might be available, they will ever be able to buy a house. Part of the reason for that is the shortage of building land within the Greater London area and in the area immediately surrounding it. The disposal of surplus public land has become a matter of huge urgency. I believe, as my noble friend has said—and he quoted the noble Lord, Lord Best—that the Greater London Authority has this whole issue very much in mind and on its whole agenda for the development of London. The case for it to be the body to initiate, promote and encourage this is very strong indeed and I hope my noble friend the Minister will be able to give us an encouraging answer this afternoon. I support the amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Tope.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Jenkin and, in absentia, the noble Lord, Lord Best, on whose behalf I also spoke, and, perhaps particularly, to the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, for pressing the point. I have to say that long experience in your Lordships’ House has taught me that moving a simple two-word amendment is no more likely to succeed than a two-page amendment. I have much sympathy with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, that it is a simple amendment that probably could have been accepted today without in any way inhibiting or preventing the discussions, which I am very pleased to hear are going on. I had no expectation that it would be accepted.

I am very grateful for what the Minister has had to say. I wrote down the splendid phrase “may be beneficial to exploring”, and I am pleased that discussions are going on with the GLA. I have no doubt that, in one form or another, we will return to this issue in three months’ time at the next stage of the Bill. Whether it is with a simple two-word amendment or a rather more complex two-page amendment, I will wait with interest to see. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 84 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Smith of Leigh (Lab)]

My Lords, in some ways the north-west is ahead of the game in handing over land to the HCA. When the NWDA was abolished by the Government, we had quite a large landholding for that agency, and the question was: what to do with the land? Rather than try to disperse it through a large number of local authorities, it was transferred to the HCA. That worked successfully, first, because these were pretty large-scale plots of land. They were originally designed for economic development and that was the purpose to which they were put. Secondly, the HCA operates on a local basis, so we were dealing with a local branch of the HCA; we were not dealing with any central bases in London. Thirdly, the HCA worked very effectively with local authorities. Therefore, any planning problems could be rapidly dealt with, and the HCA reported back to the North West Regional Leaders Board, which is a local authority leaders board, on what was left of the portfolio.

Therefore, I think that the principle of what the Government are doing is ideal. I do not think that the LGA—I must declare an interest as a vice-president of it—wants to undermine that, but it may be a case of horses for courses. There may be parcels of land which, by their nature, are small in scale and value and which would probably be better for the local authority to work with at its local level rather than the HCA, which operates on a regional basis.

I hope that, in replying, the Minister can reflect on what my noble friend said in introducing the amendment and can see whether there is a way forward on this matter.

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, said that this had been introduced as a probing amendment. I recognise that and will certainly be very interested to hear the response. I was particularly interested to hear the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Smith. I am quite prepared to accept that in this respect, at least, the north-west, or more particularly Greater Manchester, leads the way with the combined authority, which some of us think may well be part of the way forward for the rest of the country. The experience in Greater Manchester, to which the noble Lord, Lord Smith, has just referred, is certainly very interesting.

I was not terribly clear whether he was supporting the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, or supporting the probe, or saying that it is something worth exploring. It is certainly worth exploring. I hope that the Minister will agree to take it back and look not at why we do not need it or why it is not necessary, but whether and to what extent it would add to the available permissions for doing this. I think it is true that most local authorities, of whatever political persuasion and in whatever part of the country, are now keen to get on and make their contribution to meeting the severe housing need throughout the country. If an amendment or addition of this sort does anything to add to that, it must be desirable, even if it is not strictly necessary. I hope that on that basis, the Minister—although I suspect that she is not about to accept this amendment—will at least agree to take it back and give some positive consideration to how such an amendment or alteration might add one more weapon to the armoury.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, there will be a subsequent debate in respect of Clause 24 so I will speak generally to both clauses and pick up any further points in the subsequent debate. Clause 23 transfers responsibility for local land charges to the Land Registry, while Clause 24 confers additional powers on the Land Registry. Neither of these propositions can be divorced from the parallel proposition for a new model of a Land Registry delivery company, which is widely believed to be a step along the way to privatisation of the service.

Just yesterday the Government pulled the plug—at least for the time being and, I am bound to say, not with good grace—by recognising that they would have to give further consideration to the complexity of their proposed new business strategy, including moving complex applications online and automating processes. There were high levels of disagreement anyway with the suggestion that an arm’s-length model would enable operations to be more efficient and effective or that such models would have the right checks and balances to protect the integrity of the registry. While reaffirming that they are moving ahead with the digital transformation, the Government have stated,

“at this time, no decision has been taken to change Land Registry’s model”.

While we should not be under the misapprehension that the threat has gone away, we should recognise that the news, unnecessarily delayed as it is, will come as some relief to the staff and to those who campaigned against the folly which privatisation would represent.

Mr John Manthorpe, a former Chief Land Registrar, has stated in a letter:

“The Land Registry is a successful and highly regarded department of government with a 150 year history. It makes no call on the exchequer and has a 97% customer satisfaction rating … It conducts its business impartially and free from any conflicts of interest. It grants and guarantees title on all transactions so providing the security of tenure and conveyancing machinery on which a stable society depends and without which the property, transfer and mortgage markets could not function”.

I could rest my case for this clause and Clause 24 not remaining part of the Bill at this point. If the Government have to hold back on their proposed plans for the Land Registry because they need to revisit the model to deliver their new business strategy, it is difficult to see how it could possibly take on responsibility for local land charges and more, largely unspecified, powers relating to that. There are some 20 million local land charges registered, with 65,000 updates every month.

There are further detailed arguments that deserve to be heard. For a start, the consultation on wider powers and local land charges was flawed. It was conducted by the Land Registry itself, which clearly had an interest in the outcome. There were concerns that it was overly focused on what would add value to the Land Registry, and that it was undertaken with at least half an eye to privatisation.

The Land Registry proposal is to take over the maintenance and searches of the register of local land charges. It argues that this is necessary because of a perceived lack of consistency and standardisation in the provision of local land charges. The World Bank ease of doing business survey marked the UK down on the ease of registering a business, including the speed of registering and transferring commercial property. This was also prayed in aid of the proposal.

However, the Law Society, in its submission to the consultation, expressed the view that in recent times local authorities and other providers have been producing search results in a timelier and more consistent manner and at a predictable cost. Indeed, the impact assessment noted that there had been annual productivity gains of 2%. The Law Society expressed the view that while there is merit in seeking to create a single local land charge and CON29 service, most practitioners would not regard it as a priority for the Land Registry to address. It says:

“Having more consistent processes for discharging charges … could markedly improve and de-risk the process”.

Dealing with searches is just part of the conveyancing process. The Law Society’s conclusion is that the research conducted by the Land Registry does not demonstrate that there is a problem that needs to be resolved.

It is suggested that the speed of service conducted by local authorities is causing a problem in the conveyancing market. This is despite a recent survey indicating that the turnaround time for 96% of searches that involve only local land charges is less than 10 days, with three-quarters being returned within five days. Searches involving local land charges and CON29 have slightly less speedy performance but, as it is proposed that the latter stay with local authorities, it does not seem that overall search turnaround times will improve.

The District Councils’ Network has expressed concerns at the proposed separation of land charges to be undertaken by Land Registry from CON29 searches, which will remain the responsibility of local authorities. It considers that this fragmentation creates a risk of inconsistency, with the potential for errors and omissions. It says that insufficient weight has been given to the local knowledge that resides with local authorities, which are still generally the originators of the data. Local authorities will still incur costs in collating and supplying data, in maintaining a database and, presumably, for indemnity insurance—when there is no income stream from search fees. It also instances that many local authorities have made recent investments in digitalisation, for which no recovery is promised by the Land Registry.

As the Local Land Charges Institute points out, the original intention of the Land Registry was to take over and maintain the database for local land charges and CON29. However, having studied the proposition for over a year, it decided to abandon the idea. Therefore, as things stand, Clause 23 would mean a fragmented service, with no credible alternative being offered. The Council of Property Search Organisations—CoPSO—offers the view that the sector is currently operating well, with healthy competition. It says that the claimed postcode lottery is illusory and that there is no real problem to fix. Moreover, it suggests that the threat to local authority jobs could result in increased waiting times for searches, with consequent detriment to the housing market.

The Local Land Charges Institute argues: that the perceived problems with the land charge function has been overstated; that such problems as there are can be resolved more simply and with less cost; that the demand for the Land Registry takeover has been overstated; and that the Land Registry has failed to demonstrate a clear understanding of the processes and risks involved in the local land charge function and is proposing a worse service. It says that the Land Registry has failed to demonstrate how it will actually provide the service and that the Land Registry has proposed a number of unsatisfactory business models over the past three years and now proposes to take over only half the service, providing less information to customers than local authorities currently do, leaving local authorities to undertake the more complex work and providing a fragmented service to customers.

The LGA expresses opposition, in particular making the point that the proposals will leave councils with the expense of adjusting systems, breaking existing contracts and paying redundancy costs. It says that over the longer term the costs to councils of compiling, checking and verifying data have not been properly accounted for in the analysis.

The opposition is glaringly obvious from the Government’s own consultation: 94% of respondents do not think that the Land Registry has considered all feasible options and 95% do not support the Land Registry taking over the local land charge function from local government. It is time to think again, as even the Government have recognised on their delivery company. It is time to remove the clause from the Bill.

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, I confess to relative ignorance on the subject of the Land Registry, so I have been trying to understand better. Naturally, I wish to support my Government, and particularly want to support my noble friend the Minister, who has to reply to this. I have a number of concerns, some of which the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, set out very fully when making his points. Like him, I, too, have had representations from the Local Land Charges Institute and from the Law Society, which have made a number of points to which I am sure the Minister will reply.

Certain things increase my concern. First, of course, this takes functions away from local authorities and centralises them. There are two things that instinctively trigger me as a localist, and I find them difficult. I therefore need to understand better than I currently do, not just what the problem is that we are trying to fix, but what the scale of the problem is, as the Government see it, that makes it necessary to take these functions away from local authorities and centralise them. Throughout history, the experience of centralising does not necessarily automatically lead to greater efficiency, nor does it seem immediately to be in keeping with the Government’s commitment to localism.

On a similar and related point, I have seen several times the awful phrase “postcode lottery” used with reference to the current situation. I hate that phrase; if we put it rather differently, so-called postcode lotteries mean we recognise that different factors apply in different areas and that local people—local authorities, in this instance—are able to determine their priorities, their way of doing things and, for that matter, what charges they wish to set for local services. If that is called a postcode lottery then I am all in favour of it but I would prefer to call it real localism.

My next point was raised by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie. He referred to the results of the consultation, which came out significantly against the Government’s proposals. That has been dismissed as self-interest. In a sense, that is true; it is pretty obvious that the Local Land Charges Institute has an interest. You can call it a self-interest if you like, but I have to say that the responses to most consultations come from organisations or people with what could be called a self-interest. It just so happens that that self-interest means that they usually know very much more about the subject than most of us do. The fact that they have a self-interest—or, as I would put it, a greater knowledge—certainly does not mean that they are by definition wrong or that their views should be dismissed. Certainly, the context should be recognised.

Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Lord Tope Excerpts

Thursday 10th July 2014 Grand Committee

A Bill that reclassified major housing projects as nationally significant infrastructure projects, as with the new definition for offices, sports facilities and all the rest, could make a really significant contribution to easing housing shortages and helping Governments of whatever political persuasion meet the targets that we all know we have to meet but which, at the moment, show very little likelihood of being met. I beg to move.

[Lord Tope (LD)]

My Lords, I added my name to this amendment and am very pleased to support the noble Lord, Lord Best. He has described the need for these measures and the reason for them very fully, and I do not intend to repeat all or, indeed, much of what he said, most of which I agree with.

I am a very strong localist. I am not sure I go wholly with him on his concerns about localism and housing need, but my party has a target in its policy to build 300,000 houses a year by the year 2030. We at least have the realism to describe that as an ambitious target. That is probably a modest description.

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Moved by

[Lord Tope]

79B: After Clause 19, insert the following new Clause—
“Requirement for planning permission
(1) Section 57 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 (requirement for planning permission) is amended as follows.
(2) In subsection (3) after “a local development order” insert “issued by the local planning authority”.
(3) After subsection (3) insert—
“(4) Where a local planning authority propose to make an order under this section they shall first prepare—
(a) a draft of the order; and(b) a statement of their reasons for making the order.(5) The statement of reasons shall contain—
(a) a description of the development which the order would permit; and(b) a plan or statement identifying the land to which the order would relate. (6) Where a local planning authority have prepared a draft local development order, they shall consult, in accordance with regulations, persons whose interests they consider would be affected by the order.””

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, this amendment stands in my name and the names of the noble Lords, Lord Davies of Oldham and Lord McKenzie of Luton, and would enable local authorities to set their own permitted development rights. I am grateful to have the support of the Labour Benches for this amendment. I take it to be a commitment on behalf of the Labour Party that this will become government policy, should it ever be in a position to make it so. As we all know, the current system is centrally set and nationally determined and local authorities have extremely limited opportunities to change or vary what is set down nationally.

The Minister has already said today, and on many occasions, and I know she firmly believes it, that the people best placed to take these decisions are local planning authorities. We heard this in an earlier debate this afternoon. Local planning authorities are in a position to know what local needs, priorities and circumstances are, they know best what is needed to determine and stimulate local growth, yet they do not have the opportunity to set their own permitted development rights. Surely, it must follow logically from all that we all say that local authorities should have the power and ability to set such rights themselves. That is the purpose of this amendment, and in view of what has been said in earlier debates today I am confident of its acceptance. I beg to move.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Tope, indicated, we have added our names to this amendment and we support it. It took me back to a debate during the course of the Growth and Infrastructure Act when identical amendments were moved and rejected by the Government. The Government’s defence then was that the Article 4 direction would be a route that local authorities could use if they were not happy with what central government was doing. At that point, there was disagreement between the LGA and the Government about how user-friendly that route actually was. The Government were going to talk to the LGA to see whether those matters could be clarified, so it would be very helpful to know whether any clarification was forthcoming. In particular, there was an issue about how the Secretary of State should approach the use of Article 4. I refer to the debate on the Growth and Infrastructure Bill:

“Is it still the position that the Secretary of State’s general approach to making an Article 4 direction, as set out in paragraph 4.23 of planning policy guidance note 15—”

here I asked whether that policy guidance still existed—

“is that, ‘permitted development rights should not be withdrawn without clear justification’?”.—[Official Report, 12/3/2013; col. 195.]

It would be helpful to know whether that interpretation is still imposed upon the Secretary of State in dealing with any Article 4 direction.

Having said that and raised those inquiries, I thoroughly support the position of the noble Lord, Lord Tope.

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[Lord Tope]

I am grateful to the Minister for her reply and encouraging words. Clearly, I would like to take further advice and look more deeply at some of the things she said. Since the joyful days of the Growth and Infrastructure Bill, I have had some local experience of the use of Article 4. I have to say that it bore out all the things that I was saying because I was told that was what the situation was and I learnt from experience that that was the case. It is still far from satisfactory, but I am grateful to the Minister for what she has told us. I will look at this further with those who know better than I do. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 79B withdrawn.

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This is all good stuff. Every generation, when it approaches the challenging question of creating new ways of living in new places and new spaces to live, has to come up with appropriate machinery. The old delivery mechanisms are not going to be sufficient. We really need to look at some of the powers and resources that are going to have to be put into the hands of the new development corporations. The Minister is very open-minded about these things, and I hope that she will give this a fair wind and that we might see it somewhere between here and the end of the passage of the Bill.

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, I echo all that the previous speakers have said. I share the gratitude that the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, expressed to the TCPA about the extremely important work that it has been doing on all this. Like other noble Lords, I had its briefing today and was quite struck by its comment,

“There is a risk that Development Corporations might see themselves as ‘engineering’ departments rather than organisations engaged in the wider social enterprise of place-making”.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, has just said, it is very important that we are not just creating new towns; I referred earlier to my preference for calling them “garden communities” rather than “garden cities”, for exactly that reason. We are seeking to create new communities, and a sense of place is fundamental to all communities, but perhaps more than ever to new communities where it may not be immediately obvious. That is enormously important. The place-making and social enterprise—actually, “social enterprise” is probably the wrong phrase in the current context—rather, the social aspects of creating new communities are, I would argue, at least as important in the longer term as creating the mechanical and technical infrastructure. That is obviously necessary—the engineering part of the work.

Whether or not the Minister is about to accept the amendment in its entirety I do not know, but I hope and believe that she will take very seriously the points that are intended here, and that we can use the opportunity of the Bill, during what is going to be quite a long progress through both Houses, to try to have something in the Bill that reflects at least the intent of the amendment and the excellent work that the TCPA is doing to help us to create not just new towns but new communities.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, following the eloquent advocacy of my noble friend Lady Andrews and other noble Lords, I would just briefly like also to register that it seems extraordinary that the Government should not take the opportunity of this new clause to put flesh on their announced intention to make new towns. There are pitfalls if they do not, from the point of view of a lack of overall comprehensive design; a lack of vision—this new clause could propel vision; and, at least as important, a lack of participation on the part of the people affected. The new clause would leave all these problems behind and advance us into a period of proper place-making, to use the word employed by the noble Lord, Lord Tope, which I think stems from an earlier Administration.

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[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My name is attached to the clause stand part provision. While I think some of the amendments in the name of my noble friends would improve the situation, I think the Government need to think again on this. The Minister should take advice from the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, and look more closely at what circumstances and processes the problem that the Government are trying to address needs. As it stands, this is a pretty draconian and open-ended provision. Clearly, for all sorts of reasons there can be delays in the local authority being able to assess whether a condition has been met. The conditions can be quite complex because they are not only in the area of heritage, as my noble friend Lady Andrews has said, but can relate to the natural environment, social implications, traffic implications and so forth. These things are not necessarily easily dealt with, particularly by hard-pressed planning departments. As it stands, the clause would allow the Secretary of State to come to this Parliament the day after the period of the condition lapsed with an order to override the non-decision of the local authority. That seems too harsh. It is important that there is some reserve power for the Secretary of State. I understand why the Government are looking for it, but it should be exercised with discretion. Frankly, this clause gives far too much power to the Secretary of State to interfere in what essentially must be a local decision which understands the complexity of local circumstances. This clause gives no indication of what should trigger the Secretary of State’s intervention and the suspicion must be—I put it at its most extreme, but nevertheless—that a developer who happens to be close to the Minister and is frustrated by the delay tips the Secretary of State off and we have a complete override of our planning process as a result, subject only to the negative procedure of this House and another place. That is too open-ended and I hope that the Government will think again between now and when we come back on this.

I should have declared an interest as a vice-president of the LGA. The LGA has great disquiet about this, and that is shared by a large number of other organisations which are engaged in the planning process. I hope that the Minister will be able to give us something on this and that she will have another look at it before we return.

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, I am reminded that I should probably also declare an interest as a vice-president of the LGA, although I think that that is quite well known by now.

Misgivings have already been expressed this afternoon, and I hope that the Minister will go a long way to reassure all of us on this. I would like to understand better the need for this legislation. I do not know to what extent failure to discharge planning conditions is a problem. What is the evidence of the extent to which there is a problem? I am sure that there must be occasions when local authorities fail to meet the time limit. Very likely, as the noble Baroness said, that is because there has been a huge reduction in the size of planning departments. That was a problem long before the budget cuts started. Too many planning officers were going off to much better paid jobs in the private sector. With the budget cuts, the planning department has been no more exempt from downsizing staff numbers than any other part of a local authority, and that has probably added to it. That may be in part a cause of a problem but I would like to understand the extent to which there is a problem. What evidence is there of the problem that we are trying to solve?

I then come to the question of whether this is the best or the most necessary solution to the problem. I can certainly understand that if there really is a problem—if local authorities are, to any significant extent, simply failing to respond and that is holding up the necessary work—then action needs to be taken. Possibly, in extremis, this is the right action, but let us understand better the extent and cause of the problem that we are dealing with.

A number of questions have already been asked but when the Minister responds perhaps I may seek an answer to another point on the scope of what we are dealing with. Can we be clear that we are talking here about a failure to respond and not a failure to agree? That is quite important because it deals with part of my concern about the extent of the problem. The Minister referred to the very pleasing number of planning consents that are being granted. I have to say that I am much more interested in the number of starts and even more interested in the number of completions rather than the number of consents that are granted, but I hope that it is an indicator that we are moving in the right direction. However, if you ask developers what the delays in implementing planning consents are down to—sometimes they are accused of having land banks and so on, which they all deny—the knee-jerk answer is always “The planning system”, but when you probe a bit more, it is not quite that simple. Therefore, I should like to be reassured that we have evidence that there is a problem here and that we are not just responding to the easy answer that usually comes from developers about the planning system.

As I said, I want to be clear that what we are dealing with here is a lack of response, not a lack of agreement. Part of the concern is that if a developer is not entirely happy with the planning conditions—that is not unknown—that can be used as a means of getting round, wriggling out of or avoiding a consent. I am sure that that is not the intention here but it is something that we all want to ensure is avoided.

There is another thing that I am not clear about. If the Secretary of State gives deemed consent to the discharge of planning conditions but the local authority does not agree with that decision—it may be the local authority’s fault for not responding quickly enough, but one of the reasons for it not responding quickly enough may be that the development is not as straightforward as the developer suggested—can it still use an enforcement order to apply those conditions? Does that happen? I do not know, but I would like to know whether it is still available or if it is also to be taken away. We all have concerns about the detail here, as we always do when more power is given to Secretaries of State. Are we to have secondary legislation that will set out the scope and circumstances of all this? I would assume that we are. If so, when are we likely to be able to see that legislation in draft?

While I do not have quite the strong hostility to this that the Opposition have expressed, I certainly share the misgivings and I wonder whether we are using a sledgehammer to crack a nut that could be better dealt with in a simpler and more straightforward way through discussion, negotiation and agreement—and, frankly, although I never thought I would say it, with more planners.

[Baroness Donaghy]

My Lords, I do not have the expertise of other noble Lords in this area, but I want to bring in the human element, which perhaps needs to be emphasised around this Judge Jeffreys clause. We need a balance between the needs of the entrepreneur and developer and the individual whose life is impacted by these proposals. We need to think about the protection of the individual. I and, I am sure, other noble Lords in this Room know how miserable it is when something is happening next door over which you do not feel you have any control. It might be an overlarge extension that cuts out the daylight from a much loved garden. The impact on an individual is greatly underestimated by the strong lobby that surrounds deregulation. What consideration has been given to individual rights and community cohesion because these things are extremely important?

