Councils: Funding

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Shipley

Thursday 4th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

Local councillors and local government officials have done remarkably well to maintain, and in some cases improve, the quality of the services they provide despite, since 2010, a reduction in grant until recently, which was necessary to balance the national accounts. I recognise that they have done that without excessive rate increases. Looking forward, I have seen the report to which the noble Lord refers and welcome the Local Government Association’s attempt to quantify the pressure on resources. That information will be used by Ministers to feed into the spending review to make the case for a proper settlement for local government.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I also remind the House of my vice-presidency of the Local Government Association. Local government will be pleased that the Minister thinks that the sector is doing “remarkably well”. Indeed it is, but does he accept that local government is facing ever-rising costs in service provision at the same time as increasing pressure on income, not least from business rates in the retail sector? Do the Government accept that this situation is turning into a crisis and would benefit from urgent cross-party discussions across national and local government, looking forward to the spending review but also examining fair funding, assumptions about council tax levels and the future of business rates?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I say to the noble Lord that I was a vice-president of the Local Government Association—until I was expelled for introducing rate-capping in the 1980s. On the serious issue he raises, extra funding announced in last year’s Budget means that the Government will have given councils access to £10 billion of dedicated funding that can be used for adult social care, which is the real pressure point, in the three-year period to 2019-20. That is a combination of the adult social care precept and the better care fund. As for his invitation to cross-party discussions, those are always welcome: it is always helpful to have consensus on how local government is funded. Announcements on fair funding and the business rates retention scheme will be made alongside the decisions of the spending review.

Affordable Housing

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Shipley

Wednesday 3rd July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I agree with the thrust of my noble friend’s question. The other thing that we have done is that when surplus land becomes available from any government department it is put on a website, and the homes agency has the opportunity to acquire it before anybody else. It can put in a bid and do what he and the noble Lord suggested: to make the land available for housing. We are seeing more such transactions where the land is made available to local authorities or housing associations, and the Government are committed to providing 160,000 homes, I think, by March next year on land that was in government ownership in 2015.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I refer the House to my interests in the register. A few days ago, at the Housing 2019 conference, the Prime Minister said that,

“we are delivering a whole new approach to social housing … Because this is a Government with a bold vision for housing and a willingness to act on it”.

Can the Minister can tell the House what that bold vision is for social housing?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

Yes, indeed. We announced that we would abolish the cap on the housing revenue account, to enable local authorities to build up to £4 billion- worth of new homes and introduce a new generation of council housing.

Public Procurement and the Civil Society Strategy

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Shipley

Thursday 23rd May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by thanking my noble friend Lady McGregor-Smith for initiating and introducing this important and timely debate, and thank all noble Lords who have taken part. It is has been a well-informed, consensual and thoughtful debate on a subject that, as many noble Lords have said, is not often discussed. It has been particularly helpful to the Government, since our policy is, as I shall explain, in the process of development.

To sum up the debate, the view is that what we have done is good, but we need to do more, and do it better and faster; that is the message I shall take away. My noble friend Lady McGregor-Smith produced an ambitious menu of reforms, which we take seriously. If I do not address them all, I shall write to her. I know that this subject has been one of her special interests for some time and I very much welcome her input.

My noble friend Lord Maude should be answering this debate as he knows much more about it than almost anyone else. I would like to say how much I welcomed his input when I was working with him. He secured very real changes, reforms and savings in public procurement when he was in office. He reminded me of how things have changed since I was first a Minister some 40 years ago. I remember the narrowly focused, time-consuming, bureaucratic tendering. What a contrast that is with the changes he has introduced: the more flexible, market-oriented approach, which enables the taking account of social value. As he said, he has put this into the DNA and the genes are doing well as they flow around the system. He identified the barriers to entry: the performance bonds, the tender documents and the three-year requirement to produce accounts that have historically stopped some of the SMEs getting involved. I will say a word about that in a moment.

My noble friend mentioned public service mutuals. I remember him championing these in the health service when he was in office. They have an important role to play in delivering high-quality public services. At the moment there are 115 mutuals operating in diverse sectors from health to libraries, delivering approximately £1.6 billion of public services. In January last year, the DCMS launched a package of support worth £1.7 million to help new mutuals to emerge and existing ones to grow and flourish.

My noble friend also asked about the Commissioning Academy, a development programme for senior decision-makers across the public sector. It supports participants to learn from best practice across the country and is a key component in the culture change that many noble Lords have been advocating. We continue to provide leadership through the Commissioning Academy, working with the social enterprise PSTA—the Public Service Transformation Academy. The DDCMS has worked with the PSTA to ensure good commercial practice, promoting early engagement with the market, contract management, and social value.

