House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 9th July 2025 Lords Chamber

My purpose is basically to persuade the House that limiting appointments to the number of departures will be a key principle in maintaining this House no larger than the Commons for the longer term. I also hope that the noble Baroness the Leader of the House recognises that this issue should be an integral part of the discussions of the proposed Select Committee. If the measures she has mentioned are successful in reducing the House’s size, it is crucial that they are not offset by a surge in appointments. This amendment will prevent that happening, and I look forward to her response. I beg to move.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 23, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Burns, and I will add a brief footnote to his speech.

When this country is confronted with a controversial issue, it frequently turns to the noble Lord, Lord Burns, for an answer. Those of us with long memories recall his Committee of Inquiry into Hunting with Dogs in 1999 and his Independent Commission on Freedom of Information in 2015. No sooner was that completed than we had the Burns commission on the size of the House in 2016. That followed a debate on 5 December 2016, in which the House agreed, without a Division, that

“its size should be reduced and method should be explored by which this should be achieved”.

The Burns report recommended that the size of the House should be reduced to that of the other place—then 600, now 650—and that the target should be achieved over time by a two out, one in rule. It suggested that, when it reached the cap, new appointments should reflect the result of the last election and be on a one in, one out principle. The report was welcomed by the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee in the other place.

We debated that on 19 December 2017; 72 noble Lords spoke and there was general approval. Winding up, the noble Lord, Lord Burns, said:

“The question I asked myself and members of the committee asked themselves was whether we should wait to make any progress on these other issues until we had a slot for legislation, or should try to put together a system that could be worked on on a non-legislative basis, but which legislation could be brought to bear on at a later point. That certainly remains my position, having heard the points that have been made today”.—[Official Report, 19/12/17; col. 2106.]


That is what then happened. We proceeded on a non-legislative basis and it clearly has not worked—the House is bigger now than it was then. That is not because noble Lords have not risen to the challenge by retiring—or, indeed, dying—but because, with the notable exception of my noble friend Lady May, Prime Ministers have been overgenerous with their appointments.

As the non-legislative option proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Burns, has not worked, we are left with the other option—legislation—and that is now before us. Winding up for the Lib Dems, their then spokesman Lord Tyler confirmed his party’s support for legislation, if the voluntary scheme failed. He said:

“Unless the Prime Minister is willing to abide by this constraint, we might as well give up now, and without a statutory scheme her successors cannot be held to her agreement in law either”.—[Official Report, 19/12/17; col. 2098.]


I then looked up what the current Leader said in that debate, when she was Leader of the Opposition. I quote:

“are any of the objections that have been raised insurmountable?”

These are the objections to the Burns report. She went on:

“I do not consider that they are but there is one insurmountable issue: the role of the Prime Minister and of the Government. This will work only if the Government play their part. It is not about giving up patronage or appointments but about showing some restraint, as it used to be”.


Since then, there has been no restraint. She concluded:

“If the House and the Government are to show respect for the work they”—


the Burns committee—

“have done, we will take this forward. I noted that a number of noble Lords quoted from songs and plays. I will quote Elvis Presley, when he sang, ‘It’s now or never’”.—[Official Report, 19/12/17; col. 2104.]

Clearly, then it was not “now”, but nor need it be “never”. If we meant what we unanimously voted for in 2016, we should support Amendment 23. We may never get the opportunity again.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak briefly in support of this amendment, to which I have added my name. The noble Lord, Lord Burns, has come up with an elegant formulation—as he did several years ago in the committee he chaired—for a way out of the conundrum that we have. However good our provisions in terms of people leaving the House are, if we do not have any constraint—any guardrails at all—on people coming into the House, when we have a general election where there is a large majority, we will always see the ratcheting effect. We have seen that recently; there is every possibility that we will see it again in the future. It is tremendously important that we try to take some steps now.

The size of the House overall does matter. I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Gove, is in his place, and I am delighted that he obviously has become deeply affectionate and committed to the work of this House. I disagreed with most of his speech, but one thing he said that was incorrect was that the House was in danger of being bullied by those outside into thinking that it was too big and had to change. That is not the situation. As the noble Lord, Lord Young, just said, this House has repeatedly recognised the need for it not to grow exponentially, and has repeatedly recognised the danger of it being larger than the House of Commons. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Gove, that other second chambers across the world manage to find the right combination of expertise and experience without rising in their overall numbers to pretty near four figures—which is where we are in danger of going.

I believe it is tremendously important. There are those who say, “Oh, it doesn’t matter. Look at the average attendance figures. People aren’t claiming their allowances. None of this matters”. I spent five years as Lord Speaker and, in those five years, I do not know how many speeches I made about the House of Lords. The thing that most people knew about the House of Lords was not that it was brilliant at scrutiny, and not that it had fantastic Select Committees, but that only China’s National People’s Congress, in the whole world, had more members.

That issue of reputation should not be the only one that drives us; we should recognise that we need a House peopled with enough Members to do the job we ask it to do, but we do not have to have an expert on every single issue in the world. We have Select Committees that can call for evidence; we can hear that expertise. We need a House of a reasonable size and I suggest that it should be no larger than the House of Commons. Others have suggested much smaller Houses. They look at the United States Senate. They look across the world and say that other people manage with less. I believe that, as a part-time House, we need larger numbers because not everyone is here all the time and that is important—

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 9th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 21, which, as the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, said, would require that from the next Parliament all life peerages be created for a fixed term of 20 years. I looked up the debate that introduced the Life Peerages Act 1958 to see why it was decided that a new Peer should be created for life. I found that Viscount Hailsham, Viscount Stansgate and Earl Attlee participated at Second Reading on 3 December 1957—plus ça change.

It was difficult to see that the issue of why new creations should be for life was ever discussed apart from in the introductory speech by the then Leader, the Earl of Home, who said:

“We … have willingly modified the hereditary principle by the introduction of Life Peers”.—[Official Report, 3/12/1957; col. 615.]


As hereditary Peers were there for life, that principle was applied equally to life Peers so that they would be there on equal terms. Actually, there was much more of a discussion as to whether the daily allowance of three guineas would be enough to attract people of the right calibre. Now that there will, sadly, be no more hereditary Peers who are here for life, the original logic of making the rest of us here for life falls away.

The need for experience, which is a feature of your Lordships’ House, needs to be balanced by the equally important need for that experience to be up to date. Is someone who was at the top of their profession 20 years ago of more value to the House than someone at the top of their profession today? The amendment would allow the House to refresh and renew those qualities that make it different from the other place, which is why I support it.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, I declare an interest in that I have been a Member of your Lordships’ House for 28 years. I am extremely grateful to my noble friend for sparing me from the noose he is gently preparing for others. I absolutely agree with him that we need to move to a position where the House is refreshed, which is why we have spent so much time talking about other ways of doing it—the central one being, of course, retirement. In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, I think there is now consensus across the House that being here for life is no longer acceptable, because we no longer wish to see people who are in declining years decline in your Lordships’ House.

The question that this amendment raises is, what is the best way of achieving that refreshment? I rather agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, that for some people—I would like to think I am one of them, but other people may well disagree—being here for quite a long time can bring benefits. I completely agree that it also brings disbenefits—one’s expertise, to the extent that one ever had it, is more in the past. On the other hand, there are things about the parliamentary process and the way we do business, particularly in a curious body such as this, that you accrete over a long period. Although I am absolutely in favour of a retirement age and might even favour a younger retirement age than some other Members of your Lordships’ House, if somebody were appointed at the age of 50, I am not sure I would want them necessarily to be required to retire at 70.