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[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

I am extremely grateful for the announcement that there is to be a consultation on this. Will the Minister give us an assurance that the Government’s response to the consultation will come well before we reach Report on this Bill?

[Lord Tope]

I was going to ask the same question. I am grateful to the Minister for taking some time to explain and try to reassure us. I was very pleased, but not surprised, to hear about the consultation. We look forward to seeing that in some detail. What is of particular relevance to this Committee and to us is that we know the outcome of the consultation and, particularly, the Government’s likely response to that outcome in time for the Bill’s next stage in this House. If the Minister is able to give us that reassurance, we will go away a little less unhappy.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I am always eager to make sure that noble Lords do not leave here unhappy. On this occasion, and especially having felt that I was not doing what I always seek to do with my noble friend, I can confirm that the Government will respond to the consultation before we get to Report. That response will be available.

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Moved by

[Lord Tope]

83A: After Clause 20, insert the following new Clause—
“Board of development corporations: membership
The board of development corporations established by the Secretary of State shall include at least one local authority elected member who shall have full voting rights.”

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 83A, I wish to speak also to Amendment 83C, with which it is grouped. In many ways we now return to the debate we had on the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Best, and the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, about who would implement large-scale housing developments. Certainly, one solution that was offered was that of local development corporations. The Mayor of London already has that power as regards mayoral development corporations. This amendment seeks to extend that possibility to the rest of the country.

At this hour, I do not need to go into great detail as it is fairly obvious that Amendment 83C speaks for itself. It seeks to enable the Secretary of State to create local development corporations at the request of local authorities. Amendment 83A requires that any such development corporations so established,

“shall include at least one local authority elected member who shall have full voting rights”.

I hope that is self-evident and that it would happen anyway. I move that amendment as a probing amendment at this stage but hope to receive at least an encouraging response from the Minister. I hope that she and noble Lords opposite will at least support the intentions here. I beg to move.

[Lord Best]

My Lords, I declare the interest that I did not need to declare in my previous amendment, which is that I am president of the Local Government Association, which supports both these amendments. I see them as complementary to our earlier debate on nationally significant infrastructure projects.

I very much hope that wherever a local authority wants to get on with it and do these things, we should give it every possible encouragement. I hope that these amendments are both acceptable to the Minister but would just add that it is likely that housing associations would play a very significant role in the development corporations. Many local authorities will not themselves be undertaking development on such a scale, and co-operation and partnership with housing associations will also be incredibly important in making the development corporations work.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Tope for explaining the background to these amendments. As I said in response to my noble friend Lord Jenkin in an earlier debate, it is not that the Government do not support the purpose of what a local development corporation could achieve in terms of what a local authority could get from that.

We believe that what a local development corporation could achieve is possible for local authorities to do already. They already have plan-making and development control powers for their areas and powers to acquire land compulsorily where necessary. Should they wish to focus on particular geographic areas, they can, under their general powers of competence—new powers brought in by this Government—make appropriate arrangements to do so, whether informally through a sub-committee or through a formal structure such as a limited company. For example, Liverpool has set up a mayoral development corporation to drive growth and development in the city without there needing to be any specific primary legislation providing for this. Where local authorities want to work together to secure the development of an area that crosses local authority boundaries, they are able to pool their planning powers so that decisions about that area can be taken in one place.

It is quite a straightforward measure but I feel that, as I have already explained, because the powers are already there for local authorities to act in this way, I have very little more to add to that, really, in responding to the debate.

[Lord Tope]

I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Best and Lord McKenzie, for their support and to the Minister for her reply. I have no choice but to withdraw the amendment.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

Will the Minister just explain again? Are we saying that any powers that could accrue and be put in place for a local development corporation are, in total, otherwise available to a local authority on an individual or a joint basis? Is that what the Minister is saying?

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[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

Splendid.

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, I reassure the Minister that I did not feel short-changed and that I feel even less short-changed now. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 83A withdrawn.

Moved by

[Lord Tope]

83B: After Clause 20, insert the following new Clause—
“Custom build housing
(1) Local authorities may make provision for custom build housing through the assembly of land within their area.
(2) Local authorities may charge a fee for this activity from interested parties to recover their costs.”

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, I have tabled Amendment 83B to enable us to have what I hope will be a short but interesting debate on custom-build housing. This will give the Minister an opportunity to respond with examples of the Government’s enthusiasm for it, which I know is there. I am conscious that this time on a Thursday evening is probably not the best time to initiate such an enthusiastic debate. I am not suggesting for one moment that this is the answer to the housing crisis we discussed earlier today. Plainly, it is not but it is a small and useful part of the answer. There is a growing interest in custom-build housing so perhaps I should be clear for the record what is meant by that. It includes both self-build housing, where the owner builds it himself, and those where individual commissions for building are of a house. I think that the phrase custom-build housing has now been adopted to cover both.

The LGA tells me that one in 10 new houses in the UK is custom-built. If that is the case, as I am sure it is, it is a small but significant part. It is one which is growing and in which there is considerable interest. My part of the Government are certainly very keen to encourage it and if this fairly simple amendment—which, as I said, was intended to create a debate—were enacted it would encourage local authorities to make provision for custom-build housing in their assembly of land. It would give further stimulus and encouragement to what is, as I say, a growing market and make a contribution—perhaps a relatively small contribution but a useful one—to meeting the housing need. It would also meet it in a way which most directly meets the needs of those who wish to use that housing, because it is their housing in every sense of the word. With that brief explanation and introduction, I beg to move.

[Lord Best]

I will not prolong the debate late on a Thursday, but I add my support to this amendment and note again that the LGA is keen on it. The major housebuilders have moved up from building 46% of the nation’s housing to building 70%. We are becoming incredibly dependent on a handful of very large housebuilders and we need to get back to having the SMEs, the small and medium-sized housebuilders, getting back into business. Many were wiped out during the credit crunch, the recession, and we need them back again. This is a way of ensuring that they can come back, because what they lack is the opportunity to get their hands on land. This is made easy for them by the use of the custom-build technique and this amendment would help in that process. In Germany, they build something over 40% of all their housing on this basis of land being assembled and housebuilders building sometimes a single house but sometimes several houses on the plots that are made available.

There is a slightly sinister aspect to the bringing back of the SME housebuilders, which is the notion that the smaller housebuilders and those developing smaller sites—smaller housebuilders and smaller sites often go closely together, because the big players do not want to deal with small sites—would not in future have a requirement for the provision of affordable housing attached to the consent. It is a government concept, which has yet to be enshrined in any way but is subject to consultation, that sites with perhaps fewer than 10 homes would not be required to have any affordable housing within the mix. One might think that with 10 homes that does not much matter, but in rural areas nearly all the village schemes for affordable housing for local people are of fewer than 10 homes. Something like 70% of all rural schemes are of fewer than 10 homes. The thought that this will help small housebuilders to do more is misguided.

It is the land, which is the subject of this amendment, which is preventing the small players doing the kind of housebuilding they used to do. They cannot get their hands on sites. It is not that they need to have special concessions and reduce the amount of affordable housing that they build, just as it is not the case that smaller schemes should have the requirements removed from them for sustainable housing for the move towards carbon neutrality by 2016. This amendment seeks to bring back those small and medium-sized housebuilders. Those amendments which seek ways of lowering standards or of removing the requirement for affordability are missing the point. It is this one which would help bring back those housebuilders in such a way that we do not make any sacrifices in terms of quality.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Tope for tabling his amendment. This is, as he suggested, not because I think it is necessary in order to achieve an increase in custom build, but because it provides us with an opportunity to discuss and debate this important matter. This Government very much support custom build and are doing a lot to enable it. The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, outlined the way the Opposition propose to approach this issue. However, it is worth noting that, sadly, when they were in government there was no advancement in this area, so we have some ground to make up.

Finding a suitable building plot remains the single biggest barrier holding back thousands of new projects every year. Of course, some councils already provide land for custom build. For example, at Bicester, Cherwell District Council is bringing forward land for up to 1,900 custom-build homes. However, the Government want to do more to help custom builders and support this growing industry. I note what the noble Lord, Lord Best, said. This is an important way of encouraging those smaller building firms as well. That is why we announced a further package of measures in the Budget to tackle this problem. Last week, we invited local authorities to apply to become right to build vanguards. Later this year, the Government will consult on creating the new right to build, which will give custom builders the opportunity to buy suitable shovel-ready plots of land.

Local authorities are already required by the National Planning Policy Framework to assess and plan for their housing needs and our planning guidance makes clear that this should include people who want to build their own homes. Those authorities forging ahead on custom build show that they already have the powers they need to support custom building. They can also already recover the costs of sales. Stoke-on-Trent City Council is doing just that and other authorities such as Cherwell, as I indicated, plan to do the same. The Government are keen to continue to consider what we can do to support custom builders but, as I said, I do not feel that this particular amendment is necessary to do that. I wholeheartedly agree with my noble friend that we want to see more local authorities doing more to support custom build.

The other thing is that most noble Lords who contributed to the debates this afternoon are more experienced in the field of housebuilding and planning than I am. However, my father worked in the building trade and I feel very much that, when we talk about custom build, we should be careful to ensure that we paint a picture to people that it is not just the preserve of a small minority or a certain kind of people. Custom build should be available to everybody. With the measures the Government are putting in place, we are firmly on the path to realising that ambition. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Tope for giving us this opportunity to discuss this matter, albeit briefly, but I hope he will none the less withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, I am particularly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Best, for his eloquent support. He is much more knowledgeable on the subject than I and he explained it very well. I am also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, for his support, too, and to the Minister for recognising that I put the amendment down to enable the debate and not with any intention of pressing it to a vote—not that I can—or expectation that it would appear in the Bill.

We have had a short debate, but it is important that we were able raise an issue that will be of growing importance. The Minister made some personal family comments. Actually, a few weeks ago I visited a house in Glastonbury that I had not known about before but which was built by my grandfather’s nephew. He was a small builder and built that house so that each of its four walls was in a very different style. It was built at the turn of the century and was a slightly odd-looking house, but I guess that it must have been one of the original show houses. You would visit the house and choose which type of stonework you wanted. It is now used as a bed and breakfast and if any noble Lord wants the details I am happy to give them. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 83B withdrawn.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Tope Excerpts

Thursday 5th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tope (LD)]

My Lords, as I am primarily going to talk about local government I should begin by declaring an interest as a vice president of the Local Government Association, but for the first time in nearly 20 years in your Lordships’ House I do not have to declare an interest as a councillor in the London Borough of Sutton. I hasten to add that that was by my choice, not the people’s choice. I felt that 40 years was enough and I did not seek re-election.

However, I was invited to the first Liberal Democrat group meeting on the Saturday morning after the election. I like to think I was invited to give some fatherly advice to all the newly elected councillors; the truth is, I was invited because I was the only one they could find who knew how to conduct the group elections by the single transferable vote. I went into the too-small room and saw before me the 45 newly elected and re-elected Liberal Democrat councillors. The nine Conservatives remaining were in a cupboard down the corridor having their group meeting, which took about 10 minutes—they sacked their leader.