I was interested in what my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, said about local commissioning and a cross-government approach. Again, perhaps I have been in government too long, but I remember the Property Services Agency, which owned the government estate and the Government Car Service. That was able to look at a town such as Horsham, then look at the totality of the government estate—the DHSS and all the other departments—and engage local contractors. After a time, government departments thought this was a remote, bureaucratic and expensive organisation and demanded autonomy, because we charged them quite a lot to change a lightbulb. It was devolved to local departments, which then discovered that they were all having to replicate particular skills and were losing the ability for local commissioning. We now seem to be moving back towards the PSA model, on which I have an enormous wealth of experience.

My noble friend and one or two other noble Lords mentioned the liquidation of Carillion. That has been used by some, although not in this debate, as a case for stopping the outsourcing of the delivery of public services to the private sector. The Government’s view, and that of previous Governments, is that the private sector has a vital role to play in delivering public services in this country, bringing a range of specialist skills, world-class expertise and deeper knowledge to bear. As we have heard, the public sector is the largest purchaser of goods and services in the UK, spending over £250 billion on procurement. Central government alone accounts for £49 billion of that figure.

As we have heard, there is so much more that the Government could do to create and nurture a vibrant, healthy, innovative, competitive and diverse marketplace of public service suppliers, with values at its heart, where wider social benefits matter and are recognised. This is reflected in the Civil Society Strategy, mentioned by my noble friend, which was published last year. It commits the Government to use their huge buying power to drive social change by championing social value through their commercial activities and levelling the playing field for all types of businesses, including small businesses, voluntary and community-sector organisations and social enterprises—a theme mentioned by many noble Lords in this debate. In turn, that would encourage employment opportunities, develop skills and improve environmental sustainability.

The Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012 already places a requirement on relevant contracting authorities to consider in respect of procurement for services: first, how the economic, environmental and social well-being of the relevant area may be improved by what is being procured; and secondly, how, in conducting the procurement, they might act with a view to securing that improvement. Contracting authorities must also consider whether to consult the market on these issues before the procurement process starts. There have been a number of suggestions during our debate about how that Act might be amended.

I confess to noble Lords something that may already be apparent: that this is a subject with which I was less than familiar before my noble friend tabled the Motion and it fell to me to reply to it. I am a lot wiser after this debate. To get my mind around what was going on, I asked officials for an example of how incorporating social value in the tendering process would lead to a different outcome. They came up with a Ministry of Defence contract with Future Biogas and the energy company EDF to develop an electricity supply for RAF Marham in Norfolk. The MoD could have taken the conventional lowest-price approach, without considering the social, economic and environmental benefits that could flow to the local area, but did not. Instead, it engaged up front with the supply market and developed an ambitious social value plan.

The airbase will now get 95% of its electricity from biogas generated by fermenting crops grown by local farmers, an option which did not exist before the engagement. This will directly save £300,000 a year on electricity costs, but there is more to it than that, which is what struck me. The fuel is a green and sustainable solution, helping to tackle climate change. Locally grown crops will power the plant, supporting the local rural economy and ensuring continued business and employment in the area. Building, running and maintaining the anaerobic digestion plant supports skilled, long-term employment opportunities in Norfolk. Future Biogas employs five highly skilled engineers on site and an apprentice who started a four-year apprenticeship at the end of 2018, and an agricultural contracting business supporting the plant has increased its full-time employees by five and seasonal staff by a further 10. As part of an improved crop-rotation regime, soil quality is boosted and the weed and pest burden lessened, and the digestate output from the plant is a sought-after organic fertiliser, improving yields of food crops and locking up carbon in the soil.

I found that a very helpful illustration of the case for social value and it is that sort of lateral thinking that we want to promote. Other cases were included in the helpful briefings sent to noble Lords for this debate. My noble friend Lady McGregor-Smith mentioned Crossrail, as did my noble friend Lord Pickles. The important thing about RAF Marham is that it is in the Chief Secretary’s constituency. There have been one or two comments about the potential inflexibility of the Treasury in taking social value on board. Perhaps she has now been persuaded by that local example.

In June last year, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster announced the Government’s intention to extend the application of the 2012 social value Act in central government. While the Act currently requires commissioners to only “consider” social value while awarding contracts, the new proposals will strengthen this further by making it an explicit requirement in central government contracts with the private and third sectors. This work to extend the application of the Act across all central government procurement represents one of the most significant changes in public procurement in recent years. It will ensure that contracts are awarded on the basis of more than just price, looking, as all noble Lords have suggested, at a contract’s social impact too, and giving firms much-deserved recognition for their positive actions in society.

The objective for the Government’s commercial activities will always remain achieving good commercial outcomes for the taxpayer. However, it is right that commissioning and procurement should support social outcomes as well, providing that these outcomes are relevant and proportionate to what is being procured.

