Localism Bill

Debate between Lord Whitty and Lord Beecham

Wednesday 7th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, I welcome the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Newton, not least because he is only the second Conservative Back-Bencher to speak in seven hours of debate on Report. I dare say we will hear a great deal more from him and, I hope, others as we go forward.

I entirely endorse the remarks that have been made so far by noble Lords, and I share the experience of the noble Lord, Lord Tope, of serving as a local councillor. It is frequently a local councillor’s task to take up tenants’ complaints, as one does, with the relevant housing department or ALMO—many authorities have now transferred their stock—to help people through the council’s complaints procedure and to help them move complaints to the ombudsman. Many of us have done that. I find it rather patronising of those who suggest that it is somehow necessary to reconnect councillors with social housing. Most of us who represent areas with social housing regard that as part of our daily, weekly and monthly routine.

However, there are some additional issues to which I would like to refer briefly. First, as I read the Bill, there need be no nexus between the individual making a complaint and the councillor for the area in which he lives, because the Bill speaks of a member of the housing authority. It could be from one end of Newcastle to the other in my own case. There is no necessary connection between the tenant and the member he approaches, and that is hardly sensible, even if one follows the line of the Government’s thinking on this matter.

Secondly, I presume that under the adjudication by the ombudsman there may be the possibility of an award of compensation. That is not necessarily binding on an authority, but it is pretty indicative and most authorities, though I regret to say not all, comply with those recommendations and make a payment when one is indicated. On the face of it, it would seem that the individual member adjudicating would also have that responsibility. It seems distinctly worrying that there should be implicit pressure on a member not only to make a finding but also, perhaps, to award compensation. That does not seem to be a healthy relationship between an elected councillor or, for that matter, a Member of Parliament, and a constituent.

The third factor that we may have to bear in mind is that there are pending changes in the legal aid and advice system that will effectively strip people of their right to legal aid and advice. In this housing area, whether it be with local authorities, housing associations or other landlords, there is frequently a need for legal advice and support, and one fears that effectively removing that source will be unhelpful to tenants. Frankly, imposing the responsibility on elected members, whether councillors or MPs, is by no means a substitute for such proper advice.

All these factors tend to the same direction, namely that the amendment should be accepted by the Government. There is no huge political issue here. As we have heard, there is no demand for this outside, from tenants, their representatives or anybody else. There is no logical basis for the recommendations and I hope that the Minister will indicate that she will think again about the desirability of this additional superstructure on a system which is working perfectly well.

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, my name is on Amendment 68, which provides for a dual system. I do not think anyone is arguing that the tenants or leaseholders should not have the right to call in their councillor, MP or tenant panel. The issue, as has been said, is whether they should also have—from the start, not just when they have already been to their councillor—the ability to go direct to the ombudsman.

I have two points on this. First, it is not only a contradiction to principles of administrative law, it is also a direct contradiction to most consumer practice in the rest of the economy. As the noble Lord, Lord Newton, said, there are numerous ombudsmen. Some were set up by Parliament, such as the financial services and energy ombudsmen, and some are industry-based, dealing with anything from double glazing to property. In none of those cases is there a filter after the initial filter of having to raise the complaint with the provider in the first place, as my noble friend Lady Hollis has said. After that point, there is not a single example where a third party, of whatever description, is required to intervene. That may be discrimination against the English, but it is certainly discrimination against tenants and leaseholders as compared with any other consumer.

Secondly—this ought to be an obvious point, but it has not yet been spelled out in this crude way—there are a lot of reasons why individual tenants and leaseholders may not want to go to their local councillor. They may have fallen out with them, or had a terrible decision from them, or they may be their political opponent. There are also all sorts of reasons why they may not wish to raise the issue through the tenant panel, although I believe that is a good innovation. They may know people on the panel whom they disagree with or they may not approve of earlier decisions made by the panel. It surely should not be for Parliament to say to them that, despite all their reservations and previous experience, they must go through one of these three channels. All three channels are important and should be there, and if they need to be put on the face of the legislation let us do so. But we must not deny the ordinary social housing tenant or leaseholder within social housing provision the right to go direct to the ombudsman. I plead with the Government to drop this absurdity.

Localism Bill

Debate between Lord Whitty and Lord Beecham

Tuesday 12th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beecham]

I hesitate to express a slightly different point of view as a vice-president of the Local Government Association from our esteemed president, but I am not quite as reluctant as he is to see this kind of duty, as proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, and my noble friend Lord McKenzie, incorporated into the law, particularly given the state of the housing market in general and the huge unmet demand for housing, particularly affordable housing. It is important that all authorities recognise that there is a need to promote the provision of more accommodation. It is noticeable that since the disappearance of the regional spatial strategy, something like 200,000 houses it is estimated will no longer be built that would have been built had those plans been progressed.

I add one further dimension to the prescription from the noble Lord, Lord Best, for encouraging new building. I entirely agree with him that it is very desirable for private builders and housing associations to help to cater for the needs of an increasingly ageing population and indeed others. To that I would add local authorities themselves. That might be something that they would appreciate. Perhaps as a quid pro quo for having the extra responsibility of drawing up plans for affordable housing, the fact that they might actually be able to provide some themselves might be an additional incentive. I hope that sweetener will persuade the noble Lord, Lord Best, that his qualification might safely be abandoned.