My noble friend says that the advantage of passing this amendment is that it would be the burr under the saddle in case the Select Committee makes no progress and does not do all the things we will ask it to do. It is incumbent on us all to try to make sure that the committee is a success. This sort of burr will not help or hinder that process. It requires us to agree—broadly speaking, I think we have—that we want to make changes around retirement and participation and that the best way of getting there is via a Select Committee. So, although I have complete sympathy with what my noble friend is trying to achieve, I am afraid I cannot support it because I do not think it is the best way of getting to the end that he wants.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 1st April 2025 Lords Chamber

Finally, I will make a hypothetical but valid point. Suppose a Conservative Government decided to introduce a retirement age for some life Peers at age 85, meaning that they would be slung out the second the Bill became law or at the end of a Session, and say that would mean 30 Labour Peers being slung out. I think there would be outrage in this House. There would be outrage on the Conservative side that a Conservative Government would dare to treat Peers in that way. Labour Peers should reflect on that: if they are going to do that to hereditaries, what would it feel like if a Tory Government did that to them? That is what the Government plan to do to 88 hereditaries in a few months’ time. I leave it to noble Lords to reflect on that, and I beg to move.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, Amendments 107 and 113 in my name seek to postpone the removal of the hereditary Peers to the end of the next Session, rather than the end of this one. For the record, I have never sought to have my amendments degrouped from any others.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, earlier on today, this is the first time I have spoken on the Bill, though I have, of course, followed the proceedings. I support other amendments that would postpone the removal of the hereditary Peers, but I believe mine has the best chance of getting the support of other parties, because the postponement is relatively modest and so does the least injury to the haste with which the Government have committed themselves in their manifesto.

The real criticism of this Bill is not that it is gerrymandering or prosecuting a class war. There are perfectly respectable arguments for removing the hereditaries. The substantial criticism of the Bill is that it will undermine the capacity of the House of Lords to hold the Government to account by removing some of its most active Members—that is its Achilles heel.

The House of Lords is not a place where sheep may safely graze. It is a key part of our constitution, improving the quality of legislation and giving the other place an opportunity to think again. We have repeatedly heard of the disproportionate amount of heavy lifting done by the hereditary Peers; I will not repeat those arguments, but not only have they gone unchallenged but Government Ministers have gone out of their way to heap praise upon the hereditaries for the work they do.

The Government’s public response to this criticism is to say that it is an insult to the rest of us to imply that we cannot backfill the void. But in their hearts, they know that the House will be weaker. I believe they plan to do something about it, but they will not acknowledge this publicly, or begin to discuss what their response might be, until the Bill is safely on the statute book. My amendment seeks to allow more space for that discussion and more space for the subsequent response than is provided for at the moment by postponing their departure until the end of the next Session. It would give more time for ranks to be replenished and capacity to be retained, possibly by the retention of some of those due to leave.

As we have heard, many hereditary Peers sit on Select Committees, the work of which goes on from one Session to the next. We heard from my noble friend Lord Forsyth about the five Deputy Speakers. We need a longer transition if the work of the House is not to be disrupted. The amendment is perfectly consistent with the manifesto, and it actually addresses the weakness in the Government’s defence.

I believe there is a further argument for more time: we should treat fairly those who have given up careers outside and give them more time to adjust. I note what the noble Lord, Lord Burns, said on Second Reading on 11 December:

“My first reservation is the implication that all excepted hereditary Peers should be required to retire once the Bill becomes law”.


He went on to say:

“Often, they have given up alternative careers to join this House”.—[Official Report, 11/12/24; col. 1736.]


I was relieved to hear that the Government will not support Amendment 103, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter.

Here, I will refer to what happened last time. In June 1993, the Labour Party committed itself to a two-stage process of reform, removing the hereditaries in the first stage. After the election in 1997, they actually left in 1999—six years after the commitment and two years after the election.

By contrast, there has been dramatically less notice this time. There had been reports in the last Parliament that, following the publication of the Brown report in 2022, the House of Lords would be abolished and replaced with a form of regional representation. In February 2024, it was reported that wholesale reform would not be a priority for the first term; then there were reports that a Labour Government would confine themselves to implementing the Grocott Bill. It was not until 13 June last year that the Labour Party committed itself to the abolition of the hereditary Peers, leaving some 18 months before removal.

The Government sometimes point to the contrast with MPs, who lose their job overnight. But there is an important difference. Every MP knows that there will be a day of reckoning every five years or less: that is the deal. But it is not the case with Peers. Also, for every MP who is removed, a new one takes his or her place—an important distinction.

In 1997, there was a key difference. The two groups of Peers principally affected, the Conservatives and the Cross-Benchers, were allowed to choose their share of the 92 remaining. That meant that the capacity of the House to hold the Government to account was affected only marginally. There is no such safety net this time round, and the time in which to rebuild that capacity, as in the Bill, is much less.

I end with a final reason. It is important to avoid the ungracious way in which the hereditary Peers were made to depart in 1997: “Thank you and goodbye”, with T-shirts celebrating their departure. There was an absence of generosity of spirit last time, which I know the current Administration are anxious to avoid.

This amendment is moderate and sensible. It deserves serious consideration from the Lib Dems and Cross Benches, on whom its fate will depend.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham, who set out some wise and compelling reasons for his amendment. I hope that the Government will consider it as seriously as it deserves to be taken.

My Amendment 106 in this group is not so much about timing as about ensuring that proper bicameral consideration has been given to the Bill before it becomes an Act of Parliament. It seeks for commencement to take place not at the end of this Parliament but at the end of the Parliament after this. This follows the point that I raised at Second Reading, when I pointed out that we have a very new House of Commons: more than half the Members of another place were elected for the first time in July last year. When I spoke at Second Reading, I pointed out that the other place had sat for only 62 days; with their greater experience by the end of this Committee, they have now sat for 115 days—still not a great deal of time.

In this Parliament, we have so far passed only three Acts of Parliament. Two were money Bills and one was about renationalising the railways. At Second Reading, I wondered how many MPs had had the chance to experience effective working between the Houses and across the parties to see how we make laws better by working between the two Chambers. There has still been little opportunity for them to do so; on the whole, they are still a rather green bunch on the green Benches.

That is why, while I and all noble Lords respect the primacy of the elected House and the mandate on which the Government were elected, we would find it disappointing if this Bill, which seeks to make such profound changes to your Lordships’ House, has to be rammed through with no amendments from your Lordships’ House; and why I find it disappointing to hear again from the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, and others that we should not dare to put an amendment that we know will be overturned in another place. With a majority of 174, that argument could apply to every piece of legislation brought before us in the rest of this Parliament. That is not the role of your Lordships’ House. I hope that it does not become it.

Not by seeking to lengthen the time before commencement but by asking that greater thought is given to this by both Houses of Parliament, full of people who have experience of legislating for the better interests of our country—and sharing some of the concerns that were set out by the noble Lord, Lord Newby, about becoming a House regulated by the lower House—I hope noble Lords will look at my Amendment 106 with seriousness as well.

Grenfell Tower Inquiry Phase 2 Report

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

The Leader of the House will recognise that the Building Safety Act does not cover all buildings at risk or all leaseholders, and it does not cover all safety defects. She recognised that they may need to look again at the buildings under 18 metres, which get no help at all. I shall press her on something that the Prime Minister said last Wednesday:

“We cannot suggest for a minute that the existing legislation, guidance and policy is sufficient. We need more powers”.—[Official Report, Commons, 4/9/24; col. 326.]


He was right. Will we get that new legislation in this Session?

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

The first stage is to look at what can be done with existing legislation or under the legislation that has been brought forward already, and then examine whether new legislation is required. If it is, the Government will do their best to bring it forward as quickly as possible. This is not something that we want to leave and see a further tragedy. We have seen too many tragedies; this is not the first case. I am not going to give a commitment as to when it will be brought forward, but I shall say that it will be as quickly as it can be.

Parliamentary Democracy and Standards in Public Life

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I endorse everything that the right reverend Prelate and others have said about the need for integrity and high standards in public life, but what I found so dispiriting over the festive season was to read constant reports that the next general election will be the dirtiest ever. I quote from Oliver Shah, writing in the Times:

“It raises the prospect of the most expensive and dirtiest election battle in British history. The two main parties have already traded highly personal blows, with Labour running attack ads claiming that Sunak did not believe paedophiles should go to prison and Sunak accusing Labour of being in cahoots with criminal gangs in the perpetuation of illegal immigration”.


Then on Tuesday in the Times, Katy Balls wrote:

“Such tactics, though, are here to stay. While Labour and the Tories do not agree on much, strategists on both sides believe that this will be the dirtiest election to date”.