A number of noble Lords, including my noble friend Lady McGregor-Smith and the noble Lords, Lord Shipley and Lord Stevenson, wanted the Government to increase the minimum weighting for social value in central government procurement awards from 10% to 20%—or up to 50%, in her case. As mentioned, we launched a consultation paper in March. One of the areas on which we are seeking feedback is whether a minimum 10% weighting is appropriate. The 10% weighting was developed with input from supplier representatives; we are genuinely consulting on this and have an open mind. It is important that we change at a rate that suits each sector. In particular, we want to prevent barriers to entry for SMEs.

The noble Lord, Lord Haskel, and my noble friend Lady McGregor-Smith were worried that public procurement favours large companies. I will say a word about that in a moment. The expanded use of the social value Act is widely recognised as a measure that will encourage greater diversity in public sector supply chains.

The noble Lord, Lord Haskel, warned me that he would raise BSI 95009. The standard is aimed at public and private sector buyers, and proposes a framework for those in procurement to demonstrate or assess trustworthiness, transparency and ethical practice. The Cabinet Office is in discussions with the BSI. We have not yet endorsed the standard, but will consider it most important to ensure that we do not burden suppliers unnecessarily—a point I made earlier—and create barriers to entry for SMEs.

The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, asked if we would show leadership on social value by committing to producing an annual social value budget, showing how much social value has been created by central government procurement each year. On 25 January last year, the Chancellor of the Duchy announced the Government’s intention to extend the application of the social value Act in central government departments. This included a requirement to report on social value.

A number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, asked if we would expand the social value Act to cover goods and works as well as services, so that the value of every penny of public money is maximised. As part of the joint Cabinet Office and DCMS programme of work, central government departments should apply the terms of the social value Act to goods and works, as well as services. There will be markets common to both central government and the wider public sector so it will have a broader impact.

The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, asked whether the social value criteria were compulsory and whether the Government will be using them. The new social value framework will be mandatory for central government departments, their executive agencies and non-departmental bodies for procurements subject to Part 2 of the Public Contracts Regulations.

[Lord Shipley]

My query specifically related to whether it was simply advisory for local government or whether local government should be required to do what central government departments do.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

My understanding is that it is advisory, because it was not included in the mandated list I just read out. If I am wrong I will write to the noble Lord.

The noble Lord asked why the strategy guidance has not been issued and whether we will produce a quick guide on it. We actually published guidance on how to work with central government, including social value, working with the VCSE Crown representative Claire Dove. The DCMS and the Cabinet Office are working with the advisory panel to understand the needs of the sectors and to prepare for the changes to social value. We will work with the sector representative bodies to produce the guidance the noble Lord just asked for.

The noble Lord asked for an annual report on social value procurement. Again, in his announcement in June last year the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster included a requirement for central government departments to report on social value.

I was asked why large government contracts are out of scope for social value procurement. The answer is that the balanced scorecard is already in place to cover procurement of over £10 million. That already covers socioeconomic factors. The new social value framework covers everything below £10 million and above the Public Contracts Regulations threshold.

Representation of the People (Election Expenses Exclusion) (Amendment) Order 2019

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Shipley

Thursday 14th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, the election expenses exclusion order brought forward today aims to make significant improvements to the electoral framework. The order proposes that expenses that are reasonably attributable to a candidate’s disability, and which are reasonably incurred, are excluded from a candidate’s electoral spending limits.

Examples of such expenses include, but are not limited to, British Sign Language interpretation for hearing-impaired candidates, the transcription of campaign material into Braille for visually impaired candidates and specialist equipment. This order will also exclude expenses funded from grants provided through the Government’s interim EnAble Fund for Elected Office from electoral spending limits. This £250,000 interim fund will support disabled candidates and help cover disability-related expenses that people might face when seeking elected office, such as those I have listed.

The Government are committed to ensuring that the diversity of the United Kingdom is sufficiently represented in public office. Around one in five of the UK population has a disability, but disabled people remain insufficiently represented in our Parliaments, Assemblies and councils. The proposed changes will help to create a level playing field between candidates with disabilities and candidates without disabilities, enhancing equality of opportunity.

Alongside the proposals put forward today, I will remind the House of the other work being taken on to increase the number of disabled people in public office. This includes the review by my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond into opening public appointments to disabled people. We welcome his report’s recommendations, which suggest improvements across each of the key points of the appointment process, from the data the Government hold to attracting applicants, the application process and interviews and assessments. We are confident that the recommendations will enable the Government to understand better the issue, improve the disability data we hold for public appointees and pinpoint effective approaches to increasing the proportion of disabled public appointees. We are currently assessing how these recommendations might be implemented.

