Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Lord True and Lord Foster of Bath
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, I declare an interest as leader of a local authority and someone who has sat through a number of hours of proceedings on the Bill. Anyone who has read Hansard will know that my enthusiasm for aspects of it as it first appeared was perhaps a little way short of ecstasy, but it also contains some fundamental and important things that the Government promised in their manifesto and which people in this country want, such as starter homes, the right to buy and many others.
The House needs to find a balance, take part in a parliamentary dialogue and, ultimately, reach an accommodation. In that accommodation, I speak as someone who is elected, albeit as leader of a local authority. There is no doubt that the authority of election is substantial and different. It lies in the authority of the other Chamber and it does not lie in ours.
In the course of the past century, the House of Commons has not succeeded as a parliamentary Chamber capable of legislating as well as it should. That is a problem for the other place and one which the other place alone can resolve. It is because it has failed in that respect that your Lordships’ House has with great distinction developed this role as an advising and revising Chamber, which it has shown with exemplary quality and patience in the course of the Bill.
However, I ask the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, not to press this matter further. This House cannot—it is not constitutional for it and it is not capable of it—construe the view that the other place, the elected House, takes of its own financial privilege. That is a matter entirely for the House of Commons. It is not for us to debate and say, “They won’t think this ventures into their financial privilege; we can get away with something else”. This is a matter for the other place. Twice, the other place has said to this Chamber that the Commons disagrees because it is asserting financial privilege.
The noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, is perfectly within his rights, and no one on this side or from the Government should ever say that a Member of your Lordships’ House is unable to propose an amendment in lieu when the other place has cited its privilege, but there comes a point when you have to say that batting back against the will of the elected House is not a profitable course to follow, either as a collective, as a House, or as an individual. I might give some gentle advice to the noble Lord: if I were seeking admission to the counsels of the Government, I would not necessarily keep shoving back the same thing time and again. I think there are perhaps better ways to proceed.
As the leader of a local authority, I have appreciated some of the many points that the noble Lord made. I wish, in some respects, that the Government had been able to listen on other points, but we are where we are. This is a much improved Bill; that has been acknowledged in the other place by Ministers who have welcomed the amendments that have been made. But now the time has come to accept the will of the elected House on this question. The noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, has had a good run—from the “Today” studio before he even became a Member of this House, through this long Bill. With the greatest respect, it is now time for him to head to the pavilion on this matter.
Lord Foster of Bath (LD)
My Lords, I will not detain the House very long. A passing comment by the noble Lord, Lord True, has caused me to ask the Minister a basic question about financial privilege. The Minister has made it very clear to your Lordships’ House, and even clearer today, that when a higher-value affordable home is sold off, a local authority, should it negotiate with the Secretary of State, will be able to replace it with another property—a one-for-one replacement, or two for one in London.
The Minister has also made it very clear today that, when that takes place, the transaction costs and the cost of building the new property will be made available from the sale figures of the higher-value affordable home. I hope the Minister will confirm that that is definitely the case. Indeed, it covers the first part of the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake. If that is the case, and the Minister has agreed that a new property to replace—not like for like but one for one—will be funded, I am at a loss to understand why the discussion about what the tenure of that property will be makes any difference to the amount of money that will then be left available to pay for the other aspects of government policy.
In the other place, the Minister, Mr Brandon Lewis, said that these proposals,
“would significantly reduce the funding available for the voluntary right to buy, again preventing this Government fulfilling their manifesto commitment. Let me be very clear: this is a wrecking amendment”.—[Official Report, Commons, 9/5/16; col. 461.]
The noble Baroness the Minister has repeated those very words today. I am at a total loss to understand where the loss of money comes from, because she has acknowledged that the building of a new property will be funded. What the tenure is does not alter the building cost. I hope that the noble Baroness can give a very clear explanation of the statement made by the Minister in another place and repeated by her today.
Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Lord True and Lord Foster of Bath
Lord True
My Lords, I follow a very great deal of what has been said by noble Lords opposite. It is absolutely fundamental that it must be right that you get more development and housing by a process of consent than by a process from outside. That is one of my objections to some of the other policies that are around and appear to be more developer-led than development-led, so I agree with that. I think that I should quit while I am ahead in this part of the Bill because, with my authority having been praised by my noble friend on the Front Bench, the kind words of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, and even some from the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, I might risk getting some kind words from the Front Bench opposite.
I have a slight difficulty with the amendment, because it gets into the prescriptive area and slightly snags on the point that I was making on the previous amendment on the Government’s one-club approach. If we put this in statute, it will relate just to the process under the existing legislation. All local authorities should have a duty to involve communities, to put out publicity and to get engagement. My slight worry with these amendments is that, if they fall into the hands of a department of state, we will get regulations that say, “Just publish what we want to do, not what you want to do”. So I support the spirit of the amendments, but I think that it is a duty on local authorities. In our case, we might find ourselves running two parallel publicity arrangements, although we obviously publicise the opportunity to have a neighbourhood forum. For that reason, I could not go along with it, but I fully support the spirit of where the noble Lords opposite are coming from.
