King’s Speech

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by congratulating, from the Opposition Back Benches, noble Lords opposite on their election victory. I wish them well in the challenges that lie ahead. In particular, I welcome the Ministers here today and congratulate them on their appointments. As someone who was recalled to the colours way past my retirement age on many occasions, I am delighted to see the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, back on the Front Bench, particularly with the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman and Lady Taylor, whose speeches in the last Parliament I will reread for any unguarded commitments.

Further to the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, on your Lordships’ House, I note in passing that the last time we had a King’s Speech with a Labour Government, your Lordships’ House had 863 Members, including 99 Viscounts, 175 Earls, 39 Marquesses, 26 Dukes and four Peers of royal blood. However, that is a matter for our debate on Tuesday, and I want to focus on the humbler end of our constitution: local government and housing.

Labour’s election manifesto states:

“Labour will not increase taxes on working people”.


What does that mean for next year’s council tax? As the name clearly implies, it is a tax, and it is clearly paid by working people. Keeping that commitment can be done only by a generous increase in the revenue support grant in December. But the Institute for Fiscal Studies tells us that, far from having more resources at their disposal, unprotected departments such as DLUHC face a real-terms reduction of between 1.2% and 2.9% over the next few years. Reserves of local authorities are low; eight have gone bankrupt, many other well-run local authorities are in some difficulty, and there is relentless pressure from adult social services and children with special needs, whose fortunes the Government rightly want to improve.

I would like to be a fly on the wall when Angela Rayner, Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State at DLUHC, meets Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, for a bilateral on the RSG. Irresistible force meets immovable object. The fiscal rules are not negotiable; Liz Truss discovered what happens when you spook the markets by overborrowing.

I believe that that commitment on tax will be broken. That should concern noble Lords opposite, not just because of a broken promise but because, while income tax, national insurance and VAT are progressive taxes—VAT is not levied on essentials—council tax is regressive, taking a higher proportion of the income of the less well off than of the more well off. The council tax on Buckingham Palace is less than that on the average three-bed semi in Blackpool and, perversely, Labour has ruled out rebanding. When she winds up, perhaps the Minister will explain how the dilemma I have just outlined might be resolved.

On a happier note, I welcome the commitment to restore housing targets for local authorities. That was my party’s policy until an inexcusable aberration some 18 months ago. I recall saying many times that you cannot rely on the generosity of local councils to provide the homes the country needs. This is a welcome return to an essential component of a national housing strategy.

That commitment was confirmed by the Chancellor last week, but was I alone in finding it strange that a keynote speech on housing, planning and onshore wind was given by the Chancellor and not the Deputy Prime Minister, who is Secretary of State at DLUHC, in charge of housing and planning? I ask myself: is there some “Succession”-like power struggle going on between the two most powerful women in the Government for control of the Labour dynasty?

I also welcome the decision mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, to recruit an additional 300 planning officers. There is a shortage, impeding the prompt processing of planning applications and the preparation of local plans, but this is a short-term fix. There were proposals in the last Parliament to allow local authorities to increase planning fees to cover their costs instead of the fees being determined centrally by Whitehall. Will the Government consider that, as part of their policy of returning autonomy to local government?

I also welcome the re-introduction of a renters reform Bill. Crucially, however, that Bill should be accompanied by measures to increase the supply of rented accommodation. In Europe, long-term institutional finance provides well-managed rented accommodation with security of tenure; here, it provides only 2%. We need to progressively reduce our overdependence on the private landlord—who is withdrawing from the market, pushing up rents—and get the pension funds and insurance industry to invest in long-term good-quality accommodation for rent. Historically, that would have done better than equities. Will Ministers get those institutions in the room with the Treasury and unlock those barriers to growth?

The manifesto promises to

“prioritise the building of new social rented homes”.

I welcome that but, given how the business model works, if you prioritise the building of new social rented homes over homes at affordable rents, you get fewer houses because the social rented homes require a bigger grant. That will make the Government’s target of 1.5 million homes harder to achieve. This is an even more ambitious target than the previous Government’s one of 300,000 homes a year, which we never got anywhere close to reaching. Given that the UK housebuilding workforce has shrunk post Brexit and that new investment in skills and capacity is needed, how confident are Ministers that they have not overreached themselves with that target? If the Prime Minister is really in favour of the builders and not the blockers, perhaps he should revisit the nutrient neutrality rules, which are blocking 100,000 homes.

Finally, there is unfinished business on building safety and leasehold reform. On leasehold, who can forget the impassioned contributions of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, in the last Parliament on abolishing this feudal system? His most recent one was less than two months ago, on 24 May:

“I certainly hope that, whoever is in power, the necessary action is taken and the leaseholder problems are dealt with”.—[Official Report, 24/5/24; col. 1317.]


His hopes were met with a draft Bill, which I welcome. However, a particular problem faces leaseholders in blocks with safety issues post Grenfell. This cannot wait, and it is an issue on which I and others campaigned in the last Parliament. Of the 4,329 buildings identified with unsafe cladding, over half had not started remediation at the end of March this year, seven years after Grenfell. Only 23%—976 buildings—have completed remediation work. The manifesto says:

“Labour will also take decisive action to improve building safety”.


Can the Minister outline what decisive action Labour will take to help the many thousands of leaseholders who are in difficulties, living in unsafe buildings and facing bankruptcy and repossession, as well as those living in blocks under 11 metres, who get no help from the Building Safety Act? The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, understands the problem, and I hope she can make progress.

There is much to be done, and I wish the Government well. I shall provide the same critical support to this Government as I did to the last one.

Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (Pension Scheme Amendment) Regulations 2024

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Tuesday 13th February 2024 Grand Committee

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (Lord Callanan) (Con)]

My Lords, these regulations were laid before the House on 19 December last year.

The 2011 report by the noble Lord, Lord Hutton of Furness, started the Government on the road to the reform of public sector pensions. Although the Public Service Pensions Act 2013 made a large number of reforms, it did not cover all public bodies, including those within the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority group.

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, or NDA, is the statutory body responsible for the decommissioning and safe handling of the UK’s nuclear legacy. It has 17 sites across the United Kingdom, including Sellafield. The NDA was created in 2005 via the Energy Act 2004. However, many of its sites have been operating since the middle of the 20th century. This lengthy history has therefore led to a complicated set of pension arrangements. This includes two pension schemes that, although closed to new entrants since 2008, provide for final salary pensions and are in scope of the reforms. These are the combined nuclear pension plan and the site licence company section of the Magnox Electric Group of the electricity supply pension scheme.

In 2017, the then Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and the NDA engaged with the trade unions to agree a reformed pension scheme tailored to the characteristics of the affected NDA employees. This resulted in a proposed bespoke career average revalued earnings—also known as CARE—scheme, which, following statutory consultation with affected NDA employees and a ballot of union members, was formally accepted by the trade unions. The bespoke scheme is in line with the move to CARE made by the rest of the public sector.

Subsequently, a formal government consultation was launched in May 2018 and the Government published a response in December 2018 confirming the proposed changes. The reformed scheme still offers excellent benefits to its members. Notably—indeed, unusually for other reformed schemes—it still includes provision for members to retire at their current retirement age. For nearly all of them, this will be 60.

A statutory framework which applied to pension benefits across the NDA estate meant that specific legislation was needed to implement the new reformed scheme. The Energy Act 2023 provided the Secretary of State with the powers to make secondary legislation designating a person who will be required to amend the provisions of a nuclear pension scheme. This secondary legislation is being made to require the NDA and Magnox Ltd to amend relevant NDA pension schemes and implement CARE-based pension reform in accordance with the broader public sector pay policy. The instrument will also modify the statutory pension protections contained in the Energy Act 2004 and the Electricity (Protected Persons) (England and Wales) Pension Regulations 1990 in support of the reforms.

In conclusion, these measures will bring the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority group’s final salary pensions into line with wider public sector pensions. It will also deliver savings to the NDA budget, which will be recycled to support its mission of decommissioning the UK’s nuclear legacy. On that basis, I commend these regulations to the Committee.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for that explanation, particularly as he does not seem in the best of health. I do not want to add to his distress, but I want to raise three issues.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their valuable contributions to this debate.

I will start with the points made by my noble friend Lord Young and the noble Earl, Lord Russell. On the small numbers of people excluded, if an individual is entitled to pension protection under the Electricity (Protected Persons) (Scotland) Pension Regulations, they are not in scope for the changes in the NDA group. Whether an individual has this protection will depend on whom they were employed by and the pension scheme that they were eligible to be a member of in March 1990. The Government have reserved their position to keep this under review.

I think that every noble Lord rightly raised the delay in bringing forward these provisions. It was not that we could not find 20 minutes of parliamentary time over six years—if that were true, my noble friend would have a very valid point—but that we did not get the primary powers we required, as he will recall, until the Energy Bill was enacted late last year. It was entirely a result of needing the primary powers before we could make these changes, not a lack of parliamentary time. A great many other measures were held up due to lack of parliamentary time, but that was not the reason for the delay here. My honourable friend the Minister for Nuclear in the other place met the trade unions last year to discuss the NDA provisions in the then Energy Bill. They noted that they were also concerned about the length of time but, when the delay was explained, they were broadly understanding of the reasons.

On the £200 million of savings, despite the delay in the introduction of this legislation, we estimate that the level of savings remains broadly accurate. The exact level will depend on the change to pension arrangements and will vary depending on when members of staff retire, but we still believe that the savings will be significant, of the order of £200 million.

The number of staff affected—broadly 8,000—remains the same. Employees affected were aware of the changes due to be enacted as of April 2024, and there has been a great deal of communication during the last year, including a website set up for those affected. If changes are required to schemes not covered by these regulations, such as schemes in Scotland, that would require further consultation. The Government remain committed to ensuring that public sector pension reform proceeds in line with the 2011 review of the noble Lord, Lord Hutton. These regulations are essential to the success of the implementation of CARE-based pension reform in the NDA group in accordance with broader public sector pay policy.

Reflecting back, it is evident that the complexities of the NDA group’s pension schemes required tailored reforms. Engagement with the trade unions resulted in a bespoke career average revalued earnings scheme, aligning with the broader public sector framework and maintaining valuable benefits for its members. Furthermore, the reform preserves commitments to those excellent benefits, notably including provisions for members to retire at their current retirement age, as I said in opening, which for the majority will be 60. These measures will align NDA group final salary pensions with wider public sector standards, ensuring fairness and efficiency, yielding substantial financial savings and bolstering the NDA’s mission of responsibly decommissioning the UK’s nuclear legacy. I think I have answered all the points put to me—

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

I am very grateful for my noble friend’s explanation that it was not a shortage of parliamentary time. As there are four former business managers in the Committee at the moment, will he ensure that in future his department does not blame the absence of parliamentary time when that is not the reason for the delay?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

My noble friend makes a very good point. I will communicate that to officials. With that, I commend these reforms to the Committee.