Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 17th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I declare my position as a vice-president of the LGA and the NALC. My noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb focused on housing and planning-related issues in the Bill. I will look at its overall purpose.

We have had pretty well universal agreement around your Lordships’ House that we want levelling up. There are of course many things where we desperately need to see improvements in areas of the country generally regarded as left behind. Levels of public health is perhaps the most notable area. As the Explanatory Notes report, people living in the most deprived communities in England live up to 18 years less of their life in good general health than those in the least deprived. But the fact is that the level of public health is terrible everywhere in the country, reflecting our obesogenic food system, our long working hours, our commuting times and terrible public transport, our poor quality of housing, and our levels of stress and insecurity. There is no model community that we can aim up towards. We have to change it all.

We are talking about improvements and what would be better. I am sure no one would argue with more education or more educational opportunities, but the notes include discussion of ensuring that 90% of primary school pupils achieve the expected levels of reading, writing and maths. That means more teaching to the test—drilling and drilling and drilling to pass tests. That is not education.

Will we hear about a restoration of adult education—opportunities for people to get a second chance if the system failed them the first time, or just because they want to learn something new? That might be the chance to learn a language or make a pot, which might lead to a new career or small business, or just to a richer life. What about an explosion of forest schools for the youngest pupils, so they can benefit from the physical and mental gains to be had from time in nature?

There is a profound irony attached to the term levelling up. Levelling up is generally assumed to mean “becoming like London”. That is pretty strange when all the talk is of local place-making, local control, local culture and local environments, yet it appears that the basic aim is to be like London. This is not a good aim.

I will cite one piece of evidence, leaning on the work of Andrew Oswald, professor of economics and behavioural science at the University of Warwick. He points to Office for National Statistics figures on the level of reported happiness, recorded on a zero to 10 scale. In Hackney, the figure is 7.21; in Kensington, it is 7.17; and yet in the north-east as a whole, it is 7.37. In the city of Newcastle, it is 7.4; in the north-west, it is 7.43. Equivalent patterns are found for life satisfaction and cited worthwhileness of life across that regional divide. The difference between Newcastle and Kensington —the extent to which Newcastle is better—is 0.3 points. To put that in context, the average loss when people lose a job is 0.4 points. As the professor says, this is a challenge to conventional views of the levelling-up agenda. The goal as set out in the Bill is for the cities in the north and the Midlands to be as productive as London and the south-east, and we are told that UK GDP could be boosted by around £180 billion, but how much more miserable might those places be if they follow in the direction of Kensington and Chelsea?

It is traditional at Second Reading to refer to planned amendments, so I will now switch to gallop speed and cover some of those points. First, on the right to nature, I associate myself with the remarks from the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, and the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge. My honourable friend Caroline Lucas is championing—as I did during the passage of the Environment Bill—a right to roam in England such as that enjoyed in Scotland. What a potential boost it could be to so many communities to have access to green space.

Secondly, there is the quality of the nature around us, in cities and rural areas. That is good in its own right but it is also crucial for human health. You can walk along the Sheffield and Tinsley Canal and then Regent’s Canal in London and compare the difference.

Thirdly, there is the issue of land contamination and Zane’s law. I have raised previously the issue of contamination from historic landfill sites. The Local Government Association Coastal Special Interest Group has just produced a report stressing how much of a problem this is.

Finally, I mention small business space. I spoke last week to Sue Langley, founder of the pioneering Blue Patch sustainable business directory, about the sheer waste of endless empty shops. Absentee landlords—which is where this Bill crosses with the Financial Services and Markets Bill—mean that empty shops sit there. They need to be opened up to small local businesses, co-operatives and local communities so that they can use that space—their space—to recover our town centres.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 20th February 2023 Lords Chamber

Finally, these amendments are not simply an effort to help deprived communities for their own sake; there is a well-established economic justification showing that focus upon rural and coastal communities will reap dividends for the whole country. As we have heard, the rural economy is 19% less productive than the country as a whole and closing the productivity gap would add £40 billion or more to the economy. Furthermore, the Treasury’s own independent Dasgupta review concluded how important it was for us to recognise the economic contribution of ecosystem services that our rural economy provides. We will all benefit from a healthier rural economy. As the NFU argues, it is not possible to go green when in the red, and a failure to direct the levelling-up missions to rural and coastal communities will continue to hold them back and unduly hinder the economic and environmental ambitions of the whole country. I look forward to the Minister’s response and hope she will agree to enshrine rural and coastal communities at the heart of the levelling-up agenda.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Earl, Lord Devon, and to echo his concern about the lack of environmental ambitions expressed in the Bill, which I think we will also discuss in the next group. In my first contribution in Committee, I declare my position as a vice-president of the Local Government Association, to cover my other contributions in Committee.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Foster, for his powerful and expert introduction to this group. I will speak briefly to offer Green group support for the general direction of all these amendments. I will focus in particular on Amendment 5, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, which was ably introduced by the noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, and talks about looking at

“the disparities between rural and urban areas”.

The noble Lord, Lord Foster, talked about the different needs of different areas, but it is really important that, when we think about levelling up, we actually see ambitions for equal services for people all across these islands.

I will reflect on some of the experiences I have had in some small communities. Clun is a tiny, picture-perfect postcard village in south-west Shropshire near the Wales border. When I visited a decade ago, the locals believed that it was the smallest place in the UK with a food bank, which was operating out of the church. One of the volunteers working at that food bank told me that, until he got involved in that food bank, he never believed that anyone would need a food bank in Clun. He was absolutely and deeply shocked by the level of need and the experiences he encountered. There is a desperate need for essential support services. While I do not think that we should rest until the last food bank closes because of a lack of demand, we need to put other services in place to help the people who are now reliant on those food banks.

Another issue for so many of these areas is the fact that policies designed for cities and urban areas get imposed on rural areas. This makes me think about the time I visited a school in north Norfolk. The schools in that area had had imposed on them the idea of specialist schools: “Isn’t it great if pupils can choose to go to a sports academy or a language-specialising school?” However, as each village only had one bus service, pupils had no choice about which school they went to; they went only to the school that the bus went to. If you were really good at and fancied sports, but you ended up in the language school, that was just tough luck. That was because of policies imposed on rural areas which are just inappropriate.

I return to the issue of buses, because it is very close to the heart of the Green Party, having announced this week our policy for a fare that would be available to everyone in the country on local buses, “A One Pound Fare to Take You There”. When I talk about local buses in rural areas, I often get reactions such as, “Well, you can’t expect a bus in a rural area; it just won’t work.” However, I have been to Finland, where I caught a bus that went right into the middle of a national park. I went for a walk, I came back and stood at the bus stop, and I waited for the next bus service, which came every half an hour, all day, in the middle of that national park. So, when thinking about levelling up in an absolute and real sense, we should not be saying, “Oh, it’s a rural area; they can’t expect this or that.” In particular, we should not say that they cannot expect the foundation of a bus service so that people can get around. For that reason, I think that Amendment 3, about reducing disparities, is crucial.

My final point is about the little bit of discussion we have had on the Government’s vision for rural areas. Over the decades, the direction of travel in rural areas has been that landholdings and farms will have to get bigger and bigger, with fewer and fewer people working on them. However, I suggest that levelling up for rural areas means restoring small businesses and small farms which employ quite a lot of people. That then means that there are children to go to the local school, that there are people to get on the bus, and that the bus is there for the older people who need it, perhaps because they cannot drive any more. Restoring communities is about a lot more than asking, “Oh, what’s there and what can we support?”; it is about a vision.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Foster of Bath for raising this very important issue and for providing an evidence base and powerful argument in support of rural communities in particular. This short but important debate has cast a focus on the confusion at the heart of levelling up, which the debate on Amendment 1 was trying to resolve: what do we mean by levelling up and spatial disparities? What do we mean by improving the lives of people who live in different parts of the country, where for some there is low pay, low skills and poor health and for others there is a lack of connectivity or a lack of opportunities? Because we have not resolved that confusion, we will, throughout the passage of the Bill, get arguments of different natures in support of communities which need levelling up, whatever we mean by it. I hope that levelling up will not mean, or be defined by the Government as, either “rural levelling up” or “urban levelling up”, or that we will level up coastal, rural or urban areas separately. The levelling-up agenda must have a clear definition—which is in the White Paper, as I keep pointing out, but is not in the Bill—about the geographical disparities across this country, be they rural, coastal or urban, that result in people’s lives and the country being poorer. The levelling-up Bill ought to address that, but it unfortunately fails to do so.

I was struck by a really good phrase used by the noble Earl, Lord Devon, about levelling up: we do not want levelling-up ambitions to “blow in the political wind”. That is one of the reasons why I support having both the broad mission statements and the broad metrics for those mission statements in the Bill, so that we can say to whatever Government we have, “This is what we have agreed to, and this is what we are going to demand that you address.” Otherwise, we will come back again to the debate about the difficulties for people who live in rural areas. While noble Lords might think that West Yorkshire, where I live, is a big urban area, surprisingly, the upper Colne Valley could not be more rural; there are scattered farm settlements across the hillsides going up to the top of the Pennines. Its residents understand what it means to not have access to public transport, mobile networks or broadband connectivity.

Let us not go down the route of it being one or the other. I hope the Government will, even if I have to encourage them again, eventually closely define what they mean by “geographical disparities” and then address them through the missions and metrics that I hope we will put on the face of the Bill.

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[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, I support the three amendments in this group to which I have added my name, which were all very ably introduced by my noble friend Lord Stunell and the noble Baroness, Lady Willis of Summertown. They are all about willing the means for the Government’s environmental and net-zero targets. We have seen a pattern in recent months of this Government not using the many Bills we have, such as the Procurement Bill and others, to actually will the means to deliver the targets. The targets are welcome but on their own they are completely meaningless.

On the first issue of access to green space, it was less than a month ago that the Government made the very welcome commitment for the first time ever to introduce an ambition for people to be able to access green or blue space within 15 minutes of their home. That is a fantastic commitment, and I applaud the Government for it. However, the point is that you then have to deliver the means to address this.

At the launch of the environmental improvement plan, when she made this commitment about green space, the Secretary of State said:

“We will … work across government to fulfil a new and ambitious commitment that everyone should live within 15 minutes walk of a green or blue space”.


I repeat:

“We will … work across government”—


that is what she said less than a month ago. This is the Minister’s chance to prove it. This is her chance to say that the Government believe in that commitment and welcome it, which the whole House would support, and that they will use this levelling-up Bill as the first mechanism to address it. That would give all of us, and indeed the broader country, a sense that this Government are committed to the environmental targets they are producing, and that they are not just a piece of paper about which they can say at hustings, saying, “Oh, we’ve set all these targets”. Let us see a bit about implementation. The amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, is important because it is about finding the mechanisms to deliver this. I applaud her for that.

Secondly, I need to say very little in addition to what my noble friend Lord Stunell has said. He made the case powerfully with regard to why deprived communities are suffering the most burdens from climate change, and about the need for a just transition. A just transition is what levelling up is about in practice, and why all the missions—not only the new ones—should be taking account of the net-zero requirements. He made the point that we now have environmental targets; we have commitments on biodiversity and good-quality air. Again, the communities in the most deprived areas that are suffering the worst air pollution, which is an impact of the environmental degradation that this country has suffered in recent years, and why we need the environmental targets. However, again, we also need the means to deliver them, and this amendment from my noble friend Lord Stunell is a means to deliver them. We are not expecting the Minister to say great things today but we want her to listen, because willing the means is so important. If we are going to level up for people, we have to level up on net zero and the environment too.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter. I share the disappointment of the noble Lord, Lord Young, that we will not hear from the noble Lord, Lord Holmes. As someone who also knows that problem of running between the Chamber and the Moses Room all too well, I sympathise.

I do not feel that I need to add anything to the child poverty point made in the three powerful initial speeches. All one can say is that we hope that the Government in both Chambers were listening to those three speeches or will at least read them, because, really, how could they not act on the basis of them?

I want to focus on three amendments: Amendment 8, adding climate emergency as a mission, Amendment 18 on net zero, and Amendment 19, on the Environment Act. I broadly support what the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, said, but I slightly disagree with him because he said that he could not imagine a Government who did not have a net-zero-by-2050 target. I can imagine it: I know that we need a Government who have a target for net zero long before 2050, and indeed, who need to explore very closely that phrase “net zero” and what exactly it means. Perhaps I should add that that is a friendly disagreement,.

I am not quite sure that I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, that net zero should not be sitting there as a target on its own. As he was speaking, I could not help but think about the often-repeated phrase that what is not measured is not prioritised. If it is across all the targets—I very much agree that it applies across all the targets—is there a risk that it just disappears into the “Yes, we’ll put a few nice words in without really putting the counting in there”? We are seeing from local councils, so many of which have declared a climate emergency or, indeed, a nature crisis, that they are desperate to do that—to be able to show their own contribution.

A lot of our discussion about the climate emergency has focused on mitigation and the possibilities of mitigation. It is important to put that in the current global context, where we see both the United States and the European Union—particularly the US leading, with the EU trying to follow—putting massive sums of investment into what is loosely called the green economy. If we think about the Government and their often-expressed desire to be world-leading, there has been a real change in the global context just in the last few months. In that light, I want to pick up a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter. Most of the talk has been on climate mitigation. When we are particularly talking about what are commonly described as “left-behind communities”, such as the rural and coastal communities which we were talking about in the last group, the issues of adaptation and resilience to the climate emergency really need to be highlighted.

Here, we speak in the week when the UN Security Council had its first ever debate on the impacts of sea-level rise, and in just the last day or so we have seen some truly terrifying research coming out about the weakness of ice sheets that have the potential to cause a massive sea-level rise. As I was sitting here thinking about this, I thought about a visit I made to a small rural village called Hemsby in 2014 after it had been hit by a storm and a number of homes had been swept away. I just looked up Hemsby and realised that this year, Hemsby has been hit by serious storms three times again, and the lifeboat has lost its ramp again and again. If we think about places that desperately need support in the climate emergency, communities such as Hemsby have to be at the forefront. We have not really heard much discussion about that in this debate. I am not sure whether this needs to be a separate mission. The issue of resilience needs to be across all of the missions, making sure that everything we are aiming to invest in and build can stand up to climate and other shocks when we live in this age of shocks.

A number of noble Lords made the point about the interaction of human health and well-being and the environment. I do not know whether the Minister is aware—I point this out to her as a constructive suggestion—of a UN project called the Healthy Urban Microbiome Initiative, known as HUMI. It focuses on how human well-being benefits from a healthy environment even in the most concentrated urban settings. A more biodiverse setting, even on the busiest urban street, is better for human well-being. That has to underpin everything the Government are doing and thinking about here.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, this has been an important and interesting debate about new missions to be added to the levelling-up agenda. Quite rightly, the Government have been thrown a challenge in four different ways. First, there was an absolutely vital challenge from the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, about reducing child poverty being absolutely at the heart of any levelling-up agenda. As she and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester said, currently 3.9 million children in our own country—nearly 4 million children—are living in poverty. If we do not use the Bill to address that scar on our country and our communities, we will not level up the lives of those communities in those localities.

The fundamentals that we have raised in this debate of child poverty, net zero, access to green spaces and protecting and enhancing our natural environment, are, for the reasons given, at the very heart of what the levelling-up ambitions ought to be achieving. As all the contributions have indicated, if we reduce those inequalities in those areas of spatial disparities, because we are focusing on those we will focus as a country on all child poverty. If we say that in the north-east people need access to green spaces, we focus on everybody’s access to green spaces. If we focus on reducing child poverty in some of the worst parts of our country, we improve the lives of every child because we are putting a spotlight on reducing those dreadful inequalities.

