Queen’s Speech

Viscount Younger of Leckie Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Viscount Younger of Leckie) (Con)]

My Lords, at the beginning of this very long debate—rather like a long flight to the Far East—the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, referred to seat belts being fastened. Well, I hope that I have been a good passenger and kept mine firmly fastened, perhaps in case of a bumpy ride. As an airline attendant would expect me to do, I am also keeping it firmly fastened until the plane lands in 20 minutes and reaches the gate.

Secondly, a long letter will be coming to your Lordships answering all the questions that I cannot possibly address today. However, I feel that a separate long letter, perhaps with gold edges, is required for the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. Were there 12 questions in his five-minute speech or were there a lot more? I am not sure. On a more serious note, I will be writing on the many questions raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, and the noble Lord, Lord Fox, on the workers’ rights Bill.

It is my great privilege to respond on behalf of the Government today, covering the vital work of no fewer than seven departments. It reminds me of those rounds of a Christmas quiz with a variety of themes, but where the questions are set by some of the sharpest minds in our country and where one-word answers from the Minister responding are not generally the norm.

What unites the work of all of those departments are the central aspirations of this Government: to put fairness at the heart of our work, to level up the whole of our United Kingdom and to secure the long-term future of this country for generations to come.

Although I may have been given the parliamentary graveyard shift to conclude these Queen’s Speech debates, it is also an excellent opportunity to set out our ambitious plans for a new decade of prosperity for the UK. My noble friend Lady Blackwood eloquently opened this debate by showing us the way. My noble friend Lord Bates—our new fragrant Peer—reminded us of the need for optimism and belief in ourselves and in our country. As he pointed out, the UK has some impressive statistics to shout about. Let us not talk ourselves down.

Before I continue, I want to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, on her excellent maiden speech. She has given us notice that she will have much to contribute to this House on the important subjects of teaching, children’s welfare and teachers’ prospects, including—as I think she mentioned—salaries and recruitment.

The Prime Minister has made it clear that he will work for the whole of the country, and fairness in society is a central theme. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth said, we are all bound together—one nation.

I turn, first, to housing, and I hope to meet at least one of the tests set by my noble friend Lady Stroud. We are committed to increasing the supply of social housing and we will renew our affordable homes programme. To reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, we have already made £9 billion available through this to deliver 250,000 new affordable homes.

Secondly, we will continue to boost supply and will further transform planning with our planning White Paper, which I hope will address some of the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton. Thirdly, we will help more people to own their own home by introducing discounted first homes for local people. However, that sense of fairness must continue once you own your home. We are committed to banning new leasehold houses and reducing ground rent on new leases to zero. We are also committed to ensuring a fair deal for existing leaseholders by working with the Law Commission to make buying your freehold, or extending your lease, easier, quicker and cheaper.

We will ensure a better deal for renters, too, by removing the threat of no-fault evictions while also ensuring that landlords can regain possession of properties for truly valid reasons. We are driving up standards and professionalism in the sector, and expanding the scope of our database of rogue landlords and property agents. Finally, our new lifetime deposit will ease the burden on tenants when they choose to move.

The noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, raised the point about energy standards in homes, and this plays nicely into the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, about one of the greatest challenges that we face: climate change. These improved standards on energy and homes include energy performance. Since 1 April 2018, landlords in the private rented sector must ensure that their property meets a minimum standard of energy performance, which should help to reduce fuel costs for tenants. Improving home energy efficiency is the most sustainable way to tackle fuel poverty, and an important step towards achieving net zero. Our energy company obligation scheme is currently set at £640 million per year and requires energy companies to upgrade the homes of low-income and vulnerable families.

This leads me neatly on to say that this Government are committed to ensuring that people are also safe in their homes. First, we will reintroduce the Domestic Abuse Bill. The Bill will, for the first time, give local authorities a legal obligation to support victims, survivors and their children, by providing life-saving support in safe accommodation, and helping victims to leave their abusive situation by protecting their security of tenure.

There was a theme of vulnerable children and, indeed, poverty and the protection of children, led by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Blower and Lady Benjamin. The Government have invested more than £15 billion since 2011 through the pupil premium, which was mentioned earlier, to support the most disadvantaged pupils. In addition, it was recently announced that up to £165 million has already been made available for the troubled families programme to be extended in 2020-21. This will ensure that more families get access to the vital early support that they need to overcome complex problems such as anti-social behaviour, mental health issues and domestic abuse. Compared to 2010, there are 730,000 fewer children in workless households, which is a record low.