I believe that the leaders of our three main parties are decent people who have no appetite for this sort of campaign and realise the damage that it can do. It devalues the political currency, debases people in public life and discourages good people from standing. I do not believe that this is what the public want or deserve. I urge my noble friend the Leader to make the case for moderation in language. Theresa May’s book is called The Abuse of Power, but too many advisers seem to believe in the power of abuse.

Secondly, people do not trust government. Noble Lords have mentioned the Post Office scandal. What people want is competence, and failure to deliver generates disillusion. One reason for underperformance, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, is the high turnover of Ministers and senior civil servants. Who has been the most competent Minister in recent years? Ben Wallace. He was there for four years. Where is my party most exposed? On housing. We have had 16 Ministers there since 2010. When I was first elected, there were two Housing Ministers in nine years. Denis Healey was Defence Secretary for five years and Chancellor of the Exchequer for six. We then had two Chancellors in the next nine years. We have had six since 2016. This turnover has consequences. The same criticism was made in my noble friend Lord Maude’s excellent report on the Civil Service, which criticised

“the frequent and unplanned movement of officials from post to post, without regard to business need, at the expense of continuity and of developing and maintaining specialist knowledge and expertise”.

So I have two resolutions for promoting democracy in 2024: decency in political discourse; and stability and competence in government.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Monday 23rd October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

My Lords, I have one remark to make in support of Motion M1, put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale. The noble Earl, with whom it is always so difficult to disagree, stated that the reason the Government are unhappy with the idea of climate change becoming more central is that it opens up a wide range of challenge. But climate change is going to be the central, existential issue of planning beyond our lifetimes. It is not an add-on; it is not planting a few trees in order to get planning permission. It is absolutely core, and dealing with that will make life very difficult for planning applications. I support this amendment so that climate change becomes central to the decision-making process, not an adjunct.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I will intervene briefly to speak to three Motions in this group—first, Motion ZH, to which the noble Lord, Lord Best, has just spoken. It is the substitute for an amendment on housing need that he promoted on Report. There is a crucial difference between the original amendment, which required local authorities not just to assess need but to make provision for it. The Government’s amendment deletes that last half—making provision for need. None the less, we have heard some encouraging words about social rent. It is a brave man who seeks to outbid the noble Lord, Lord Best, when it comes to speaking or voting on amendments on housing, so I am happy to follow his lead and not press that. I pay tribute to the work that he has been doing on this.

Secondly, it was disappointing to hear my noble friend Lord Howe say that Motion N1 on healthy homes, from the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, still had to be resisted. Ever since the Private Member’s Bill was introduced, we have had numerous debates in Committee and on Report, and each time, in response, the noble Lord has moved further and further towards the Government. There never was a wide disagreement, because the Government always said that they agreed with the thrust of what he was trying to do.

It is worth reading out what may be the only sentence of the original amendment that remains:

“The Secretary of State must promote a comprehensive regulatory framework for planning and the built environment designed to secure the physical, mental and social health and well-being of the people of England by ensuring the creation of healthy homes and neighbourhoods”.


That is apparently too much. It continues:

“The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision for a system of standards”.


In other words, how that objective is reached is left entirely to the Secretary of State. Far from cutting across, as my noble friend Lord Howe said, the amendment seeks to bring it all together under a comprehensive framework to promote healthy homes.

The last point I want to make is on Motion R1 of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. It repeats an amendment that I originally proposed in Committee that gives local authorities powers to fix their own planning fees. In the other place, the amendment was resisted on these grounds:

“It will lead to inconsistency of fees between local planning authorities and does not provide any incentive to tackle inefficiencies”.—[Official Report, Commons, 17/10/23; col 186.]


Central government should be quite careful before it preaches to local government about inefficiencies. This is the month in which we abandoned most of HS2. Pick up any NAO report and you will find criticism of the MoD on procurement. There has been criticism of the new hospitals programme and of HMRC in its response to taxpayer inquiries. If I were running a planning department in a local authority, I would be slightly miffed if I were told that, if I had the resources I needed, it might lead to inefficiencies.

There are problems in planning departments, but they are because a quarter of planners left the public sector between 2013 and 2020, so of course they cannot turn around planning applications as speedily as they might. The argument about promoting inefficiency does not really hold water. If one were to take that argument, why stop at planning fees? What about taking books out of a public library, swimming or parking? Are these not areas where local authorities might conceivably be inefficient?

Almost the first sentence of the White Paper introducing the Bill said that it would promote a “revolution in local democracy”, but allowing planning departments to set fees, so that they can recoup the costs of planning, is apparently a step too far. Yes, you will have inconsistency of fees, but that will happen if you have local democracy. We already have inconsistency of fees in every other charge a local authority makes, including building control fees. The argument that it will somehow confuse individuals or developers does not hold water. How many individuals make planning applications to a range of different local authorities and then express surprise that the fees are different? Yes, developers will be confronted with different fees, but they want an efficient planning department that processes their applications quickly.

I cannot understand why the Government are digging in their heels on this amendment, which empowers local government and gives them resources. It does not get resources at the moment because, in a unitary authority, the planning department, which does not get enough money from planning fees, has to bid for resources from the council tax in competition against adult social care and other services. It is no wonder that it misses out. At this very late stage on the Bill, I ask my noble friend whether the Government could show a little ankle on this, move a little towards empowering local government and trust it to get this right.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise for intervening before the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, has a chance to speak to Motion R1, but I have to disagree with my noble friend on this occasion. Last week, we had a debate on planning fees, in which I participated. The risk in what the noble Baroness proposes is that it would lead to local authorities significantly increasing the fees that would be charged for householder applications.

I remind the House that I chair the Cambridgeshire development forum. As far as larger developers are concerned, the point I made last week is that we should promote planning performance agreements to enable local authorities and developers to come to proper agreements, with potential sanctions and performance obligations on the part of the local planning authority. They would give them access to greater resources in dealing with major developments. I fear that what the Liberal Democrat Front Bench proposes would just lead to increases in fees for householder applications.

I also want to say a word about Motion M1 on climate change. The noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, knows that I thoroughly agree with what he proposes but, at this stage, sending back the same amendments is inherently undesirable if it can be avoided. I hope that my noble friend on the Front Bench will tell us more about how the Government will use the new national development management policies, which will have statutory backing. If the Government set down NDMPs in terms that are clear about the importance of decisions that take account of mitigation of and adaptation to climate change, they will have the effect that my noble friend and other Members of the House look for from this Motion.

The distinctive point of the original Amendment 45 was that it would extend specific consideration of mitigation of and adaptation to climate change to individual planning decisions—there is plenty in the statute about the application of this to plan-making—so that is where the gap lies. That gap can be filled if national development management policies are absolutely clear about how decisions are to be made on the impact of climate change. I hope that my noble friend says something that allows me to feel that we do not need to send the same Amendment 45 back to the other place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Howe, for his kind words and for the time that he devoted to this particular aspect of a very long and complex Bill. Nevertheless, it is regrettable that he has not yet seen his way to accept the sensible and reasonable amendment that noble Lords sent back to the Commons on Report. Its purpose was to safeguard the rigorous safeguards built into the Building Safety Act 2022, which this House was united in supporting and which was designed to establish a robust regulatory regime that would ensure there was never another Grenfell Tower disaster. Less than 12 months later, and before the new regulatory regime even comes fully into force, the Government are giving themselves and their successors sweeping powers to rip it up—save only for a very flimsy affirmative Motion on a statutory instrument as a defence.

The modest amendment your Lordships sent to the Commons simply required the Government to accept that, if they wanted to change the fundamental structure and mechanics of delivery of the building safety regime, that must be justified to and approved by Parliament. The Government’s response, which the noble Earl has just repeated, is that they do not want to change the fundamental structure and delivery of the building safety regime. All they want to do is take it away from the Health and Safety Executive, lock, stock and barrel, with no changes at all, except in the nameplate and the branding. If that is true, the amendment before your Lordships today is exactly in line with their intentions.