Lord Foster of Bath (LD)
My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Lord in what he said, and I hope that in my very brief remarks about neighbourhood planning I can reassure him that in this area there is so much enthusiasm at the local level that central government prescription is not really going to hold sway. That is what is so exciting about what happened with the Localism Act. It really has liberated local communities in so many different ways to take on and run local assets, to take on and run local services and, of course—as we have heard—to introduce neighbourhood planning. I intervene merely to express my huge enthusiasm for neighbourhood planning, to share a couple of experiences and then to ask one simple question of the Minister, which may help provide information to the House that may help us move forward on these issues.
It is worth recording, notwithstanding what my noble friend said a few minutes ago, that we have already seen 126 successful referendums; interestingly, in every single referendum that has taken place the plan has always been passed, which is huge testimony to the work that local communities have done to engage the local community before the plan is finalised and brought to the referendum stage. I acknowledge of course the 10% figure we have heard which relates to the way in which those plans have often led to developments of housing, for instance, far greater than they were in the local plan. I have had the opportunity to see first-hand a number of examples where, as a result of local involvement, things that were perhaps initially not very acceptable to the local community have suddenly been embraced because the community has been involved and engaged in the detailed decision-making process.
In one case there was a plan to have a supermarket in a relatively small town. There was huge opposition to it and a neighbourhood planning group was brought together. Residents discussed what they wanted in the neighbourhood plan and eventually decided that it might be a good idea to have a supermarket after all if they could determine its location, the routes people would use to get to it, the parking arrangements, and so on. Eventually, a supermarket was included in the neighbourhood plan. It has been to a referendum and been accepted, and the supermarket is being built.
Back in February 2013, when I had the opportunity to engage with neighbourhood planning, I and the other Minister involved, Mr Nick Boles, went to a windswept Upper Eden in Cumbria a few days before the first referendum on the first neighbourhood plan was due to take place, when we had an opportunity to talk to councillors and members of the local community. We were under strict instructions from the civil servants that in no way were we to express a view on whether we were for or against the neighbourhood plan, which proved rather difficult for two Ministers who are passionately supportive of the principle. But we more or less stuck by that, although we both left wearing “Yes” badges on our lapels on the way out. It was exciting to see the first plan going through.
The crucial bit, which relates to Amendment 88B, was that only a few weeks following that visit I was able to announce a £9.5 million fund for a two-year period to provide more financial support to communities that wanted to develop a neighbourhood plan. To reflect the point in my noble friend Lord Greaves’s amendment, further money was then made available to give local councils financial support for their work in supporting and dealing with various aspects of neighbourhood planning.
We were also able to announce the establishment of the My Community website, which has subsequently been a very good source of information for people looking to develop their own neighbourhood plan, and after that there was also a scheme to introduce 40 neighbourhood planning champions, many of whom operate up and down the country; they are people who have led their own neighbourhood plan, local councillors, planning officers and so on. Members of your Lordships’ House who are interested in this matter may like to have a look at the recently established website, where these neighbourhood planning champions now share their own experiences and so on.
The reason I intervened, apart from perhaps to show my enthusiasm for neighbourhood planning, was to ask the Minister a very specific question in regard to my noble friend’s Amendment 88. As various pots of money have been made available—initially, for instance, £7,000, now £8,000, potentially with a further addition of £6,000 in difficult areas to support neighbourhood planning development—the Government announced an additional pot of money for pilots for councils to look at best ways of helping to promote neighbourhood planning in their areas. They made £600,000 available and various bids were sought.
Since then, I have been unable to find any further information as to what has happened to that particular pilot scheme. It was designed to help us identify the best way of moving forward in promoting and supporting neighbourhood planning, which is the thrust of my noble friend’s amendment. So I think that the House would be delighted to hear from the Minister details of how the money has been spent, what sort of projects have been brought forward and what lessons have been learned from which we can all benefit.
Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Lord True and Lord Foster of Bath
Lord Foster of Bath
I share the noble Lord’s view that this is not an attack on the Minister, who has been clear that she is doing her very best to provide the information. However, I do not share the noble Lord’s view that we should wait for a period before the Minister brings forward the information she has promised. The timetable of work that is being done is available today. The department will have that information. I hope the Minister will be willing to say that, by the next meeting of your Lordships’ Committee on the Bill, we will have the information on where we are at each stage.
Given where we now are, I also hope the Minister will further reflect on the view that has been expressed by many people, including the Delegated Powers Committee, that many of the bits of secondary legislation that will come before us, which it is currently proposed to deal with under the negative procedure, should now be moved, by a government amendment, to the affirmative procedure.