I thank the speakers, particularly my noble friends Lord Stunell and Lady Parminter, who drew the attention of the Minister and the House to the advantages of putting net zero and the environment at the very heart of all that we do. If we do not, we are missing a trick, as someone said. We have to will the means, said my noble friend Lady Parminter, not just express them. That is why on these Benches we will wholeheartedly support the amendment. If the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, wishes to bring this back on Report, she will have our support, as will those who raised the other issues with regard to the environment.

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[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I spoke earlier about data and the processes and policies that we are putting in place for data capture and analysis. These are the things that will come out of that. I expect that to be one of the outcomes that we will see in the reviews of the missions.

I am very sorry that my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond was not here, but I know what he would say because he is a huge voice for disabled people in this country. I thank him for that and for his Amendment 14. If the House agrees, I will respond to it. The objective of improving the lives of disabled people has been considered throughout the levelling-up White Paper. People with disabilities are less likely to be employed, and face additional challenges in workplace progression. The White Paper highlights the in-work progression offered to support better employment opportunities. We need to continue this. The disability employment gap is widest for those who have no qualifications, hence why we will continue to work closely with local authorities to improve their special educational needs and disability services where they are underperforming.

The Government are delivering for disabled people. We have seen 1.3 million more disabled people in work than there were in 2017, delivering a government commitment five years early. We have supported the passage of two landmark pieces of legislation—the British Sign Language Act and the Down Syndrome Act. We have also delivered an additional £1 billion in 2022-23 for the education of children and young people with more complex needs.

Amendment 16 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, would require this Government and future Governments to include a mission to increase cultural infrastructure across the UK within mission statements. I agree with her that people’s lives are shaped by the social and physical fabric of their communities. The local mix of social and physical capital, from universities to good-quality green spaces and from libraries to local football clubs, gives areas their unique character and vibrancy and makes residents proud to live in that place. Recognising that in the levelling-up White Paper, the Government set a “pride in place” mission. The Government’s ambition is that, by 2030, people’s satisfaction in their town centre and engagement in local culture and community will have risen in every area in the United Kingdom, with the gap between top-performing and other areas closing. Increasing cultural infrastructure will be key to achieving this mission.

The Government have taken practical steps to support, protect and expand cultural infrastructure. The £1.5 billion cultural recovery fund rescue packages helped thousands of cultural organisations across a range of sectors to stay afloat during the Covid-19 pandemic, while the community renewal fund, the community ownership fund, the levelling-up fund and the UK prosperity fund have provided opportunities to enhance cultural arts, heritage and sporting infrastructure in places across the country. The mutual importance of cultural and place identity is recognised in the Government’s work with places, such as through the devolution deal and the pilot destination management organisation initiative in the north-east of England.

I hope that the extent of the Government’s action on these priorities, set out elsewhere in the policy, and the approach that has been set out—a clear, uncluttered and long-lasting framework for levelling-up missions—provides Peers with sufficient assurance not to press their amendments.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

The Minister addressed climate mitigation but not climate adaptation and resilience. Can she write to me about the ways in which the Bill addresses those resilience and climate adaptation issues?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I will read Hansard, then write to her and put a copy in the Library.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 27th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, as we have already discussed this afternoon, the principle of consultation when fundamental changes are being made to governance structures is an important one. Amendment 61 is aimed at establishing the principle of public consultation in relation to the formation of a combined county authority and to setting a realistic threshold for the constitutional reform to proceed.

A fundamental principle of localism is that changes must be made with people and not to them. Without a provision in the Bill like this, it is too easy for a leader or a group of leaders, or even a Secretary of State, to take fundamental governance changes, such as the formation of a CCA, a long way without consulting those who will be affected by them. The complex structure of local government in the UK, which means some areas have multiple layers of local authorities overseeing services, makes this even more necessary. The amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Hayman outlines the process for ensuring that the outcome of the consultation process is publicly available, essentially before any submission to form a combined county authority is made.

Amendment 62 is designed to probe government thinking on the constitution of combined county authorities. With the rolling five-year housing targets potentially being removed, for example, is it the intention that governance structures should be able to consider the impact across a defined economic area, or do the Government envisage that the combined county authority will determine such matters for itself? If the latter is the case, is there to be an arbitration process which will help to determine where one economic area crosses boundaries with another? On the issue of non-constituent members of CCAs, for example, will it be the case that some members of authorities will be required to sit in more than one authority if it affects their economic geography?

Amendment 63 reflects on the nature of levelling-up missions and the significant part of the Bill that refers to planning matters. The Government may have assumed that co-operation between combined county authorities would take place in order, for example, to resolve boundary issues where a service is necessarily delivered across boundaries or where a planning matter either crosses boundaries or requires a facility delivered in one area to have the use of services provided in another. As I make these points, I am reminded of the example of Harlow and Gilston village, which sits in both Essex and Hertfordshire.

Planning history suggests that writing the duty of co-operation on the face of the Bill would be helpful. Whether we are talking about the delivery of missions across rural areas, or in urban areas such as London and Manchester, where the boundaries of CCAs may be complex, guidance and a framework for duties to co-operate would probably be helpful.

Amendment 64 is crucial, particularly as it is difficult to see how missions will be delivered at all with a patchwork quilt of non-coterminous boundaries between public bodies as they are currently constituted. This has been a long-standing issue in local government. The amendment will, for example, enable discussions about the impact of the rollout of ICSs on the potential for future health devolution—a really important issue. If we do not devolve the responsibility for health issues to these new authorities, we will not be able to tackle as effectively the inequalities in health that we discussed in earlier debates on the Bill.

It is welcome to note from the Greater Manchester population health plan that significant benefits have already been recorded for local residents following the devolution of health and social care to the Greater Manchester Combined Authority. This includes a substantial increase in school readiness and a smoking prevalence rate falling twice as fast as the national average. We definitely see the benefits of this, and we want to see it extended across other devolved areas. We would welcome further information from the Government on how they envisage the further devolution of health, police and crime commissioner powers, and other public functions which would enable the progress of the missions.

Amendment 65 is probably shaped by my long experience as a district councillor. We in district councils were very pleased to see the original amendment to Clause 18, which enshrines the role of district councils in determining the future governance of their areas; but I always believe in a belt and braces approach, particularly where the track record for inclusion has not always been consistent. The same applies to my colleagues in the National Association of Local Councils in respect of parish and town councils. We want everybody to be included in these discussions.

Lastly, Amendments 101 and 102 refer to the dissolution of CCAs. The first would require that public consultation take place before dissolution. If there is to be consultation on the setting up of a CCA, it follows that it should also take place if one is to be dissolved. Amendment 102 asks the Secretary of State to clarify, upon dissolution of a CCA, how local powers will be retained, and implicitly suggests that they will not return to central government. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s comments on how that might work for the future. I beg to move.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 127, which appears in my name in this group, and to make a couple of brief comments on the amendments so clearly and comprehensively presented by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage.

I refer back to the terminology the noble Baroness used in the previous group when talking about what the spirit of devolution should be: it should surely be a democratic spirit. The decision about the shape of devolution should rest with the local people, the people who are actually affected. Historically, the perception and the reality of some instances of devolution has been deals done un-transparently, in the dark, in what would once have been smoke-filled rooms. The smoke may have gone, but that lack of transparency remains.

What we are seeking here is a different idea of devolution—devolution that is truly transparent and open, with local people in control of the process rather than having it inflicted on them. With that in mind, my Amendment 127 calls for a referendum to be conducted on whether a combined county authority should be established in a given area. It occurs to me, having listened to the debate on previous groups of amendments, that the amendment should say “established or disestablished”, but we are in Committee so we can explore these things as we go along.

I see that the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, is in his place, so we might have already had extensive discussion about what happened in Sheffield, South Yorkshire and north Derbyshire. I will not, therefore, go into great detail on that, but it is worth noting that Sheffield voted against having a mayor and then, not long afterwards, found itself with a mayor.

I will also give a more positive, more recent example from Sheffield. Sheffield is the largest local authority to convert, through a referendum, from a cabinet-based system to a modern committee-based system of government. I know many of the people who were involved in that campaign, which was led not by political parties but by a local community group. Many people said, “You’ll never get this referendum through. It’s all too technical, difficult and complicated, and people won’t understand.” But the referendum was voted through. It was a real vehicle for a huge amount of debate and discussion in the city about how it was run and administered, and how that could be done better. Putting a referendum in for CCAs would be a chance to have a discussion and a debate, and to really engage local people, which is what we need in our local areas to improve the quality of local governance.

Of course, the other recent example of such change, driven at the local level with decisions made by local people, is the city of Bristol deciding to get rid of its mayor. That was the decision that the people of the city made. Again, some said, “You’ll never get this referendum through; everyone is just going to shrug and it will all be too difficult.” But people were engaged and involved and they made the decision for themselves. Surely, that is what democracy means, and that is why I have tabled this amendment.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I will make just one or two comments on this group. I have listened very carefully to this and the previous group and I think we have an opportunity for the Government to clarify a number of issues around consultation and, indeed, referendums. I listened carefully to what the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, said about referendums. What is needed is a statement from the Government, hopefully before Report, on what the nature of consultation should be. What would be deemed to meet a minimum requirement or threshold for there to be an official consultation?

Secondly, the Government need to be absolutely clear what their own powers should be in relation to a consultation: what they can require of a local authority or set of authorities. I welcome the fact that this discussion is taking place; it is really important. We have discussed before in recent years during the passage of previous Bills what local people have a right to expect of their consultation. I, too, in Newcastle, have been through a mayoral referendum, and the same thing happened. The decision was not to have a mayor, but, of course, we now have a mayor of the North East Combined Authority—for which, in fact, there was no referendum. Our referendum was within scope; I ask the Minister: are referendums out of scope?

Turning to Amendment 62, I was struck by one or two other very important issues raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, which the Government need to be a bit clearer about. The first was also raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock: travel-to-work areas. It all depends how big your CCA or other combined authority is geographically. A very important issue is raised in Amendment 62: whether the Government are thinking in terms of each CCA having a single economic hub. In a number of areas that would not be suitable. In my own part of the country, several travel-to-work areas apply. Hopefully, that point will not be forgotten by the Government.

Lastly, on Amendment 63, the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, made another very important point about the duty to co-operate. When during previous Bills we have debated the duty to co-operate, the Government have always been very positive about having that duty placed clearly on the face of the Bill. But a CCA is not just being required to co-operate with a neighbouring CCA, but with all the other bodies that may relate to it. Given the ability of the public sector to operate across boundaries, both geographical and in terms of responsibilities and powers, it matters that the duty to co-operate is made absolutely clear at the outset.

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[Earl Howe (Con)]

My Lords, as we have heard, this group of amendments covers preconditions for establishing, and indeed disestablishing, a combined county authority. This process is locally led and it aligns with the process for a combined authority that we have seen successfully used in many areas to date.

Amendment 61, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, seeks to insert a requirement into Clause 7 that the Secretary of State can establish a combined county authority via regulations only if they deem there to be at least 60% support from local residents in the area to be covered by the CCA. In a similar vein, Amendment 127, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, seeks to insert a requirement into Clause 44 for there to be a referendum before the Secretary of State may make regulations to establish a combined county authority, and for this question to be approved by a majority of local government electors.

We do want to ensure that the local public, in the broadest sense, are consulted on a proposal to establish a combined county authority in their area. This desire on the Government’s part is already captured by the requirement for a consultation provided for in Clause 43. Clause 43(4) states that, prior to submitting a proposal for a combined county authority to the Secretary of State, the local authorities proposing the establishment of a CCA must undertake a public consultation on the proposal in the area that the CCA will cover.

The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, asked, perfectly reasonably, what a proper consultation would look like. One important element is that it would have to cover the waterfront, as it were, in terms of stakeholders, to get a real sense of the strength of feeling and the climate of opinion in an area, and the extent to which an authority has taken the trouble to represent the scope of that opinion and feeling in the submission it makes. Once the consultation has happened, the authorities must submit a summary of consultation responses to the Secretary of State alongside their proposal.

When deciding whether to make the regulations to establish a combined county authority for an area, one of the tests the Secretary of State must consider is whether the area’s public consultation is sufficient. That is a judgment the Secretary of State must make in the light of the information presented, but if they conclude that it has not been sufficient, Clause 44 provides that the Secretary of State must undertake a public consultation before any regulations can be made.

I noted the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and will take advice on why that clause is worded as it is. I suggest to her that there is nothing sinister in it—it is the way that these legal provisions have to be drafted—but the net effect is as I have described, because what we wanted to introduce was a safety net, as it were, of a further Secretary of State-initiated consultation if that was deemed necessary. I hope the fact that we have done that demonstrates the importance which the Government attach to the consultation process.

We believe that the existing clauses provide for sufficient local consultation. I hope the way I have outlined the provisions and what we intend them to do in practice has persuaded the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, that a referendum would be unreasonably burdensome. What we want, above all, is transparency of local opinion and that I hope we will get.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Many examples are flashing through my head, but I am thinking about one particular local government consultation that I saw, which happened to be around the city of Chester. The consultation asked, “Do you want to build on the green belt in areas A, B, C, D or E?”. Many local people pointed out to me that they wanted to say, “None of the above”, but there was no space in the box or provision to do that. So can the Minister reassure me that part of the Secretary of State’s examination of the summary of consultation responses will look at whether the consultation truly gave the space for local opinion to be expressed?

[Earl Howe (Con)]

That is certainly the aim. I do not know whether the noble Baroness would agree with me that one of the downsides of referendums that we have seen in the past is that people are asked to take a binary decision. That very often does not allow for the nuances and subtleties of an issue to be presented in the question, to put it at its mildest. So we think the consultation model is more appropriate for this type of situation, particularly as the different constituent elements of a community will have different interests and viewpoints on the issue in question.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 27th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I shall speak to my amendment in this group and my opposition to Clause 25 standing part. I will make a couple of other comments on other amendments in the group.

I begin by very strongly agreeing with the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, in supporting Amendment 69 from the noble Lord, Lord Shipley. I will be very interested to hear the Minister’s explanation of the reasons for this, but an undue dominance of one party in committees is a clear problem, and it is very hard to imagine a justification for the deletion that the Government are proposing. I also agree with Amendments 114 and 120 on the CCA having to approve the appointment and powers of deputy mayors. That is an obvious point of democratic scrutiny.

In this group I have given notice of my intention that Clause 25 should not stand part of the Bill. This would delete the power for the Secretary of State to establish an elected mayor for a CCA, and my Amendment 113 would require a referendum for an elected mayor. What we are talking about here is what I was talking about in the previous group on which I spoke: democracy. We have seen from several sides of the Chamber a real desire to impose a model of governance known as the strong leader model: “We need to have one person there as a figurehead, who makes the decisions.” As a Green, I am fundamentally opposed to that model. I think it is very bad for democracy and very bad for the quality of decision-making and the quality of governance, independent of whatever the ideology might be. I also think that it discourages broader involvement in politics, which should be the very foundation of our democracy.

What we have also seen in the context of this is the election system for elected mayors, which the Government chose to unilaterally change under the Elections Bill—now Act—despite considerable opposition. I am not standing up and saying that as Greens we are going to write into this Bill that there is no right to have an elected mayor. I am saying that people should have the right to decide whether they want an elected mayor. It is very possible to imagine a community, an area, or a region that says, “We want a CCA, but we do not want an elected mayor.” I am seeking to ensure that however it is written into the Bill, that people have that choice, and that genuine choice is available to them.