Motion X1 picks up the point the noble Earl made about the original amendment to the Commons—that it was flawed because the wording would obstruct the transfer of the statutory committees from the HSE to the new, completely unspecified and unknown safety regulator. The revised wording in Motion X1 therefore makes it clear on the face of the Bill that it will be lawful to make that transfer. This amendment is designed simply to avoid changes in how the new regulator is structured and organised and to prevent changes to the tasks that are entrusted to it and the statutory committees that underpin its work. The amendment, if agreed, would ensure that the Government’s replacement regulator retains those duties and timescales: for instance, to review the regulations relating to electrical fire safety, the safety of staircases and ramps, safe escape routes for people with mobility issues and fire suppression systems such as sprinklers.

There is other detail, but in the interests of time I will simply say that the original arrangement in the Building Safety Act was that those committees and tasks could be changed only by the Secretary of State if he or she received a proposal from the regulator to put into place. That was because it was seen as very important that the regulatory regime should never again be captured, as it had been in the past, by departments and Ministers taking short-term political decisions, and that the regulator would always be able to independently assess needs to improve safety and then make recommendations in public to Ministers for them to decide on action.

The noble Earl has offered us a sincere undertaking that, at least for the time being, nothing will change; that Ministers will not be tempted to steer away from making essential safety improvements that they deem politically difficult or a bit too costly; and that they will faithfully press ahead without delay when those fire safety reports come in, however revealing and unwelcome they prove to be. Of course the noble Earl is absolutely sincere, but I say to him that Ministers and Secretaries of State come and go, and the sincerest of undertakings can be withdrawn when the facts are said to have changed. The accountability given by an affirmative resolution is tenuous.

I urge the Minister to retain the progress made during the enactment of the Building Safety Act by safeguarding those statutory committees, reinforcing the obligation for those long-awaited safety studies and making sure that the three-year timescale is retained. The way to do that is for him to say that, on mature consideration, he will accept Motion X1. I beg to move.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Motion ZC1 in my name. I pay a heartfelt tribute to my noble friend for the real progress that has been made since we last discussed this matter in helping qualifying leaseholders who extended their lease after the Building Safety Act came into effect. In a nutshell, the Act extended protection to qualifying leaseholders against the costs of remediation. However, inadvertently, it said that, if you renewed your lease after it came into effect, you lost that protection.

The Government recognised that there had indeed been a mistake and, on Report, I moved what is now Amendment 243, which would retrospectively have put the leaseholders who extended their lease back within the protection of the BSA. At the time, before the Bill went back to the other place, my noble friend resisted my amendments and said that the issues require

“very careful legal dissection and working through, and that is what we are doing”.

When I summed up, I said:

“In a nutshell, the Government made a mistake when they drafted the Building Safety Act. Unwittingly, they have removed the protection that some leaseholders were entitled to. They have known for months that there has been this defect, and I do not accept that the defect is so complex that it cannot now be put right. That is what my amendment does. I seek leave to test the opinion of the House”.—[Official Report, 18/9/23; cols. 1248-95.]


I do not know what my noble friend said to the department when he got back, but what had previously been impossible to do within the context of the Bill suddenly became possible. I am grateful to my noble friend for tabling Amendments 288A, 288B, 288C and 288D, which, in effect, do what I asked the Government to do last time. As I said, I am grateful to my noble friend for the pressure that he put on the parliamentary draftsmen to correct an injustice that had unwittingly been perpetrated.

Against that background, it might seem churlish of me to have tabled Motion ZC1, but there remains a problem: leaseholders who extended their leases, and therefore lost the protection of the BSA, will have received invoices and bills for payment, and some may have made payments. As drafted, the government amendments do not entitle those qualifying leaseholders to a refund. I am grateful for the Public Bill Office’s help in drafting my Motion ZC1—I hope that will inject a note of caution into any remarks that the amendments are imperfectly drafted. The Motion seeks to say that, in those circumstances where a qualifying leaseholder has already paid the remediation costs, but need not have, they are entitled to a refund.

Under the Government’s amendment, there is a provision whereby the Government have powers, under regulations, to make certain provisions. I want my noble friend to answer a question that was put twice in the other place. The Opposition spokesman on housing, Mr Pennycook, said:

“we welcome the concession that has been made, albeit with one proviso: Ministers must take steps to ensure that leaseholders who paid service charges over the past 15 months in the belief that they were not eligible for the leaseholder protections under the Act, because of the Government’s mistake, are reimbursed. Those individuals should not suffer financially as a result of a drafting error that should not have been allowed to occur in the first place. If the Minister—I hope she is listening to this point—can provide us with some reassurance on that point, we will happily accept the Government’s amendment in lieu”.—[Official Report, Commons, 17/10/23; col. 199.]

My honourable friend the Father of the House, Sir Peter Bottomley, made the same point.

In winding up, Rachel Maclean was under tremendous time pressure because of the timetable Motion in the other place, and she was not able to answer either of those two questions. So if my noble friend is unable to accept my amendment, as he implied, I ask him for an assurance on the provisions of his amendment, which enable certain regulations to be made in proposed new subsection (11):

“The provision that may be made in regulations under this section includes … provision which amends this section; … provision which has retrospective effect”.


Can he assure me that, if a leaseholder has paid a bill and need not have, my noble friend will use the powers under his own amendment retrospectively to entitle that leaseholder to a refund? That is the import of my amendment, which I do not wish to press to a Division—but I hope that, in return, my noble friend will be able to give me that reassurance.

My noble friend’s Motion ZC knocks out a whole range of amendments that were passed without a Division in this House and that extended protection to non-qualifying leaseholders. These are basically leaseholders living in buildings under 11 metres; enfranchised leaseholders, who are counted as freeholders for the Act; and those who own more than three properties in buy-to-let investments. There are real problems: people in buildings under 11 metres get no protection at all, cannot get a mortgage and cannot sell. They have to pay the cost of remediation, because that is the only way that the building can get insured. They face exactly the same problems as people in buildings over 11 metres, but they get no protection at all. There are also leaseholders who, following government advice, enfranchised and became freeholders. Despite assurances I was given by the then Minister that they would be treated as leaseholders, the Bill treats them as freeholders and denies them the protection extended to leaseholders.

There is also the problem of those who have buy-to-let properties. A person who owns a £1 million property and other properties overseas is protected, but someone who owns three properties worth £100,000 each gets no protection at all. People who jointly own a property with their husband are counted as wholly owning. There is a whole range of outstanding issues from the Building Safety Act that I understand cannot be addressed in the Bill, but, again, I hope that my noble friend is able to say that, in the proposed leasehold reform Act, it will be open to the Government to reopen these unresolved problems in the BSA and that legislation will be proposed to address at least some of the issues arising from the BSA that I have outlined and that I believe remain unsolved.

In conclusion, I thank my noble friend again for his efforts in response to my original Amendment 243, but I hope he can give me the assurances I seek for leaseholders who have paid bills that they need not have.

--- Later in debate ---

[Earl Howe (Con)]

I am grateful to noble Lords for their comments on this group. I thank my noble friend Lord Young for his kind words on government Amendments 288A, 288B, 288C and 288D. He asked about his Motion in relation to leaseholders who have paid remediation costs since losing the protections. Like my noble friend, the Government are concerned about leaseholders who have paid a significant service charge where they have lost the protections upon extending their leases. Those who have paid out remediation costs while outside the protections may be able to bring a claim for unjust enrichment.

I should point out to your Lordships that we are not aware of this issue being raised with us by any affected leaseholders, so it may well be theoretical in nature—my noble friend may contradict me on that. That said, if we do come across any cases where remediation charges have been paid and are not returned, the Building Safety Act contains a power to make secondary legislation that we believe enables us to provide a bespoke remedy to this issue. If cases do come to light, we will consider carefully whether that is the right thing to do.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

I am very grateful for what my noble friend has just said. However, will leaseholders first have to go through the process of claiming unlawful enrichment before the Government introduce the provisions he has outlined—which I welcome—or will the Government use the provisions under subsection (11) of new Section 119A to give them the protection without first obliging them to go through a complex process of claiming unlawful enrichment?