The order brought before the House today has a wide remit of application. It will apply UK-wide to all UK parliamentary elections, including by-elections. In England, the order will also apply to local government elections, Mayor of London elections, London Assembly elections, mayoral elections and combined authority mayoral elections. In Northern Ireland, it will apply to Northern Ireland Assembly elections. I can tell noble Lords that the Government plan to lay a second statutory instrument this year to widen the application of this provision to police and crime commissioner elections across England and Wales.

I will turn briefly to the detail of the proposed changes. The election expenses exclusion order excludes expenses that are reasonably attributable to a candidate’s disability and which are reasonably incurred, by substituting a new paragraph 7(a) in Part 2 of Schedule 4A to the Representation of the People Act 1983. Part 2 of Schedule 4A to that Act sets out a list of matters that are “excluded” from being “election expenses” and therefore are not taken into account when calculating a candidate’s electoral spending limits. This ensures parity with electoral spending limits for non-party campaigners. Schedule 8A to the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 excludes reasonable expenses incurred that are reasonably attributable to an individual’s disability from electoral spending limits of non-party campaigners.

I would like to allay concerns about whether the change will require candidates to disclose any disability. It will not. There will be no legal obligation for candidates to report their disability-related expenses. Candidates can declare these expenses if they wish so to do. I would also like to allay concerns that this exclusion could be misused by individuals who want to manipulate their electoral spending limits. The provisions are clear: this exclusion can be used only for expenses that are reasonably incurred and reasonably attributable to a candidate’s disability. Any breach of the spending rules for candidates can be referred to the police and prosecutors for investigation. The order will not give candidates with a disability an advantage. Its purpose is to create a level playing field in respect of electoral spending limits, so that candidates with a disability are not disadvantaged by that disability in standing for election.

We have consulted on the elections expenses exclusion order with the Electoral Commission, the Welsh Government, the Scottish Government and the Northern Ireland Office. There has been cross-government collaboration between the Cabinet Office and the Government Equalities Office. All the consulted stakeholders have been supportive of the proposals. We have also kept the Parliamentary Parties Panel informed of the position with the order.

On a final point, I would like to highlight that it is important that the order is in place as soon as possible so that it can apply at the local government elections in England on 2 May. This order will therefore come into force on the day after the day on which it is made. I commend this order to the House.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

I thank the Minister for explaining this order and I want to record that I agree with it. It is entirely appropriate that any disability-related expenses in elections should be exempt from spending limits, on principle. That is because it helps disabled candidates to stand for election on equal terms with others. I noted the Minister’s comments about some objections that may have been raised on some of the details—but none is more important than the overall principle of equality of opportunity.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, I am very happy to give the order my full support. I was glad that the noble Lord mentioned the political parties panel, because I was going to ask him about it. There is no mention of political parties at all in the consultation referred to in the Explanatory Memorandum. I know that the noble Lord mentioned it in his contribution, because I was going to ask him about it. The bodies listed in the Explanatory Memorandum do not pay election expenses and do not fill out election returns. I am glad that he covered that point. It is important that we keep the political parties informed on all these matters. They can often inform the Government’s thinking in a positive and helpful way. Since the noble Lord answered my question, that is fine. I am very happy to support the order.

Combined Authorities (Mayoral Elections) (Amendment) Order 2019

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Shipley

Thursday 14th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, in moving this order I shall also speak to the draft Local Authorities (Mayoral Elections) (England and Wales) (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2019.

The order and regulations make changes to the rules governing the conduct of elections of combined authority mayors and local mayors in England. The instruments also make important changes to the electoral framework in relation to candidates standing at these polls. They remove the existing requirement that each candidate’s home address must be published during the election process and be included on the ballot paper at elections of combined authority mayors and local mayors. These changes are designed to enhance the security of candidates standing at these polls and of their families, and to deliver commitments made by the Government in response to recommendations from the Committee on Standards in Public Life.

I should explain that these are two of four instruments that we have brought forward on this issue. In December 2018, we made two statutory instruments that implement the recommendation made by the CSPL in relation to candidates at local government and parish council elections. Electoral law provides that these statutory instruments are made under the negative resolution procedure, and they are therefore not required to be debated in Parliament before being made. This reflects the requirement that the rules for local government and parish council elections are to follow those for UK parliamentary elections. These orders are laid under the affirmative procedure.

Since 2010, candidates at UK parliamentary elections have been able to choose for their home address not to be made public at these polls. The changes we are making in the four instruments that relate to local and parish council elections and to combined authority and local mayoral elections will bring the procedure at these polls into line with that at UK parliamentary elections.

By way of background, in December 2017, the CSPL published its report, Intimidation in Public Life: A Review by the Committee on Standards in Public Life. It made a package of recommendations on ways to enhance the security of those wanting to take part in public life and to reduce the risk of intimidation. This included the recommendation that:

“The Government should bring forward legislation to remove the requirement for candidates standing as local councillors to have their home addresses published on the ballot paper”.


