Devolution: English Cities

Lord Turnbull Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2019 Grand Committee

[Lord Turnbull (CB)]

My Lords, while reading the excellent report by the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, I was at times overcome by nostalgia, having followed the history of local government finance, functions and boundaries since I joined the Treasury in 1970. I remember in the early 1980s the Treasury was proud to have got local authority self-finance expenditure—LASFE to the cognoscenti—up to more than 60%, but only a decade later it was down below 25%. Local authorities have been stripped of functions and taken out of social housing and their boundaries are constantly reshuffled. How did this happen?

There was a narrative in Whitehall and Westminster that local authorities were incompetent and wasteful, out of touch with the interests of local residents, meddling in national politics, anti-business and anti-development. Was that a fair description? It was certainly not in all cases, but there were prominent examples that fitted the bill, such as my home borough of Lambeth, Brent, the GLC and Liverpool. One response was the introduction of a poll tax on the premise that business, which contributed much of local taxes, had no vote and many voters paid little in rates. The unwinding of the poll tax led to business rates being sequestered and captured as a national tax, and rates replaced by council tax, which was less buoyant and less progressive.

The Whitehall/Westminster narrative continued for several decades and to some degree lives on. Recently, education has been taken away from local authorities and cuts in spending imposed on them have been more severe than on government departments. The first thing that strikes one about the narrative is its sheer hypocrisy, the pot calling the kettle black, as though central government never had any major failures of policy or delivery. When I joined the Departure of the Environment as Permanent Secretary in 1994, with the noble Lord, Lord Deben, then Secretary of State, it was apparent even then that the narrative was outdated. I met many local government chief executives and found them impressive, possessing skills often lacking in Whitehall, which explains why, when senior civil service positions were opened up to open competition, many of them were successful. I also found that they were keen—desperate, even—to develop their communities.

In 1997, the noble Lord, Lord Deben, was succeeded by the noble Lord, Lord Prescott. I am sorry that he is not well enough to be with us. He changed the name of the department to the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, recognising explicitly the regional dimension of its work. His commitment to the regions was strong and unwavering, but in retrospect I think he took a wrong turn in trying to develop a greater regional dimension by championing the creation of regional assemblies. These never took off. Most of the subsequent development of local authorities has been focused on stronger executive action with the creation of elected mayors overseen by small assemblies—more power to act, rather than power to debate.

The report from the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, makes a powerful case for city regions with elected mayors on the London model. One can spend a lot of time obsessing about the optimal size of the local authority, but we are close to a reasonable outcome. Where it is possible to make unitaries work they should be the first choice, bringing housing and planning alongside other major services. But that still leaves some functions that are too broad even for the larger unitaries, such as London boroughs and the met authorities around our big cities, such as transport, infrastructure, business development, regeneration, skills and further education, and the development of affordable housing. By the latter, I mean principally land assembly and planning, rather than the landlord function, which needs to be at a more local level, perhaps left to housing associations. It is for these wide-ranging services that the city regions are best equipped. I also endorse the recommendation that mayors absorb the unloved police commissioners, as in London.

When I arrived in the Departure of the Environment in 1994 there were still two important components of the Heseltine legacy: urban development corporations and the regional offices. The noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, notes that there was opposition to urban development corporations as they were taking away responsibilities from local authorities, but where they were reviving derelict industrial and port land in areas with few residents I thought that was appropriate. Indeed, the centres of our major cities are much more prosperous and completely transformed from where they were 30 years ago. The problems now lie elsewhere, in the suburbs and smaller cities. Going forward with UDCs on the original model is probably not the right vehicle. The particular structures should be for mayors to decide.

The other piece of machinery was the regional office network, which strangely the noble Lord gets to only at page 52 of his report. This was a consortium of Whitehall departments—the DoE, the DTI, employment and so on—which came together to act at a regional level. They were an essential counterbalance to the vertical structures of Whitehall. It was a big mistake to abolish them and I hope they can be quickly reconstructed.

There is one issue where I queried the noble Lord’s proposals. He proposes a separate department of the regions with its own Secretary of State and Permanent Secretary. In the 1990s the DoE and the DETR, while retaining their responsibilities for housing, planning and regeneration, were, in effect, the conveners of the network. Creating a department that has a co-ordination function but no services of its own—no skin in the game—is likely not to be effective. A department of everything that would be the DETR, which was already a monster department, plus skills and employment might be too much of an ask.

The belittling of local government has done immense damage to England, politically, socially and economically, exacerbating divisions rather than closing them up. We should welcome the mea culpa of the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, and his conversion to strong and effective local government, but to achieve that Whitehall/Westminster has to cast off its inbred sense of superiority.

I have one final thought: 30 years after its introduction, council tax is due for revaluation. It takes no account of changes in relative property values across the country and, without that, we will find no proper solution to local government finance.