My understanding is that the Labour Party, as well as the Conservative Party, has tended to be in favour of this strong leader model. That is a model to which I am fundamentally opposed, but I am saying that people should be allowed to have a choice whether or not to have that model applied to them. As in the previous group, I referred to the fact that in a number of cases around England where people have had it imposed on them, they got rid of it when they got the chance—as the people of Sheffield and Bristol did. To answer the question about cost from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, I can cite figures for Sheffield. When conducting it at the same time as another election, it cost around £170,000 for Sheffield, which is the fifth largest city, making it more or less comparable to other cities. That was a couple of years ago, but it gives you a ballpark sense of what it would cost. I do not believe that sort of figure, proportionately, is too high a cost to apply for democracy.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 13th March 2023 Lords Chamber

I cannot speak on this issue without referring to last year’s news about two-year delays and fundamental questions over the future of HS2. That proves that this Government are tone-deaf about the significance of that project. It is the key to unlocking the private and public sector investment that must be made if levelling up is to have any meaning at all. The fact that there is now serious doubt over the project is one of the greatest failures of this increasingly muddled and confused Government.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I offer Green support for the direction of travel of this whole group of amendments. I was not able to be here for the previous group, but I offer support for Amendment 469 in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Pinnock and Lady Randerson, about allowing local authorities to run their own bus services.

I turn to the specific points in some of the amendments in this group. We have already heard the case set out. I agree with pretty well everything that has been said by the previous speakers about the parlous state of local transport in the UK, particularly in England, and the way in which we are so badly trailing other parts of the world. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, talked about electric buses. I was just looking up the stats. The most recent ones I could find for the EU are from the end of 2021. There were 8,500 electric buses in the EU then, and I have no doubt that that figure has grown significantly. That is based on my own experience of arriving in a number of small European cities and finding that a line of little electric hopper buses, as we might call them, taking people from the bus station to the train station or around the city is just normal—yet for us that would be a rare and amazing pilot scheme.

I shall pick up some specific points. Amendment 93, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, would allow residents of the combined county authority to petition their authority and the Government for new transport infrastructure. Creating that democratic framework, explicitly putting it in the Bill, would be useful. We know how much hunger there is in local communities. Mostly they are trying to defend the bus services that they are about to lose, but in many places if people saw the potential for a route towards a new service that everyone knew was needed, the petition would provide a mechanism for that.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, said, Amendment 94 refers to the assessment of the sustainability of transport infrastructure. With 27% of our total emissions coming from transport, and 91% of those from road vehicles, heading towards public transport and indeed active transport—cycling and pedestrian routes—is crucial. To ask the CCAs to put down on paper where they are at and where they are aiming to go is also crucial.

Sustainability also means looking at the issue of resilience. We are in the age of shocks, climate and other, and as I was listening this to this debate I was thinking about the situation at Dawlish and the number of times that we have seen that crucial rail route cut off. That first really came to public attention in 2018, and we have got precisely nowhere on that issue since.

Amendment 97, which we have not yet heard formally introduced, would mean that CCAs could formally designate rail, bus and particularly cycle paths as key routes. If we are going to have the kind of modal shift that we need to see in transport then bus routes and cycle paths are crucial. We need to give CCAs the power to take control over those, see the way forward and make sure that they are secured and treated as important in the same way that we do, far too often, with the main road network.

This is all fine detail and not the kind of stuff that is ever likely to set the headlines ablaze, but it is crucial if this levelling-up Bill is going to go anywhere towards delivering what the Government say is its aim.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, this has been rather a depressing afternoon. We have had a long debate about where money was coming from, and the answer is, “There isn’t any”. Now we are on to a debate about another vital aspect of levelling up: you need the money, but you also need a transport policy that works. Reference has been made to the mission statement. I am becoming increasingly concerned that in every debate we essentially get the same message: the Bill is not about implementing the mission statement, delivering on the five pillars or any of the stuff that was in the White Paper, but about something completely different—and so far it has completely eluded me what the something completely different is. Here we have an opportunity to put a bit of substance in the Bill, which this set of amendments would certainly do.

I appeal to the Government just to join up some of the dots in their own levelling-up White Paper and their own set of mission statements, and to look at this piece of legislation as a way of delivering, or at least of outlining how they intend to deliver, these challenging targets. The mission statements have dates attached to them, yet we have already heard that the financial review is going to be quite a long way ahead—probably in the next Parliament, let us be honest. The transport amendments here would give the new CCAs some powers, chances and opportunities to begin to help the Government to deliver on their mission statement. I cannot say I am hoping, but I must surely have some expectation, that the Government are going to rise to that challenge.

I want to remind the Government that one of these aims is to have a similar level of public transport outside London as there now is in London, by an end date. I will leave aside whether that was a promise that could ever be fulfilled, but it would certainly be easier to achieve if you started now rather than starting in two years’ time or whenever the next big Bill or funding round comes.

In light of that government ambition, the Built Environment Committee, of which I was at that point a member, published a report called Public Transport in Towns and Cities outside London at the end of last year. We took a lot of evidence on what the impact of the pressures of single-pot funding are on transport authorities around the country, and some were much more successful than others. As somebody who lives in the area of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and Transport for Greater Manchester, I rejoice in the fact that we usually do pretty well out of all this. But you have only to look across the Pennines to other transport authorities to see some that do not. We took evidence that they have essentially given up bidding because every bid that they have made, which costs money, has been unsuccessful, and they do not get the feedback that they need to improve or find a way through the system. It is single-pot funding which is not delivering levelling up in the way that it should do.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, mentioned Northern Powerhouse Rail and Transport for the North. Plenty of work is going on pointing out to the Government what they could and should do, and how it could be delivered to achieve outside London that London level of public transport. Yet these opportunities are being missed again and again, so I say to the Government that these amendments are a way of getting that process started.

In Greater Manchester, the mayor—not of my political persuasion but certainly with a strong mandate—has been pushing ahead to get public transport to operate in a co-ordinated and fully functioning way across that city. Successive Conservative Transport Ministers have been deeply sceptical of what Greater Manchester has been trying to achieve, and I have challenged the Government on two or three occasions about whether they were or were not actively supporting the model of Greater Manchester and encouraging others to do so. The evidence that was given by the then Transport Minister to the committee was that the Government are completely neutral about all these funding models, and that it is entirely up to anyone to do what they want—except that the Government prefer that they do not do it the Greater Manchester way. Sometimes the Government seem incapable of learning from the practical experience of what works, and allowing or indeed encouraging others to take advantage of the experience that has been developed on the ground. Obviously we see this in Committee, and will see this all the way through it—“If it is not invented here, it cannot be any good.”

From that point of view, I dare say that the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, are doomed to fail today, but I ask the Minister to take a look and go back to the Department for Transport, and whoever else needs to be talked to, picking up the point the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, made. Please can the Government, and not just the department, put some guts into the Bill and make it deliver on the missions and objectives that they have set out, that they are so proud to boast about, and which these amendments could facilitate the delivery for?

[Earl Howe (Con)]

My Lords, this group of amendments relates, as we have heard, to transport functions and associated arrangements of combined county authorities. Before I address the amendments, I say to the Committee in response to those noble Lords who question the Government’s commitment to levelling up in the area of transport—in particular the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, but also the noble Lords, Lord Berkeley and Lord Stunell, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Randerson and Lady Bennett—that the Government are committed to delivering improvements to transport across the north and across the piece. Let there be no doubt about that. We are committed to supporting all forms of transport. Indeed, between 2020-21 and 2022-23 we have invested over £850 million in active travel alone. The Transpennine Route Upgrade is the Government’s biggest single investment in upgrading the country’s existing railway, and is part of our continuing commitment to transforming rail connectivity across the north of the country. I plead with noble Lords to have some faith in the Government’s commitment in this area.

Amendment 92 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, looks to place a requirement on the Secretary of State to publish an annual report on any differences in integrated transport authority functions conferred on combined county authorities, and the rationale behind them. It is of course important to help interested parties understand differences in conferral of transport functions between CCAs. Once established, the combined county authority will become the local transport authority responsible for managing public transport in the CCA’s area.

The functions conferred on combined county authorities from an integrated transport authority to enable the CCA to be the local transport authority will be a merger of those currently possessed by the CCA’s constituent local authorities, with their agreement and consent. These will be agreed with the local authorities as the combined county authorities are established, and this approach will be consistent across all CCAs. Therefore, as this clause relates only to powers already held locally, there is no need for the Secretary of State to produce such an annual report because there will be consistency across CCAs. The Explanatory Memorandums to the secondary legislation will also provide an explanation of transport powers that the combined county authority will be responsible for.

Amendment 93, tabled by the noble Baroness, seeks to allow residents in the area of a combined county authority with transport functions to be able to petition their CCA and the Government for new transport infrastructure. We support residents having the ability to push for new transport infrastructure for their area; indeed, this is already possible. The residents of an area with transport functions are already able to petition their local authorities, including for transport infrastructure, and this will be the same for combined county authorities once created. Therefore, creating this additional requirement relating to transport specifically for CCAs is unnecessary.

I come now to Amendment 94, tabled by the noble Baroness to require a combined county authority to publish an assessment within 90 days, if they are transferred certain functions, on whether transport infrastructure in their area is sustainable. An assessment of infrastructure sustainability in a CCA’s area already forms part of a local transport plan. Where a CCA has been given transport functions, it will include this assessment as part of its local transport plan anyway, so we feel there is no need for a separate time-limited assessment.

Amendment 95 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, would require a combined county authority to undertake an assessment of any company operating a train franchise in its area. There are already contractual reporting arrangements between train operators and the Government, and the train operating companies report their performance publicly on their websites and with key strategic partners, such as CCAs. In line with the Government’s commitment to not create additional bureaucratic burdens, we would not expect to mandate a report on any CCAs. Furthermore, if the CCA feels that it wishes to undertake such an assessment, we would expect it to utilise the existing reporting mechanisms. Given the existing reporting already in place, I hope that she will feel satisfied that the measures are sufficient.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I am wondering how this fits in with local government reporting, in the context of Britain’s legally binding net-zero obligations. This brings to my mind a broader question, but I will understand if the Minister wants to write to me later. How do the actions of the CCA fit within the overall framework of delivering net zero?

[Earl Howe (Con)]

If the noble Baroness will allow me, I will write to her on that, because I do not have an answer that would satisfy her in my brief.

Amendment 96, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, would require combined county authorities to notify the Secretary of State of any plans to begin a local travel survey within 30 days of being transferred functions under Clause 19. There is no legal requirement surrounding a combined county authority’s use of local travel surveys. Creating a legal requirement on CCAs for the reporting of their use within 30 days to the Secretary of State would, I suggest, place an unnecessary burden on CCAs, relative to the benefit.

Noble Lords may be interested to know that the Department for Transport conducts a national travel survey. We would expect CCAs to conduct further work locally to gather evidence in developing their local transport plans. However, we feel that mandating the use of local surveys in this way would be disproportionate, so I am afraid we do not feel we can accept this amendment.

I turn to Amendment 97, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage. It would allow the Secretary of State to make regulations to confer on a combined county authority a power to designate railways, bus routes and cycle paths as key routes. The purpose of a CCA designating a route as part of its key route network is to enable the mayor to direct local councils in how they should use their powers as the highway authority for that route, if they are not carrying out actions agreed under the local area transport plan. For example, a combined county authority mayor might direct local authorities to build a particular bus lane on part of the key route network, which would have strategic, area-wide benefits for the CCA as a whole.

CCAs will already be able to designate bus and cycle lanes that form part of a highway in their area as part of the key route network under the existing Clause 22. The powers that local authorities have as highway authorities do not extend to railways, so allowing CCAs to designate them as key routes would have no effect on their operation. Given that CCAs will be responsible for the local transport plan for their region, we would expect them to identify their key transport routes and plan how to manage these, including railways.

Amendment 98, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, would enable the Secretary of State to confer a power on a combined county authorities to designate their area’s transport infrastructure as in need of regeneration. I would like to reassure her that, once established, combined county authorities, like existing local authorities, will have multiple means through which to petition the Government for improved transport infrastructure for their region. For example, Network Rail is responsible for maintaining the railway and for any renewals to ensure a safe and efficient-running railway. When it comes to enhancements being sought for railway improvements, we follow the rail network enhancements pipeline policy, which sets out how areas can engage with government on rail improvements.

On local roads, the Department for Transport provides local highways maintenance funding through the highways maintenance block and the potholes fund, which provide annual funding for eligible local highways authorities, including future combined county authorities, to locally prioritise investment in local roads and associated infrastructure, such as bridges and lighting columns. The Department for Transport will also maintain regular contact with combined authority areas, which will provide ample opportunity for areas to make the case for transport infrastructure improvements.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 15th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, we have begun the debate. That is the intention of this probing amendment, because we must have it.

Today’s Budget decentralises—but does not devolve—some powers, although not fiscal ones, to combined authorities, which is welcome but comparatively minor. In other words, if a combined authority was able to adjust a block grant and make different decisions on how to commit expenditure from it, that would be welcome. However, it is not a fiscal policy. As the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, said, it would be helpful if the Government could explain their thinking on devolving real fiscal powers.

I would pick up the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, on one statement. He said that we are not a unitary state. That would be hard to explain in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, and it goes to the heart of the problem as I see it. Substantial devolved powers, including fiscal ones, reside in Scotland, Wales and, theoretically, Northern Ireland that do not apply in England. Yet England is a country of 56 million people. It is far too big to operate out of centralised control in Whitehall, but there is a very strong argument for saying that, in terms of Treasury control and the Government’s desire to do things on a hub and spoke model in which all the financial resources are controlled in London, England is a unitary state.

I want to add one thing to the excellent contribution from my noble friend Lord Scriven and the other contributions from the noble Lords, Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Jackson of Peterborough, which I really appreciated. Can the Government explain why Scotland and Wales can have fiscal powers but no constituent part of England is permitted to have them? That is the nub of the problem, and it is why starting the debate on this issue is very important.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise to add to the political breadth of this debate and to offer Green support for the introduction of this amendment from the noble Lords, Lord Scriven and Lord Shipley. Localism is at the absolute heart of Green politics, but I think we have seen right across your Lordships’ Chamber a great desire for an end in England to the incredible concentration of power and resources in Westminster.

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[Baroness Harris of Richmond (LD) [V]]

I agree with everything that my noble friend Lady Pinnock has just said. I put my name to her amendment because in my rapidly disappearing district council of Richmondshire a motion was almost unanimously agreed to support a system of voting proportionately. It was proposed and seconded by two of my colleagues on that council, Councillors Richard Good and Clive World. It is almost unheard of to have a council in Richmondshire vote together on an issue as contentious as this, so I was delighted when they agreed to forward a letter to the Government requesting a move away from the first past the post system to a fairer and more representative way of voting.

As it was, only two Conservative councillors voted against the motion. The motion they presented was as follows:

“First Past the Post (FPTP) originated when land-owning aristocrats dominated parliament and voting was restricted to property-owning men … In Europe”,


as we have heard,

“only the UK and authoritarian Belarus still use archaic single-round FPTP for general elections. Meanwhile, internationally, Proportional Representation (PR) is used to elect parliaments in more than 80 countries. Those countries tend to be more equal, freer and greener … PR ensures all votes count, have equal value, and those seats won match votes cast. Under PR, MPs and Parliaments better reflect the age, gender and protected characteristics of local communities and the nation. MPs better reflecting their communities leads to improved decision-making, wider participation and increased levels of ownership of decisions taken … PR would also end minority rule. In 2019, 43.6% of the vote produced a government with 56.2% of the seats and 100% of the power. PR also prevents ‘wrong winner’ elections such as occurred in 1951 and February 1974 … PR is already used to elect the parliaments and assemblies of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. So why not Westminster? … Council therefore resolves to write to H.M. Government calling for a change in our outdated electoral laws to enable Proportional Representation to be used for general, local and mayoral elections.”

I could not have put it any better myself. I fully support my noble friend’s amendment and hope that the Government will consider it seriously before Report.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baronesses, Lady Pinnock and Lady Harris of Richmond. I will really restrain myself and not make general comments about PR but speak only about a specific element of democracy.

I am tempted to make a one-sentence contribution, which is, “Democracy: it would be a good idea, wouldn’t it, if we had it?” We are talking about a local area deciding how to elect its own representatives. The amendment does not say, “You have to have proportional representation —the system that we know means that the number of councillors matches the number of votes and that the council or the Parliament reflects the views of the people, and that we know produces a better quality of governance.” It does not say any of those things. It merely says that each local area should be able to decide the system under which it governs itself.