[Earl Howe (Con)]

As I said, we will carefully consider what is the right thing to do. I have no briefing on whether it will be necessary for leaseholders to make a claim either directly or through the courts. We will make a decision as to what is right in all the prevailing circumstances. I am afraid I cannot go further than that.

I can assure my noble friend that we completely appreciate the point that he has raised, and the Government are looking into what we can do for leaseholders who have had to pay excessive service charges where they have lost the protections. For the reasons I have set out, including the potential for unintended consequences which I described in relation to Amendment 242, I ask my noble friend not to press his Motion on Amendment 288E.

On the other issues he raised, I cannot, as my noble friend will understand, pre-empt the forthcoming gracious Speech or what may be contained in it; it would be quite improper for me to do so. However, I can tell him that the issues he has drawn our attention to will be carefully considered in the department I am representing.

On Motion X1, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, I recognise his continued concern and repeat my earlier assurances that the Government do not intend to interfere with these important committees. Section 12 of the Building Safety Act contains appropriate provision to change the statutory committees of the building safety regulator as needed in the future. This gives the Government and regulator the flexibility needed to adapt the role of the regulator and its statutory committees.

We do not agree that it is appropriate or necessary to impose restrictions on the use of that section. We are concerned that, as drafted, this restriction would cause confusion while potentially preventing the use of the powers in Section 12 of the Building Safety Act to make changes to the statutory committees of the regulator in the future.

The Government do not intend to use the power in any way imminently. We consider it necessary to create the ability to move the building safety regulator to an existing or a new body in the future, but we would look at any options very carefully and consider the recommendations from the Grenfell Tower inquiry before confirming the best way forward.

This does not affect the timeline for the building safety regulator’s important work. We expect the regime to be fully operational by April 2024, and we are determined to support delivery of the programme to that timetable. The changes will make sure that we are ready and have the flexibility in place to respond quickly to the Grenfell Tower inquiry report when it is published and that we can be radical and long-term in our thinking.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

3rd reading
Thursday 21st September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe (Con)]

My Lords, in begging to move that the Bill do now pass, I extend my thanks to all noble Lords who have contributed to a very detailed and proper scrutiny of this Bill. It is not possible for me to thank everyone individually, for which I hope I will be forgiven, but there are a few people I would like to mention specifically.

First, I am sure that the whole House will recognise and wish to thank my noble friend Lady Scott of Bybrook for the extraordinary amount of time and effort she has dedicated to the passage of this Bill, both inside and outside the Chamber. Her hard work and dedication have been an example to us all. It is equally appropriate for me to express gratitude to Opposition Peers, most notably the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman of Ullock and Lady Taylor of Stevenage, on the Labour Front Bench and, for the Liberal Democrats, the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, and the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, in their turn. My noble friend Lady Scott and I are grateful to them all for the fairness and good nature of our engagement and debate throughout the Bill’s passage. That far-off halcyon time when the levelling-up Bill did not figure in their weekly workload must seem an aeon ago.

I also thank those on the Back Benches for their many constructive contributions, in particular my noble friends Lord Moylan, Lord Randall of Uxbridge, Lord Lansley, Lord Young of Cookham, Lord Lucas, Lord Caithness and Lord Trenchard, as well as the noble Baronesses, Lady Young of Old Scone, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, Lady Randerson, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle and Lady Hayman, and the noble Lords, Lord Berkeley, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, Lord Shipley, Lord Crisp, Lord Best, Lord Lytton and Lord Carrington—and there have been many others.

The House of Lords Public Bill Office, the House clerks and the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel also have my admiration and gratitude for their extraordinary hard work. Last, but certainly not least, I pay tribute to all the members of the Bill team. If ever there was a Bill team deserving of our fulsome thanks, it is this one. The team officials in DLUHC are those I principally have in mind, but many others from departments across government have made an invaluable contribution to the delivery of this Bill. Again, on my noble friend’s behalf and my own, I thank them all for their immense hard work, patience and professionalism over these many months.

This Bill creates the foundations and tools necessary to address entrenched geographic disparities across the UK. It is designed to ensure that this Government and future Governments set clear, long-term objectives for levelling up and can be held to account for its progress. The Bill devolves powers to all areas in England where there is demand for it, empowering local leaders to regenerate their towns and cities and restore pride in places. It also strengthens protections for the environment, making sure that the delivery of better environmental outcomes is at the heart of planning decision-making. I hope that we can all wish it a fair wind. I beg to move.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, may I say on behalf of the whole House that my noble friend Lord Howe has also borne some of the burden of getting the Bill through? No one can say “No” more politely than my noble friend, as he has had to do to a large number of my amendments.

The only point I really want to make is this: I have done 49 years in Parliament and I have never known a Bill quite like this one. I wonder whether my noble friend can tell the House whether any lessons have been learned from the passage of this Bill—which I think has now taken 24 days in your Lordships’ House —against the background of yesterday when we were told that there will be yet another planning Bill to deal with infrastructure. I express the hope that the next Bill on planning is a little shorter than the one that is about to pass.

[Earl Howe (Con)]

My noble friend Lord Young can be assured that there will be an exercise to derive those lessons that we think are appropriate from the passage of this Bill. In many ways, I am sure noble Lords would agree that the House has done its work extremely well by its thorough examination of this lengthy measure. However, there may be issues that we can all agree should become the focus of future legislation of a similar kind. I am grateful to my noble friend for raising that question.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 18th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, it is pleasure to follow the noble Earl, Lord Lytton. I pay tribute to him, not just for the professional expertise that he brings to the subject—something that none of us can match—but for his persistence in campaigning to rectify the injustice done to leaseholders.

I shall speak to the amendments in my name but, before doing so, I want to say this: not all our debates in this House on the Bill have had a wide following in the outside world, but this one will. Hundreds of thousands of leaseholders are living in unsafe buildings, and they are looking to your Lordships’ House to deliver on the promises that the Government have made to them but which remain currently unfulfilled and which the amendments in this group seek to rectify. The End Our Cladding Scandal team have done a first-class job in briefing noble Lords.

I compliment the Government on the measures they have taken to help people living in unsafe flats. They introduced the Building Safety Act, protecting many leaseholders from ruinous bills, they took aggressive action against 50 of the country’s biggest developers and secured binding legal commitments worth more than £2 billion to rectify their failings, and they set up the building safety fund to help to pay for remediation for orphan buildings. I welcome this and the patience with which my noble friend Lady Scott listened to my representations on this subject.

But my noble friend the Minister will not expect a speech from me to be an unqualified paean of praise. What promises did the Government make at the outset, and have they been met? In his Statement in the other place on 10 January 2022, the Secretary of State said:

“We will take action to end the scandal and protect leaseholders”.


He went on to say:

“We will make industry pay to fix all of the remaining problems and help to cover the range of costs facing leaseholders”.


He then said there would be “statutory protection”, and he clarified what he meant by this:

“First, we will make sure that we provide leaseholders with statutory protection—that is what we aim to do and we will work with colleagues across the House to ensure that that statutory protection extends to all the work required to make buildings safe”.—[Official Report, Commons, 10/1/22; cols. 285-291.]


Note that that commitment extends to all building work, not just cladding, and there was no qualification of the word “leaseholders”.

These broad commitments were confirmed in a letter written to all noble Lords by my noble friend’s predecessor, my noble friend Lord Greenhalgh, on 20 January last year, entitled:

“Introduction of the Building Safety Bill”.


Under a section headed

“Protecting Leaseholders from Unnecessary Costs”,


it said:

“The Secretary of State recently announced that leaseholders living in their homes should be protected from the costs of remediating historic building safety defects”—


not just cladding but “building safety defects”. But the position now is that there are significant exclusions from those commitments: not all buildings are covered, not all building safety defects are covered and, crucially, not all leaseholders are protected. These amendments help to fulfil the Government’s earlier promises.

One specific commitment given to me by the then Minister, no doubt in good faith, has been explicitly and inexcusably broken. During the passage of the Bill, I raised the question of leaseholders who had enfranchised and bought the freehold. I was assured that they would be treated as leaseholders and not as freeholders, and that they would get leaseholder protection under the Bill. My noble friend Lord Greenhalgh said:

“They are effectively leaseholders that have enfranchised as opposed to freeholders. I hope that helps”.—[Official Report, 28/2/22; col. GC 262.]