Housebuilders

Lord Turnbull Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Turnbull (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of a study by some housing associations into the future of their sector. I do not need to repeat the lengthy charge-sheet against the major housebuilders, which my noble friend Lord Best and others have set out already, I just want to return to one point, the terms for leasehold houses. These do not meet the principles of treating customers fairly now being enforced in financial services. The Government have set out proposals to outlaw these, but I ask the Minister what the Government are going to do to enforce redress for leaseholds already sold on unfair terms. Redress was provided for PPI: the detriment in these cases may be very much greater.

However, in a housing debate we should remember the adage that those who live in glass houses should not throw stones. Many of the problems in the housing sector have been shaped by government policy. Whatever their faults, private housebuilders are building around 130,000 units per annum, getting on towards the pre-2008 peak. So the collapse in total housebuilding is principally the result of shutting down all social housebuilding, with the exception of 20,000 to 30,000 dwellings built by housing associations. In 1978 local authorities built 75,000 dwellings. This fell to close to zero around the turn of the century and has now recovered to the heady heights of about 2,000. Owner-occupation has fallen from 69% to 62%. It will not recover quickly, however hard the Government try to ramp it up. New regulations rightly require banks to be much more prudent in their mortgage lending. Salaries of young people entering the workforce are growing slowly and they will emerge from higher education with a liability to pay 9% of their earnings over £25,000. Saving for a deposit while they pay huge rents is virtually impossible.

A greater priority than the performance of housebuilders, in my view, is to transform the rental sector. With social housebuilding largely closed down, it is the private rental sector which is taking the strain. Since 2000, private renting has doubled as a proportion of all dwellings from 10% to 20%. There are now 2.8 million more privately rented properties but this has not come about by positive choice—quite the opposite. Owner-occupation has become more expensive and less affordable, and social housing has contracted. Nor has it come about because the economics are more favourable; again, it is precisely the opposite. Buying with a mortgage took on average around 20% of weekly income, including benefits, whereas private rents absorbed 42%. The most acute problems are suffered by the poorest families. Their number in temporary accommodation, where housing standards are frankly a national disgrace, is growing. Many families are being evicted even though they are not in rent arrears, simply because landlords are refusing to renew tenancies.

Putting an “H” back into the name of the department will not be enough. We need a renewed effort to expand affordable properties for rent and, as others have noted, this will almost certainly mean relaxing the constraints on housing revenue accounts to bring them into line with other forms of borrowing. We also need to be honest with ourselves about the green belt. Much of it is essential to the beauty of our landscape but a good deal of it is not. We should remember that nearly all of us live in houses that are on what were once fields. Why should this change in land use be frozen where it was in 1948? While a debate criticising major housebuilders may give us a warm glow of righteousness, we should not let this blind us to the even-greater problems elsewhere in the housing market.

Assisted Dying

Lord Turnbull Excerpts

Monday 13th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Turnbull]

My Lords, despite the advances made by the DPP’s guidance, the new status quo still leaves the dying and their families with three unsatisfactory choices: to soldier on with their suffering; to accept assistance but still with risk of prosecution; or to pay up and travel to Switzerland to die away from home and family.

Parliament should no longer hide behind an official, however enlightened. Any change will face opposition, not just from faith groups and the palliative care sector but also from what might be called the slippery-slopers, who have already concluded that a satisfactory framework can never be found. We should not accept this defeatism; the Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, was denied a Second Reading, thereby preventing the issues from being explored. With the expertise that we have in this House in medicine, ethics and the law, a robust framework of safeguards must surely be attainable.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Lord Turnbull Excerpts

Tuesday 10th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

Parliament could use its majority to get the repealing Act through, just as it could use its majority to pass the resolution. In my respectful submission, there is no difference between the two.

[Lord Turnbull]

Can the noble Lord explain my one reservation about a provision I otherwise support, which is about the point in the next Parliament when this option has to be exercised. Can it be exercised at any time through that Parliament, or does it have to be done early on? If it is not early on, is it fair that you do nothing for, say, two or three years, then when it looks as though you might quite like the protections of this Act, you decide in about the third year to revive it? Should there be some point at which you have got to place your bet?

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

I understand the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick and the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, to be governed by Amendment 25 in this respect. What happens is that this Bill continues only up until the first meeting of the next Parliament, and I assume that the resolution can be passed at any time thereafter. I hope that satisfies the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull.

[Lord Turnbull]

I think it satisfies me as regards the explanation, but I am not sure that it satisfies me as to whether that is the right outcome.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

I would have thought it is sensible for Parliament to decide when it wants to consider the resolution—it might well want to consider it early on, or it might well want to consider it later on. I do not see any purpose, as far as the amendment is concerned, in restricting the time as to when the resolution needs to be considered. In my respectful submission, the key point in relation to this is that this is a bad piece of constitutional legislation, in the sense that the process used is agreed by all to be a bad process. Putting aside the argument that says all constitutional legislation should be subject to a sunrise clause, it is right, if we are going to make a change to our constitution of this importance, that there should be some protective measures. This seems, with respect, to be a very sensible protective measure. If we see our role as being to protect the constitution, and we can do that without denying the Government what they want politically, then I respectfully suggest we should take that opportunity. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and the other co-signatories to the amendment for giving us that opportunity.