Of course, I have to make some reference to the better quality of governance which is demonstrably the result of proportional electoral systems, and indeed to look at the other side of this, which is what has just been happening in Plymouth City Council, where a Tory council has gone out in the middle of the night to cut down more than 100 mature trees in the city centre, despite significant local resistance. That, of course, is a replay; they seem not to have learned at all from what happened a few years ago in Sheffield, where a Labour council, again in a one party state-type set-up, did the same thing, sneaking around the streets in the early hours of the morning to try to ensure that it could cut down trees against the will of residents. So we have there a case study, which is not even slanted in any particular political direction, of our current system not working.

Again, I stress that the amendment does not say that it will force the change on anyone; it simply says that people should be able to decide for themselves. In the previous group of amendments, we focused on the lack of power in local government because of its lack of resources. Well, take back control: that was crucial and remains a very strong, passionate feeling among the British people. This amendment gives a chance to take back control at the local level, which is clearly urgently needed.

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[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 157, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, seeks to enable each local authority to choose its own voting system. In doing so, the

“local authority must have regard to the benefits of reinvigorating local democracy in its area.”

We agree that a vigorous local democracy is vital; however, we take a different view as to how this will be best provided for.

First, we are clear on the merits of first past the post as a robust and secure way of electing representatives. It is well understood by voters and provides for strong, clear local accountability. It ensures a clear link between elected representatives and those who vote for them, in a manner that other voting systems may not. For those reasons, we have provided that, from this May’s elections, first past the post will also apply in voting for local authority and combined authority elected mayors, and for police and crime commissioners.

Secondly, we do not believe it would be right for the voting system to be a matter of local choice for particular councils. It is important that the voting system be clearly understood by electors and that they have confidence in it. Having different systems for neighbouring areas risks confusing electors, and any such confusion risks weakening public confidence in the electoral process.

A council being able to choose its voting system would also risk political manipulation. For example, the current controlling group on a council could seek to choose a system that it believes would favour it. While I accept that there could be various safeguards to mitigate that risk, I do not consider that it could be entirely removed.

Elections are the foundations of local democracy, which is central to our values and our being a free society; we should protect and nurture it. I recognise that all noble Lords in this Committee share that view, but I am afraid that what this amendment envisages would in practice be the kind of tinkering with the foundations of local democracy that I am clear we should avoid.

Finally, there are already relevant provisions in place under the local government and public health Act 2007 which enable district councils to change their scheme of elections. Those councils electing by thirds, where a third of council seats are up for re-election in each of three out of every four years, can move to whole-council elections, where all council seats are re-elected at once, every four years, and some councils currently holding whole-council elections, which formerly elected by thirds, can resolve to revert to electing by thirds.

Perhaps more importantly, experience has shown the merits of whole-council elections: facilitating stable, strategic local leadership, and delivering a clear programme for which the council can be held to account by the electorate. We encourage those councils still not holding whole-council elections to consider using the powers which Parliament has given them to switch to such elections. We would not wish to see councils which have not previously done so moving to elections by thirds.

Before I finish, I will just remind noble Lords that we had a referendum on changing first past the post in 2011, and 67.9% of the population voted against any change.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Would the Minister acknowledge that that was not giving the public the choice of a proportional representation voting system, where the seats would match votes?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

But it was about a change in the type of election and there was a very clear result against it. I consider that to be a very clear result in support of first past the post.

Therefore, although I appreciate the intentions behind this amendment, for all of those reasons I hope I have said enough to enable the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, to withdraw her Amendment 157.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 20th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 312A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Best. I declare my interest as a patron of the Community Land Trust Network, and a vice-president of the LGA. I apologise for not being present at Second Reading.

As always the noble Lord, Lord Best, has fully set out the rationale behind this amendment, which is quite complex. He gave an example of a redundant hospital which could have been used for extra care. When considering disposing of land they own, local authorities and other bodies feel that they have to get the best price possible. This often means that local communities are cut out of the equation, even when they may have excellent plans for a site or building. The inclusion of this proposed new clause introduces the duty to optimise the use of public land, which is quite different from getting best value or best consideration.

Often, local community land trusts are formed specifically to provide housing in areas which are either unviable for developers or on small and difficult sites. The local community has, however, identified a need for housing that may be of mixed type and tenure. For example, there may be young families wishing to stay in the area and, equally, there may be older people wishing to downsize but there is nothing of the right size in the area; it could also be for single young people wishing for a space of their own. The price of land is expensive and local authorities are obliged to get best value, which means going with the highest bidder, although this may not always meet the needs of the community. If local authorities are permitted to make the optimal use of public land, this opens up the availability of land for communities to have the facilities and homes that they need. I will try to explain this by giving an example. If a council has policies in certain areas—such as increasing social housing and achieving net zero—the council could then say, “How much would it cost somebody to develop homes on this site to achieve net-zero standards? What would the homes sell for or what would the rent be?” If this cost is deducted from the value of the land, you arrive at the correct valuation that will achieve the optimal use for the site.

It may be that a community is looking not for homes but to enter into a community shop run by volunteers. Both small rural shops and pubs have closed at an alarming rate over recent years; communities are now discovering what a valuable asset they have lost in terms of shopping at a convenient local venue and a venue where they could meet for a coffee and a chat. Perhaps a small local school has stood empty for some time, and it could be attractive to a developer. At the same time, it could be the saviour of the community in bringing residents together to create a much-needed facility for use by all ages. Levelling up is surely about the examples that I and others have given.

This is a complex subject but one that the Government are aware of. The Secretary of State received a letter in December 2021 on it and there has been subsequent correspondence with DLUHC. There were over 34 signatories to the original letter and the amendment is supported by various luminaries of the planning and real estate profession, including Yolande Barnes, professor of real estate at UCL, and various chairs and former chairs of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, including members and fellows.

The credentials of what is proposed have strong foundations. The noble Lord, Lord Best, has made a strong and lucid case for this amendment, which will make a real difference to the way in which local authorities, mayoral development corporations, Homes England and others approach the issue of best consideration for land, which should be a great asset to all communities. I strongly support the noble Lord, Lord Best, and other speakers on this group of amendments.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, and to join her in commending the noble Lord, Lord Best, and his expert collaborators on tackling a huge issue for communities up and down the land, but particularly for some of our most disadvantaged communities. It is important that we put this in the context of where we are now. Since the late 1970s, about half of all public land— 2 million hectares in total—has been sold from public to largely private hands. That means that local government has 40% less landholding than it did four decades ago; the NHS estate is down by 70%.

What we have seen, as we have heard from other speakers in this group, is not just a loss of land—people might or might not have ideological views about that—but a loss of capacity, facilities, access for local people, and the simple destruction of what had been a public resource. I think of one of these that I visited a few years ago on the Isle of Wight, a particularly tragic tale. The Frank James Hospital had been donated as a charity—a beautiful, big piece of land. It was a public facility that over decades—the best part of a century—the public had raised money for and put money into, but was sold 20 years ago to a developer and is still sitting there rotting.

Closer to us here, some noble Lords may know of Caxton Hall, which was a huge centre of historical interest and a place to hold public meetings in the vicinity of Westminster, at one point fairly affordably—something that anyone who has tried to organise one of those will know is a very rare breed indeed these days. Now it is, of course, private flats.

The noble Lord, Lord Best, has hit on something really important here, and I offer to do what I can to work with him if he wishes to take this forward into the next stage of the Bill. We have lost space for political campaigning. We have lost space particularly for our young people—those public spaces were often where young people gathered and where they were not surveilled, overseen, and expected to spend money; they were just a public space for young people to gather. So much of that has been lost. As I think the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, said through the ventriloquism of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, this is very much a levelling-up issue. When you go to the poorer communities around our country, the public spaces have been sold off, but they also do not have even private spaces that you could rent because there is not enough money to support that kind of private space. This is a crucial issue to pick up in the Bill.

I will briefly comment on the Government’s Amendment 165, which broadly concerns the principle of choosing to dispose of land for “less than best” consideration. It is an excellent idea. The example that comes to mind is of a police and crime commissioner deciding to give at very low cost, perhaps even at peppercorn cost, a piece of land that might be used to build a youth centre on—that facility that we have lost so terribly in most parts of the country. That would clearly be a very good thing for a police and crime commissioner to do, directly serving their mandate.

What worries me a little about this is the Secretary of State consent element, which is just one more centralisation. I wonder whether there should not be a range of local and regional bodies having an input, rather than it coming down to Westminster. None the less, I applaud some degree of progress.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, this has been an interesting debate on a number of important amendments. It is, of course, essential that these new combined county authorities and constituent local authorities should be able to use land in their ownership and negotiate with partners to use land resources to create facilities, regenerate their areas, and make best use of the scarce land resources we have. The other reason this is so important is that making best use of these brownfield and previously developed sites affords the ability to make environmental protections to those parts of the country where we do not wish to see development. That is another reason for doing this. The amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Best, also takes into consideration the fact that there may be attempts to frustrate development. That certainly struck a chord with me, as the saga of the development of my town to the west of the A1(M) has dragged on for over 27 years without resolution—but that is enough about my personal pain.

I welcome the Government’s amendment on the issue of there being no specific provision relating to disposal below value. This is a big issue for local authorities whenever we are looking at these things. I think there is a degree of misunderstanding about it in local authorities, where a lot of arguments go on between the legal side and the policy side about how the power of environmental, social and economic improvement works, in conjunction with the audit side of having to achieve best consideration. I hope that these amendments will help to resolve some of these issues. The ability to empower PCCs to include considerations other than monetary value alongside local authorities is welcome, although I will come on to some of the issues around that in a moment.

The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, rightly pointed to the very steep price rises and the 160% inflation that is currently linked to valuations. The words of the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, channelled through the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, raised the issue of the assets available to more deprived communities and what we do about making sure that we do not exacerbate that rather than using the powers of the Bill to level up. Using the power of land to provide preventive facilities—as in the example the noble Lord, Lord Best, used—which will do long-term good for the community and potentially save long-term revenue funding for the public bodies concerned is a really important way forward for determining how the value of land is determined in the first place. If it is going to provide facilities for that community and save revenue for the public body in the long term, surely that ought to be one of the considerations we can take into account.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester highlighted the outdated nature of the figures currently used. This has been one of the common themes of the data used that we have highlighted throughout the consideration of the Bill. We must get up-to-date data here, otherwise we will end up giving ourselves problems that we should not need to have.

Turning to the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Best, he made a very clear exposition of why the need to be able to make best use of public land—and therefore improve the built environment—is crucial to levelling up, and how the use of public land charters could help. It was interesting to hear that the work of the Select Committee had looked at that closely and determined it.

We cannot blame hard-pressed public bodies, which are so desperate for cash, for sometimes having to go for the option that will give them the most funding when looking at valuations on their land. Of course, the long-term solution to that is to fund public bodies properly in the first place—they would then not have to make those tough decisions—but we are where we are with that.

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[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I am speaking to Amendment 172A in my name, but I want to commend the breadth of what has already been described in the three speeches that we have already heard. I strongly commend Amendment 170, in the name of my noble friend on the Front Bench, about bereavement; we have to be careful what we do here.

I want to make it clear that I am not speaking about empty property. I think there is absolute clarity about taking action to bring back into proper use, as either rented or owner-occupied premises, those homes that have been empty for a length of time. However, I shall touch on some of the complexities relating to second homes. I declare a very long-term interest from 1987 onwards, because I was involved in having to have a second home as a Member of Parliament, as MPs outside a radius of 25 miles of London will inevitably have to do if they are serving their constituency appropriately. Not all do so, but these days most see it as their duty to have a foothold, a footprint, in their constituency, even if they spend more time than would otherwise be necessary in London.

Perversely, because of the nature of our housing market, even with the new rules through the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority—which will pick up, on behalf of the public purse, the cost of second homes—there can be the very perverse situation where someone chooses to designate their second home in one place when actually it is their main home, because they do not want to be caught on their death in relation to capital gains, or when they move. There are all kinds of complexities that many people speaking today know more about than I do when it comes to the housing market.

I want to address the importance of the devolution of decision-making to local authorities, but with the proviso that those authorities are encouraged, in whatever way is appropriate, to do a proper research review themselves of the impact of the actions that they take, because the intent—and I have to say it is a very socialistic intent—of the legislation before us, in the debate that we are having, can have completely perverse consequences. Today we have heard references to short-term lets and Airbnb, which the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Exeter mentioned last Thursday, and to holiday lets. They are very different, but all have very similar impacts in the short-term nature of those coming into communities which otherwise would have long-term owner-occupier or renting residents. I separate the two because there are already consultations going out—or pseudo-consultations—from local authorities across the country, consequent on and in anticipation of the passing of this legislation, which fail completely to distinguish between ownership and rent.

Of course, there are people with second homes who rent them on a long-term basis, perhaps on a lease, and those who are the owners of the property. In certain parts of the country, we have very large landowners who are landlords and have built up over the years enormous portfolios of rented accommodation. They are the owners and people are renting—many of them local people who managed to obtain a rent agreement in the past that still holds. There is a residue of old agricultural workers legislation in some parts of the country.

The perverseness I refer to is that, on many of these large estates, when accommodation for rent becomes available because the tenant leaves—for whatever reason—it is turned into holiday lets. They are turned into business rate, rather than council tax, providers, which changes the character and nature of the locality. Of course, many second-home renters or owners may turn up infrequently. However, many, not least because of the experience we had from Covid, are spending a quite lot of time in both their homes using the facility of being online and—if I might touch on a controversial issue—working from home for part of the week. This has also transformed the nature of how the impact might be felt at a local level.

I want to put on record that, although I have no problem at all with this, it is important going forward—and I hope the Government will bring forward their own amendment—we ensure that a proper economic and social impact assessment is undertaken by people who know what they are talking about. I am afraid to say this as someone who spent many happy years in local government, but many authorities, particularly small ones, do not have officers with the first idea how to conduct a proper research survey, never mind analysing it.

If we do not get this right, it will have consequent perverse outcomes none of us wants. The purpose must surely be to try to get as much accommodation as possible available for long-term local provision, either for let or owner-occupation, to keep the life of those communities going. If action is taken that has a very different effect and pushes accommodation that is currently available for rent into holiday lets, we will have achieved exactly the opposite outcome to the one we seek. As I have some experience of this and know what is going on, for example in the Peak District, I counsel very strongly that we build in guidance so that we get what we think we are getting, rather than the opposite. It does not matter if it is a 100% or 300% council tax hike if you get the wrong answer and it switches to national business rates. Neither local people nor the local authority will be the gainer.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I offer Green support for the general direction of all of these amendments. I will attempt not to repeat the tale of woe we heard, but I will make a couple of additional points and also pass on some good news, because I think we need some at this point. In the debate on the last group, I should have declared and put on the record that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

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[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My noble friend suggests that Raspberry Close might be what we have as a future name. This provision illustrates everything that is wrong about the Government’s approach to levelling up and this Bill. First, it removes an existing power of councils to do exactly what the Government say they want to control. It adds bureaucracy and cost, and it puts in a new procedure which is not needed at all but, just to be clear, is a centralised new procedure. The word “regulation” appears eight times in 42 lines.

It is a make-work clause for people in Whitehall. It serves no practical purpose, but it goes down to the smallest detail in the text. For instance, Clause 77(3) states that, the name having been changed, a local authority may put up a sign. That is a pretty good point; I am glad they did not overlook that. What kind of sign? Well, it can be “painted or otherwise marked”. Yes, that is another good point. I am glad they did not overlook that. Where can it be put? It can be put on

“a conspicuous part of any building or other erection”.