Another theme of the debate was online harms. I want to talk about the White Paper and the importance of protecting people online. This was raised, not least by the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, the noble Baronesses, Lady Howe and Lady Benjamin, and the noble Viscount, Lord Colville. We plan to respond to the consultation in the coming months, which answers a question raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton. The response will reflect our extensive consultation with a wide range of stakeholders. We will outline next steps ahead of legislation. In the coming months, as we have announced, the Government will publish interim codes on online content and activity relating to terrorism and child sexual exploitation.

The second major area is around building safety. Two and a half years since the Grenfell Tower tragedy, it remains our priority to have a building safety system that people can trust will keep them and their loved ones safe. We accept, in full, the principle of the findings of phase 1 of the Grenfell Tower inquiry. I reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, that we will take these matters forward urgently, together with recommendations from the Hackitt review, shortly responding to our Building a Safer Future consultation and progressing the Building Safety Bill. Taken together, they will form a central part of our new and enhanced regulatory regime for building safety and construction products—a regime that will also ensure that residents have a stronger voice.

We will also soon introduce the Fire Safety Bill, which puts the scope of the fire safety order beyond doubt by including external walls—including cladding—and the front doors to individual flats in multi-occupied residential blocks. Where primary legislation is not needed in this area, we have lost no time in taking action. This includes: making £600 million available to replace unsafe ACM cladding, with 90% of remediation in the social sector already started or completed; banning combustible materials on the external walls of new high-rise buildings containing flats; and consulting on changes to building regulations to lower the height threshold for sprinklers.

As phase 2 of the Grenfell Tower inquiry begins this month, we will continue to support the bereaved and survivors of that tragedy for the long term. As we help those affected to rebuild their lives, the Grenfell Tower Memorial Commission, made up of representatives of the bereaved survivors and local residents, will determine a fitting way to remember those lives so tragically lost.

I wish to reflect on the second theme of the gracious Speech: levelling up every part of our United Kingdom. It is an ambitious agenda: to level up power, level up investment and level up opportunity. As we leave the EU, we have a unique chance to give communities power over the decisions that affect their lives. Our devolution White Paper will set out our plan for English devolution, including creating more mayoral combined authorities with genuine power and accountability. We will also level up investment in transport as part of a wider infrastructure revolution, boosting links here in the UK and with trading partners around the world. We have set out details of our £100 billion infrastructure programme, including creating a Midlands rail hub, boosting Northern Powerhouse Rail and restoring vital domestic links. I have taken note of the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, on HS2, although I cannot enlighten him on any of the timescales that he has asked for at this time.

We will also boost our £22 billion a year aviation industry with our Air Traffic Management and Unmanned Aircraft Bill, which also tackles issues with drones. We are also mitigating events that cause real passenger misery, from reforming how we deal with airline insolvency, such as the issues raised over Thomas Cook, to keeping minimum numbers of services running during transport strike action, ensuring that unions can no longer hold the travelling public to ransom.

We are also levelling up on opportunity, as the noble Lord, Lord Young of Norwood Green, highlighted. He is right that we are going to improve the apprenticeship levy. I just wanted to get that in. Technical and further education will be at the heart of this opportunity push, which is why we have given a £400 million boost to education for 16 to 19 year-olds next year. We have set out plans to deliver 20 new institutes of technology, connecting science and tech students to business and industry.

However, levelling up must also start earlier, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, mentioned. He spoke about the importance of early years, as did my noble friend Lady Wyld. We are boosting funding for primary and secondary schools, with a total of £14 billion spread over the next three years, as well as offering an arts premium worth over £100 million to secondary schools, which will fund enriching activities for all pupils. I hope this gives some reassurance to the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, who are acknowledged champions of the arts in this House.

This Government are determined to level up opportunity so that everyone can fully participate in the life of this country. As raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, our national strategy for disabled people will be critical to this effort, as will modernising the Mental Health Act. Yes, creating parity between those with mental health problems and physical health problems, as raised by the noble Lord, Lord Bradley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, is important and on the agenda. Moreover, we will bring forward legislation to ensure that our NHS and patients gain faster access to innovative medicines and world-leading treatments, while maintaining the UK as a destination of choice for manufacturers to bring medicines to market.

I want to reflect on a further aspiration of this Government: to secure the long-term future of this country for generations to come. As my noble friends Lord Hunt of Wirral and Lord Leigh of Hurley said, we are in a strong fiscal position. Our day-to-day spending is under control, with near-record low borrowing costs, so we can afford to invest more in growing our economy while keeping control of borrowing and debt, which answers directly a question asked by my noble friend Lord Leigh.