The thought that struck me forcibly for the first time as I looked at our new 45-strong Liberal Democrat group was just how much it looked like our local community. For years now, we have had a pretty good gender mix, which is still there and still strong. We have had, for borough population, a better than average visible ethnic mix. I could see from the family names of the newly elected councillors that they reflected a fair number of European countries. I saw a mobility scooter parked at the door, and I happen to know that at least two of our newly elected councillors have been assisted by a scheme to help people with disabilities to attain elected office.

However, what struck me most forcibly and what was new was the age range of our new councillors. At least five of them were under 30, which, I am sorry to say, these days is quite an achievement. Of particular pride to me was the fact that several of those new young councillors had been born in the borough when it was run by the Liberal Democrats. They had been at the schools in the borough when it was run by the Liberal Democrats and now they were there as part of a Liberal Democrat administration. I understand that my Conservative and Labour friends will think that there is nothing unusual about that, and indeed in many areas of the country that is not unusual for their parties. However, for my party it is not just unusual but unique, so I was very proud of that. The Liberal Democrats were expected to retain control of Sutton council, so when we did it really was not news. There was much more news in relation to places where we were not retaining control and to some places where, sadly, we were not retaining councillors at all.

However, I wondered why nobody asks why an outer London suburb of 200,000 residents and no particularly distinguishing characteristics has elected a Liberal Democrat council eight times over for 32 consecutive years. I wondered even more why for half of that time—for 16 years—it has elected Liberal Democrats to more than 80% of the council seats. We still support proportional representation; we would just like one or two other councils to join in the experiment.

I say all that not just to boast—although I feel that I have something to boast about—but because I think that having the answers to those questions would certainly be a service to my party and might offer some lessons for politics and politicians as a whole. It is a truly remarkable achievement. If any of my noble colleagues are also wondering about the answers to those questions and are perhaps thinking of commissioning a poll, I shall be only too happy to suggest the questions and to co-operate in finding some of the answers.

I now move on to the subject of local government more widely and more generally. Local government represents roughly 25% of public expenditure and therefore it is inevitable and fair that it should have had to bear its share of reducing the deficit. Indeed, as my noble friend Lord Wrigglesworth said earlier, with the ring-fencing of education and health, it is even more inevitable that much of the brunt of deficit reduction will fall on local government, and that has happened. I cannot honestly say that local government makes no complaint about that. For as long as I can remember, it has always complained about the financial settlement, regardless of who are in government and regardless of the financial situation. However, I believe that all parties in local government generally have done remarkably well in coping with their share, or perhaps more than their share, of the deficit reduction. I recognise and accept that, and I always have done. My main regret looking back—and I said it at the time —was that it was so front-loaded and that so many of the deficit reduction measures for local government happened in the first two years. I say that particularly because truly transforming services and local government cannot be done in a hurry under the pressure of having to find immediate and substantial budget cuts. It takes time. With hindsight, and perhaps not just with hindsight, I would rather that we had been given the full four-year period to meet the same targets.

I now want to look to the future. For most major local authorities, the worst is yet to come. We know now that for most authorities the financial year 2015-16 will be the worst so far. The relatively easy budget cuts have been made. I say “relatively easy” because many of them have not been easy at all, but relatively they have been. What are left now are the severe cuts to public services, and all authorities, of whatever political persuasion, will this year—not next year—struggle with having to make difficult, controversial and inevitably unpopular budget cuts.

I understand and wholly accept that there have been significant and disproportionate effects on some sections of the community, but I do not think that the greater majority of residents all over the country—north and south—have been personally greatly affected by budget cuts. That is going to change over the next 12 months and it will happen during a period in which the coalition parties, certainly, will be trying to convince the public that the recovery is on the way. They will be trying to convince them that the past four years of hardship were worth it because the recovery is starting, but that is not likely to be the local experience.

That is clearly an issue for my party and our coalition partners but I do not think that I will see any wise Labour Party people rejoicing either. They will know that those budget cuts are being made in the town halls, and it is at the town halls that people will be protesting to those making the unpopular decisions. In most cases now—sadly, from my point of view—it is Labour councillors who, first and foremost, will get the blame. There is nothing in that for any of us. The outcome will inevitably be even more public disillusionment and disengagement and all the effects that we know only too well will come from that. I feel very sad to give a gloomy but inevitable prognosis for the period up to the general election.

There is one particular issue on which I want to comment. For a local authority, being able to raise income is often a better choice than cutting a budget. It needs to be done proportionately and fairly but, if it is done to raise greater income and thus avoid greater cuts, that surely is usually a better option. Yet, so often when a local authority embarks on that course, Ministers complain about it. I shall take one recent example, although there are many. Charging for the collection of green garden waste in a local authority—I think that it was probably in Birmingham—was recently criticised by CLG Ministers and by one in particular, and it is an issue that many of us are going to have to look at. However, it is a discretionary service; there is no requirement on local authorities to collect green garden waste. To paraphrase the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, it is, if you like, a service paid for by the poor to provide to the rich. I use both those terms relatively, but all those who live in flats or small houses with small or no gardens are paying through their council tax for a so-called free service to those of us who are fortunate enough to have large gardens and silly enough not to do sufficient composting. At any time but particularly under the current financial constraints, what on earth is wrong with charging for that service? Why does the Secretary of State suggest that there is something wrong with it and why—I can probably guess—does a local Conservative MP choose to describe it as a stealth tax? I would have thought that it was anything but stealthy. I think that Ministers need to think about their attitude towards this.

One particular area of charging which is, and always will be, controversial is parking. Earlier this year, the Department for Transport carried out a public consultation on local authority parking strategies. I think that if there is one subject that should be left to local authorities, it is parking; nevertheless, the Government, and the Department for Transport in particular, have carried out that consultation. At this stage, I am not going to start a debate on parking but the end of the consultation document states:

“A summary of responses, including the next steps, will be published within three months of the consultation closing”.

The consultation closed on 14 February. The analysis of the results and the next steps should have been with us before 14 May. I looked on the website last night to see that the results are still being analysed. I have seen quite a lot of the results. I suspect that the analysis is not taking very long. Probably what is taking a little more time is what the next steps will be. I do not suppose the Minister is likely to tell us those next steps this afternoon or will drop just a few hints, particularly about the use of CCTV cameras, which is causing much concern. If nothing else, perhaps she will tell us when we will have the analysis of the results and, even better, when the Government will decide on the next steps. Best of all, will they decide that it is best left to local authorities to decide for themselves?

The greatest welcome from local government for this Queen’s Speech is that there is no significant local government legislation in it, although a number of Bills, such as the Deregulation Bill and the Infrastructure Bill, are of particular interest. As has been said several times already today and no doubt will be said many times more, our real interest is in the Queen’s Speech after the next Government have been elected. We will see from whoever is in government whether they have a commitment to the devolution of power, which must mean a devolution of revenue raising and spending, and whether that really will be in the next Queen’s Speech.

I conclude with the comment that, based on the election results two weeks ago and most opinion polls for a long time now, the party most likely to be in government in a year’s time is the Liberal Democrats.

Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Tope Excerpts

Wednesday 27th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, as this is the first time I have spoken at this stage I, too, must again declare my interest as a member of a local planning authority in London. Briefly, I echo the sentiments of both my noble friends who have just spoken; even though they started by disagreeing with each other, in effect they are saying the same thing. I recall recognising at Second Reading that the Minister is well known for listening, and saying that on this occasion I hoped that she would not only listen, characteristically, but hear and be able to act accordingly. I am grateful that she has indeed listened and heard and that we have these welcome amendments. I rather gather that the government amendments are being welcomed on all sides of the House. While not making this clause perfection, they have certainly improved it considerably.

In saying that, I have had the chance only to have a very quick look at the consultation results, which we received fairly late yesterday. I am a little surprised that there is so much support for the proposals in Clause 1, including from local authorities. I cannot help wondering whether, if we were to consult now—I am not suggesting that we should—on Clause 1 as it is likely to read after today, we might see even better results. With the reassurances that have been, and I think still will be, given on it, Clause 1 has been made far less onerous than when we first looked at it. I welcome the movement from the Government and their amendments before us today. They do not go as far as some of us would wish but they go considerably further than we might have hoped at an earlier stage and we on these Benches certainly welcome them.

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, we are running slightly out of order so, with the leave of the House, I will speak now and the noble Lord can respond after me.

I am glad that most noble Lords have had an opportunity to see the consultation. I made it clear in Committee that I would try to ensure that the consultation responses, at least, were available to the House, and that is what we have done. It would be fair to say, as the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, has done, that with any consultation parts are agreed and parts disagreed. If I did not misunderstand my noble friend Lord True, he suggested that we might dismiss anything that had come in from a local authority. I can assure him categorically that that is not the situation.

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Moved by

[Lord Tope]

2: Clause 1, page 1, line 10, at end insert—
“(aa) the local planning authority has been given 12 months prior notice by the Secretary of State ahead of their designation for the purposes of this section.”

[Lord Tope]

Amendment 2 will have the effect of giving a 12-month period between a local planning authority being identified as performing poorly and the time when it may become designated. In Committee I suggested 18 months, my noble friend Lord Greaves suggested 12 months and we did not need to argue over that. I have settled on 12 months because part of the Government’s argument against the amendment at that time was that 18 months was too long.

There is a slightly different approach towards Clause 1 and designation. The Government have said that they want Clause 1 as a deterrent to local authorities. I prefer to see Clause 1 as an incentive. There is an important difference in thinking: a deterrent is something negative which implies punishment at the end if you do not comply, whereas I see incentive as encouragement, something positive, to seek to improve. That is what the Government seek to achieve as well. They are not out to punish local planning authorities—that has become very clear during the course of the many debates on this clause. They are seeking improvement too.

I suggest that there should be a 12-month period from the time when a local planning authority becomes aware that its performance is poor enough to warrant possible designation. It should then have the time to take the necessary actions itself, if it can, to bring about the necessary improvements, to join with others in a peer-led improvement, on which the Local Government Association—of which I am not a vice-president—has a very good track record and which I know the Government have appreciated on many occasions. It also gives time for the Government and others to assess the direction of travel of that local planning authority. If it is improving at a significant rate, then to designate it at the end of that period would seem to be an unnecessary punishment. We should, rather, stimulate with greater encouragement.

This amendment is brought forward in good faith in the hopes of further helping the Government to achieve their objectives. The Planning Minister, Mr Boles, has said that he hopes that neither he nor any future Government will ever have need to use the provisions in Clause 1 because local planning authorities will have improved their performance and it will be unnecessary. The amendment allows a sufficient and reasonable time period to enable local authorities to bring that about themselves without suffering the punishment of designation.

I hope that when the Minister replies she will spell out how the Government see this as an incentive to improve, not a punishment to be inflicted for poor performance. When we look at the process in more detail we can see how that is being achieved. I beg to move.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Tope, in Committee on a similar amendment proposing a period of 18 months. The intention is to give early warning to local authorities, so that they have an opportunity to improve with the help of other local authorities, the LGA, and possibly even the Government.

The thrust of the amendment is entirely reasonable. We suspect that the Government’s response will be that authorities will know in good time. Designation will be based on two years’ data and authorities will know the results of the first of these years. If they are failing the criteria for year 1, the danger signals will be there for the end of year 2. Councils will be able to seek to improve. This does not address the position at the start of the scheme where, before the ink is dry on the legislation, the die will effectively be cast.