To avoid doubt, I was asked to read the Minister’s lips. But the Government resisted amendments that would have done just that, and leaseholders who have enfranchised are in a worse position than those who have not. Amendment 282ND addresses that unjustified distinction.

It remains perverse that a Government who are about to introduce legislation to encourage enfranchisement, with the proposal that eventually all blocks should be enfranchised, should at the same time deliberately choose to disadvantage exactly those leaseholders in the Bill. The two principal exclusions from the commitment I referred to a moment ago are leaseholders who live in buildings fewer than 11 metres tall and non-qualifying leaseholders, a category of people that does not exist in Wales, where all leaseholders are qualifying leaseholders and protected.

On buildings under 11 metres, the Government’s position is that residents should be able to leave the building in the case of fire without expensive remediation. This position is at odds with the position of the London Fire Brigade, whose statement said:

“While we understand the approach of starting with tall buildings, LFB have always been clear that using building height as the only measure of risk is too restrictive and believe that there are other high risk buildings with vulnerable occupants that also need to be considered”.


It concluded:

“With regards to the remediation of buildings, we strongly assert that all buildings with serious fire safety defects should be remediated regardless of height”.


That is an unequivocal professional rejection of a distinction made by the Government.

There are countless examples of the problems that have resulted from this exclusion. I give just one. Leaseholders took over the freehold of their five-storey block in London because the developer, who had originally retained the freehold, went into liquidation. They thought that they were doing the right thing but, in their words, “It seems like we are being punished for this now”. The building has combustible insulation, combustible spandrel panels that extend the full height of the building, and vertically aligned timber balconies. Unless every leaseholder in the block can pay, at an estimated cost of over £30,000 per flat, the work cannot take place and leaseholders simply remain trapped in unsafe, unsellable flats. The 2011 fire at the retirement home Gibson Court in Surrey, where 87 year-old Irene Cockerton lost her life, makes very clear why fire safety issues in low-rise blocks can be life-critical, yet many retirement homes remain unremediated.

Defective buildings of any height may require remediation if they have life-critical safety risks and, as Michael Gove himself acknowledged in the House of Commons on 14 March, of fire safety defects in buildings under 11 metres, “some will be life-critical”. Yet there is no requirement for responsible developers to remediate such life-critical safety defects, no access to government funding, no matter how high-risk the building is, and in a recent consultation on the issue DLUHC has even excluded freeholders of such buildings from the duty to try to pursue alternative cost recovery routes before charging leaseholders. These flats are unsaleable. The owners cannot afford to pay for remediation. In the view of the fire brigade, they are unsafe; in the views of insurers, they are uninsurable; and in the view of lenders, they are unmortgageable. This cannot be what the Government intended.

The second exclusion is non-qualifying leaseholders. I have already mentioned enfranchised and resident-run buildings, which are excluded from the Building Safety Act 2022 cost protections. Any costs of remedial works required to those buildings will fall on the leaseholders, although they may be entitled to some help with the costs of cladding removal. The principal exclusions are the approximately 400,000 flats in mid or high-rise buildings owned by a non-qualifying leaseholder who owns or has an interest in three or more properties.

The problem has a ripple effect—in any building that has but one non-qualifying leaseholder who cannot pay, remediation work to make all the homes safe may be delayed or unable to go ahead. The perverse consequence of this is that if you own a manor in the Cotswolds, plus a villa in Italy on Lake Garda and a luxury penthouse in central London worth £1.5 million, you qualify for protections under the Act. Yet if you and your partner own a small, terraced house and three small £100,000 buy-to-let apartments as part of your pension planning, only one of which has non-cladding fire safety issues, you may face bankruptcy. Amendments to change the exclusion of buy-to-let leaseholders were resisted by the Government as the Bill went through. Again, Amendment 282ND puts that right.

The LUHC Committee, with its government majority, rightly noted last year:

“Leaseholders are no more to blame for non-cladding defects than they are for faulty cladding on homes they bought in good faith. Buy-to-let landlords are no more to blame than other leaseholders for historic building safety defects, and landing them with potentially unaffordable bills will only slow down or prevent works to make buildings safe”.


The unintended consequence of the Building Safety Act 2022 has created a two-tier system where leaseholders deemed qualifying will benefit from the protections, whereas those arbitrarily deemed non-qualifying have been left to fend for themselves. Shared-ownership leaseholders face even greater difficulties because of the nature of their leases. Without a truly comprehensive solution to all buildings, of all heights and tenures, uncertainty and a lack of confidence in the residential flat sales market are set to perpetuate. My amendments seek such a solution.

I note in passing that a property’s non-qualifying status remains on the title in perpetuity. That means that any future purchaser—whether a first-time buyer, second-stepper or landlord investor—will be required to take on the risk of unlimited costs to fix safety defects that may not even yet have been identified. This renders non-qualifying leases effectively unsellable, regardless of the existence of known safety defects.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Young of Cookham]

282C: After Clause 226, insert the following new Clause—
“Qualifying leases under the Building Safety Act 2022After section 119 of the Building Safety Act 2022 (meaning of “qualifying lease” and “the qualifying time”), insert—“119A Variation, surrender or regrant of qualifying leases(1) A qualifying lease varied, or subject to any surrender and regrant, remains a qualifying lease.(2) This section has effect in relation to any qualifying lease varied, or subject to any surrender and regrant, before the coming into force of this section.(3) Any agreement contrary to this section is void, whether made before or after the coming into force of this section.”” Member's explanatory statement
This section fixes a gap in the Building Safety Act 2022 to ensure qualifying leases retain their protection if the leaseholder enters into a deed of variation, or exercises statutory lease extension or enfranchisement rights.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all those who took part in the debate some hours ago about protecting leaseholders. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Howe for what he said—that proposals will be brought forward shortly to help those blocks that have enfranchised. My noble friend said that I would greet with a sigh his rejection of my amendment, and he was quite right. I say in return that his heart must have sunk when he read his brief and saw the less than convincing reply he had been equipped with to rebut my amendment.

In a nutshell, the Government made a mistake when they drafted the Building Safety Act. Unwittingly, they have removed the protection that some leaseholders were entitled to. They have known for months that there has been this defect, and I do not accept that the defect is so complex that it cannot now be put right. That is what my amendment does. I seek leave to test the opinion of the House.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Young of Cookham]

282ND: After Clause 226, insert the following new Clause—
“Non-Qualifying Leases under the Building Safety Act 2022(1) Section 119 of the Building Safety Act 2022 (meaning of “qualifying lease” and “the qualifying time”) is amended as follows.(2) After section 119(1) insert—“(1A) This section only applies to a dwelling if it is a dwelling in a relevant building and the relevant building has one or more relevant defects.”(3) After section 119(4)(b) insert—“(ba) where a person (“T”) was a tenant under a lease of, or had a freehold interest in, a dwelling and at the qualifying time T was a tenant in common of that dwelling, T is not deemed to own that dwelling unless T’s share under the tenancy in common was more than 50%.”(4) After section 119(4) insert—“(5) Notwithstanding anything in this section:(a) a tenant is always deemed to own a qualifying lease for each of the first three dwellings that tenant owns; and(b) a landlord must cease to make any distinction between qualifying leases and non-qualifying leases once all work to remedy relevant defects in a relevant building is completed.””Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment secures parity between non-qualifying and qualifying leaseholders under the Building Safety Act 2022. It extends protection to 3 properties for all types of leaseholder. It also amends the Building Safety Act to exclude shares in a property of 50% or less from being counted as wholly owned. Lastly, it removes the distinction between leaseholders once relevant defects are remedied.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Young of Cookham]

286: Clause 231, page 272, line 30, at end insert—
“(ca) under section (Secretary of State’s duty to promote healthy homes and neighbourhoods);”

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Young of Cookham]

315A: Clause 234, page 276, line 15, at end insert—
“(c) section (Qualifying leases under the Building Safety Act 2022) comes into force on 1 August 2023.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment provides a commencement provision for one of Lord Young’s new clause amendments.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 13th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I remind the House of my relevant interests as a councillor and a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

Throughout the debates on the Bill, we have all agreed on the importance of having a plan-led approach to development. Therefore, an effective local authority planning service is key to implementing timely decisions on planning applications. The House of Commons Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Select Committee issued a report on planning reforms earlier this year. The report stated that the National Audit Office found that local authority planning services had been cut by £1.3 billion over a 10-year period to 2020, which equates to a 55% reduction in service spending. That is from the National Audit Office, so we cannot argue with those figures.