That work to put us on a secure financial footing began a decade ago. Today, just to remind the House, we have 3.7 million more people in work. we have cut borrowing by over four-fifths as a share of GDP, the proportion of low-paid jobs is at a 20-year low and wage growth is outstripping inflation. The gracious Speech sets out how we will build on this strong record to support working families with the cost of living, including increasing the national living wage and the national insurance threshold. Our new Pension Schemes Bill will further support pension saving, setting out plans to give the Pensions Regulator greater powers and a framework for online pensions dashboards.

Another key theme raised during the debate was productivity, raised by the noble Lords, Lord Fox and Lord Griffiths, the noble Baronesses, Lady Bull, Lady Kramer and Lady Rock, and my noble friends Lord Tugendhat and Lord Flight. Increasing productivity is the best way to boost wages, improve living standards and enhance prosperity. We will continue to invest responsibly, including by creating a new national skills fund and committing to our target of 2.4% of GDP being spent on R&D. The national infrastructure strategy will focus on levelling up and connecting every part of the country, and addressing the critical challenges posed by climate change, building on the UK’s world-leading commitment to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.

On the issues raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, the creative industries not only make a valuable cultural contribution to the UK, as she would know, but are an important part of our dynamic and diversified economy. As she said, I also understand that my noble friend Lord Duncan has committed to meeting with her to discuss these matters.

Securing our long-term future is the idea behind our record levels of funding for the NHS of £33.9 billion by 2023-24, which will be enshrined in law. It is a figure that has received input from clinicians. That responds to the comments from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, and their challenges on that number. We will publish draft legislation with proposals to help deliver the goal and ambitions of the NHS long-term plan.

I will say a little more about our manifesto commitments. This plays into questions raised by the noble Baronesses, Lady Greengross and Lady Jolly, and the noble Lords, Lord Freyberg, Lord Dubs and Lord Kakkar. We are embarking on a long-term programme of investment in our NHS buildings, estates and equipment. This will be the biggest, boldest hospital-building programme in a generation.

We recognise how incredibly hard our NHS staff work, day in day out. We have committed to delivering 50,000 more nurses in our NHS by 2025. We will do this through a combination of investing in and diversifying our training pipeline, and recruiting and retaining more nurses in the NHS. Critically, our upcoming work towards urgent social care reform in England by establishing cross-party consensus and bringing forward the necessary proposals and legislation will help us fix the crisis in social care for the long term. This theme was definitely a major part of this debate, and we are aware that successive Governments have not managed to tackle this, as my noble friend Lord Forsyth pointed out.

I will say a little more about this, as many Peers raised the issue of funding—I will not mention the names. Many Peers asked about the steps taken to ensure that the social care system has the funding it needs. The Government have recognised the pressures that local authorities face on social care. That is why, in 2020-21, we have given local authorities access to over £5.5 billion of dedicated funding across adult’s and children’s social care. This includes providing councils with £1 billion of new grant funding for adult and children’s social care, and we are proposing a 2% council tax precept for adult social care that will enable councils to access a further £500 million.

We remain determined to find a long-term solution to the challenges of social care to ensure that every person is treated with dignity. However, as a good few Peers have mentioned, the number of reports published in recent years suggesting different approaches to reform demonstrate the lack of consensus across the political parties to ensure that the reforms we progress are viable into the future.

I have listened carefully to so many of the comments raised by noble Lords and have also had words on the Front Bench with my noble friend Lady Blackwood. She has pledged to take all the comments raised today back to my right honourable friend Matt Hancock in the other place. I hope there is a head of steam on making sure that strong views are presented.

Securing our long-term future is also behind our ambitions to support our high streets by reducing the burden of business rates; publishing a draft national security and investment Bill, to strengthen the Government’s powers to investigate and intervene in business transactions, such as takeovers and mergers, to protect our national security; and ensuring that, after we leave the EU, we both maintain our world-leading financial services regulatory standards and remain open to international markets, and keep the highest standards for workers’ rights, through our employment rights Bill, which I alluded to earlier.

My noble friend Lord Hodgson spoke about responsible capitalism and mooted changes to our audit regime and limited liability. He raised a variety of other matters. These are major issues, also raised by my noble friend Lord Wakeham in regard to changes to strengthen regulation.

Edmund Burke urged us to

“obey … the great law of change … the most powerful law of nature”.

I hope I have convinced your Lordships today that change is surely coming. At the dawn of our new decade, we have a chance to think anew about the great challenges of our time. The gracious Speech does exactly that, laying out a bold and positive vision for the future, one that will improve opportunities for countless people in the years and decades ahead.

Motion agreed nemine dissentiente, and the Lord Chamberlain was ordered to present the Address to Her Majesty.