At a recent meeting, which was kindly organised with the Planning Minister, it was hinted that there might be some easement in the early period. Perhaps the Minister will tell us whether there are any such developments. In any event, on an ongoing basis, knowing in year 2 that year 1 criteria have not been met may not give the local planning authority sufficient time to improve. Improvement may in part depend on the nature of any new applications. Tardy dealing with the major development submitted in year 1 may affect the data for year 2. For a small local planning authority, staff sickness and the timescales to recruit new staff are factors which anyway could mean that a local authority has insufficient time to turn things around by the end of year 2.

If the objective is to encourage sustainable improvement in local planning authorities, the rigid application of the criteria could be counterproductive. The noble Lord’s amendment seems to give an opportunity of improving that situation under these arrangements. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Tope, that if we do not get a satisfactory answer from the Minister today, he should consider testing the opinion of the House on this proposition.

That leads to our Amendment 15, which requires the serving of a notice of intention to designate but then, crucially, a chance for a local planning authority to make representations as to why designation would be inappropriate—not for an extensive period but for just four weeks in this case. We know that the Government will argue for the importance of transparency and certainty in the process but they should also recognise that a range of factors could affect the timeliness of dealing with applications—difficult development, statutory consultees, extended and iterative community consultation, to name but a few. It might be argued that anyone served with a prospective designation notice is bound to make representations but of course not all will be justified.

In any event, at a recent meeting, we heard from the Planning Minister that although the number of likely local planning authorities to be designated has crept up—I think that he suggested 20—that surely is not too large a group for there to be the opportunity to make representations. We should think of the damage to and the demotivation of a planning team which gets designated through no genuine reasons that it could influence.

Perhaps I may again take the noble Baroness back to our deliberations in Committee when she said:

“There are usually reasons why planning applications are delayed, and one may be that an application will take longer than the normal consultation period. Before an authority is designated, it will be allowed to put that view forward and say that it has not been able to deal with certain applications because it has agreed that the process will take longer, or there may be some other reason. A portcullis will not just come down; discussions and explanations will be possible”.—[Official Report, 22/1/13; col. 1032.]

That seems to be pretty clear and suggests that there should be scope for precisely what the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Tope, and our Amendment 15 seek. Unfortunately, from all that we have heard so far, it seems as though the portcullis will just come down and that there will be no stay of execution on this.

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[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I have two bits of comfort, if I can voice it like that. First, I think that local authorities that are in the designated zone will be very aware that they are and the Local Government Association is well prepared now to help them. Secondly, the figures that they can see at present may make them feel at risk once they have done that, but they can then approach the Local Government Association for help to see whether they can improve their figures going up to October.

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, for his support so far and I am grateful to the Minister. The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, said, in urging me to consider testing the opinion of the House, that we would have to listen very carefully to what the Minister had to say. I am grateful to the Minister for spelling out the whole process so fully and thoroughly. We will all want to look at it a little more carefully and read it in Hansard tomorrow, but it seems to me that she has gone a long way towards meeting the intentions of my amendment.

As I believed to be the case, she has confirmed that the intention is to seek improvement and not to punish. She has confirmed that it will be a sector-led approach, that discussions have taken place with the Local Government Association and that it will fully co-operate, help, support and lead that. She has rightly said that those authorities that are likely to be at risk under the criteria, which, as she rightly says, are set at a very low threshold, already know that they are at risk. I believe that, since the Bill was published last autumn, those authorities that feel themselves to be at risk are already showing some significant signs of improvement.

I feel that the Minister has accepted the intentions of my amendment; indeed, she has accepted almost everything but the words themselves. Having achieved that much, I feel that it is right and proper at this stage to beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 2 withdrawn.

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[Lord Tope]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Shipley and I have added our names to Amendment 13, to which the noble Lord, Lord True, has spoken. I strongly echo all that he has said; indeed, I think we find ourselves so much in agreement that our respective council groups will be getting very alarmed by our togetherness. I will not repeat what he has said or what the noble Lord, Lord Deben, has said, with which I also strongly agree.

I want to use this amendment and this opportunity to return to the position in Greater London, about which I spoke in Committee. At that time, I pointed out that the Mayor of London—the office, not the post-holder—is responsible for strategic planning in London; that the mayor is elected and democratically accountable both to the elected London Assembly and to the electorate of London; and that if any London planning authority was unfortunate enough to find itself designated, it would surely be far more appropriate and satisfactory for the Mayor of London to take the place of the Planning Inspectorate, with his far greater level of local London knowledge.

In reply, the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, said:

“We gave the reassurance that applications of potential strategic importance would be notified to the mayor very quickly once they had been received by the Planning Inspectorate, so that he will be able to act immediately should he wish to intervene”.—[Official Report, 22/1/13; col. 1101.]

He described that as a more practical approach than having the mayor, in effect, taking the place of the Planning Inspectorate in London. That sounded reasonable and reassuring in theory, but I want to use this amendment to understand better how it is intended that that would work in practice. Will it happen through regulation or through some form of gentlemen’s agreement —and who knows, one day the mayor might not be a gentleman? To what extent will the mayor be able to take responsibility for dealing with the appropriate applications in London when an authority has been designated and, if it is still PINS, what notice will PINS take of what the mayor, with that responsibility, has to say?

I think the Minister is aware that I was going to raise these points. I seek clarification for me, the mayor and the mayor’s office, who are similarly not sure whether or not to feel reassured.

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I hope I can be reassuring on all the aspects that have been raised. We are fully aware of the necessity to ensure that residents and local communities are involved in any planning application. In any planning application process, effective community involvement is essential. It is a priority that we have been pursuing vigorously through the various planning reforms.

In Committee, I tried to be clear that we will ensure, through secondary legislation, that there is no reduction in the rights of communities to become involved where applications are made directly to the Secretary of State. Let me go into that a little further. There will be no dilution of the legislative safeguards to enable communities to become aware of applications made to the Secretary of State, to comment on them and to have their views taken into account; nor will any less weight be given to their views on the planning issues involved.

Indeed, the existing primary legislation will require a planning inspector, when making a decision on such an application, to take all material considerations into account, just as a local planning authority would. The decision would have to be made in accordance with the development plan unless there are any material considerations that indicate otherwise. Again, that is no different from the approach that a local planning authority would have to take. The local authority will, of course, be able to put its own representations to the Planning Inspectorate with regard to the application.

It was a major element of the Localism Bill that there should be pre-planning discussions, and we expect those to take place as well. This is not a fast process from that point of view. You would expect pre-planning discussions to take place before the application was lodged, because otherwise they are not worth having. That aspect will still continue. We are trying to ensure that the important protections in town and national planning policy are taken fully into account, whether the decision is made by a planning inspector on behalf of the Secretary of State or by the local planning authority.

Through secondary legislation, we will ensure that the relevant documents for applications made directly to the Secretary of State are made available at the offices of the local planning authority as well as on the planning inspector’s website. I can also confirm that our intention is that there should be short local hearings. The noble Lord, Lord Tope, asked whether hearings and discussions would be held to consider the views of key parties where a case has raised issues that should be considered in public. I hope noble Lords will understand that we are very anxious that local communities are not excluded from this process and that it is as transparent, as it would be were the local planning authority dealing with it.

My noble friend Lord Tope raised the question of the Mayor of London. Schedule 1 allows the Mayor of London to retain his ability to call in any applications of potential strategic importance for the capital where an application is made directly to the Secretary of State. To ensure that the mayor is made aware of any such application as swiftly as possible, the Planning Inspectorate will make an immediate assessment of whether any application it receives falls into this category. If it does, it will notify the mayor’s office without delay and he can then decide whether he needs or wants to call in the application for his own decision. I hope that addresses the point made by my noble friend.

The Town and Country Planning Act makes specific provision for parish councils to be notified of proposals in their area. It was a point made by the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, and the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, neither of whom are in their places today. I reassure them that parish councils will have to be notified of proposals in their area where they have notified the planning authority that they wish to be kept informed. It is voluntary as far as they are concerned.

I have two amendments in this group. Amendment 17 responds to the point made by the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, which I have just discussed, and will make it a statutory requirement for the Secretary of State to inform parish councils of any applications that affect them, provided that they have asked to be notified of the applications, which seems reasonably fair. Amendment 19 makes a minor consequential change to Schedule 1.

In the light of what I have said, while I understand and sympathise with the intention behind the amendments put forward by the noble Lords, Lord True, Lord Tope, Lord Shipley and Lord McKenzie, and spoken to very supportively by my noble friend Lord Deben, I do not think that these additional changes are necessary to ensure that effective community involvement is seriously taken into account where applications are made to the Secretary of State. As I have said, we will ensure that secondary legislation requires the same degree of consultation with communities as primary legislation, which sets out the requirements that apply when applications are made to the local planning authority. We will of course ensure that the House has an opportunity to consider the secondary legislation that deals with these matters when the time for that is ripe.

With those assurances, I ask the noble Lords not to press their amendments.

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[Lord Deben]

My Lords, I remain uncertain as to the value of this clause but I am clear that the Government, particularly my noble friend, have done a great deal to allay the real and immediate anxieties that we have had. I am sad that the Government put her in this position. The changes that she has made could perfectly well have been part of the Bill in the first place. There are other things in it on which I am not sure that we have yet reached the kind of accommodation that will be necessary if they are not to do serious harm. We shall come to those later.

This is now a better clause after the assurances and changes that have been made. The clause to which the noble Lord, Lord Judd, has jut referred is the clause with which we started. We are not discussing that but one that has been amended and clothed by the explanations and references that the Minister has put before us. I hope that others will recognise the sterling work that she has done to get us into this position and perhaps in future we can be a little more careful about how we produce the Bill in the first place. Many of our discussions could have been prevented, in the proper sense of that word, by more care in its drafting and with thought over how one proceeds in a House with sufficient numbers who do not speak from a party political point of view but who have some experience of how these things work out in practice. I hope that this may serve as a warning and a reminder that Bills carefully prepared at the outset are less likely to take time to pass through.

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, I am inclined to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Deben, but then to speculate that if that perfect world existed what function would we be left with?

Three months ago I would have had little, probably no, hesitation in joining the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie. When first published, this clause was really the antithesis of localism, which we spend so much time debating. It was clearly centralist and unsatisfactory. Even after some welcome reassurances on Report in the other place, at Second Reading, I still felt that it was unacceptable.

In moving his amendment, the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, acknowledged that the Minister had moved “a little”, I think his precise words were. That was uncharacteristically ungenerous of him. The Government have moved very substantially on this clause. I have not become an enthusiast for it but I acknowledge that pressure from all sides of this House, some excellent work by the Minister and her colleagues, and other Ministers who have been prepared to listen and hear—to echo my earlier words—have made this clause very much less harmful than it might have been. We have criteria, which will be subject to parliamentary approval, proposed at a very low threshold that, as set now, would catch, if that is the right word, few local planning authorities. We have a process whereby local planning authorities will have good warning of when they are at risk and ample opportunity to improve.