In responding to the CSPL report, the Government accepted this recommendation in relation to local councillors. Indeed, they went further in their response and stated that the practice of removing the requirement for home addresses to be published on the ballot paper should be applied equally to all those standing for election to public office, and should apply to those standing at any level of local authority elections, including for mayoral positions. We are therefore going beyond the CSPL’s report in taking action on this important issue.

As I indicated, in December last year, we made two statutory instruments that implement the recommendation made by the CSPL in relation to candidates at local government and parish council elections. The two instruments we are considering today will apply the changes to the elections of combined authority mayors and local mayors.

The CSPL heard from a number of individuals that the requirement for candidates standing for election as local councillors to publish their home address on the ballot paper has been a significant factor in enabling intimidatory behaviour, and would put people off standing as a council candidate due to that risk of intimidation. A number of former local election candidates stated that the disclosure of their home address enabled intimidatory behaviour to escalate when they subsequently stood as a parliamentary candidate. These personal accounts reinforce the need to take action to address this issue.

I turn briefly to the detail of the proposed changes. Currently, candidates standing at combined authority and local mayoral elections are required to give their home address, which will appear on certain election documents and the ballot paper. The only exception to these existing requirements is for persons standing at combined authority mayoral elections where the mayor will have police and crime commissioner functions. These candidates may already require that their home address is not made public. Under the proposed changes, candidates at any combined authority mayoral election and at all local mayoral elections will not be required to provide their home address on the nomination form or consent to nomination form. In future, candidates at these polls will be required to complete a home address form and to include their home address on it. Candidates will be able to choose that their home address is not made public and so not included on the ballot paper or other electoral documents.

We recognise that we need to strike a balance between transparency of the electoral process and the safety of candidates running for public office. We think it is important for electors to know whether a candidate lives locally and whether they have a link to the area in which they are standing for election. For this reason, under the proposed changes, if a candidate chooses not to make their home address public, they must state the name of the local authority area within which they live; this will appear on the ballot paper, the statement of persons nominated and the notice of poll for the election, instead of the candidate’s home address. Again, we are mindful of the need to ensure that there is openness in the electoral process. We are therefore providing that the home address forms will be available for inspection by certain authorised people, including other candidates standing at the poll.

We have consulted on the two mayoral instruments with the Electoral Commission, the Association of Electoral Administrators and the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives. We have also kept the Parliamentary Parties Panel—which is made up of representatives of the main political parties—informed of the position of the two instruments. There is broad support among stakeholders for the proposed changes.

On a final point, I highlight that it is important that the instruments are in place as soon as possible so that they can apply at the local government elections in England on 2 May. These instruments will therefore come into force on the day after they are made. The instruments presented before the House today make sensible and fair changes to the electoral framework. I commend them to the House.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his explanation of these orders. I am supportive of them. They bring the regulations into line with the election of police and crime commissioners and of Members of Parliament. They also respond to the recommendations of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. It will of course be a voluntary matter and, where an individual candidate makes a decision not to show their home address on the ballot paper, it is right that the local authority area they live in is shown on the ballot paper to assist voters.

It is a finely balanced issue but a decision to allow candidates for the mayoral election not to publish their home address seems justified by the evidence, as long as a candidate whose home address is not shown has their local authority area published on the ballot paper, the statement of persons nominated and the notice of poll. I emphasise to the Minister that my comments relate to mayoral elections, which cover large geographical areas. We will need to look more closely at the precise regulations for local councillors, who have a much more local focus, but that is for another occasion.

Affordable Housing

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Shipley

Thursday 25th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I declare an interest in that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I am pleased that so many colleagues have put their names down to speak in this debate, and I thank them. I thank too all those organisations that have sent briefings to us for their contribution to this debate; it is appreciated.

This debate is an opportunity for us to examine government policy on affordable housing. The Motion talks about the case for building more affordable housing—that is, more housing that is officially defined as affordable, but also housing that is more affordable for individuals, which increasingly is not the case. The general public think of affordability as related to income rather than market rates.

The term “affordable” has existed for some years. It was created by the then Deputy Prime Minister—now the noble Lord, Lord Prescott—in 2006. It was defined as,

“subsidised housing that meets the needs of those who cannot afford secure decent housing on the open market either to rent or buy”.

That seems a thoroughly reasonable definition. The official definition of “affordable rent” is that it is set at a maximum of 80% of local market rent. That definition was first introduced by the coalition Government in 2010. The problem is that that concept of affordability is out of date because it is no longer affordable in high-cost parts of the country. Indeed, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimates that today’s policy on affordable rents will see 1.3 million more people in poverty in 2040, placing huge additional pressures on the housing benefit bill.

