Smoke-free Pavements

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Wednesday 24th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, all previous legislation to reduce the harm done by smoking has been on a national basis, such as the ban on smoking on public transport and the ban on smoking in public places. However, despite representations from the Local Government Association that any ban under this measure should also be on a national basis, the Government declined and left it to local discretion. Will the Government follow up the suggestion by the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, and, in the light of that, consider giving a clear health warning about the risks of damage from smoking and introduce a total ban on smoking on pavements?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for making the point about how progress has been made and that it has been on a national basis. However, as someone who spent 20 years in local government— 16 as a councillor and four in City Hall as deputy mayor—I know that sometimes it is right to recognise that we do not have problems equally on a national basis. Smoking rates are higher in the north of England, so let us learn from there first before we take the next step.

Leaseholders: Costs

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)]

I call the noble Lord, Lord Young. Apologies.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for what I know he was doing behind the scenes to sort this. Can he confirm that when his Secretary of State was given his new job, he was instructed by the Prime Minister to resolve the cladding crisis? This clearly involves measures beyond those that my noble friend has already referred to. If innocent leaseholders are to avoid financial distress, bankruptcy and eviction, either the Treasury or those responsible for building these defective flats will have to dig deeper into their pockets. Does he agree?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My noble friend makes it easy for me: yes, I agree. Implicit in the fact that the Treasury would have supported a subsidised financing scheme is that we need more taxpayer subsidy, but it cannot be the only answer. We need to make sure the polluter pays, and the Secretary of State is looking at every avenue to do that.

Levelling Up White Paper

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2021 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Young of Cookham]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government when they will publish their white paper on levelling up.

[The Minister of State, Home Office and Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Lord Greenhalgh) (Con)]

We aim to publish by the end of the year. However, our priority is to have a White Paper which meets the scale of ambition and sets out our transformative agenda to deliver real long-term change across the United Kingdom. Levelling up is at the heart of this Government’s agenda to build back better after the pandemic. The recent spending review showed the significant action we are already taking to empower local leaders, boost living standards, spread opportunity and restore local pride.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the Government’s commitment to levelling up and to reducing some of the inequalities in our country. But if levelling up is to be more than a slogan, does it not need clearly stated objectives, transparency in the allocation of resources, and measurements so that we can monitor progress? Is my noble friend able to tick those three boxes?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, in July, the Prime Minister set out that we will have made progress in levelling up when we have begun to raise living standards, spread opportunity, improved our public services and restored people’s sense of pride in their community. The forthcoming White Paper will set out the further detail, so that I hope we will be able to tick my noble friend’s three boxes.

Leaseholders: Safety Remediation Costs

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 4th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, for his choice of subject for this debate, which I hope will come up with some helpful suggestions for resolving the crisis facing leaseholders, resolving the current impasse and enabling Michael Gove to respond to the rumoured injunction from the Prime Minister to “sort out the cladding crisis”.

I begin by thanking my noble friend the Minister for his tireless work behind the scenes to get a better deal for leaseholders caught up in the post-Grenfell cladding scandal. The steps the Government have taken so far to help leaseholders, which I welcome, have been in part due to his interventions in the intergovernmental discussions that have taken place. These started with the Treasury taking the view that there was no role for taxpayer funding in finding a solution, so we are making some progress.

My concern is that the combination of government help, freeholder support and voluntary action by developers still leaves a very substantial shortfall and, unless further steps are taken, we are likely to see bankruptcies, repossessions and evictions of people who took every reasonable precaution to protect their interests. As the noble Lord has just said, some 1.5 million householders are potentially caught up in this crisis, which is likely to come to a head next April when the bills fall due and land on leaseholders’ mats.

I agree with the unanimous recommendation of the Select Committee in another place, which it repeated in its report earlier this year:

“It has consistently been this Committee’s position that leaseholders should not have to contribute towards any of the costs for a problem they played no part in creating.”


Indeed, I believe that was also the Government’s initial position, though not the Treasury’s. The Select Committee’s proposal was that there should be a comprehensive building safety fund, fully funded by government and industry, and the Government should establish clear principles regarding how the costs should be split between the two. Total contributions should not be capped. I regret that the Government have not accepted the recommendation and have instead come up with a capped contribution from themselves and an inadequate contribution from industry.

There is a precedent for more generous intervention than the Government have offered so far. I refer to the Housing Defects Act 1984, which I put on the statue book 37 years ago. That provided for a 90% grant towards the cost of repairing the defect of a property, subject to an expenditure limit, or repurchase of the property at 95% of the defect-free value. That legislation covered Airey houses, built after the war, that were discovered to be defective in the 1980s. The background is similar in many ways to the problems confronting today’s leaseholders.

Under that legislation, properties were designated if they were defective by reason of their design or construction and if their value had been reduced substantially because the defects had become generally known. Designation was reserved for serious inherent defects that owners, councils or professional advisers could not have known about on survey, sale or purchase —a close parallel to today’s problems for leaseholders. Compensation was provided by the Government on the terms I have outlined.