Is this not getting down to the absolutely absurd? Of course, at first I was worried that trees were not included in the places where you could fix a sign—but then I realised that the Minister would tell me that trees will be covered in regulations. In fact, the whole clause is covered in regulations. The whole Bill is covered in regulations. The only consolation I get out of this is that we have not yet been given the department’s list of approved street names—but possibly the Minister will tell us that that is going to come on Report.

This is an unnecessary clause: it is poorly drafted and dripping with red tape and the Minister should take it out of this Bill and let us focus on the real task of levelling up, to which it contributes in no way at all.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Well, my Lords, follow that. After that devastating forensic analysis explaining exactly why Clause 77 should not stand part of the Bill, I rise briefly to add a couple of additional points to the arguments just presented. I very much agree with the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, that this clause should go altogether, but I also understand that the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, is trying to ameliorate the mess to some degree. But I think it is clear that getting rid of the clause altogether is by far the best option, and I note that the Local Government Association has expressed its concerns about it.

I want to add one case study, one piece of analysis and one warning for the Minister and the Government in general. The case study concerns what has happened not with a street name but with a similar story in Stroud. There is what has been described as “an offensive racist relic” clock that glamorises the slave trade. When this became an issue, the council started an eight-week consultation. Some 1,600 people in a town with a population of 13,500 responded to that consultation; 77% said that the clock should be taken down. This is an interesting case study. One issue is that the clock is on a building owned by a trust. It is possible that the Secretary of State may have to be referred to on whether the trust is allowed to have this clock, which the people of Stroud have expressed their desire to see removed. This is my cautionary warning to the Government and the Minister. Do Ministers really want to get tangled up in these stories and issues?

Maybe they do, which brings us to the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, about the purpose of this clause. It would appear that the purpose of the clause is that Ministers can be seen to take a position; that is surely a very bad reason to write law. The other case study warning, which has not been mentioned here but should be, concerns Bristol and the Edward Colston statue. That was a demonstration of what happens when public opinion is not listened to and when there is a strong clinging to tradition. As other noble Lords have said, times have moved on and things put up in the past are now offensive. People will take things into their own hands. It is clear that these are local issues that should be decided at a local level, and the Government really should not be sticking their oar in.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to continue the absurdity that my noble friend Lord Stunell spoke about. Clause 77(6) says:

“An alteration has the necessary support for the purposes of this section only if … it has sufficient local support”—


so one needs to determine what is “sufficient local support”—

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 20th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tope (LD)]

My Lords, I accept that a mayor, were he or she so minded, could act in that way. However, I have to say that the current mayor has shown no interest whatever in conceding anything to any of the boroughs, let alone to one single borough. We could get to a state in which the mayor allows one borough—I will not name one, although Bromley comes to mind, remembering the trouble we had with the introduction of the Freedom Pass—to opt out and the mayor could accept that, but I would not want to put that responsibility on some future mayor.

It would be much better if we stuck to the majority principle that we were talking about just now; the boroughs should have the right themselves to opt out of the scheme. I would hope that they would not do so, but they could have the right to opt themselves and their area out of it, but not the right to either stop it for everywhere else or rely on the benevolence of the mayor—little of which we have seen recently—to opt that borough out. So a much better way would be to reword the amendment. I suspect that the noble Lord is not going to press this to a vote tonight, although a lot of people in London think he is: much better that we come back on Report with clearer, better wording to try to achieve what we want to do.

I think, as the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, said, that what this amendment is actually about is the relationship between an executive Mayor of London—in a sense, a presidential system—and the borough councils, which are essentially a parliamentary system. Nobody has given enough thought, and there are many other examples, to how we match the mismatch between a presidential and parliamentary system. We have a situation now where the boroughs are all, in a sense, elected parliamentary bodies, with borough council leaders playing an increasing role through London Councils in the running of London, and a presidential-style elected mayor who has all the power vested in the mayor, with none vested in the boroughs and none, for that matter, vested in the London Assembly either. I say that with some regret after serving as an assembly member—indeed, as the leader of the Liberal Democrat group there—for eight years.

I hesitate today to ask for a reconsideration of the government of London—I am not sure I would want to go through all of that again—but that is, in essence, what this amendment is about. If we can agree a slightly different form of wording for this to come back on Report, I should be happy then to give it my support.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise to speak only to Amendment 178B, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, in the interests of embracing an extraordinarily rare consensus. It would be ideal, for the Green group, for my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, former London Deputy Mayor and long-time London Assembly member, to be here, but unfortunately she is otherwise engaged, so you get me, a resident through many of the years that the noble Lord, Lord Tope, was talking about. I say “embracing a rare consensus” with enthusiasm, because I was buoyed last week by the fact that we saw the Government table their own amendment to the UK Infrastructure Bank Bill following a Report stage at which the noble Lord, Lord Vaux of Harrowden, had put down an amendment. The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, and I had both signed it, and that actually ended up in law. So, you never know; maybe the same kind of unusual consensus of the noble Lords, Lord Moylan and Lord Greenhalgh, the Greens, the Lib Dems and others all backing Amendment 178B might get to the same outcome. We can but hope.

I think the case has already been very strongly made for this: this is democracy. But I just want to make one additional point, which is that the London Assembly is, of course, elected through a proportional system, so the majority there reflects the views of the majority of the public. That is unlike local authorities, which are elected by first past the post systems yet need only a simple majority to overrule the administration’s budget.

We heard a lot in our debates on the Bill earlier today about tidying up and fixing up past inequities and infelicities; well, this would be a real democratic addition and a real tidying up. I entirely back the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, and all the others who have signed this amendment. Let us see where we can get with it.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I rise to support Amendment 176, in particular, in the name of the noble Lords, Lord Moylan and Lord Greenhalgh. Beyond the focus of the amendment on low emission zones, I think in this Bill—which promotes, after all, outsourcing a range of decisions to greater numbers of local and regional bodies—one area where local authority decisions are clashing not just with mayors but with local citizens, in terms of their needs and wants, is in restricting and controlling people’s car use and movement, in the name of tackling the supposed triple threats of air pollution, climate change and congestion.

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[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise for not being able to take part at Second Reading.

Amendment 178A, in my name, is about the City of London, where local authority housing functions are carried out by the City of London Corporation through its Court of Common Council. The City is subject to the same member rules governing participation in discussion or voting on local authority housing matters, where a member has a pecuniary interest, as those which apply to councillors of local authorities. These rules are contained in the Localism Act 2011.

The rules include an ability for local authorities to issue dispensations to allow councillors to participate and vote where it is right for them to do so to fulfil their democratic responsibilities. However, this ability to issue dispensation does not apply to the City because an additional provision, contained in what is now Section 618(3) and (4) of the Housing Act 1985, bans City members outright from voting on such matters. The contravention of this ban constitutes a criminal offence.

The history of the Housing Act provisions have been examined by the City’s law officers and discussed with officials, but their origin remains unexplained. They have simply been repeated without comment in successive consolidations of housing legislation over the years. My amendment seeks to address this anomaly by removing them. This will make the City of London subject to the same regime as local authorities. It is clearly only right that City residents should have the same entitlement to be represented in housing matters as applies elsewhere. I hope that my noble friend will agree. I beg to move.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, with apologies, and being aware of the hour, I will be brief. I oppose in the strongest terms the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Naseby.

The City of London is the last rotten borough. The elections to the City of London can in no way be described as democratic. There is also the City of London cache, a massive fund amassed over many centuries and explicitly excluded from freedom of information. The last figure that I have, from 2012, is of a £100 million per year income.

The rights of the City of London go back to William the Conqueror, who said that he would maintain all the rights and privileges that the citizens had hitherto enjoyed. It is about time that we finally modernised and got past that. In 1894, it was recommended by a royal commission that the City of London Corporation be abolished. I put on the record my desire to work with any noble Lord who wishes finally to reach that obvious conclusion.

[Earl Howe (Con)]

My Lords, as my noble friend has explained, Amendment 178A seeks to remove voting restrictions on either housing issues or related planning decisions applying uniquely to members of the common council of the City of London who are also tenants of the City of London Corporation. Sections 618(3) and (4) of the Housing Act 1985 mean that, while an individual can be a councillor of the City of London if they are a housing tenant of the corporation, they cannot apply for a dispensation to vote on housing or related planning decisions. Voting in breach of Section 618 is a criminal offence. This is not dissimilar to the regime that applies under the Localism Act 2011 which also creates a criminal offence where a member fails, without reasonable excuse, to comply with the requirements to declare their disposable pecuniary interests, and takes part in council meetings.

Councillors in any authority elsewhere in England, operating under the disposable pecuniary interest regime in the Localism Act 2011, can apply for a dispensation to vote on matters where they have a declared interest—but there is no such discretion for the City of London to grant a dispensation where Section 618 applies. In short, this means that City of London councillors are being treated differently from all other councillors in England. I am aware that the City of London has raised the issue on previous occasions. I am grateful to my noble friend for his amendment. Between now and Report, I undertake to give the matter proper consideration and would be happy to arrange a discussion with my noble friend if he would find this helpful.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 27th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I want to speak to Amendments 186 and 187B in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham. When we concluded the debate last Wednesday, my noble friend the Minister explained the Government’s reason for the introduction of the national development management policies. I reiterate to my noble friend that I very much welcome and anticipate a further response to clarify how the NPPF and NDMP relate to one another, perhaps by particular reference to the example of the chapter on green-belt policies.

If I can paraphrase, my noble friend said that a key reason was to make local plans more local. She said that, when making a determination of a planning application, the local plan policies will “sit alongside” the national development policies. But what if they are not consistent? This group of amendments looks at that question. The present position is that applications for planning permission must be made in accordance with the development plan, unless material considerations indicate otherwise. Clause 86 of the Bill inserts

“and any national development management policies.”

Therefore, applications must be made in accordance with the development plan and any national development management policies. The material considerations would need to “strongly indicate otherwise”. We argued that point last Wednesday.

Section 38 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 states that, if a policy

“in a development plan … conflicts with another policy in the development plan the conflict must be resolved in favour of the policy which is contained in the last document”—

so it is simply a matter of which is the most recent. In future, that conflict may be between a development plan and the national development management policies. The Government, to resolve that question, state in Clause 86(2):

“If to any extent the development plan conflicts with a national development management policy, the conflict must be resolved in favour of the national development management policy.”

We have heard from the noble Baroness moving Amendment 185A that it proposes that proposed new subsection (5C) created by Clause 86(2) be deleted. Amendment 192 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, would give precedence to the development plan. This turns the Government’s intention on its head. However, I have to say that it runs a serious risk of undermining national policies by virtue of local plan-making and turning the whole problem the other way around.

My Amendment 186, tabled with my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham, would add the word “significant” to make the phrase, “if to any significant extent” there is a conflict. That would have the simple benefit of avoiding the disapplication of development plan policies because of an insignificant difference between that and an NDMP. It would run the risk—I have to acknowledge—of debate over what “significant” means. However, if the Minister were to object to the insertion of the word “significant” because of the risk of litigation, I will return to the question of the litigation that might arise through the insertion of the word “strongly”, which the Government resisted on those grounds.

Amendment 187, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, would reverse the primacy of NDMP over the development plan where there is a substantial set of devolved responsibilities given to a combined county authority. These are, in effect, the planning powers of the constituent local planning authorities, so I have to confess that I am not at all clear why, if the powers are vested in a CCA, as opposed to a local planning authority, the primacy should be switched simply on those grounds.

Overall, we have a group of amendments here that illustrate the problem but do not offer a solution. The development plan should not be inconsistent with the NDMP. The new Section 15C of PCPA 2004, to be inserted by Schedule 7, states this. On page 294 of the Bill, it can be seen that the intention of the Government is that there should not be any inconsistency between the two. However, in practice, such inconsistencies will arise in relation to specific planning applications. That is where the problem emerges. When they do, as the Minister herself made clear, this is a plan-led system, and a decision should, so far as possible, be made in accordance with the development plan. As the NPPF makes clear, where there is no relevant plan policy or no up-to-date plan—our Amendments 187A and 187B are relevant here about the necessity of an up-to-date plan—then the decision should be made by reference to the national development management policies, which will continue to be given statutory weight, by virtue of this legislation, even if the plan is out of date.

Therefore, I ask the Minister to reflect on this question and whether the primacy of the national development management policies should be achieved through the plan-making process—that is, sustain that question of there being no inconsistencies—but also where no up-to-date plan applies. However, if there is an up-to-date plan, then that should be the basis of the decision. That would retain the principle that those seeking planning permission should do so in accordance with an up-to-date local plan. I hope that the Minister will consider whether, when we come back to this on Report, that might be the basis for amending the Bill.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I will speak particularly to Amendment 187, to which my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb has attached her name. She is mostly handling the planning parts of this Bill, but she is otherwise engaged at this moment. The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, made a very interesting speech. It comes down to the question of what we mean by “inconsistency”. Do we mean that the local plan is trying to set higher standards than the national guidelines? If that is so, what we should have are national plans that set minimum standards. It should be within the power of local authorities to set higher standards if they so desire and if they think those are appropriate or necessary for the local area.

The noble Lord asked why this should apply particularly to CCAs, given that they are essentially a compilation of existing powers. The situation is that, where you have a CCA that has been created and handed the highways, environmental and other powers, certainly in local perception, in the understanding of people who have elected people on to those local bodies, the power that has been handed to this local body should rest in that local body.

Here, we have to look at the context of what it is like on the ground. I spent the weekend visiting various local areas outside London and hearing lots of complaints about local councillors’ lack of power to do what local residents want them to do. National planning rules have become far too bloated, and local councillors simply do not have the power to shape what happens in their local community in the way that residents expect them to. For example, people are surprised at how little power councils can have over the types of business established on a local high street. Massive international chains such as Starbucks can undermine the character and charm of a local scene, and the local planning authority and councillors are left wrestling over how the signage looks—which is not the issue that local people are most concerned about. There are more than 550 Green councillors around the country now, and this probably gets to the heart of what I hear from them so often: expressions of frustration at how power is centralised here in Westminster.

--- Later in debate ---

Placing targets in legislation is something the Government have said time and again they believe in. They have done it for a whole range of things, including for the Climate Change Act itself, yet they refuse to do it for the energy-efficiency target. The amendment that the noble Baroness introduced places those targets into legislation and offers an opportunity to get together to find and work on a way forward to help the industry rapidly build up the number of staff to do the work. I hope that, on this occasion, the Government will listen.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I hope the Lords spiritual will forgive me for borrowing from their script, but I feel like I am in green heaven, because everything I have just been hearing from all sides of the Committee is what I and the Green Party have been banging on about for the last decade and, indeed, much longer. I was looking back at an interview I did with Red Pepper just after I was elected as Green leader in 2012, talking about how people were being left in cold homes, mourning something that has not been mentioned tonight but that we really should talk about: the hideous level of the UK’s excess winter deaths. That picks up the point from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, about the way our society is going backwards in life expectancy, particularly healthy life expectancy.

Green policy for decades has said that environmental and social justice are indivisible. By environment, we mean the physical built environment as well as the natural environment. So you will not find any Green names on any of these amendments, because we did not need to be there. Nearly all these amendments have full cross-party backing, including from the Conservative Party, and non-party backing—and I join many others in applauding the huge amount of work done by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, on the issue of buildings. All this fits together. In Oral Questions earlier today, in a debate about diets, the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, said that it is not just about diets; it is also about exercise. Well, how about we have homes built with active transport in mind; how about we have walking paths, cycling paths and safe ways to get around?

The noble Lord just referred to access to nature and a children’s right to nature. How about we write that into law and say that every child has that right? The proposals in this amendment point us in that direction and put them, crucially, into the Bill. I am not going to repeat everything that has been said, because so much has been said. The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, picked up something I have long been banging on about, and that is security by design. Rather than talking about bobbies on the beat, rather than trying to deal with the problem we have already created, let us build out the problem of neighbourhoods that work for people and that are secure.