We have heard that that improvement will be sector-led and that the LGA has been in discussions and is prepared to work with local planning authorities at risk and to help them reach the necessary improvements so that they do not become designated. If after all that a local planning authority is performing so badly, it probably deserves to be designated. We are looking at an incentive to improve and not a deterrent to punish. I believe that after the criteria that we have put in place, and the provisos and reassurances that we have had, very few local planning authorities will actually get designated. I understand why the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, fears that, at least in part, that may in part be because the quality of decision-making is reduced particularly to meet timescales, or, to be less particular, on important issues such as design.

We will have to see, but given how few local planning authorities currently would meet the criteria for designation, I am not too worried about that. If it looks to be the case, we will have to tackle that, but I am not too worried. As I said previously, if at the end of this process the local planning authority is still so bad that it meets the criteria for designation, that may very well be the last resort that has to be taken, but even when we get to designation we should remember that major planning applications will not be required to go PINS; that will be the choice of the developer. The local situation may be so bad that the developer makes that choice, but my guess is that in most cases the developer would still prefer to stay local and stay working with a local planning authority, where by that stage no doubt the relationship would be far from perfect, but there would still be a relationship.

I start to wonder whether this clause—not that it is undesirable—may not be necessary and whether the Planning Minister’s hope and aspiration that it will never be necessary to use it may well come about. Like my noble friends, I have been reassured during the process of the Bill and, perhaps unlike the noble Lord, Lord Deben, I am pleased that we have been able to go through the process, although I would rather not have been in that place in the first place. On that basis, I am prepared to accept the Government’s wish to have this clause as an incentive not a deterrent to encourage those local planning authorities whose performance is far from perfect—and we all acknowledge that they exist—to improve themselves.

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I think my noble friends Lord True and Lord Tope for their encouraging words and for their recognition of the amount of work that has been done in this House—and we should acknowledge the fact that the House has played a very important part in the changes that we have been able to make in this Bill. I understand that there are still real concerns about it, and the noble Lord, Lord Judd, referred again to localism. This is not an issue of localism but of ensuring that local people get a proper planning service and that local developers get a proper result from the applications that they put forward.

This is not a measure that we take lightly. It is something that we are very serious about because we believe it to be both necessary and appropriate. We are very clear—and I want to emphasise this—that planning decisions should continue to be made locally wherever possible but, as I have emphasised throughout our discussions on this clause, we should be prepared to act where standards have fallen to a wholly unacceptable level. Noble Lords will agree that the criteria that they are working to at the moment would constitute being at a wholly unacceptable level. That is no different from the approach that previous Administrations have taken, and I have pointed out how the criteria were adopted by schools, hospitals and other services under previous Governments. We should be prepared to do the same for planning, not least because of the role that it plays in supporting growth as well as being an important community service in its own right.

We listened carefully to the arguments made in Committee, and the amendments that we have brought forward put beyond doubt that this measure can be used only where it is clear that performance is inadequate and that the ability to apply directly to the Secretary of State will be open only to those seeking approval for major development. We have defined that, too. As my noble friend Lord Deben said, the choice of where this application is heard will still be in the hands of the developers; it is their option to go to the Planning Inspectorate if they are not happy having the application heard by a designated council, but they do not have to. They can leave the application and have it heard in the normal way by the council, if that is their choice. I agree, too, that some developers work very closely in particular areas and therefore have a relationship that is wholly proper with their local authorities.

I also indicated that Parliament will have the opportunity to consider again the criteria for designating authorities before they are finalised and before any changes are made to them in future, if they are to be made. By using transparent criteria, with data published on a regular basis, planning authorities will be clear about whether their performance needs to improve to avoid designation, and through the support package that we have been discussing with the LGA we hope and expect that the number of designations in future will be very limited indeed.

Of course, we also anticipate that the mere existence of this measure will encourage timely and well considered decisions by planning authorities and so avoid the need for designations. I do not accept the argument that local authorities will now rush around trying to get planning decisions through in 13 weeks to escape or grind up slightly from the percentage that might hit the criteria. We have made it clear that they do not need to rush; they need to make a very focused effort on plans. If there are reasons why the planning applications cannot go forward in the normal timescale, then the planning agreement signed and agreed between the local authority and the developer will be recognised as the reason why it has taken longer than normal.

For those authorities that are designated, we are clear that we are not removing any powers from them in any way. The Secretary of State is intervening in only a very marginal area.

The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, referred to the planning and development grant. I point out to him, as I am sure he knows, that planning fees have increased by 15%, and there has been an extra contribution to local authorities from that point of view.

I believe that this clause remains a necessary measure, albeit one of last resort. We have put beyond doubt how it may be used, and thought carefully about an approach to assessing performance that is fair, transparent and minimises any risk of perverse outcomes. My noble friends Lord True, Lord Tope, Lord Deben and Lord Judd—well, the noble Lord, Lord Judd, is a friend, but not in this instance—have underlined what I have been saying. There is a need for this, however limited the need may be. I ask the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, to withdraw his amendment; if he does not and he presses it to a Division, I ask the House to reject it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, these amendments set out procedural steps to reflect the existing mayoral planning powers on applications of strategic importance in London. They are therefore in line with the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Tope and supported by my noble friend Lord Jenkin and the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, in Committee.

We are proposing that the mayor should be notified of applications under Section 106BA relating to planning consents on which he was formally consulted, and that he should have the right to submit evidence on the viability of to those applications if he wishes. To ensure that decisions are made in a timely manner, we have set tight timescales for the Mayor of London to notify and submit representations to the authority. The mayor will have seven days from the day the application was received by the authority to notify it of whether he wants to make representations. The mayor will then have 14 days from the day the application was received by the authority to submit representations, or such other time as agreed between the authority and the applicant. The local planning authority will have an additional seven days to determine any application to which this amendment applies. That is to reflect the additional time needed to work with the Greater London Authority. I hope noble Lords will welcome the amendments we are proposing and I beg to move.

[Lord Tope]

I very much welcome these amendments. I thank the Minister for listening, hearing and acting.

Amendment 24 agreed.

Local Government Finance Bill

Lord Tope Excerpts

Thursday 19th July 2012 Grand Committee

I am now an unabashed supporter of localism and at our last sitting my noble friend Lord Deben, if I may say so, made a tremendously powerful speech on that subject. He was a very much better Secretary of State for the Environment than I was and I listened to him with fascination. However, that is my view too and I utterly support it. It is quite inconsistent for the Government to be taking these centralised powers, over even such things as how the transitional arrangements are introduced. Is that necessary? Yes, this is a probing amendment but please could we have an answer? I think what we are all looking forward to is the answer to the fascinating proposals from the noble Lord, Lord Best, about the level of the single person benefit.

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, my name is with that of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, on the amendments to which he has spoken and I endorse all that he has said in speaking to them. I also endorse strongly what he said in relation to the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Best, to which I am extremely sympathetic. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, is right to say that the noble Lord, Lord Best, has made a powerful case. Perhaps I might also reflect on what the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, said in his conclusion. I certainly do not want to adjudge who might or might not have been the best Secretary of State for the Environment—I am not going into such dangerous territory—but he is absolutely right in his enthusiasm for localism. Localism means that you have to trust local authorities. Inevitably, some local authorities will sometimes take decisions with which many of us might disagree, but that is also what localism means.

We had what I thought was a very helpful letter this week from the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, to the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, which answered many of the points that were made in our session on 10 July. In the noble Earl’s letter of 16 July, he said that,

“the very point of localisation is that it is the council who has the greatest insight into council tax payers in its area, their ability to pay council tax and should take these decisions”.

Before that he said:

“Local authorities will be able to take their own decisions about the design of schemes”.

Elsewhere in the letter he says that local authorities,

“are best placed to take decisions about who should receive support”.

That really makes the case for our amendments and perhaps I should just sit down, saying that the Minister has made the point for us. That is at the heart of this argument. If we are to have localisation of council tax support—there are varying degrees of enthusiasm for that although I think we all accept that it is to happen—then that is what we should have. However, paragraph 2(8) of Schedule 4 gives the Secretary of State power to make regulations prescribing requirements for schemes. Paragraph 2(9) mentions all the things that those regulations may cover, including prescribing,

“classes of person which must or must not be included in a scheme”.

It has been made very clear that the Secretary of State intends to prescribe that people of pensionable age will be excluded from this. That may or may not be right, but to me that does not meet the test of localism set out very fully by the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, in his letter. In no way does that leave local authorities best place to take decisions about who should receive support and in no way does it recognise that local authorities are in the best position to judge what is appropriate for the needs and circumstances of their area.

I do not think that we should be debating here whether pensioners or any other group of vulnerable people should, or should not, be protected if we believe that it is localism. That is a decision for local authorities that are best placed to judge the circumstances in their local area. If we mean localisation, I do not think that is a decision for Parliament or the Government. That is a consequence of localisation. If the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, were here now, she would probably be feeling a little agitated. We need to recognise that as a consequence and know where those decisions are to be taken.

The noble Lord, Lord Best, has raised the very important issue of the single person’s discount. I very much agree, not that Parliament or the Government should take that decision, but that the local authority should be given the flexibility to consider that in their armoury when dealing with this issue, just as they will have the very welcome flexibility with empty homes and second homes, the single person’s discount, part of which, of course, is recognising that council tax is not just a property tax but, in a small part, is a personal tax. That flexibility would be very important indeed. I hope that the Government will give very serious consideration to that during the coming month or two before Report stage.

When considering this sort of legislation, we always have to consider, not what the situation is now, but what it will be for the lifetime of the Bill that we will eventually enact. We will not have forever the present Secretary of State with his very well known commitment to localism and his benevolent approach to these matters. One day, there may be another Secretary of State—who knows, that day may not be so far off—who takes a less benevolent approach. It is to that future Secretary of State that we are giving pretty well unfettered powers to do whatever he or she may choose to do with this scheme, to impose it on local authorities, with no requirement even to consult. That, as my noble friend Lord Jenkin said, is the least modest requirement of Amendment 82A.

Amendments 88B and 88D, also in my name, as he rightly said, are probing amendments. I think he made the case on those very well indeed. As they are probing amendments, I look forward to hearing the results of our probe when the Minister replies. The key issue before us in this debate is what do we really mean by localisation and localism and do we really trust local authorities with the armoury of powers available to them to make those decisions without the benevolent eye of the Secretary of State telling them what they can and cannot do.

Local Government Finance Bill

Lord Tope Excerpts

Monday 16th July 2012 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Lytton]

I rise simply to refer to the points that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, made. I attended the excellent meeting that he convened with London Councils. Its views on the problems of the lead-in time for dealing with IT have been corroborated by the views of the Institute of Revenues Rating and Valuation. Larger authorities might well have significant IT capability in their own right, but that cannot be said of all authorities, and I think that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, was saying that while some authorities are clearly getting on with the work, others will lag behind until a package is available to them. That is where the fear is.

In the period leading up to when an authority has a useable IT system, there is a question of a brief, and possibly of tendering and commissioning. A programme has to be written, or there has at any rate to be some sort of alteration to an existing programme, which has to be tested, and the staff have to be trained. At the moment, we are right on the edge of the summer holiday period when a lot of people are likely to be away and capacity in all areas of commercial endeavour, not least in the IT world, will be challenged. I simply echo what the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, said and ask the Minister whether any investigation has been done on the realities of preparing the IT, bearing in mind that all local government finance is heavily dependent on it. What reassurances can the Minister give the Committee?

