Dormant Assets Bill [HL]

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 26th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to join many others in welcoming a fellow former newspaper editor to your Lordships’ House. I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Fleet, will be a great addition to our ranks and I particularly welcome her comments about encouraging the creative industries and, I hope, creative education. I hope that she has considerable influence on the government Front Bench of both your Lordships’ House and the other place. She arrives on the day that we heard the dreadful news that the University of Sheffield plans to close its world-leading, world-renowned archaeology department. I hope that she also picks up advocacy of archaeology as a subject that explores and helps us to understand the creativity of the past, which can inform our lives in the present.

We have had an interesting and wide-ranging debate, but I have to pick up a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Bates, and echo his praise for the volunteers who contribute so much to so many of our communities. However, I am afraid that I do not share his confidence in the capacity of volunteers to pick up more and more responsibilities, when we have an increasing pension age and the pressures of low wages, high rents, long working hours and reduced government services, which leave many with increased care responsibilities within their families and among their friends. From libraries to lunch clubs, volunteers have been asked to do more and more.

I find myself today in the unusual situation of welcoming a government Bill and entirely agreeing with the Minister’s introduction. Proposed here we have a sensible use for money parked in obscure places doing nothing. We are talking about potentially a further £880 million for social and environmental initiatives. We are building on an existing scheme that has provided more than £745 million for charities and social enterprises in the past decade. That is £75 million a year. It sounds nice when you say it like that, but I would like to put that figure in the context of the financial sector, of which we are drawing on a very small part here.

The amount of money lost in corporate tax revenue because of money placed in tax havens is estimated to be between $500 billion and $600 billion a year. It is estimated that lost tax revenues from high net worth individuals are about $200 billion a year around the globe. The Minister spoke about money languishing and sitting around doing nothing. That is what that money is doing in tax havens—not being used to fund the real economy or to circulate in the kind of communities we are looking to enrich. For full clarity, those figures come from a September 2019 article called “Tackling Tax Havens” by Nicholas Shaxson in Finance & Development, a journal published by the IMF. What we are talking about here is not so much peanuts as the crumbs of peanuts. The warmth with which this Bill has been greeted in your Lordships’ House is a measure of the public hunger even for crumbs.

Looking at the detail of the Bill, I will focus particularly on Clause 29, as does the briefing that I am sure many noble Lords received from the National Council for Voluntary Organisations. As many noble Lords have said—I cannot list them all, but they include the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, and the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts—it focuses on the way in which we are once again in the Henry VIII territory of Governments being able simply to readjust the direction and change what is happening with very little reference to any kind of democratic structure.

Clause 29 contains a legal duty to consult. I suggest—and I would very much like to talk to other noble Lords who might like to join me in this—that there should be a legal duty to see this money directed towards the most disadvantaged areas of the country, as measured by objective, agreed and academically accepted means and criteria, not something dreamed up by the Government. This is one of the ways in which the European Union was always much more democratic than the UK, in that money explicitly allocated to disadvantaged communities actually had to go to disadvantaged communities, using objective and agreed criteria.

The noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, said one campaign group had expressed concern that there was a danger of this becoming a slush fund. I can only agree with that campaign group and thank the noble Lord for highlighting this, because it reflects the concerns in many quarters. What we have seen with other funds originated by the Government are essentially pork barrels dropped by helicopter into chosen places.

The noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, focused on the idea of a community wealth fund. She explored that at considerable length, so I will not go to the length I was planning to. I note that 400 community groups have backed that idea. As the noble Baroness stressed, what is really crucial is local decision-making and how these funds are allocated and used. We have the most centralised polity in western Europe. Far too much power and resources are concentrated here in Westminster. We need to transfer the power, resources and decision-making out into communities.

In my final short section, I feel like I probably need to declare my position as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. In her introduction, the Minister said that they were making sure that this could not be used as a substitute for central government funding. I would like to see that as a theory, but I would say that there is absolutely no alternative but that this money will be used in that way, given the level of austerity over the past decade. From 2010 to 2020, we have seen a reduction in funding to local government of £16 billion. I contrast that with the kind of total figures that we are talking about through this Bill. Local councils have lost 60p in the pound of money from Westminster to spend on local services.

What we are seeking to do with the money from these funds is to put a plaster on a gaping wound of deprivation and destruction of community services. None the less, this is a small positive. But if we really want to tackle the issues that affect so many communities on these islands and really want to spread prosperity around our land, what we actually need to do, to circle back to where I started, is to ensure that rich individuals and multinational companies pay their taxes. That requires a Government who want to make rich individuals and multinational companies pay their taxes.

Dormant Assets Bill [HL]

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 16th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to be able to speak in support of the amendment. As Committee was quite a long time ago, I hope noble Lords will forgive me if I repeat some arguments.