I am going to really restrain myself here, because I could just get so excited hearing so many things that I agree with from every side of the Committee, but I will not: I am going to do the classic Green thing and point out some hard truths. One of these is that, while I said this was green heaven, the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, put some silver sprinkles on that heaven by bringing up growth. We have had growth for decades; we have chased GDP growth and look where it has got us. Look at the actual fabric of our society, the utter ill health, mental and physical, of our society. I say to both of the largest parties, who are currently waging a political duel about who can offer more growth: let us talk about the healthy society that the amendments here would collectively put together in the Bill.

The other awkward truth is what is behind all this. Who is building these homes that immediately need to be retrofitted to be even basically liveable and healthy? Who is building these homes in places where there is no public transport and no provision for active transport? We have a handful of mass housebuilders who are driven by profit. It is the legal responsibility of the directors to maximise profit, which is why we need these amendments to the Bill. All parts of our society need to see that there are controls on the profit motive, so our society works for people and planet and does not keep being milked for profit at the cost of the rest of us.

We have to have these controls and rules, and these rules have to come from government, and from Parliament if they are not going to come directly from government. I would say that your Lordships’ House has a huge opportunity with this Bill, and not just this Bill: tomorrow, we will be on the Energy Bill; and how about Caroline Lucas, the Green MP, who has a big drive on for solar panels on every suitable new home? Why on earth not? We need to join all this up and make it happen: this is our responsibility to the people of today for the climate, and our responsibility to the people of the future.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I have been listening to an excellent debate, and I just want to say one thing that relates to Amendment 484 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, and others. I just hope that, when my noble friend is responding or takes some of these very important points away, he responds not simply to the question of what is required in Building Regulations but what is achievable in terms of the sustainable framework for buildings. I declare a registered interest as counsel to Low Associates, which, between 2018 and 2020 was working with the European Commission on Level(s), which is a European Commission sustainable framework for buildings.

Such certification schemes exist. In this country, we have the Building Research Establishment’s environmental assessment method; the Americans have Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design; in France, they have gone further and legislated in RE 2020. The point I want to make is that, yes, we should focus on what is needed in order to secure an assessment of whole life-cycle carbon emissions in a building, but actually that is not enough, in my view. We should be increasingly looking at greenhouse gas emissions in total, at a circular economy and the reuse and recycling of materials, including in the demolition of buildings or the repurposing of buildings. We should be looking at water use and water resources. And we can put these, as many organisations increasingly do in certification schemes, in formats that are also very relevant to the performance assessment, including the cost assessment, of buildings, for those who have to invest in buildings, and indeed, in the public sector for those whose job it is to procure buildings.

We have structures that are available. We can see both voluntary schemes and—in the case of France and one or two others—legislative schemes that can focus on the broader environmental, health-related and social objectives of our buildings. These schemes recognise that, across Europe, 36% of greenhouse gas emissions are derived from our building stock. We have to deal with this; it is a central part of our environmental objectives. I hope Ministers are looking at both the statutory minimum requirements and a certification process that encourages the whole industry to move to a higher level of performance.

--- Later in debate ---

With these explanations and assurances, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, will be happy to withdraw Amendment 188. I am sure that these are matters to which we will return on a regular basis, but I hope that noble Lords will not feel the need to press their amendments in this group when they are reached.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I want to make one point on the quality of building, in particular the safety of new-build homes. In 2021, the average new-build property had 157 defects, up 96% from 2005. Would the Minister care to tell me when he thinks we might get back to the defect levels of 2005 and how the Government will achieve that?

[Earl Howe (Con)]

I would love to tell the noble Baroness how that is to be done. I will consult my officials and do my best to do so.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 18th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My Lords, I think I could possibly make the shortest speech with regard to the amendments that have just been discussed and just go #MeToo. In fact, I want to say—and I hope that the Minister takes this as a compliment—that I feel that among the people who work within the local government parameters in the House, and particularly with housing, there is an amazing consensus about what needs to be done. What we will argue about is how quickly it needs to be done and why it has not all been done yesterday. Therefore, the noble Baroness should perhaps take heart from our belief that we know she understands where we are coming from. We probably sense that she is sometimes as frustrated as we are, considering her own background.

On the rogue landlord register, will the Minister tell us, if there is to be such a thing and if it is to be effective—which is the really important point about data and who goes on any register—whether it will be public? The question should really be: why not?

It is a pleasure today to speak to Amendment 274A, tabled in my name. In short, it would introduce new requirements to encourage the development of small sites. My motivation is twofold: I was the elected mayor of the smallest geographical council area in the country, so we never had large sites. Every single attempt to meet the needs of our community was always on small sites, and those can be particularly problematic to build out. We also have a demonstrable shortage of affordable homes, as we have all said—again, there is a huge consensus on this—which, as we know, is well evidenced.

Secondly, as shown by reports from the Barker report to the Letwin report, as well as by recent evidence from across the housing and construction sector, small and medium-sized builders have been really squeezed out of building homes over the past decades, yet they can and should be part of the solution to the housing shortage—and indeed they want to be. I see this amendment as a simple, straightforward way of achieving that, and I believe that the Government wish to see more SME builders contributing to resolving our housing problem. We can do this by changing how we deal with small sites, while at the same time bringing forward affordable housing as a sort of Brucie bonus.

As I said, I have chosen to focus on small sites because, in my view, the case for enabling easier and more streamlined development of these small areas of brownfield land is a strong one. We are currently underutilising such sites, which are often the areas of blight in neighbourhoods. They are the disused garage sites or the place where the old industrial warehouse building was. They really blight certain areas.

I recently came across some interesting research by Pocket Living, an award- winning SME developer in London that specialises in delivering affordable homes. Its research shows that there is currently the potential to deliver 110,000 homes on brownfield sites across the country. Despite their potential, these sites are not being developed—they are just not coming forward. Less than a quarter of small brownfield sites suitable for housing are coming forward, and half of councils allocated fewer than 15% of their potential small brownfield sites.

Why are they not being better utilised? In short, the planning system itself is a major barrier—no surprise there—and does not take into account the complexities of complying with many local plan requirements on a small site. Most of those come with a price tag attached that prices out a lot of SME builders; we know this because they tell us that this is their main reason for not being in the market. I deduce from that that we need to treat them differently if we want them to contribute more. Small sites are by their very nature tight and constrained, and they cannot possibly achieve every development management policy set out in the London plan, the local plans or even neighbourhood plans—I am looking at my noble friend Lord Stunell. At present, small sites take an average of 60 weeks to gain a planning determination, which is almost five times the statutory period. This is not beneficial to our economy, our pipeline of affordable housing or the millions of young people unable to get on the housing ladder due to a lack of appropriate housing supply.

The amendment seeks to encourage councils to bring forward small sites for development, and in reality it would say that we are tilting the balance in favour of development on small sites below 0.25 hectares where it is believed that high levels of affordable housing can be demonstrated. Therefore, as the pay-off it would provide a fast-track route for viability assessment and would incentivise a more streamlined delivery across the country. The sites would need to be a specific size and contain more than 50% affordable housing. The important pay-off for communities is that it is used for this in order to get their fast-track permission.

This change could potentially free up tens of thousands more sites for development in suitable locations, particularly in urban areas where this kind of development is most needed. It would also give the SME housebuilders a vital boost. Since 1988, the number of SMEs actually in operation and building has decreased by 80%—I was staggered by this figure. I welcome the inclusion of the small sites reform within the most recent NPPF consultation but believe there is an option right here and now, through Amendment 274A, to act sooner and faster to get homes delivered and to give that boost to our SME sector.

This amendment also has huge support from across the development sector and housebuilding industry. I am grateful that a coalition of more than 40 high-profile organisations are supporting it, including Barratt Homes, Optivo, the National Housing Federation and a range of SMEs. Small sites have incredible potential to improve both the supply and the diversity of market stock, but without policy intervention it is an underutilised resource just sitting there, looking a mess. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill. I will not say anything more on Amendment 274A because the case for it has clearly been overwhelmingly and comprehensively made. I will briefly focus on Amendment 208 and the final amendment in this group—which is something of an alphabet soup.

First, on the role of SMEs and small sites in local plans, I have come across many cases where I have been pleased to see that Green councillors around the country have been able to look at that classic development we see now: a new block of what is almost invariably labelled as luxury flats, in the basement of which is a single, fairly extensive shop that is one of a handful of supermarket chains—one more piece of dominance in our economy of what is already an oligopoly in our food supply. But what sometimes has been possible, and should be encouraged and supported through the development of local plans, is dividing that space into three. You can then have a small independent greengrocer or a small independent hardware-homeware shop that stocks that kind of thing that you suddenly find yourself needing, which can be almost impossible to find in our residential retail deserts where you just see identical supermarkets again and again. Maybe the third of those shops could be something we urgently need to see—earlier today I was at an event with the University of Manchester talking about scaling up the green transition—namely a repair shop, where, when something is broken, you can go and get expert help to fix it instead of throwing it into the rubbish: the circular economy in action. That kind of simple, clear thinking about what we need in our communities, building not just homes but communities, can really work.

I also want to draw on the work of my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb from her London Assembly days. She produced a report, The End of Industry in London?, in 2015. In the previous seven years London had lost the equivalent of 750 football pitches of sites where many small industrial businesses were based. That was in a situation where flipping industrial land into residential land could see a doubling of the price. I would be surprised if, since that report was published, we have not seen a continuation or even an acceleration of that trend. We need those small independent businesses as part of our thriving, strong, local economies.

Finally, on Amendment 504GJA—if I have that right—this is important and it is, in a piecemeal way, already being done. Here in London there is the London Rogue Landlord and Agent Checker, but Green London Assembly member Siân Berry did some research on this and found that only 3% of tenants had used it, although 20% of tenants had complaints that were relevant to it. If we had a situation where this was expected and everyone knew, wherever they moved in the country, that this resource would be there for them—something that could be publicised around the country and was built into the requirements for all local authorities—that would be a useful and practical tool to help us know how much private renters are being exploited. I have just come from the debate on the economic crime Bill and the problems of fraud and the way in which people are literally being robbed of cash, such as their rental deposit. We need to tackle these issues and this is a practical step towards that.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 18th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

It might be covered in the national model design code, but I do not think that is how it looks at the moment. The purpose of this document last year was to say, “Put it into the national model design code”. Logically, if you are going to do that, you have to at least signal its importance in the National Planning Policy Framework. Otherwise, all your guidance —because, technically, that is what it is—simply does not cohere together. What we have discovered, which is at the heart of many of these arguments, is that in large measure we do not yet know—we are still to debate this—how far what the Government say in the National Planning Policy Framework will be national development management policies and, by extension, cannot be varied from in local plans. So we have this inexorable relationship between things that we do not know and how it is going to turn out in the future.

Amendment 222 is very simply saying, because we do not know and cannot find evidence of the centrality of these environmental principles to the national model design code or the National Planning Policy Framework, let us put them in the Bill. All I am doing in this context is saying that, at this stage, I want to know that they will be central to the design approach—and if they are not, they ought to be. I hope that Ministers will be able to reassure me on that point.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise to offer Green support for all these amendments. On the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, it is worth reflecting that if you design a space, a community or a building that is accessible and welcoming to everybody, that will be a really good building for any person to enjoy. This is the same principle that applies to accessible public transport and many other areas.

I mostly want to speak to Amendment 222 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. I commend him both on tabling this amendment and on his excellent introduction to it. He was perhaps reading the mind of the Committee on Climate Change, because he must have tabled this amendment before its report about three weeks ago, which really stressed the nation’s utter failure to prepare for the climate reality that is now already locked in—what is now known in shorthand as adaptation. Another Member of your Lordships’ House, the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, said:

“This has been a lost decade in preparing for and adapting to the known risks that we face from climate change”.


It is very clear that what we should be doing now is making sure that we design, build and deliver buildings, infrastructure and communities that are actually fit for—as the noble Lord said—the next century. To take a practical example of this, the APPG on Wetlands has done a great deal of work and spread the word about how crucial wetlands are. We think about all the issues the Government keep facing all the time on sewage and what is spilling into our rivers and oceans. Sustainable urban drainage systems and just the smallest-scale wetlands—something that I have seen NGOs presenting with—can be a way of enriching biodiversity and addressing the kind of issues that this amendment does. They also create a much more pleasant environment for people and do something to tackle all the issues we have with water distribution in our country.

It is not just the Committee on Climate Change. Yesterday your Lordships’ House gave strong support for the amendment to the Energy Bill saying that we absolutely have to deal with retrofitting—with the adaptation that is necessary for existing homes. That very much addresses this amendment as well.

I will offer one constructive suggestion to the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, and something to think about. We have now got to the stage where pretty much everyone, including the Government, is talking about the climate emergency and about biodiversity in nature. These are just two of the very big issues we face in terms of the planetary boundaries. A year or so back, the Stockholm institute concluded that we have exceeded the planetary boundary for novel entities, which is shorthand for pesticides, plastics and pharmaceuticals. I suggest that the next step—which everyone will be talking about in a few years, but we can get ahead of the curve now—is to say that we need design codes that ensure we are living within all the planetary boundaries, which includes things such as geochemical flows and protecting fresh water: a whole range of issues that come under the planetary boundaries model. If we are indeed to be able to survive and thrive on this poor, battered planet, we have to design to live within those planetary boundaries.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, is quite right to raise the issue of accessible and inclusive design. Everyone benefits where design is accessible and inclusive for everyone, so all planners and all local plan strategies should bear that in mind as a prior consideration. The noble Lord has our complete support.

We must say two things to the Government that the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has said several times today. We need the content of both the National Planning Policy Framework and the national development management plan before we get to Report, otherwise we will have to include in the Bill content that may later appear in either of those two important plans. We cannot operate in this vacuum of lack of knowledge and information about the content of two absolutely fundamental building blocks of strategic planning. We need to keep raising that—I think it was also raised today by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage—and I hope the Minister has heard the pleas from across the Committee.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 20th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

Rapid is faster than far, but that would not be obvious to the average local public sector employee whose job it is to ensure that there is adequate infrastructure for EVs.

My Amendment 486 requires the Government to update us regularly on their strategy to improve the charging network. It particularly refers to the discrepancies across the country. The discussion often relates to the pure numbers of charge points, but just as important are two different factors. The first is the adequacy of the numbers available in public places. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, has made that point. Currently, EV ownership is concentrated among more affluent people—those with drives and who can therefore have chargers attached to their homes. We cannot have an EV revolution that is only for the rich. People who live in terraced houses and in flats must also be able to own EVs. As the revolution plays out and a second-hand market develops for electric vehicles, this becomes an ever more pertinent point. The second factor is that the Government have emphasised time and again that they believe that the market will adequately take care of the provision of charge points, but the figures do not bear that out. London and the south-east have a far more generous ratio of electric vehicles to public charge points than any other part of the UK.

My conclusions are that particular problems need to be addressed. The first is the disparity in cost between home charging and public charge points. If you charge at home, you pay 5% VAT; if you charge in a public car park, a public place or from a lamppost, you pay 20% VAT. That reinforces the unfairness. I urge the Government to deal with the issue soon as otherwise it will hamper any of their best intentions on this issue.

The second conclusion is that the Government must work much harder to increase support and funding in areas that have large gaps in their electric vehicle infrastructure. They are often towns in poorer areas and, of course, almost every rural area. Local authorities have a key role in this but often need greater advice because officials do not know the difference between fast and rapid and so on. They need not just money but support and advice to help them, otherwise EVs will remain vehicles for rich areas and poorer areas will remain subject to suffering from poor air quality.

My final point on this is that the Government simply must address the delays in national grid connection. They are hampering the whole thing which is totally inadequate to service the revolution that needs to take place.