In the words of Shelter, we need,

“a new generation of homes for social rent”.

Just 5,380 were built in 2016-17. Shelter estimates that we need at least 90,000 a year to meet the backlog. We have a huge shortage of decent homes and a huge backlog in demand for them. The Office for National Statistics may have downgraded its household growth projections from 210,000 per year to 159,000, but that remains a large number and may anyway omit households that would have formed but could not afford to.

The lack of affordable homes has led to the current crisis in homelessness. I am grateful to Shelter for its latest figures, which show that there are 268,000 homeless people in this country, including 123,000 children; there are 80,000 households in temporary accommodation, up by nearly half in the last five years; and there are 1.2 million households on council house waiting lists. Today we learn from the Huffington Post that 50,000 homeless households have had to move out of their communities in the last five years. I find that a national disgrace.

The Government’s White Paper, 18 months ago now in February 2017, Fixing Our Broken Housing Market, said:

“The starting point is to build more homes. This will slow the rise in housing costs so that more ordinary working families can afford to buy a home and it will also bring the cost of renting down”.


However, I submit that to bring down the cost of renting requires government support.

The evidence of unaffordable prices and rents is stark. Buying a home costs eight times annual workplace earnings; 20 years ago that figure was three and a half. Home ownership has gone down from 71% in 2003 to 63% in 2016-17, and it is just 37% today in the 25 to 34 age range. Private rents have risen steeply. The English Housing Survey in 2016-17 showed that private renters are spending 41% of their income on housing, as opposed to 31% for social renters and 19% for owner-occupiers.

There is a major affordability crisis in the private rented sector. Take Bristol: on Sunday the Observer reported that 200 people are sleeping in their vehicles in Bristol because the cost of private renting is unaffordable, given the low wages that they earn. According to the Valuation Office Agency, rents have risen 33% in Bristol in the last four years.

The Prime Minister has taken a keen personal interest in housing. She has talked in terms of a national housing crisis. She is right, but we need a coherent strategic plan to deal with the housing crisis, which still seems to be lacking. The Government’s emphasis has been on promoting owner-occupation. Last year, a further £10 billion was announced for Help to Buy but only an additional £2 billion for affordable housing, which meant only an extra 5,000 affordable homes a year. The Chartered Institute of Housing reminded us last year that only £8 billion of the £51 billion allocated for housing to 2021 will fund affordable homes. At the same time, the Office for Budget Responsibility has recently said Help to Buy pushes up house prices.

The balance between support for rent and support for owner-occupation is wrong, and perhaps there is growing recognition of that. Earlier this month, it was finally admitted that the cap on councils borrowing against their assets to build houses should be lifted. Might the Minister tell us why that decision took so long, when it could lead to around 10,000 extra affordable homes a year?

However, this speech is not all about criticism. I want to praise the Government for something: I praise them for not implementing the worst elements of the Housing and Planning Act, such as the forced sell-off of high-value council homes. What is the policy on starter homes, since they are defined as affordable? And is the forced sale of housing association homes now well and truly in the long grass? I also look forward to the impact of some of the reforms that the Government have introduced: the role of Homes England, the changes to the National Planning Policy Framework and, hopefully, some announcements in the Budget as a consequence of the Letwin review on the build-out rate.

In August, we had the social housing Green Paper, which was delayed almost a year. It is unclear why it took so long to write when in the last five years, according to the Chartered Institute of Housing, 150,000 social homes have been lost. I wonder whether the Government have taken account of the impact on the housing benefit bill of the increasing dominance of the private rented sector. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has stated that,

“investing in 80,000 affordable homes per annum could reduce the housing benefit bill by £5.6 billion per annum by 2040”.

That demonstrates that government policies must be for the long term.

But so much effort is having to go into dealing with the symptoms of the lack of sufficient homes: high house prices; high rents; rogue landlords; the misuse of viability assessments for affordable homes, which I hope is now at an end; and high housing benefit costs caused by inflating rents. As we know, private sector conditions can be very poor with insecure tenure. Almost 750,000 tenants live in unsafe or dirty homes because rogue landlords ignore the rules. Thankfully, the Government want to make progress on these issues, but they are taking time and there is a need for resources both nationally and locally. The only long-term solution to these problems is to increase the supply of new homes at prices that are genuinely affordable to those on average incomes.

Underpinning public policy should be agreed values that we are aspiring to achieve. I submit that only when those values have been achieved will we be able to say that the housing crisis is over. We need to agree the values that should underpin our approach to housing policy. These are that no one should be forced to spend more than a third of their income on housing costs. Those in work on the living wage should be able to afford to live reasonably close to where they work. No one should be forced to sleep rough or depend on temporary accommodation when they cannot find a permanent place to call home. No child should be forced to move school and away from friends because a landlord serves notice to quit because that landlord can command a higher rent if the existing tenants leave. Space standards for new homes should be sufficiently large to enable families to live comfortably in them.