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, my name originally appeared on Amendments 78 and 79, and I am concerned that it still appears on Amendments 85 and 88A. That was a mistake. To the extent that I may have had a part in that, I apologise to your Lordships. I do not support postponement and had never intended my name to appear on amendments in this group. I want to say why. I am pleased that we are having the debate. This is important, so a debate on the amendments is necessary.

Had the Government been minded in, say, May or April, while the Bill was in the other place, to postpone the implementation day, I would not have been too unhappy. Indeed, I would probably have been happier if they had abandoned this part of the Bill altogether, but that was not to be. I might have been happier for that to happen provided that the £500 million reduction was also going to be postponed. That, of course, was never going to happen—and we knew that. I have therefore always been at best ambivalent about postponement. That was certainly an earlier view generally across local government. I do not for one moment claim to speak for all local government, but that of which I have any knowledge and contact broadly does not support postponement, for some of the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, alluded to when speaking to the amendments in his name.

Let us deal first with the issue of software. Back in February, when the Local Government Chronicle article was written, there was certainly considerable concern, not least among the suppliers, about whether the software could and would be completed in time. We all know that the record on IT systems has not always been perfect. I hope that the Minister, who must be better informed than me, will be able to comment on this, but my understanding—both from my direct knowledge of my own authority and one or two others that I know a bit about, but more particularly through the LGA, which has been in discussions with the software suppliers—is that that concern is considerably less now than it was in February or more recently. As much as anyone is brave enough to be confident before these things are done, there is no longer the level of concern and alarm about the issue that there once was. However, I speak only with limited knowledge and not with any personal authority. I hope that the Minister can assure us on that very particular point.

The other concern, quite rightly, is whether local authorities would have all the information that they needed before preparing and consulting on their draft scheme. I hope, as the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, said, that the Minister will reassure us about the information that is not yet published. Much of it is already published and more is to be published this week, perhaps even today, but I have not been able to keep up with that. The noble Lord referred to the autumn. Let us say that by the time we return in October, all the necessary information will have been published as completely as it can be before enactment.

In view of that, we once again look at being where we are rather than where we might wish we were. Quite a number of authorities, including my own, have accepted that it is going to happen in April and have drawn up a consultation scheme. My own authority agreed its consultation scheme in June with all-party agreement—which, in my authority’s case, is both-party agreement—and is now out to consultation on that scheme. Later, our neighbouring authority of Kingston did the same and drew up a slightly different scheme, and that scheme is out for consultation.

I know that many other local authorities are in a similar position—we might wish we were not, but we are. The process is now under way. The considerable work under pressure that has been alluded to, quite correctly, is now under way. My personal view, and the impression I have from those with whom I am in touch, is that at this stage we would not welcome postponement. We might have done a month or two ago or even a few months ago, but at this stage we are so far down the road that we need to accept that this is going to happen. There are different views about that, but we are well down the road on it and we need to get on and make the best we can of it.

Local authorities of all political persuasions generally have a very good record of coping with what is often thought to be impossible, or certainly very difficult, whether that is the front-loading of the budget reductions that we have all experienced or the many other difficult measures. The fact that local authorities quite rightly protest when these measures are proposed and implemented, but when the time comes have to buckle down and deliver, does not mean that they were wrong to protest in the first place. It simply means that local government actually has a very good record of achieving these things. I therefore hope that if this is going to happen in April and proceeds with few, if any, problems, it will not be thought by central government that local government is again crying wolf. It is not; local government is actually getting on and delivering in the way that it always has.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Smith of Leigh]

I remind the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, that the Olympic Games’ security problems were caused because of the outsourcing of security. As the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, reminded us, much of the council tax administration is also outsourced, so that may not augur well for us to get a successful conclusion.

I was interested in the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Tope, about his authority already being out to consultation. I question whether the timing is right. Amendment 73 proposes a change to the consultation, and other amendments might come through, so that the consultation that his authority has undertaken might not be the right one when an amendment is passed. That is the danger of rushing it too early.

I would welcome from the Minister in responding to the debate, in addition to answering the questions asked by my noble friend Lord McKenzie, a timetable for the publication of the Government’s default scheme. That would be helpful.

[Lord Tope]

I agree with the noble Lord, and frankly I was surprised when I saw it in the committee papers back at the beginning of June. However, the way in which my authority worked—and I played no direct part in this—was on the basis that the scheme had to be finalised by the end of January. Therefore, working back from that date, given the committee system that we have now adopted thanks to the Localism Act, it was necessary for the draft consultation to be agreed in committee in June. I am not arguing that it is desirable, and I accept that in the course of the consultation there may well be changes. I am quite sure that at the end of the consultation there will be changes as a result of the consultation, never mind any other changes, but unless local authorities start to get on with it now, they will get into difficulties with the timing. I say to the noble Lord that he may need to look at the timing in Wigan as well.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

The phrase keeps going through my mind, “More haste, less speed”. It is no criticism of local authorities, but we have to remember that devising a means-tested benefit scheme is very complicated. As the Institute for Fiscal Studies pointed out, councils face a difficult task in squaring a number of circles in devising schemes—and my noble friend Lord McKenzie outlined some of those circles and squares earlier. They have little experience or expertise in designing means-tested support schemes, and very little time to do it. It worries me that we are requiring local authorities to rush this process when they have to take account of so many factors in working out their means test, balancing all the different vulnerable groups that they are supposed to take into account while having their latitude squeezed by having to protect pensioners.

My noble friend Lord McKenzie pointed out that councils will have to take account of their child poverty needs assessments because they have a duty under the Child Poverty Act. A recent survey by 4Children found that fewer than half of English local authorities have a child poverty strategy in place, and 35 of those without a strategy do not even have a needs assessment, so presumably before they can work out their council tax benefit scheme they will have to do a child poverty needs assessment, which will slow things down as well. We will go on to talk about some of the other factors that they need to take into account—disabled people, carers and so forth. It really worries me that, all right, they may have schemes in place, but they will then have a year in which local people will be finding all sorts of holes in those schemes. It will not be us who suffer but local people in need.

[Baroness Sherlock]

I want to add one brief comment. If I understood correctly, the noble Lord, Lord Tope, suggested that the Committee should not try to press amendments that would delay the scheme because local authorities have already begun to consult on it. I do not want to overly stress the importance of Parliament, but surely the point of this exercise is for us to get the Bill right. If the Government have placed local authorities in a position where they are asking them to start the scheme so early that they are required to consult before Parliament has finished scrutiny of the Bill, surely that is a problem for us, not for them.

[Lord Tope]

I do not want this to turn into too much of a dialogue, but I said that I welcomed the amendments because it is important that we have this debate. Personally, I do not support them. They will not come to a vote today, but in the unlikely event that they come to a vote in October, which will be a bit late, I will not support them. I am not urging people to press them or not press them. As I said, I actually welcomed the amendments so that we could have the debate. I expressed a view on it, as we all do.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, we have had an interesting discussion on the timing of the implementation of these reforms. As the Committee knows, this reform is about delivering real decentralisation and contributing to deficit reduction—a contribution that must start from 2013.

The funding for the scheme is also a key component of the new business rates retention system. We are not reinventing a whole new system but providing flexibility and not necessarily complexity for councils to deliver a saving and to tailor schemes to their own circumstances with minimal prescription.

In answer to many Members of the Committee, we are building on our statement of intent and we are today publishing two key sets of regulations, particularly about prescribed requirements. Those regulations are coming out today in draft, which will allow councils to press ahead with the implementation without looking over their shoulders to central government prescription. That is why I am confident in saying that councils will be ready to implement these reforms for April 2013.

We need to do everything that we can to allay any concerns. It is interesting to note that experts in local government on this side of the Committee seem to believe that these changes can be implemented, including with the necessary consultation. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, told the Committee that district councils cannot meet the timescale because they need to consult twice.

Local Government Finance Bill

Lord Tope Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, I am happy to confirm that the broad alliance remains intact. We are very happy to support the amendment. The key points have been made. We are in a changed environment where what happens to business rates can have a direct impact on local government and this request is straightforward and honest, as the noble Lord described.

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, I am not sure now whether I am part of an enlarged coalition or a broad alliance, but whatever it is I am pleased to be part of it. I feel comfortable in such a coalition and alliance. My name and that of my noble friend Lord Palmer of Childs Hill have been added to the amendment and we are pleased to support it. The points have been made.

Perhaps I may add one thing. I suspect that it is unlikely that the Minister will stand up in a moment and say, “No, of course the Government will not consult anyone about this; we will just do it”. I do not think that that is going to happen. I am sure that we will receive reassurance that consultations would take place. I expect that we would have reassurance that the results of the consultation would be taken carefully into account. However, it is the next stage that also concerns many local authorities, and it certainly concerns me. If, as is very likely, there are financial implications from any such policy changes, the reassurance that I should like from the Minister is that the cost and effect of such policy changes will be fully funded by the Government, either anyway or under the new burdens initiative. Frankly, that is one of the key points that we are concerned about—not whether the Government will give us warm words and reassurances about consultation, but whether the effects of any such change will also be fully funded. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, I envisage that “all interested parties” will include business. However, for the avoidance of doubt it would be helpful if—assuming that the Minister gives her blessing to the amendment in one form or another—she would confirm that that is the case. Clearly, since the rationale of the proposal in the first place is to incentivise local government and its business development policy, however valid that may be, it would make sense to involve business in any consultation about changes to the policy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

My Lords, I had not planned to speak to the amendment, but my noble friend Lady Sherlock raised a question about whether universal credit would be treated as income or not for the means test for local schemes. I am one of those sad people who has spent some of my weekend reading House of Commons Hansard Written Answers, and I have the answer for her. Stephen Timms asked the same question, and the answer was:

“Local authorities will be free to design their own scheme for localised support for working age people in their area. This includes being able to design any means test they wish to include, and deciding on what that test should and should not take account of”.—[Official Report, Commons, 2/7/12; col. 414W].

Going back to what my noble friend Lady Hollis of Heigham said, what local factor could possibly make it fair for one area to include universal credit as income and fair for another not to do so? It makes absolutely no sense at all. Every local authority, unless it goes for the default scheme, will be reinventing the wheel over and over again, working out their own means test. People will see absolutely no fairness in it whatsoever. It makes no sense not to have a national scheme.

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, there are a rather large number of people here who must have been council leaders during the period of the poll tax—as, indeed, I was. I do not want to rehearse much of what has been said about that period except to say that, in my local authority a few years before the poll tax was introduced, we had 47 Conservative councillors and three Liberal Democrat councillors. By the time we had moved to the council tax, we had 47 Liberal Democrat councillors and four Conservatives. The five remaining Labour councillors were astonished to find themselves the principal opposition. So some good did come from the poll tax.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

Only on the localist agenda.

[Lord Tope]

Only in a localist sense. It is fair to say that this issue has divided opinion throughout the country and, certainly, opinion within local government. When the Government’s proposals were first announced as the localisation of council tax benefit—council tax support, as it now is—many of my colleagues in local government were surprisingly enthusiastically supportive of it, perhaps because of the word “localisation”. That is a seductive word for many of us who would quite rightly describe ourselves as localists; I am very much one of those. I said in the Second Reading debate, and say again, that others including myself have thought throughout this that it properly belongs with universal credit. That is my personal view; it is not shared by all colleagues in my party. To be fair, it is not shared by all colleagues in any party. It divided local government. The Local Government Association still supports the localisation of council tax support in principle, with increasing reservations. On the other hand, London Councils, to which my authority belongs, has always opposed the move. Let us not pretend that there is one universal belief about all of this.