So I pose the question: if it was right for the Government—a Conservative Government—to intervene generously then to protect innocent home owners, is there not a case for more generous intervention now? In this case, I am not suggesting the Government should pay 95% and I make no apology for repeating a suggestion I have made on earlier occasions, supported by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham and my noble friend Lord Blencathra, namely that there should be a retrospective levy on the developers who initially sold the defective flats—the “polluter pays” principle referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Stunell.

Instead, the Government have announced a prospective levy of a 4% tax on profits over £25 million on future residential development, to raise just over £1 billion in five years. There are three problems with that solution. First, it does not produce enough money. We are looking at a shortfall of some £10 billion between the cost of remediation at about £15 billion and the £5 billion now on offer. The levy falls well short. Secondly, the buildings on which the levy is payable will not be defective but built under the new higher building regulations. Thirdly, the levy will not fall exclusively on those who benefited from the sale of defective property. Many future developers who had no part to play at all in the Grenfell tragedy will pay, potentially passing the cost on to future purchasers.

So my suggestion to Michael Gove is that he meets the £10 billion gap with a £5 billion retrospective levy on the developers of the offending flats, most of whom are still around and have substantial reserves, and a further £5 billion from the Treasury, belatedly delivering the recommendation of the Select Committee that costs should not fall on leaseholders. I believe a solution along those lines would enable us to begin to draw a line under this problem and relieve thousands of leaseholders of the nightmares they now suffer from.

Public Services

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Tuesday 26th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, it is for every council to decide what level of council tax it needs to set. Obviously, there is a latitude to increase council tax by up to 2% to help support the additional social care costs, but the Government have set out their plan to increase funding to social care, as the noble Baroness knows.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, many of us who remember the days when local authority direct labour organisations had a monopoly on public services such as refuse collection welcomed the decision in the 1980s to open these services to competition—a decision that has not been reversed since. Given all the pressure on local authorities today, is now the right time to encourage them to invest manpower and capital to re-enter this market?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

I agree with my noble friend. There has been a tremendous success in the competitive tendering of services that has driven down cost and increased value for money for the taxpayer, and also seen an improvement in the delivery of local services. It is not surprising that £64 billion is now paid out by local government to private companies to deliver those services. Although local authorities have the powers to trade and charge, they should think very carefully before they decide to move back to the situation before the introduction of competitive tendering.

Building Safety Defects: Costs

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Monday 18th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, we are looking very closely at the “polluter pays” principle and the amendments that have been supplied to us by Steve Day. I have asked my officials to meet on a number of occasions; in fact, I am meeting them this Wednesday. There are, however, some difficulties and hurdles that need to be overcome to make this potentially work. I do not exaggerate; they will be quite challenging to overcome.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, since we discussed this on 16 September, we have a new Secretary of State with instructions from the Prime Minister, so we read, to sort out the cladding crisis. While welcoming the new tax on high-rise development and the substantial support that the Government have already offered, this is not enough to prevent innocent leaseholders facing substantial hardship. Further to the suggestion of the right reverend Prelate, should there not be a substantial levy on the developers who built and sold these unsuitable flats?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, we have a new Secretary of State who is putting his fresh eyes on this. We recognise that the developers that put up these shoddy buildings need to pay. Indeed, we may need to look at other people—the cladding manufacturers may also need to contribute to this—because we want to do whatever it takes to ensure that leaseholders are protected as far as is practicable.

Inequalities of Region and Place

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 14th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I very much welcome this debate, so ably moved by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle. Like him, I look forward to the maiden speech from the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate. This debate is timely because it comes just before the imminent publication of the White Paper on levelling up. This is in fact the delayed White Paper on devolution, promised for September last year, which has now morphed into a White Paper on levelling up. I very much hope that this rebranding will not diminish the previous commitment to greater local autonomy. Devolution has clear centrifugal overtones: pushing powers out. Levelling up has connotations of a more centralised approach: how else can you make things level?

While we are all pretty clear what devolution means, there is no such clarity about levelling up. Like others in this debate, I have spent many hours on the doorstep listening to voters’ priorities: safer streets, better schools, more houses and shorter waiting lists. Nobody has ever said, “George, please level me up.” This is not to discount it as an objective, but just to say that it means different things to different people.

In the context of this debate, in his levelling-up speech on 15 July, the Prime Minister uttered two sentences which I hope will inspire the levelling-up White Paper. First, he said that

“for many decades, we have relentlessly crushed local leadership”.

The second sentence was:

“Come to us with a plan for strong, accountable leadership and we will give you the tools to change your area for the better”.


This afternoon, we should respond to that challenge and then hold him to those words.

I took further encouragement from the recent appointment of Neil O’Brien to the rebranded Department for Levelling Up. In his speech last Wednesday, which was overshadowed by another speech on the same day, he said:

“Boris Johnson put levelling up at the heart of his conference speech ... But what is it? The objectives of levelling up are clear. To empower local leaders and communities.”