I have concluded that the current housing crisis represents the biggest failure of public policy of the past 20 years. Over that time, we have built about 2 million too few homes, resulting in high prices, high rents, many fewer social homes and serious difficulties for younger people wanting to buy their own home. The Government need to achieve a threshold of 35% of affordable housing in all private developments, with a higher 50% threshold on all public land. We need to promote high-quality modular building, with its potential cost savings and faster building timescales.

Crucially, we need to capture an uplift in land values for public benefit. I note the work of the Centre for Progressive Capitalism, which states that currently 75% goes to the landowner and 25% to community benefits. It should be reversed. That requires reform to the Land Compensation Act 1961.

I also believe that the time has come to suspend the right to buy until the problem of the inadequate provision of social housing is put right. Suspending the right to buy has occurred in Scotland and will be introduced in Wales next January. Above all, we need to achieve the building of 300,000 homes a year.

If there is one immediate thing that we could achieve from this debate, it would be that the Government agreed to stop using the term “affordable” when, for so many people, homes described as affordable are out of their reach. I beg to move.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, with the constraints of a two-hour debate, given the number of noble Lords who wish to speak and the published time limits, the mathematics reveal very little margin for error. I urge noble Lords to stick to the limit of four minutes.

Building Regulations and Fire Safety: Government Response

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Shipley

Thursday 17th May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The noble Lord is quite right: what Dame Judith is basically saying is that we should rely less on looking in isolation at individual elements within the construction industry, which she argues leads to fragmentation, silo thinking and gaming the system, and move towards an outcome-based approach, which means standing back and making sure that the system as a whole has integrity. She is worried that at the moment what she describes as a prescriptive approach means relying on people meeting minimum standards and not taking a broader view of what is going on. In a quote that makes the point, Dame Judith says:

“This is most definitely not just a question of the specification of cladding systems but of an industry that has not reflected and learned for itself, nor looked to other sectors”.


She wants to promote what she calls a proactive and holistic view of the system as a whole. So not only should we look at the oil and gas industries, we should look at what is happening overseas where other countries are also moving towards an outcome-based system. I shall certainly take on board his point about a dialogue with other industries which have moved in this direction.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, perhaps I may remind the House that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I will raise two issues which I do not think have come out fully in our discussions so far. One relates to the fact that in the future, and depending on the consultation, it might be possible for combustible materials to be used on buildings. The Government’s Statement says that people living in buildings such as Grenfell Tower should be safe and should feel safe. But no one who knows that their accommodation is made of combustible materials is going to feel safe, and I suspect that they will also face substantial increases in their insurance premiums. So I hope that we will pay close attention to what the ABI and RIBA are saying about the need to make the use of combustible materials illegal.

My second question concerns the £400 million, because this issue has not yet been made clear. Is this a fixed sum of money which local authorities are to bid into or is it a flexible sum that may actually be higher than £400 million when all the costs of replacing the cladding are known? Further, does it include payment to local housing authorities for the fire watching that is currently being undertaken in a large number of high-rise blocks? It goes on for 24 hours a day, seven days a week and the costs are likely to have substantial implications for the rents paid by those who are in that accommodation. I hope very much that the £400 million is a flexible sum that will include the amount that might be loaded on to people’s rents.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I take the noble Lord’s point about the views of the ABI. Under the recommendations made by Dame Judith, those living in blocks of flats will have much more information about how safe their building is. She talks about a “golden thread”, which is a database relating to the building. It would be kept up to date and would be accessible to residents.

On the £400 million, we want to allocate this funding for remediation as soon as possible and we will announce more details shortly, including how we will encourage landlords to continue to pursue other parties for costs where they are responsible or at fault. He asked whether it is a flexible sum. As someone who was once a Minister in that department and had negotiations with the Treasury, I suspect that it is not a flexible sum: it is £400 million that is available for local authorities to bid for to help them with the costs that they have faced. We are trying to do all we can to ensure that in the social housing sector, the costs of implementing the recommendations do not fall on tenants’ rents. We have made that position clear.

Housing Associations

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Shipley

Thursday 8th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I remind the House of my entry in the register of interests and beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, the coalition Government secured more social housing by prioritising homes for affordable rent over homes for social rent. This enabled more than 357,000 new affordable homes to be built since 2010. We are providing more than £9 billion of funding for the affordable homes programme to March 2021 and £1 billion housing revenue account borrowing freedom for local authorities. This will support social landlords to build more affordable homes including homes for social rent.