I cannot help feeling that today we are having a Second Reading debate that actually happened last year rather than in relation to this Bill. I know that this was much debated—and others here know much better than me; they experienced it—during the passage of the Welfare Reform Bill. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, is almost certainly right to say that it was an argument between the DWP and DCLG, the outcome of which we are here today to discuss. I feel now that we have to move on.

The reality is, whatever our dire predictions may be—and I have to say dire predictions that it will be “just like the poll tax” are exaggerated; I cannot know that, nor can anyone else here, but I do not think it will be that bad—it will pose some real difficulties for local authorities. We have heard mention already of the difficulties experienced under poll tax, and in other situations, by local authorities having to attempt to collect relatively small debts, particularly from people who have not previously been paying council tax, and for whom paying it is not the norm or part of the culture. Whether or not these predictions are exaggerated, only time will tell. I think they possibly are but then I joined the Liberal Party in the 1960s—I am an optimist. We wait to see.

As we say so often, we are where we are. This is what is going to happen, and what we need to do today and in future proceedings on this Bill is to see how we can mitigate the very worst effects of what is proposed in it and the accompanying regulations. It was inevitable that we were going to have this Second Reading-style debate now, but we need to move on and accept that, whether we like it or not, we have to implement what is to come in the best way possible. I hope and believe that we will have a constructive debate on how we are going to achieve that.

One of the worst aspects of all of this is actually calling it the localisation of council tax support. Frankly, I do not believe it is localisation; it is passing a scheme to local administration. It is the worst of all worlds. I am sorry to say this to my noble friends: it is not localisation, it is not moving to local authorities the right to determine the schemes for themselves; it is passing them a very prescribed scheme, together with a £500 million reduction. We will not debate the need for that reduction today; I think there are better ways of achieving that, but again that is what is going to happen and this is the way it is to be done.

There is extremely qualified support from me for what my Government are trying to do. I have to speak honestly about that but I hope that from now on we can discuss how we can make it better—or, if Members opposite prefer, less bad.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, perhaps my noble friend should have spoken after me.

[Lord Tope]

I was trying to offer some guidance.

[Lord Greaves]

My noble friend was looking for some guidance? He might get some. My noble friend said that the role of this Committee is to look for ways of mitigating what I believe is going to be a potentially disastrous situation. He is right, of course, but before we can understand how to mitigate it, we have to understand what some of the problems are going to be and the effect this policy is going to have.

My noble friend is right in saying that it is not going to be as bad as the poll tax. It only causes one of the problems the poll tax caused, not the two main problems—certainly in my part of the world—and it is not going to affect as many people. But for the people it does affect, some of the problems are going to be the same.

The poll tax had two basic problems. As has been discussed, one was that it resulted in local authorities having to collect relatively small amounts of money from a lot of people. This was extremely expensive and not cost-effective. The second problem was that for people in the kind of houses that exist in large parts of the north of England and other areas—that is, relatively cheap terraced houses, which had very low rates in the past—the poll tax resulted in a huge increase in what they had to pay. In our area, it increased overnight by three or four times for people who were moving into a new house or an old house like that. That was one reason why people refused to pay it. Another was that it was a poll tax, not a property tax.

I was leader of the council at the time. I had the pleasure of introducing the first poll tax budget in Pendle. The consequence of that was that my party got booted out at that year’s elections, was kept out for another couple of years and I was no longer leader of the council. However, these things go round in circles. There is a new leader of the council now. That is what happened. We should learn from history but people simply do not. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, mentioned the Poor Law of the 1830s and the poll tax. It seems that people simply are not learning the lessons of history here.

The noble Lord, Lord Smith of Leigh, talked about the kind of housing in Wigan, of which we have large amounts in east Lancashire. He is absolutely right. Although we have a relatively high vacancy rate in such properties—perhaps 5% or 6% in some areas—it will be extremely difficult to collect the money from those properties. Again, there is a question of cost-effectiveness. You cannot really send the bailiffs round to an empty house. You have to pursue the owners, who may be in other parts of the country and often are.

I will just put forward one or two facts from my own small district authority that illustrate the problem. All authorities will differ in the proportion of people who fit into different categories and so on, but the basic problems will be similar, certainly in the north of England. At the moment, 10,457 people in total receive council tax benefit. Of those, 42% are pensioners. In some areas the figure is higher—much higher in some—and in some it is lower. In addition, there is the question of identifying vulnerable people, who will also be protected. That in itself will cause a problem to local authorities. There will be different definitions in different authorities, which may be seen as unfair, as the noble Baroness pointed out.

In total, those protected will account for between 40% and 50%. Of the rest who are not pensioners—50% to 58%—the number who are passported claimants of working age is around 64%. That is, of the people of working age who claim council tax benefits, around 64% are passported benefit claimants who get, in most cases, 100%. In other words, around 36% of people—around 2,200 of them—are being means-tested by their local authority. They are the people who are, by and large, being given part-payment. Some get 100% but most get part-payment. That is the sort of scale. They are the people who, between them, will cause problems.

Of those 10,457 people, 8,816 are in properties that are classified as band A for the purposes of council tax. They are mainly terraced houses but some are flats and bungalows and so on. This means that those 58% of people of working age will be lumbered with the whole cost of the 10% reduction if the local authority chooses to pass it on to them by charging them a council tax. If it is all done that way, the council tax benefit reduction under the new scheme will be around 18% for persons of working age. Some of those persons are on benefits. Some are working but, by definition, they are not in a position to pay more tax or to pay tax when they do not at the moment. In any case, if they get housing benefit and so on, they are often already suffering from cuts in what they will receive. So it will not be easy and the collection will be a problem.

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[Lord True]

My Lords, I cannot claim to have been a council leader at the time of the community charge, as I will carry on calling it.

[Lord Tope]

The noble Lord was too young.

[Lord True]

However, in the early 1990s I worked for Sir John Major at No. 10, where one of our main responsibilities was finding an alternative to the community charge. Therefore, I was in a different place but working on the same issue. In many ways I am also in the same place as other noble Lords who have spoken today. I made a number of points at Second Reading that were taken up by noble Lords. I support to a large degree the intellectual case that was put. My noble friend Lord Tope spoke wise words. The Committee must address practically the issues that have arisen. We have all made our position clear. I said at Second Reading and will say again that I would rather we were not here and that the benefit was part of universal credit. However, given the position that the Government are in, we must try to make this work in the best way possible.

This debate has taken on the tone of that on Amendment 1. I agree with some of the analysis, but if the logic is that the burden will go on a narrower and narrower base, and that base will tend to be lower-income working families, we will have to wrestle with these issues very carefully in Committee. A number of amendments suggest all sorts of other exemptions, some defined, some less defined. Some call for the Government to define who the vulnerable are; that is an interesting concept. The risk is that the Committee could make the work incentive situation worse with a well meaning intent to try to protect broad categories of people who obviously deserve our consideration.

I throw that into the discussion because it will be an interesting tension given that we are also told to take it as read—like my noble friend Lord Tope, I accept the position of my Government—that pensioners are to be excluded. However, as my noble friend Lord Greaves and others have said, that of course narrows the ground. In my authority, too, pensioners make up around 44% of claimants and 43% of council tax benefit spending.

I am not going to claim any credit of prior speaking on this. The point is well made; I made it at Second Reading. However, I hope that as we go forward to look at the amendments in detail we will remember that some well meaning amendments might have the perverse effect of making the work incentive situation even worse. I hope that we can now go on to look at the matters in detail.

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[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

Perhaps I misheard the noble Lord. I understood that he was asking the LGA to reconsider its view. He is perfectly entitled to do so, but it is against the background that the association has considered its opinions on this extremely carefully and has made its decision. Of course it is not unanimous; no one is suggesting that it is. If there were unanimity, the millennium would have arrived. In matters of local authority finance, there are many different points of view. Perhaps we may leave it at that.

In speaking to this amendment, I am looking for some assurance from the Government on how they see the future of this structure. Local authorities are anxious that, after the next comprehensive spending review, they will find themselves bearing a significantly larger proportion of the total cost than is envisaged at the moment. If my noble friend could give any assurances on that, I know they will be very well received.

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, I am not a vice-president of the Local Government Association and I certainly do not claim to speak for it. I said in a debate on an earlier amendment that the views of local authorities within the Local Government Association, as most are, have differed on this issue, regardless of political control. There are certainly Labour-majority councils that have supported what they thought was the localisation of council tax. There are some in my own authority. However, as people have come to realise the implications of what we are debating today, that support has become more questioning. I shall put it no more strongly than that. The briefing that I imagine we have all had from the LGA today states:

“The LGA supports the principle of localising responsibility for decisions about the incidence of council tax”.

The question is whether that is what we are getting now but maybe that is for another debate.

I support my noble friend Lord Jenkin. My noble friend Lord Shipley and I have added our names to Amendment 73A, which the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, explained very well. The concern that we address with this amendment is the expectation that, for a range of reasons, the cost of council tax support will increase. More people are likely to claim it because, sadly, they will fall into that category, perhaps because the change in wording from “benefit” to “support” will—wrongly, maybe—encourage more people to feel able to claim it. Therefore it is highly probable that the costs will increase in years to come. We seek from the Government an indication of how they intend to deal with that and, more particularly, an assurance that it will fit under the new burdens doctrine and that the increased costs, assessed annually by the Government, will be met in full in accordance with the doctrine. That is the purport of the amendment in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin. We seek reassurance from the Government.

[Baroness Sherlock]

My Lords, unaccountably I have never been invited to become a vice-president of the Local Government Association—

[Lord Tope]

The noble Baroness is in very good company.

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[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

Particularly pensioners.

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, I said in the previous debate that simply changing the name from council tax benefit to council tax support is likely to increase the number of people who feel able to claim support, having, for whatever reason, felt uncomfortable about claiming benefit. That change alone, which was not produced by local authorities, in intended to increase take-up.

My advice to the Minister is that when in a hole, one should stop digging. We are getting a bit stuck here. I have heard it said by Ministers—although never in this House—that it is necessary to give local authorities an incentive to get more people back to work. I find that both patronising and deeply offensive. Some local authorities are better able to do it and have better circumstances in which to do it. However, I cannot believe that there is a local authority anywhere in the country that would say it has no incentive and does not want to get its local people back into work. Performance may differ greatly but I am sure that the intention is the same. Therefore, we are a bit stuck on this. It is an unanswerable question—as the noble Baroness well knew when she asked it. Perhaps we should spare the Minister his suffering and move on with the rest of the debate.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, on this point, not all eligible pensioners take up their council tax benefit. A number of factors affect the take-up rate. One is the stigma attached to the word “benefit”. That is why the Royal British Legion campaigned for a change in 2009. However, it is just one factor affecting take-up. There are many others, including the complexity of making a claim, people’s confusion about whether they are entitled to it and their aversion to disclosing information in answer to questions that they feel are intrusive. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, is nodding in agreement. In estimating future demand, local authorities will want to consider all these factors together.