That objective was reinforced by Bridget Rosewell, a member of the National Infrastructure Commission, who commented on a report that it issued last month. She said:

“Levelling up cannot be done from Whitehall. Every English town faces a different set of challenges and opportunities, and local leaders are best placed to develop strategies to address these.”


But we live in a highly centralised country. In a recent report on tax and devolution, the IfG said:

“The UK is an outlier by international standards. In 2014, every other G7 nation collected more taxes at either a local or regional level according to estimates by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.”


Our figure is about 5%, roughly half that of most other countries.

So, while other countries have national and local government, we have national government and local administration, and it is not working. The helpful Library brief for this debate shows that the UK has the highest regional inequalities of the 27 nations measured. I believe that part of the answer to the question posed by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, in this debate about regional inequalities is to set regions free from central control and allow them to take greater responsibility for key decisions. Others will talk about devolution of power; I shall talk about devolution of money because, without freedom to raise and spend, and being accountable for those decisions, devolution of power is meaningless.

Let me give two examples of how the system is weighted against raising money locally. The Government have just increased national insurance contributions from 12% to 13.25%—an increase of more than 10%. Local government would not have been able to do that without holding a referendum first. There has been no such inhibition on the Government. Then take national taxation. Government income is buoyant. Without touching tax rates, economic growth and inflation swell the Government’s coffers year by year. Income tax, national insurance, inheritance tax and capital gains tax all rise without the Chancellor lifting a finger or incurring a single hostile headline. The OBR estimates that just freezing personal allowances—so-called “fiscal drag”—will be worth £8 billion a year to the Government by 2025-26.

Local government has no such advantage. The council tax base is fixed at 1990 levels, and if local government wants to raise more money, even to stay still in real terms, it has to raise tax rates, with all the aggravation that that entails. And, unlike income tax, council tax is regressive and the tax base is 30 years out of date. Would the Government raise income tax on the incomes of 1990?

I will irritate my noble friend the Minister once more by suggesting that tax bands should be revalued and that there should be two additional bands. However, my final suggestion is that, when we move from taxing fuel to road pricing, the revenue from road pricing—a buoyant source of revenue—should go to local, not central, government, which would give councils the independence and financial help that they need to deliver the autonomy that we all want to see.

Leasehold: Building and Fire Safety

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 16th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, we recognise that if you buy a defective dwelling you expect the person responsible for the building of it to do something about it. That is precisely why the Government, as part of the Building Safety Bill, are proposing to increase the Defective Premises Act redress period from six years to 15 years retrospectively, which will bring in a great number of buildings to be able to seek redress from developers. That is why we continue to work on measures that will ensure that the polluter does pay wherever possible, and we are looking very closely at proposals from Steve Day and his team around the polluter pays amendments.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, the Government have provided substantial support to deal with the cladding crisis, which I welcome, but that support, together with the new tax on high-rise development the Minister mentioned, will be inadequate to avoid hardship and inequity for many innocent leaseholders. Further to what the right reverend Prelate just said, would it not be fair to bridge the gap by a levy on developers that built and sold these substandard homes?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My noble friend is right, which is why we are looking at a new levy and a developer tax to ensure that the industry contributes. At this stage we are in consultation. We need to ensure that it is set at a level that raises substantial funds precisely for that purpose.

Supported Housing: Funding

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Tuesday 14th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

The noble Baroness is right: we are concerned about quality issues, and that is why we carried out some pilots in Birmingham, Blackburn, Darwen, Hull, Bristol and Blackpool. We do not have the results from those pilots, but that is why we invested £5.4 million—to ensure that there is no drop in quality.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, following the success of the Everyone In campaign, which protected rough sleepers from Covid, Housing First is the most cost-effective supported housing solution, to stop those most at risk from returning to the streets. It is estimated that 16,000 places are required, but so far the Government have pledged funding for only 2,000. Can my noble friend hold out any prospect of a more generous response?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My noble friend knows that we are committed, in our latest manifesto, to expanding Housing First. The findings of our evaluation, together with our experiences from the pilots, will help to inform next steps.

Grenfell Tower: Demolition

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Monday 6th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, in addition to the consultation by the site team of my department, MHCLG, the local authority is engaging reactively. I heard from the leader of the council this week that it has another meeting to look at mental health and other well-being issues, and it has asked my officials to join that meeting. The Government at every level have a duty to do their best to make sure that we learn from this tragedy and that we continue to engage with the residents, bereaved and survivors.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, the Minister will know that the Kensington Aldridge Academy is located at the base of the Grenfell Tower. It had to move out following the fire and move back in 2018. What consideration has been given to the future of that school in the discussions referred to by my noble friend?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, despite the reporting, I can assure my noble friend that the school does not require any move or decant in the future. The tower is safe; there are no immediate safety issues. As I said, the programme of safety maintenance continues until the spring of next year.