We are all committed to building back better—to coin a phrase—and the proposed community wealth fund or funds could be a valuable foundation, enabling us to tackle a range of inequalities and improve outcomes for the residents of our most disadvantaged areas. As such, they potentially have a key role to play in the levelling-up agenda, as already noted, as increasingly it is recognised that levelling up must involve not just physical but social infrastructure, as the right reverend Prelate has said. As the report from the Bennett Institute for Public Policy argues, social infrastructure brings

“economic, social and civic value”

—and, we might add, cultural value—to areas where such assets may be weak. According to the British Academy, of which I am a fellow, the pandemic has shown:

“National capacity to respond to changing circumstances and challenges requires effort to sustain a strong web of communities and community engagement at local levels.”


Community-led networks are vital for combating inequalities over the long-term and must be at the centre of plans to build back better.

Social infrastructure matters to people. There is a lot of evidence that the presence or absence of it makes a big difference to how people feel about their neighbourhoods and their satisfaction with them. In areas with strong social infrastructure—particularly places and spaces to meet, and community organisations—people feel a greater sense of community, civic pride and belonging. These areas are more neighbourly and more cohesive. They also have better health and employment outcomes.

The Minister may have seen the recent report from Onward, a right-of-centre think tank, entitled Turnaround. It draws a number of positive lessons from the Labour Government’s new deal for communities, one of which is that

“the most significant sustained improvements are those with the strongest base of civic assets and most engaged communities. This suggests that the government should pay much more attention to nurturing the social fabric of a place alongside economic interventions.”

It also emphasises the importance of

“social infrastructure within local places”.

If we are to build back better, we need to invest in social infrastructure in these deprived neighbourhoods. We need—as is the case with the proposed community wealth funds—this investment to be long-term so that it provides continuity. Crucially, as my noble friend Lord Bassam of Brighton said, we need it to be community- led, albeit with communities receiving appropriate support to build community confidence and capacity. Again, to quote the Onward report, one of the lessons from previous regeneration policies is that

“communities must have a stake in regeneration, not merely be consulted … community involvement is essential, but many are capacity constrained”.

I realise that the Government are reluctant for the Bill to be amended to specify the distribution of dormant assets—and I am supportive of the intended consultation which will be the subject of later amendments —but, as has already been explained, this is a permissive amendment. I can see no reason for the Government not to support it.

One of the reasons I am speaking in support of this amendment is because it has such widespread support, as has already been said by the right reverend Prelate. Those 450 organisations to which he referred are part of a growing alliance advocating for the fund. This includes 40 local and combined authorities, most of the major independent charitable funders and all the main civil society umbrella groups, including the NCVO.

Polling research by Local Trust—and I express my appreciation for the briefing that it provided—demonstrates that the proposal would have the support of senior leaders in the financial services industry.

The community wealth fund has also been recommended in reports from a large number of think tanks and inquiries, including Localis, the Centre for Cities, the Fabian Society, New Local, the No Place Left Behind commission and the Civil Society Futures inquiry. It has also been endorsed by the APPG for “Left Behind” Neighbourhoods, of which I am a member.

I acknowledge concerns expressed by those who use dormant asset funding for the work that they already do. However, I see no reason why they should not continue to do that work and receive funds because these are new funds and no one is arguing that the whole of them should be used for community wealth funds. Again, this is a permissive amendment, not one that requires specific action. Such a strong case has been made by so many civil society groups. There is a growing consensus that a community wealth fund, or funds, is much needed and that investment should come from dormant assets. I therefore urge the Government to listen to civil society and accept this modest amendment.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett. I think the case for this amendment has been powerfully made and I want to show the breadth of support for it.

Last night in the policing Bill we were debating how we saw a grass-roots-up initiative starting from Nottingham that saw the practice of recording misogyny as a hate crime. So many new ideas and innovations start with the local and start in local areas. Yet we live in one of the most centralised nations on this planet, certainly in Europe, with power and resources concentrated here in Westminster. This amendment very modestly puts power and resources out into places that desperately need them.

Often, we are talking about places that no longer have a place to meet—even the pubs have closed in many of the poorest communities that I see. Lots of housing has recently been built without any public meeting places and places for people to gather at all. What we are talking about here is giving power to local communities that are really struggling, to let them decide for themselves what they need to do. I think we could see some truly wonderful innovations starting from the community wealth fund that then could spread far more widely. Perhaps appropriately for a Green, let us think about throwing out some seeds and seeing some wonderful plants flourishing, flowering and growing.

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, when I initially heard about community wealth funds, I was rather sceptical, and I perhaps remain on the more sceptical end of the spectrum in your Lordships’ House. But during discussions on the Bill, I have become less sceptical about the idea, as the noble Lords, Lord Bassam of Brighton and Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, have talked to me, along with the groups mentioned by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ely.

Two things in particular have caused me to think again. The first is the experience of the pandemic and how everybody’s sense of locality and place has changed. I happen to live in south London, and one of the many things that got me through the toughest of times was discovering local parks that I had never come across before. Watching other people having to live their lives in a much more geographically restricted scope has made a new sense of place. I now understand —in a way that I perhaps did not before—that being able to appreciate and develop your community space will be a very important part of people’s physical, economic and mental well-being in future.