[Lord Shipley]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply. He will be aware that the loss of housing association homes for social rent reported at the end of last week reflects in part a move from social rented homes to affordable rents but also the sale of some housing association homes. We have been waiting for the Government’s Green Paper on social housing for many months. When is that Green Paper due? Do the Government actually believe in social housing?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

Of course the Government believe in social housing, which is why, as I said in my reply, more than £9 billion has been allocated to it. In the last seven years, more affordable homes have been built than in the last seven years of the last Labour Government. We are committed to more social housing. The Green Paper on social housing is expected in the spring.

Grenfell Tower

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Shipley

Thursday 14th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I endorse what the noble Lord said about the response of the fire service—it was on the scene within six minutes—and about the community response. The most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury paid tribute to and spoke very movingly about that response on the “Today” programme.

To bring the House up to date: 151 homes were lost in the fire; some of those homes were overcrowded and others had multi-generational households which now wish to divide, so 210 households that formerly lived in Grenfell Tower and Grenfell Walk need to be rehoused. One hundred and forty-four households have accepted an offer of either temporary or permanent accommodation; 99 have moved in—54 into temporary housing and 45 into permanent housing—and 111 are in emergency accommodation, of whom 66 are yet to accept an offer of either permanent or temporary accommodation.

The noble Lord asks, quite rightly, what action is being taken. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea plans, by Christmas, to have acquired 300 homes, set against the 210 that are needed. It is acquiring two homes a day. I quite agree that Christmas is no time to spend in emergency accommodation; the Government are acutely aware of that. In the four hotels where most of the families are, specific arrangements have been made for the families to have space of their own to meet each other and to entertain their wider families, if they want to. A lot of services are being put on by voluntary or faith groups over the Christmas period to help and support those families.

We very much hope that by June next year everyone will have moved into permanent accommodation, but families need to move in their own time. Some who are in emergency accommodation do not want to move into temporary accommodation because they might have to move twice. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is doing intensive work alongside the families, finding out what accommodation they need and where they need it, and seeking to match that with the 300 houses that it is acquiring. I very much hope that by June everybody will have been offered and accepted permanent accommodation.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I join the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, in paying my respects to those who died in the Grenfell fire six months ago. I remind the Minister that this Question is about what the Government are doing. Does he accept that local people have now lost confidence in their local council? I remind him that in the Government’s Statement on the Grenfell fire on 19 October, it was said that there were expected to be 300 suitable local permanent properties by Christmas, yet only 45 households have moved in. Does he have confidence in the local council to deliver, or may it be time for the Government to intervene more directly?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The Government have no plans to put commissioners into the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. It has a new leader and a new chief executive and the Government have established a task force to make sure that that royal borough lives up to the expectations that everyone has of what it plans to do. Some of those in temporary accommodation want that to become their permanent home. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is approaching the relevant landlords to see whether that can take place. Some of those in emergency accommodation have already accepted permanent accommodation but it takes time to complete, fit out the house and put in the white goods to enable the families to move in. I am conscious that your Lordships are impatient for progress to be made but I am confident that the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, which plans to spend nearly £250 million acquiring property, now has the message, and I think the former lack of emotional intelligence and empathy is now behind us. It is now getting on with the job.

Housing: Planning Laws

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Shipley

Wednesday 25th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I welcome what the noble Lord has said about the Prime Minister’s announcement on lifting the local housing allowance cap on supported housing. That is welcome. We now need to move on to an agreed model for supported housing. On planning consents, the planning system granted consent for 304,000 new homes in the year up to March this year, which is up 15%. However, the noble Lord’s point is a good one. A third of new homes granted permission between 2010-11 and 2015-16 have yet to be built. That is where we need to focus. In the Autumn Statement last year, the Chancellor announced £2.3 billion of funding for housing infrastructure. That is to be focused on those sites where we have planning consent but, for infrastructure reasons, development is not taking place. We hope that will unlock sites for 100,000 homes in areas of greatest need. On raising the cap on local authority borrowing, he will see from Hansard, in my reply to last week’s debate, that there are circumstances in which we would consider lifting the local authority borrowing restrictions.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I remind the House of my interests in the register. I do not think this should be about liberalising the planning system, but rather about making the current system work better. Is the Minister aware of the very recent study by the Royal Town Planning Institute, which shows that we need more, not less, planning for getting large sites right without the delays and compromises we see so often? Does the Minister agree with that statement because, if so, there is an issue about the resourcing of planners from planning fees?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

There is indeed an issue, which is why we have decided that local authorities should be allowed to raise their planning fees by 20%, as long as the proceeds are then ring-fenced and ploughed back into the planning system. We are also looking at the so-called viability assessments, which sometimes hold up the planning process. The noble Lord will know that Ministers have powers to intervene where, for whatever reason, local authorities are dilatory in coming forward with local development plans.