A Local Government Association survey in 2022 found that 58% of councils had trouble in recruiting planners—and, in county councils, that rose to 83%. The Royal Town Planning Institute estimates that one in 10 planning officer posts are not currently filled. From my own experience in my council, I know that senior planners are enticed into the private sector, leaving councils less well equipped to deal with complex applications. The enormous stress on planning services has the consequence of putting an additional delay on development, which adds programming problems for housebuilders and developers of commercial units. Amendment 235 in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham—who I thank for adding his name to an amendment on issues that we both raised separately in Committee—would insert a new clause to address those practical issues. It would enable a local planning authority to set a level of fee that covers the costs of a planning application.

I appreciate that the Government have agreed to increase planning fees by 35% for major applications and by 25% for all other applications. Of course, that is a step in the right direction. However, nationally set fees fail to take into account regional differences in costs; they also fail to reflect the actual costs of dealing with very complex developments, either very large housing sites or commercial developments.

This national approach to fee setting results in council tax payers subsidising complex planning applications. That cannot be right. The stark fact is that 305 out of 343 local authority planning departments had a deficit totalling £245.4 million in 2020 and 2021. That is a huge sum, where council tax payers are subsidising housebuilding developers, for example, who are well able to meet the costs of a planning application in full.

In addition, of course, there are the Government amendments that the noble Earl, Lord Howe, has spoken about this morning, which are a good step forward in conceding the argument made by the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, about statutory consultees being paid for the work that they do—that is right and proper. But this adds to the bill that local authority planning services have to pay and it adds to the cost. All in all, there will be additional costs for the work being done. I think that the Government have made some concessions to the principle that the noble Baroness, Lady Young, has asked about and I support that. I wish that they had gone further, as she argues, but it is one step in the right direction.

I will of course listen carefully to the response from the Minister to Amendment 235, but I feel strongly about this issue. It is not a matter of principle; it is a practical amendment to enable local authority planning services to provide the service that they are required to do and that they want to do, but for which they need the funds to do. If the Minister is unable to concede that principle, I will be minded at the appropriate stage to test the opinion of the House on this matter.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 235, which I proposed in Committee and to which the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, has just spoken. Since Committee, the need for it has become more urgent, as reflected in the report of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Select Committee in July, which concluded:

“The Government’s reforms to national planning policy will fail if local authorities lack sufficient resources to implement them. The package of support which the Government has outlined does not go far enough to address the significant resourcing challenges which local authorities currently face”.


I support the amendment for two reasons. First, I do not believe that the Government should be controlling the fees charged by planning departments, as a matter of principle. They do not control other local authority fees—building regulations, parking fees, library charges, school meals, swimming pool charges—so why planning? A national cap does not reflect the different circumstances of local authorities.

The case for relinquishing control is made stronger by the aspirations in the levelling up White Paper, with its commitment to

“usher in a revolution in local democracy”.

The revolution is stopped in its tracks by the notion that local authorities should not be free to recover the costs of their planning departments.

In reply to my amendment in Committee, my noble friend the Minister said that

“having different fees creates inconsistency, more complexity and unfairness for applicants, who could be required to pay different fee levels for the same type of development. Planning fees provide clarity and consistency for local authorities, developers and home owners”.—[Official Report, 24/4/23; col. 1003.]

Let me briefly dissect that. As far as local authorities are concerned, they are the ones who sponsored my original amendment. They have since confirmed their continuing support with this statement:

“We support this amendment. Planning fees do not cover the true cost of processing planning applications. In 2020/21, 305 out of 343 local authority planning departments operated in a deficit, which totalled £245.4 million”.


As far as developers are concerned, they already have to cope with myriad different local plans and can well manage different fees. What the developers want are well-resourced planning departments that can effectively process their applications quickly. One of the reasons for the disappointing housebuilding performance is planning delays. The amendment addresses that. As for home owners, I do not think that they know that planning fees are set centrally and they are used to local authorities having different charges for libraries, parking, allotments and the rest. I do not think that they would mind if fees were set locally, as long as they got a good service.

Secondly, I do not think it right that council tax payers should have to subsidise the planning system—the hidden subsidy referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Young. There are more important calls on those resources, underlined by the financial problems facing Birmingham City Council. The Minister told us that the Government were consulting on increasing the fees, but in the words of the Local Government Association:

“We welcome the Government’s commitment to increase planning application fees. However, our modelling has shown that even if all application fees were uplifted by 35 per cent, the overall national shortfall for 2020/21 would have remained above £80 million”.


In his opening speech, my noble friend referred on several occasions to full-cost recovery for provision of services. That is exactly what this amendment does.

I conclude by quoting the Times, which recently, on 7 July, summed up the position:

“Britain’s planning system is grinding to a halt, with four out of five big applications now being delayed by up to two years.


Official figures show that more than half a million new developments have been delayed during the past five years as threadbare planning departments struggle to cope with even routine cases.


Industry experts said the delays were exacerbating the housing crisis, with developments now taking up to three years to get started. Councils are supposed to give developers a decision on big projects within 13 weeks, but the latest official data shows that only 19% of applications were processed in this time over the past year, down from 57% 10 years ago … Developers say that performance is damaging efforts to tackle the housing crisis and other government priorities such as installing wind and solar farms. They warn that unless the government insists on proper funding for planning departments, the housing crisis will worsen as councils will always choose refuse collections over planning when allocating scarce resources.”


The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, has made a powerful case and I hope that the Government will reflect in their reply on the further measures that are now needed.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, before I talk about the amendments, I take this opportunity, on Back British Farming Day, to pay tribute to and celebrate our wonderful farmers across the country—a big thank you to them.

I draw noble Lords’ attention to my interests in the register: I am now vice-president of the LGA, vice-president of the District Councils’ Network and a serving councillor in both Stevenage and Hertfordshire.

As the Minister mentioned, the government amendments in this group are technical and consequential and I do not intend to comment on them other than to link some of his comments to the other amendments.

My noble friend Lady Young’s Amendment 227A is a sensible proposal that those organisations charged with providing supporting advice to planning applications should be able to recover fees for that advice directly from applicants. For too long, the weight of providing specialist advice has fallen on the public purse or on the budgets of hard-pressed third sector organisations, as my noble friend outlined so clearly. Anyone looking at this from the outside would consider that to be unreasonable. I hope that the Government will consider my noble friend’s amendment and take it seriously. Indeed, the noble Earl, Lord Howe, said that there should be full cost recovery for NSIPs. We need to think about that amendment and the one that I will talk about in a moment and how we create a level playing field in this respect.

Amendment 235 in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, and the noble Lord, Lord Young, seems to me the no-brainer of the Bill. For many years, the LGA has been campaigning for local authorities to be able to charge full cost recovery in relation to the actual cost of processing applications. A government report proposed this in 2010, following a consultation by Arup that demonstrated the extent to which councils are undercharging for planning under the current fixed-fee system. The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, quoted the figure, which was from 2021; I expect that it is a lot more now and probably way over £250 million a year.

Of all the problems in the planning system, this seems the simplest to resolve. Over time, it would enable authorities to recruit the number of planners that they need and it would shift the cost burden of planning from the local taxpayer to the developer, who, after all, will receive the benefit of the application. I can only quote from my experience of a major town centre regeneration scheme. There were two years of planning discussions on the scheme and then literally a vanload of papers for the application when it came in, and we have just three planners in my local authority. That shows the kind of pressure on the system. Local authority budgets are more hard-pressed than they ever were, so it is hard to imagine why the Government would not accept that full cost recovery should be a basic principle of planning and that it is up to local authorities to charge their own costs.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 3rd May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, forgive me: I do not have an amendment in this group and I do not want to delay the point when we arrive at my further amendments, but I want to say something about green-belt policy. I am glad to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, because I come from outside Cambridge and she lived in Cambridge, at one time, and now lives now in Oxford, if I am correct. Looking at the green belt by reference to Oxford and Cambridge is an interesting way to approach these things, and I want to do it by reference to the Cambridge green belt in particular.