In relation to Amendment 48 from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, I live in Wales. This week, 20 miles per hour became the default speed limit throughout the country. I live in Cardiff, where it has been the default speed limit for some time, and we have all—more or less—got used to it. The traffic flows more smoothly.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I guess I should rise at this point to follow with pleasure the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, who made a point that I was going to make. I note that in Scotland, they are going for 2025. This is a case where England urgently needs to catch up. I will primarily speak to Amendment 482. It is very simple:

“for “30” substitute “20”.

This is a “20 is plenty” amendment. I am going chiefly to speak to that, but I note that this is a very neat and fit group of amendments.

We express Green support for Amendment 240. We obviously need to get active transport joined up to make preparation to make sure that it happens. Also, we support Amendment 486 from the noble Baronesses, Lady Pinnock and Lady Randerson, on disability access in railway stations. Of course, we broadly agree with electric vehicle charging points. However, on the interaction between these two issues, we have to make sure that where vehicle charging points are installed on roads, they do not make the pavements less accessible, particularly for people with disabilities, with strollers and other issues. The space should be taken from the road and cars and not from pedestrians.

Returning to my Amendment 482, this would make the default general speed limit for restricted roads 20 miles per hour. Among the many organisations recommending this is TRL, formerly the Government’s Transport Research Laboratory. Going from the local to the international, there was of course the Stockholm Declaration, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2020, which recommends 20 miles per hour speed limits where people walk, live and play. That is the global standard that the world is heading towards, and we really need to catch up on this. I can see much nodding around your Lordships’ House. I am sure many noble Lords know that pedestrians are seven times more likely to die if they are hit by a vehicle travelling at 30 miles per hour compared with 20 miles per hour. If they are aged 60 or over, they are 10 times more likely to die when hit by a vehicle at 30 rather than 20.

Noble Lords might say this is the levelling-up Bill rather than general provision, but to draw on just one of many reports that reflect on this issue, Fair Society, Healthy Lives: the Marmot Review says that targeting 20 miles per hour zones

“in deprived residential areas would … lead to reductions in health inequalities”.

However, there is, of course a problem. The Marmot report was looking within the current legal framework for travel, but it is extremely expensive to bring in local areas of 20 miles per hour speed limits. There needs to be local signage and individual traffic regulation orders, and then presumably, if there is to be some hope of compliance, there needs to be an education campaign. All of those things cost money, and councils in some of the poorest areas of the country will find it most difficult to find those funds.

If we think about some of the other impacts, as well as road safety, 20 miles per hour speed limits where people live, work and shop reduce air pollution and noise pollution. These are things that particularly tend to be problems in the most deprived areas. The wonderful 20’s Plenty for Us campaign that has been working on this for so long, and increasingly effectively, notes that there is a 30% reduction in fuel use with “20’s plenty”, so it saves people money as well—something of particular interest to the most deprived areas of the country.

This is a very simple measure, by which we could catch up with other nations on these islands and really make an improvement to people’s lives, health and well-being. I have focused on the practical health impacts, but the reason this group of amendments fits together so well is that, if you want to encourage walking and cycling, then ensuring that the vehicles on the road travel more slowly is a great way to open up the entire road network to cyclists and walkers. Of course, it could also build communities: the reduction in noise pollution gives neighbours more of a chance to chat over the garden fence and build those communities that we desperately need.

[The Earl of Lytton (CB)]

My Lords, my name is attached to Amendment 470 in this group, and it is a particular pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, on this. I would like to say a few words about the question of footpath access that he addressed initially. It seems to me—and it was amply spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham—that this is part of the essential infrastructure that enables people to have what used to be, and I hope still is, known as multi-modal travel opportunities. In other words, one has at least some sort of menu of options, and one is not just obliged to be in a motor vehicle. This goes to the heart of what we do about making sure that developments are both related to existing settlements, where these facilities are available, and do not become detached from that unless there is some particular reason—and then only when this infrastructure is put in. So I am very much in favour of that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Would the Minister acknowledge that 30 miles per hour was, of course, the blanket applied by Westminster? That is what has been set by Westminster, and it is of considerable cost for councils to apply a reduction. We are discussing the levelling-up Bill, and it is councils in the poorest areas of the country that would see the greatest benefits but may well not have the money to be able to bring in that improvement for their residents.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I was about to come on to the fact that changing the speed limit on a blanket basis would be incredibly costly and complex to introduce. I go back to the first point, which I believe is the stronger of the two arguments, because you can throw money at anything and make it work. Local authorities quite rightly have the power to set speed limits on the roads in their areas. Many local authorities have decided to do 20 miles per hour zones in all or parts of their area, and that is entirely up to them. We endorse that approach in Department for Transport guidance and, particularly, we think that that is something that should be considered where pedestrians, cyclists and vehicles are all in close proximity. However, they are not always in close proximity. There will be roads which the local community and their local elected leaders will decide should stay at 30.

If one were to apply this blanket change to 20 miles per hour, what would happen is that all of the repeater signs for 20 miles per hour that already exist for those areas that are 20 miles an hour would have to be removed, or there would have to be repeater signs for 30 miles an hour put in. This would, of course, be after the local authority had gone through its entire road network to figure out which roads should be at which speed. So I believe that where we are at the moment provides the balance between ensuring that local people are taking responsibility and decisions for matters that affect their local communities, based on their local knowledge. The corollary to that is that if one applies a blanket approach now, it would be very costly, as the noble Baroness has already pointed out herself.

With the assurance that I have given in relation to each of the amendments in this group, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, will feel able to withdraw his Amendment 240 and that the other amendments in this group are not moved when they are reached.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 18th May 2023 Lords Chamber

However, if the Government are determined to tidy up this instance of duplication, I hope my noble friend will find my amendment a helpful and simple solution. It would ensure that environmental outcomes report regulations can replace habitats regulations requirements only if they are functionally the same. This would take away any risk that a future Government would weaken these essential environmental laws, while clarifying the Government’s intention to reduce duplication. I hope my noble friend will agree to this simple solution.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge, and I am sure the entire Committee will join me in saying that we are delighted to have him back with us. I also commend the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, for the huge amount of work that has gone into this. So much is having to be filled in from the Opposition Benches and indeed the Back Benches on the other side, because this is such a skeleton Bill.

We have not only a shortage of birds, mammals and insects, but we are running into a shortage of Henry VIII metaphors. We have Henry VIII on steroids with rockets strapped to his boots—I have run out of additions to that one. The Bill as before us now would put into law an extreme right to Ministers to do whatever they would like. It is interesting to be having this debate in the context of the just-completed Report of the retained EU law Bill, because then your Lordships’ House expressed very clearly a desire to see non-regression in environmental regulations, but we need amendments such as these to the Bill to deliver the will that the House has expressed.

This group also made me think of debate on the economic crime Bill, where we were recently discussing the issue of freeports. There is a great deal of fear and concern in the community that these are places of open slather, where businesses will be allowed to do whatever they like and destroy whatever they like, where all the rules are taken away. As the Bill is written, that is what environmental outcome reports will effectively be doing: taking away EU-derived protections and leaving nothing written down in their place.

I will not run through it in detail, but if any noble Lords have not seen it, I point them to Wildlife and Countryside Link’s excellent report going line by line through a number of the amendments and explaining their importance. I pick out a couple of points. Amendment 372 concerns the climate. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, said, we are in a climate emergency, and how can that be missing from this crucial Bill? We are supposed to be talking about a levelling-up Bill. These changes to environmental protection around the country seems a long way from levelling up, but that is where we are. If we think about the protection of nature and the impact of the lack of nature on public health, people’s well-being and communities, it is of particular interest to communities generally seen to be in need of levelling-up support.

I particularly pick up one element of Clause 141: the fact that it destroys the mitigation hierarchy. The environmental mitigation hierarchy starts with “avoid”: do not trash things in the first place. We are one of the most nature-deprived corners of this battered planet and should be absolutely avoiding environmental damage. At the moment, we are doing the opposite. I think of how often my social media feed and my email queue are full of desperate people saying, “How can we be cutting down this ancient tree to build one house?” or, “How can we be destroying this hedge when, with a bit of initiative and creativity, we could leave the hedge and build some houses as well?” There is so much we are not doing, and the way the Bill is written allows open slather to that.

I just note one point on Amendment 388, which introduces a super-affirmative procedure for regulations. It is an inadequate backstop: it is a backstop, but not nearly good enough. We need to write the essential protections into the Bill. That would mean that the Committee is following the desire that the House expressed at Report on the retained EU law Bill.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to three amendments in my name in this group: Amendments 378A, 378B and 386A. They are designed to try to ensure that this part of the Bill works effectively, and I hope will be regarded as helpful by my noble friend on the Front Bench. Not everything I have had to say has always been helpful, but I hope this is—it is all intended to be helpful, of course.

I remind the Committee of my registered interest as chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum. In that context, members of the forum from BDB Pitmans helped me with the construction of these amendments. Amendment 378A relates to Clause 142(3), which provides for informing the public and for “adequate public engagement” to take place in relation to the exercise of functions under this part. The effect of this new provision could be to extend public consultation requirements to the exercise of permitted development rights, because of the use of “proposed relative consent”. These are consents.

The present situation does not require such consents to be the subject of such a consultation requirement. In the legislation as it stands, adequate public engagement does not imply no public engagement. This would therefore increase the burdens on utilities, for example, in exercising a consent for a permitted development right in relation to telecommunications, highways, rail, et cetera. Amendment 378A would enable the Secretary of State to disapply the requirement where it would impose a disproportionate burden on development. Alternatively, page 174 mentions

“proposed relevant consent or proposed relevant plan”

in relation to “adequate public engagement”. If “proposed relevant consent” was replaced with “EOR regulations”, it would serve the purpose perfectly well, and save the problem that might otherwise arise.

Amendment 378B relates to Clause 142(1) on non-regression. It is a pleasure to welcome back to his place my noble friend Lord Randall of Uxbridge. We have heard from him about the

“overall level of environmental protection”.

This is defined by reference to the European Union law when this Act is passed. My Amendment 378B would enable the Secretary of State to take into account, in exercising this responsibility to maintain the level of environmental protection, any urgent need for energy resilience. It is worth remembering that Section 20 of the Environment Act 2021 provides for environmental legislation to be introduced with a statement that

“will not have the effect of reducing the level of environmental protection provided for by any existing environmental law”.

There is then in that section a statutory provision enabling the Secretary of State to make

“provision that is different from existing environmental law”

and

“might provide for the same or a greater level of environmental protection”.

Why then is there no equivalent provision in relation here to the making of EOR regulations? The inflexibility of this provision is particularly illustrated by the prospect in the European Union of the introduction of a streamlined environmental assessment process for low-carbon technologies. I have reflected this in the phrase

“urgent need for energy resilience”.

This would enable Ministers to take account of such a process to advance low-carbon technologies and not be tied specifically to a level of environmental protection defined by current environmental law. I encourage my noble friend to consider either my amendment or something similar to the provision in Section 20 of the Environment Act 2021.

Amendment 386A refers to Clause 150, which makes the consequential amendments to this part. It is about the proposed repeal of Section 71 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, which is what provides for environmental assessments. As it stands, that section will be repealed two months after this Bill passes into law. Existing environmental impact assessment regulations will then subsist from that moment until such time as the EOR regulations can be made, following the entry into force of those regulations.

But how long is the gap? How long will it be between this Act coming into force and the making of the EOR regulations? It could easily be well over a year and possibly two. For the greater part of that period, no power would remain to amend the environmental impact assessment regulations, pending the environmental outcomes reports regime. The EOR power is not able to amend the EIA regime until that stage.

--- Later in debate ---

Recent rumours, suggestions and stories suggest that the Government are now thinking again and may, at best, propose an extension to the deadline rather than its elimination. To that, I reply that I have been in this House long enough to know that, when half a loaf is available, you should take it. However, such a decision does not help to resolve the basic reason for the delay, which is the inability, incapacity or unreadiness of local authorities to process the applications already made. The Ramblers, other interested voluntary groups and, indeed, individual walkers such as myself have no power to influence events. They watch powerless from the sidelines as this valuable national asset is put at risk. Surely, to remove the cut-off date and end this suspense would cause no real difficulty. I therefore look forward to hearing from my noble friend the Government’s considered response.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, and to continue the trend of the afternoon of unusual coalitions across your Lordships’ House after my noble friend Lady Jones agreed fervently with the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, on the last group. I entirely agree with everything that the noble Lord just said. I also very much agree with the two initial speeches in this group on Amendment 387, to which the Green group would have added our backing if there had been space. In the interests of clarity and making progress, I will constrain myself to speaking to four amendments: Amendments 467H to 467J in the name of my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb —she unfortunately cannot be in your Lordships’ House because she has had to dash off to an emergency dental appointment; I think that we all feel her pain—and my own Amendment 480.

I have a slight structural problem in that those first three are amendments to government Amendment 467G, so I shall try to explain the situation—I hope the Minister will forgive me if I cross over some ground on the government amendment as well—and then briefly set out the details. The background is that maps of access land show people where they are allowed to exercise their current very limited right to roam in England. Public access to these areas of mountain, moor, heath and downland are mapped according to criteria drawn up by Natural England. These maps were published in 2004. The Countryside and Rights of Way Act requires them to be reviewed every 10 years, so this review should have happened in 2014. Then—we are back to the issue of deadlines—the Government extended that deadline by another 10 years and are now seeking to extend it to a full 25 years after the maps were first produced. The first maps took only four years to produce, so why is there this delay in updating them, especially in the light of the Government’s commitment to ensure that everyone lives within 15 minutes walking distance of a green or blue space?

The Government admitted in the other place that

“not all downland was mapped satisfactorily”.

This concession proves what organisations such as the Ramblers have said for a long time: there are areas of the countryside where people should and do have the legal right to roam but are wrongly prohibited from exercising that right because of the failure of the maps. The organisations that have been working on this issue have extensive lists of mapping errors and omissions, many of which have been recognised by Natural England but cannot be corrected until the mapping review takes place. Examples of this span from Cumbria to Northumberland, Somerset to Sussex.

Another failure in the current maps is that there are access islands, where the public have a legal right to roam but no legal means to access the land. Unless you can parasail yourself down into it, there is no way of getting there. These valuable recreation spaces could be opened up and connected to the access network. One example is Letcombe Bassett in Oxfordshire. The mapping review could also open up more downland, particularly in southern and eastern England, which has much less right to roam than upland areas. For example, only 0.6% of land in Kent has a right to roam, compared to 72% of the Peak District.

This mapping review might also open up access to waterways and woodlands, such as the majority of Forestry Commission land that has been voluntarily dedicated as open access land. This could open up access for a good half of the population who do not have it now. The need for a mapping review is clear, as it will give more people rights to access incredible nature sites. Given that it took only four years to do the original mapping, it is nonsense that it should take almost eight more years for the first review to be completed.

The government amendment seeks to remove the duty to conduct further reviews after this one—it will set things in stone when this final review is done and that is it. This looks like an exercise in the Government removing a statutory duty that they have continually failed to deliver, rather than having any real justification. These reviews should be regular and seek continual improvement, because there will of course be mistakes that are not recovered until after the next review. Noble Lords can read the details for themselves but, very briefly, Amendment 467H would allow five years instead of seven to complete the mapping review, Amendment 467J would allow extra rights for appeals and Amendment 467I would allow for a continuous review process. Those are the amendments in the name of my noble friend.

I come now to Amendment 480 in my name. It is interesting that it is very rare that the two Houses are talking about the same issue at the same time: my honourable friend Caroline Lucas had a debate today in the other place on the right of access to nature, which is fitting for these issues that people are very concerned about and which are very much at the forefront of the public’s mind. This Bill gives us the opportunity to address them.