The second reason why I have changed my mind is this. The noble Baroness gave a long list of community initiatives that have flowed out over the past 30 years, many of them from the National Lottery, the new deal for communities and so on. Pretty much all of them were the release of resources into a community, with varying degrees of restriction on how they could be spent—but they were resources to be spent in poor communities.

This is about something different. It is about an investment fund that has to generate wealth within those communities. To do that, the people who will be managing it locally will have to learn and display economic development skills themselves. That is a different proposal from the ones before. The noble Baroness is right that, as we move through a huge period of economic change—green development and the green economy—if we get away from the old idea of development solely in buildings and talk about investment in economic skills and new jobs, managed in a much more local way, that has the potential to be different.

The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, was absolutely right: we had to grab a passing Bill and shove something on to it. But the very purpose of this Bill is to take assets that are lying dormant and put them into communities where people are financially excluded, do not have business skills or need some help with the generation of wealth and well-being. This is about doing that with people in their community, not yet another building. So I have changed my mind and think this is something different, and therefore I now think it is worthy of support.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, this amendment was triggered by remarks made in Committee by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, who was the very capable Minister then who was replaced by another very capable Minister. She was very open in response to a question that had been asked quite innocently. We wanted to put in an amendment in Committee a requirement to confirm that the dormant asset money would flow to charities or recognised and formalised social enterprises.

In her response, the noble Baroness said no, that the Government wanted to make sure that the money was also available to mission-focused for-profit companies. There was general shock around the Committee, as everyone talked about the Dormant Assets Bill as providing money to charity and social enterprises, and it sent me away to Google. Perhaps others in your Lordships’ House were far less naive than I, but there is a massive business growing in the social impact arena these days, which has become very attractive to the private sector.

To give your Lordships an idea of who is coming to play in this particular arena, I will refer to one of endless websites that contain copies of similar discussions: “Mainstream venture capital … funds”—we are talking about VC funds—

“are beginning to look for a new kind of unicorn—companies that will not only provide huge financial returns”—

we are talking here about 12% returns for modest venture capital, perhaps with earlier-stage money 20% returns—

“but also create huge social impact.”

It notes London and San Francisco as two of the leading hubs for these kinds of investments.

I have no argument with a venture capitalist who puts money into social good. That is absolutely fine as far as I am concerned. But I am very concerned if that entity is seeking grants from the dormant asset fund and turning that around to enhance the returns to its investor, who is expecting a return around the 12% to 20% mark. I can see why it is extremely attractive to the for-profit company; after all, it is very hard in most circumstances for social impact to generate returns of that extraordinary size. But if there is a very significant grant coming from the dormant asset fund, one can achieve those kinds of benchmarks easily. I do not think that is the purpose that was embedded in the original Bill or the purpose which most of us who are associated with this have in mind.

The amendment is not an attempt to exclude all for-profit companies, because I understand that there are some areas where they have been very useful, for example in teaching financial literacy. It is to make sure that they are not plucking extraordinary returns as a consequence of grants from the dormant assets fund. Charities and social enterprises seeking funds and grant money may indeed find that they have some excess over the particular project that they have been working with, but their whole constitutional structure requires them to make sure that money flows back into good causes. I do not want this to turn into an opportunity for that money to flow back to large-scale investors.

As we all know, the oversight process in the Dormant Assets Bill—we will talk about this on the very last amendment—is very weak, because in the original concept the end users were going to be charities and social enterprises that were under constraint and governance of various different kinds. Therefore, an additional level of scrutiny was not a matter of significant concern. With this big expansion, and with the purposes to which the fund can be applied being essentially in the gift of the Secretary of State, this becomes a major concern.

We are all concerned about money being spent inappropriately. Nothing would be more damning to this whole process than a major scandal in which we suddenly have a newspaper describing circumstances in which money from the dormant assets fund has gone to an investor seeking very large returns. This could compromise not just that particular project but the whole programme. Frankly, I do not think that is a principle that should be allowed to proceed in this Bill, which is why I have moved this amendment.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to commend the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, on her alertness in uncovering this issue, and to make a very simple comparison with something that has occupied a great deal of time in your Lordships’ House lately: the water companies, and what we have seen happen with them, with, very often, hedge fund owners involved, massive profits being taken out and massive loads of debt. This is a terribly important amendment. I regret not attaching my name to it. I certainly would have done had I been alerted to it earlier. This is terribly important, and I encourage the noble Baroness to keep pushing.

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

My Lords, I do not have a great deal to add. The argument of the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, is very sound and was well made and well researched. We had an interesting debate on this topic in Grand Committee, and I am grateful to our colleagues on the Liberal Democrat Benches for allowing us to return to it through this reformulated amendment.

During the previous debate, examples were raised of organisations that are not social enterprises or charities, but which nevertheless deliver public good through the use of dormant assets funding. This new amendment captures that reality, while introducing the safeguard that these funds, which are finite and will be highly sought after, are not used to enhance investors’ returns, where that may be a concern.

I do not really understand why the Government should not write this kind of safeguard into the Bill. Failing that, will the Minister put something on the record that will provide us with some comfort? We need that reassurance, protection and level of accountability.