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, I support the principles of the amendment proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross. A whole section of this Bill later on in Part 6 deals with social housing and changes many of the existing arrangements for tenure, what the local authority is obliged to provide and tenants’ rights. Some of them I support and some of them I strongly oppose. However, the whole point of a social housing strategy is that it relates to the totality of the housing need in the area. Unless there is a provision somewhere in this Bill, such as the provision suggested by this and related amendments, dealing with social housing in the abstract is nonsense.

All forms of housing tenure are in crisis. We know that a lot of people who would have got a mortgage by the age of 30 now can no longer get a mortgage until their late 30s or even into their 40s. More and more people are having to rent in the private sector and are being delayed in setting up an independent household. We know that the rate of household formation is growing because of various developments in society, but it is growing at twice the rate of new build housing. We therefore have to have an holistic approach to housing need, area by area. If we are not going to achieve the targets through the regional spatial strategies, which I admit were a bit Stalinist in their approach, we have to ensure that the local authorities themselves take responsibility for looking at housing need in their areas and assessing it against their private sector development plans and the social housing that they and the housing associations in their areas can provide.

Somewhere in this Bill we need to tell local authorities that part of their responsibility from now on must be assessing total housing need against costs, against price and against demographic trends. That is not covered by the 2004 Act in sufficient detail. Given what I would regard as something close to a crisis in the housing market in all forms of tenure, I think it would be appropriate for us to set that out in the Act. Then, when we consider the social housing provisions, we can set them against a requirement for every local authority to assess needs, supply, demand, price, and demographic and employment changes, and to set its social housing targets and provision against that background. Unless we do that, social housing is isolated and is a residual form of housing based on what is already there. It does not relate to the needs of the totality of the community in which local authorities operate. If the Government are prepared to accept the noble Baroness’s amendment here, they need to say that at least somewhere in this Bill, and we need to ensure that local authorities behave accordingly.

Localism Bill

Debate between Lord Whitty and Lord Beecham

Tuesday 12th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, scattered among this vast group of amendments are four amendments of mine. The Committee will be relieved that I do not need to speak for very long on them since one of them, Amendment 147R on the marine planning side, has already been spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, and I endorse everything he said. The other three relate to the area to which the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, has just spoken. Amendments 148G, 148J and 148K try to sharpen up the requirement to co-operate. Much like the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, I have particular issues in mind where clearly a development, as distinct from a very high-level strategic approach, will be of interest to more than one local authority and may well be of interest to local and national authorities. I declare an interest, for example, in relation to climate change adaptation as I am a member of the Environment Agency Board. Clearly, flood arrangements need to apply to the whole catchment area, wherever the political boundaries may fall, and there may be an involvement in that of national bodies such as the Environment Agency or Natural England. On climate change mitigation, major renewable energy projects may well involve more than one authority, either because of the location of the plant itself and its connections, whether it is a wind turbine or a biogas plant or whatever, or because there are visual effects thereof which impinge on other local authority areas.

I would hope that the requirement for local authorities to co-operate will be pinned down a little more than is currently the case. My proposals to amend the new section proposed in Clause 95 would give a general subsection (1) duty to co-operate, and a clearer purpose to that, making a specific reference to sustainable development. They would also ensure that the requirement in proposed new subsection (6) to consider a “joint approach”, very much along the lines of the joint framework to which the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, referred, and “joint local development documents”, became a compulsory requirement.

I know that some local authorities are not particularly keen on those provisions being in that form in the Bill and say that they will co-operate the whole time. Regrettably, that has not always been the case in relation to flood defence provisions or to renewable energy projects, when different local authorities may have reached different conclusions coming from different angles. So it is important that the Bill itself puts a requirement so that, as far as possible—and this is mildly framed—they reach a consistent and compatible approach to these matters. This needs to be seen in the wider context of sustainable development, which the Committee debated the other night, when I was unfortunately not able to be here. If we tighten this up a little bit, there will be an extra nudge to local authorities to co-operate and take a more coherent and sensible approach to planning and projects within their areas. I therefore commend these amendments and hope that the Government can at least take the spirit of them on board.

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, I listened with great care to the remarks of my noble friend Lady Andrews, who is no longer in her place, because I have an interest— I think that the appropriate adjective would be an historic interest—in the subject that she raised, the position of English Heritage. I served as a commissioner of English Heritage for four years, having been appointed by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, and removed by Mr Nicholas Ridley in due course, no doubt for good reasons. My noble friend certainly has a point about not encumbering some organisations with heavy statutory responsibilities.

On the other hand, some agencies need to be involved from the outset in the kind of strategic approach adumbrated in the Bill, and in rather broader terms in the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. I have in mind, for example, the Highways Agency, which in my experience is not one of the more co-operative government agencies when it comes to its dealings with local government, or the Environment Agency or the Homes and Communities Agency. They have a better track record but, as the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, pointed out implicitly in his reference to environmental matters, they clearly have a key role to play in the development of a joint approach.

I join in inviting the Minister, in replying, to indicate the kind of bodies, though not necessarily adumbrating all of them, that might be included in proposed new Section 33A(1)(c) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 under,

“prescribed or of a prescribed description”.

It would be helpful to have an indication, though not necessarily on the face of the Bill, as obviously we may need to add or change the description over time.

I also take on board the point about local enterprise partnerships made by the noble Lord, Lord Cotter, when speaking to his amendments. It is not clear to me that they have much power in any event, as presently constituted, but they should certainly be involved in consultations. Whether it is useful to have a duty to co-operate on bodies that may not have the power to do very much is perhaps arguable, but the point is worth exploring, and perhaps the Minister could enlarge a little on the role envisaged for local enterprise partnerships generally and in relation to the position under the Bill, if not today then as a matter for further consideration.