After the noble Baroness left Cambridge, we lived with precisely the consequences that she described. For 25 years, until about 2000-01, all the development that was required for Cambridge was happening in villages outside Cambridge and generally beyond the green belt. There are many people who will say that it is all very well to talk about reviewing the green belt, looking at green-belt land and whether it should be in or out the green belt, but they are not politicians and they do not have to live with the consequences of reviewing the green belt. Well, I was a politician when we agreed to review the green belt in the run-up to the strategic plan review in 2006, if I remember correctly. Not only did we review the green belt and sustain that through an examination in public, but we successfully reshaped the green belt around Cambridge such that, in the years since, a much larger proportion of the development that is required for Cambridge has happened in the green belt. Some of it has actually delivered access to the countryside that was never available before.

That firmly focused our minds on the purposes of the green belt. For example, we retained green corridors running into Cambridge. Those familiar with Cambridge will realise that, if they come into the centre through Trumpington, they will continue to see countryside reaching right to the centre of Cambridge itself. That was not lost. However, the review acknowledged the requirement for the release of land not primarily for residential purposes but for the purpose of building the Cambridge Biomedical Campus. If we had not reviewed the green belt, the biomedical campus south of Cambridge, around Addenbrooke’s Hospital and what is now Royal Papworth Hospital, and their related research institutes, would not have been able to be built. That would have been an immense loss to the UK economy and life sciences sector.

The point I am making is that understanding when to retain the boundaries of the green belt, when to review them and under what circumstances that review should conclude that the boundaries should be changed is a vital part of planning policy. We should not leave it out. I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, and other noble Lords remember from other debates that I am firmly of the opinion that this legislation should be used to give a stronger statutory basis to the environmental purposes of planning, including—one of my earlier amendments did this—in respect to nature recovery and biodiversity gain.

However, I should say to the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, that I think it is inappropriate to extend green-belt purposes to the features that she has in Amendment 295, because that would create a different statutory basis for planning policy on green-belt land, as opposed to greenfield or any other available land for development. It would entrench the idea that there is something different about green-belt land from other land.

Of course it is permanent, but I remember back in the early 2000s when I asked what permanent meant in relation to the green belt. The answer, I was told, was 25 years. If it is permanent now, we are talking about land that should stay in the green belt until 2050, more or less. That is when we are supposed to achieve net zero—in fact, before then, as our Green colleagues regularly tell us and would tell us now if they were with us. We have to think about the consequences we expect for our land use strategies if we are to achieve net zero between now and 2050.

For example, I have mentioned Cambridge City Council’s environmental assessment before it commenced the review of its local plan. It showed that it requires a significant increase in the density of development in urban areas and development to be focused on public transport corridors. Let us look at where the public transport corridors are, for example around London. I come from Essex: if you go out into the countryside on the Central line, you go through the green belt, but you do so on a public transport corridor on which there is effectively no development. We have to look very carefully and ask whether that is sustainable. The principle of sustainable development is at the heart of planning, and the boundaries of the green belt should be subject to the principle of sustainable development and assessed against the purposes set out in the National Planning Policy Framework.

As I mention the NPPF for the 98th time in these debates, it would be jolly helpful for the Government to tell us what precisely they plan to say in the NPPF and in the national development management policies in future. I come back to chapter 13 of the draft NPPF, which has two parts to it: one is effectively about setting policy for the green belt, which is about setting its boundaries, and the second is about the policies that should apply to the determination of an application for development within the green belt. The latter should be a national development management policy and the former should not: it should continue to be part of what is effectively the overall guidance from the Secretary of State for plan making. My noble friend sent me a letter following a previous debate but did not clarify precisely that division. I think we need to know, as a very clear example of what is or is not an NDMP. It is an important basis for our future debates on Report.

I am sorry that Ministers thought it appropriate to propose a change to the NPPF to include the sentence:

“Green Belt boundaries are not required to be reviewed and altered if this would be the only means of meeting the objectively assessed need for housing over the plan period”.


I do not know why they have inserted it and I do not see the benefit of it. In those local authorities that consist very largely of green belt—and there are some—it will effectively remove from them the obligation to play their part at all in the provision of housing to meet assessed need. I suspect that the same will be true of the requirements for employment and commercial-related development. As I see it, this has no place. Sustainable development should be the principle, and this sentence effectively absolves those local planning authorities of the responsibility to pursue sustainable development in their areas. I hope that, even at this stage, when they look at the responses to the NPPF consultation, Ministers will recognise that this is inappropriate language to use in relation to green-belt boundary setting.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, this short debate has revealed that tension at the heart of planning policy and, indeed, political debate: what is the relative priority for environmental imperatives on the one hand and for housing on the other? What the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, described as covering land with concrete is, for some people, providing families with decent homes. That is the balance we have to make.

The noble Baroness, Lady Young, opened this debate by asking what the green belt is for. Her amendment outlines nine criteria and purposes for the green belt, and the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, came up with some more criteria. I turn that question the other way around: if a piece of land meets none of the nine criteria in the amendment or those mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, but happens to be designated as green belt, should it remain designated? I am all in favour of expanding the green belt if it meets these criteria and others, but there are bits of the green belt that fulfil none of them.

My noble friend Lord Lansley referred to the document put out on 22 December on reforms to national planning policy. One of the questions was:

“Do you agree that national policy should make clear that Green Belt does not need to be reviewed or altered when making plans?”.


The answer is that I do not agree. As my noble friend said, that gives a let-out, but it also prevents the optimum use of land that is needed for housing.

I hope that, if we do come up with positive policies and descriptions of the objectives to be fulfilled by the green belt, we will look very critically at bits of the green belt that do not meet those criteria. There have been award-winning housing schemes built on what were green belts. We may need more of them if we are to hit our target of 300,000 homes a year. Along with my noble friend Lord Lansley, I think that there are other considerations to take into account when striking the appropriate balance between the environment on one hand and the need for decent homes on the other.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this important debate. At least, I think I thank them all. There are one or two I probably do not agree with. The noble Lords, Lord Lansley and Lord Young of Cookham, amply showed how the polarisation argument about green belt is quite corrosive. It cannot be either/or; it has to be both. We have very little land in this country and we are asking more and more of it, so we have to find ways to meet all the needs for land effectively. That is the subject of another amendment that I have tabled to the Bill. In particular, I hope I misunderstood the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, who seemed to imply that if green belt did not meet the broader criteria, other than just urban sprawl reduction, that was a good reason for building on it. In my view, we should be asking: how do we get this land, which is primarily for the purpose of restraining urban sprawl, also to do other things while it is at it?

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

I hope I did not give that impression. I made it clear that as long as land met one of the nine objectives, of which protecting against urban sprawl is only one, in my view it should be green belt. My point was that if it met none of them, what was it doing being classified as green belt?

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for that clarification. I hope that there are not huge numbers of pieces of green belt that do not meet at least the urban sprawl criterion. I very much look forward to the work that the noble Lord, Earl Howe, outlined. We do go back a long way. On one notable occasion, on the eve of the 1997 election, he saved my bacon comprehensively and I shall say no more about that right now. He knows what I am talking about.

I disagree with him that we should not see the required provisions in statute rather than just in planning guidance, but I hope that the NPPF consultation inclines in the direction of boundary review, just not only for the purpose of meeting housing targets. The boundary review should be an exception rather than an opportunity.

I very much appreciate that Defra and DLUHC are working together on how we link green belt provision with access, biodiversity and woodland creation. It is a pity that we cannot get further information about that now and I hope we might see more before Report. I commend the two departments for working these issues out together because there has been inadequate linkage between them on some of these issues in the past. I suppose that what I am taking from the Minister is that there is some hope for jam tomorrow. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.