My amendment is a “Let’s have a review” amendment. Noble Lords may say that this is a sign of your Lordships’ House modifying my instincts and making me look for a middle way, which goes entirely against my instincts. In September 2021, when we were debating what is now the Environment Act, I put down an amendment that said: “Let’s have a right to roam in England”. That is still where I want to go, but I am looking for others to back me and ways in which we might make progress in your Lordships’ House, so all this amendment does is say: “Let’s have a review in England about people’s right of access to nature”. Let us not forget that in Scotland, people have the right to roam over most of the countryside: not in front gardens or gardens, not in places growing crops or where you will do damage, but otherwise you can go where you will. By contrast, in England 1% of the population owns half the land—quite a few of them are very familiar to your Lordships’ House—and the other 99% have the right to roam on just 8% of the remainder. My noble friend’s earlier amendments would marginally improve that situation; this is looking for a really big improvement.

I will not talk at length, as I am aware of the time, but I have three quick points on the benefits we could all see from a right to roam. I was at an event this morning where the Rural Policy Group released its annual Sustainable Food report, and we were talking about citizen science, which the Minister was just praising in wrapping up the previous group. We were also talking about the internet of things; someone said how brilliant it would be if we could plant electronic sensors all over the countryside. Someone pointed out that we would have to really fix rural connectivity to the internet before this would go very far, but we could use those electronic sensors to map the numbers of dragonflies, certain birds or butterflies. Of course, if we had a right to roam, we could also have groups of citizen scientists roaming around the countryside doing that mapping for you at considerably lower cost and without all the issues around electronic technology.

Also on the Environment Act there was a great deal of discussion about litter. Much of the litter in the countryside is blown or washed there, and people exercising their right to roam can clean some of it up. Undoubtedly, the biggest argument of all is the issue of public well-being and public health. We know so much now about the need for public health to improve, and we know that the right of access to nature gives that improvement.

[Baroness Scott of Needham Market (LD)]

My Lords, I support and shall speak very briefly to Amendment 471 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson. It is really important to recognise at the outset that his amendment is about one specific thing. It is not about the merits or otherwise of public access; it is about the future of the estimated 40,000 miles of historic public rights of way that were omitted from the definitive map in 1949 because the mapping was done in a great hurry. It is not about creating rights that have not previously existed; it is really important to recognise that.

I have form when it comes to public rights of way. For a decade, I chaired Suffolk County Council’s rights of way committee and have spent many happy hours looking at public map modifications and all the things that go along with that. These things are very time consuming, and there are a number of reasons why. One is the complexity of rights of way law. I do not think we are ever going to tackle that, because it would be really difficult to know where to begin; it has been built up over so many decades and centuries and it is a very complex area of law.

There is also the matter of the historical record and the time that needs to be spent going to the Public Record Office, looking at tithe maps and other documents and so on to get an understanding of whether something is or is not an historic public right of way. That is important because, in highway law, when something has once been a highway, it will always be a highway until there is a legal Act to stop it. There are some very lengthy statutory processes. All these add up to a huge demand on local authorities, which have less capacity than they did back in my day. Finally, there is the capacity of the Secretary of State and the appeals process. All these mean that every claim takes a long time to process.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I thank my noble friend. He and the noble Baroness made very important points, but this is a question of resourcing and of prioritisation in local authorities. Of course, some local authorities are inundated and others are less so. It is about supporting them to register these rights of way. I will work with him and all interested noble Lords to make sure that we assess how this is going against the new timescale.

Amendment 475 would have the effect of permitting the right to wild camp on open access land. The Government understand concerns about the ability to wild camp in Dartmoor National Park, as raised by the noble Baroness. As a result of the local court judgment, this has come into much clearer view for the wider public. Private Members’ Bills in the other place also seek to make similar legislative amendments to those proposed here.

For the record, it is worth saying that Dartmoor has never banned wild camping: there was just never a right to it. It is a question of which end of the telescope you look at this issue from. There was what I thought was a very fair report on “Countryfile” a few weeks ago, which gave the perspective of both those who want that access as a right and those who very often end up clearing up the mess from the small proportion of those who act irresponsibly and damage our natural environment. The amendment would have negative impacts, including potential legal conflict and complexity surrounding the rights of private landowners, concerns about health and safety and the liability of landowners, and the risk of damage to the natural and historic environment.

Amendment 480 requires the Government to review recreational access to land and open access land. The Government are already required by law to complete a review of open access land under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000, and the next review is due by 2024-25. We will consult on extending the rights to open access land after having completed the review of our existing maps of open access land; this point was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. I understand the point that she raised, and I have been active in providing access to land close to where a lot of people live. I understand the tensions and problems. Much can be done by good joint working between land managers and the people who wish to use it. I am very happy to continue that debate.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I thank the Minister for giving way. I have a point of clarification. The term “recreational access to land” may have been interpreted as meaning open access land. This amendment is meant to mean all land, not just open access land, and I think that the way it is written shows that.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I understand the campaigning point that the noble Baroness makes. That is perhaps for another occasion in this House; I am very happy to have that debate. I want to see more access but, over the next six years, the recovery of species in this country has to be our priority, as there has been a catastrophic decline. We have to work with people to give them more access where it is appropriate, but we also have to protect our countryside and rare habitats and make sure that hotspots of biodiversity are allowed to thrive, because the benefits from those will spill out right across our country.

Amendment 504GJC, so ably spoken to by my noble friend Lord Lucas, enables local communities, landowners and organisations to contribute directly to the 30 by 30 target through an internationally recognised structure—namely, the other effective area-based conservation measure. We understand the intentions behind this amendment. I provide reassurance that, as I said earlier, the Government are committed to protecting 30% of land for nature by 2030 and to developing the most appropriate approach to increasing and enhancing our protected areas and other land of value to nature.

We are working with partners across the country, including members of the public, the environmental sector, academics, farmers, landowners and the private sector, to deliver against this commitment. The nature recovery Green Paper sought views on our approach to 30 by 30. This included our plans to explore how land that is delivering for biodiversity outside of our designated protected areas can contribute to our 30 by 30 target. Many of the reforms explored in the Green Paper have fed into the Government’s environmental improvement plan, our delivery plan for protecting nature. The noble Lord is absolutely right to raise these points. More areas will be developed for nature as part of our reforms, and I very strongly believe that these should be included in our 30 by 30 calculations.

Government Amendments 467G, 504O, 509E and 515 address the requirement for Natural England to review the maps of open access land in their entirety at set intervals, with the first review currently due to be delivered by 2024-25 and subsequent reviews to be completed every 20 years following this date. These amendments allow Natural England to complete proportionate reviews, focusing on areas that were mapped incorrectly or have changed status, on an ongoing basis. While much open access land is already mapped correctly, some mistakes were made during the initial mapping process, and a first review of these areas is required to establish an accurate baseline. The amendments do not remove the first review deadline completely but move it to 2031 to allow for sufficient preparation of the review.

As I have said, we recognise the importance of enabling access to the countryside. That is why we have established 13 community forests, alongside substantial programmes to create more green open space and significantly expand national trails. We have also created and restored some 360,000 football fields of habitat since 2010. Our response to the Glover recommendations made clear that we will not consider whether CROW rights should be expanded until the review of the CROW maps is complete. Our stakeholders have been clear that reviewing the maps is a necessary first step before any consideration of expanding rights can be made. Once the first review is completed and a baseline established, the amendments will enable us to move to a continuous selective review system. Any changes in land use can be amended on the maps in good time rather than needing to wait up to 20 years for further review.

Amendment 467G inserts a new provision into the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 regarding when Natural England must carry out reviews following the issuing of open access maps, and the matters that such a review must cover. The amendment also makes provision for regulations to set out the procedure on a review and makes consequential amendments.

I hope noble Lords will support these important amendments. A substantial amount of planning is required if we are to ensure that the reviewed maps are fit for purpose, so that we can then switch to a system of limited continuous review rather than the periodic reviews required at present. Amendment 467H would reduce, by three years, the time we have to make sure that the first review of maps is completed to the standard needed. The Government have tabled amendments which remove the scope for regulations to push back the deadline for the review, so I offer the noble Baroness assurance that this date will not move again.

Amendment 467I would insert a legal requirement to make regulations to enable subsequent reviews of the open access maps. Once the Bill has achieved Royal Assent, the Government intend to make regulations to enable a continuous review following the completion of the first review, which I hope will reassure the noble Baroness that the ability to do this will not be lost.

Amendment 467J would take the opposite approach of the government amendment by returning to the existing power to invoke the original appeals regime so that it applies to the review process. The Government feel it is important that we have the flexibility to fit the details of the appeal regime to the very different circumstances of the review, and therefore do not feel able to support this amendment.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 22nd May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow what I have to say are two very important speeches. They were from two expert contributors and I have nothing to add except to say that they have certainly convinced me that there is grave cause for concern here.

I want to speak about another government amendment, Amendment 467F, about requiring local authorities to transfer land to academy trusts. We have to look at this in the context of the huge privatisation of public land—2 million hectares, 10% of the entire British land mass—over the past few decades. In 2018 prices, that was estimated to be worth £400 billion. It is also in the context of the Government in the past month having apparently won—certainly in the High Court anyway—a legal tussle with Annington Homes, owned by the private equity firm Terra Firma, over the privatisation of the Ministry of Defence housing portfolio, which the National Audit Office estimated had left the Government between £2 billion and £4 billion worse off.

The amendment is quite long and quite technical and I have done my best to grind my way through to make some sense of it. What we are seeing here is a swap. What is the Government’s assessment of the risk of this swap and of the lack of clarity that might occur in terms of local democracy and local understanding?

I have a couple of other things to ask about this amendment. Proposed new paragraph 9A(7) talks about the local authority bearing the costs of this swap. Why? There is also the underlying concern of many local residents around the country and many local authorities that potentially an essential resource disappears from public space for the interests of private profit. One of the case studies for this was the Durand Academy, a particularly infamous case in Lambeth where the Department for Education terminated an academy’s funding agreement and it maintained that it still owned the land on the school site, and accommodation and a leisure centre had been built there.

Speaking as a former school governor, I am well aware of the complications that have arisen from school buildings that are also mixed with private accommodation, private accommodation that is leasehold and private accommodation owned by the council. Very complex situations are being created so I am really seeking reassurance from the Minister that this amendment is not going to add further risks in terms of the transfer of lands to academy trusts.

[The Lord Bishop of Chelmsford]

My Lords, following the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, I rise to speak in favour of government Amendment 467F and at the outset say that my right reverend friend the Bishop of Durham, who leads for the Church of England on education, very much regrets that he cannot be in his place.

We are grateful to the Department for Education and the department for levelling up for working together and with us in the Church to fulfil the Government’s commitment to bringing forward legislation to safeguard statutory protections relating to issues arising from the occupation of land by Church academies. The decision not to progress the Schools Bill might have meant that this uncontroversial but important change to legislation would have been lost, so it is very good to have the amendment in this Bill, which will maintain the important legacy of educational endowments that provide land for the purposes of a school with a religious character. This is important for all schools with a religious character, not just Church of England schools, and it will remove a significant barrier on the journey to academisation for Church schools, which is vital in the Government’s policy aims, as such schools make up one-third of the entire school sector and seek to serve local communities up and down the country.

As boards of education implement their strategies for the development of the family of Church schools in each diocese, they need to have confidence to do so in a way that ensures the security of that provision for the future. That still requires further work on governance arrangements which we are developing in partnership with the DfE through the use of the Church model articles, but it also requires legislation with regard to the way land is held on separate charitable trusts for use by academy companies. This amendment provides that legislation and captures clearly the issue as described in the fact sheet that accompanied the now withdrawn Schools Bill.

We therefore welcome this amendment to preserve trustees’ existing land interests once schools whose sites are held on educational endowments become academies. This amendment is a vital step towards ensuring that school sites continue to be used for original charitable purposes, enabling schools with a religious character to engage with the changing educational landscape. It will give greater certainty to the sector, the Catholic Education Service, the Church of England Education Office and our dioceses that together serve nearly 2 million children today and are at the heart of communities across our villages, towns and cities. It ensures that the distinctive Christian ethos of Church schools will be protected in the long term by reassuring the sector that on conversion to an academy, the nature and purpose of the trust deed of the school site will continue to be preserved if the academy needs to relocate. We therefore wholeheartedly support this amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

Amendment 478 is on rooftop solar. I look forward to the new report from the Campaign to Protect Rural England, The Rooftop Revolution: Unlocking the Potential of Rooftop Solar in an Energy, Climate and Cost-of-Living Crisis, which will be launched tomorrow. It is such a shame that we have pre-empted its launch by a day. I am sure that it will strongly reinforce the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. It is good to know that since this amendment was first tabled, the Government have made positive commitments on solar, including taking forward the recommendations in the Skidmore review calling for a gear shift in delivery to achieve renewables targets, including the solar and onshore wind revolution. That is all well and good, but more must be done to achieve the Government’s “70 gigawatts by 2035” ambition. It is vital that the new solar taskforce take forward industry recommendations at the pace and scale needed.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan. She has made a powerful case for ground source heat network trials, so I will not pursue that, except to note that the case is clearly much more overwhelming than the weak to non-existent case for the hydrogen trial the Government seem to want to pursue.

I will speak to Amendment 478, which has full cross-party and non-party support, and which the Green Party would have attached its name to had there been space. I note that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, with his Amendment 504GJE, is on to an important and crucial point. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, I was going to refer noble Lords to the CPRE report, which is due out in about nine hours’ time, so we are pre-empting that a little. I also reference something that shows where we could have been—the Primrose Hill solar village in Huddersfield, which was built nearly two decades ago. Driven by pioneering local Green councillor Andrew Cooper, 79 affordable homes were built there on a brownfield site. For two decades the people there have been benefiting from the kind of housing we should have been building everywhere in the country, all of the time. That it is in a very deprived area of Huddersfield, classic levelling-up territory, demonstrates how much people have suffered because of the policy failures of the past two decades.

Rather than repeating what other people have said, I want to make a few additional points. The number of households that are retrofitting solar panels has reached its highest level in more than seven years. More than 50,000 installed them between January and March, which shows how much people want solar panels. They are going for it, but through the much more expensive, difficult and complicated method of retrofitting, rather than buying a new home that already has them on the roof, which is what Amendment 478 would provide for.

I will cross-reference certain points rather than go through everything. My honourable friend in the other place, Caroline Lucas, had a Westminster Hall debate on 22 March on rooftop solar for homes. The point was made that about two-thirds of what is currently fitted is ground mounted. It is nonsensical that we are using up ground for that. Earlier today, your Lordship’s House debated the land use strategy and the establishment of a land use commission. Surely, such as commission would be saying that there are so many things we could be doing with that land that we should not be using it for that until every roof—certainly every new roof—has solar panels fitted to it.

I want to pick up on some points that might be made in opposition to this amendment, perhaps pre-empting the Minister. Yes, it could add cost to a new property, but there would also be an estimated saving of between £974 and £1,150 per year per home. Taking into account the cost-of-living crisis, the cost would be rapidly recovered by the people living in these homes.

We want to talk about having affordable housing, and part of affordability is being able to afford to run the home on a year-to-year basis into the future. Plus, we are in a climate emergency, the world is not meeting its carbon targets, and this is one obvious way that Britain should be making a further contribution.

In the debate in the other place, it was suggested that there are other ways of doing this, and that maybe solar panels are not the answer. Of course, this amendment refers to the appropriate housing; it is not saying every single house but, more than that, solar panels do not preclude also having ground source or air source heat pumps. In fact, the combination of those two things is absolutely valuable.

There has been talk of global supply challenges, but the right political will would ensure that it is possible to source these materials outside China, where the bulk of the current issues—particularly human rights—regarding solar panels lie. There is also the question of sourcing silicon, but there are alternatives to that and breakthroughs are being made all the time. It has been suggested this may stifle innovation somehow. This is not just about delivering the basic fabric of a building that should be there; it does not mean that we cannot do many additional things as well, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, has so clearly suggested.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, for introducing this group of amendments and her amendment in particular. We strongly support amendments that aim to increase renewable energy sources. This is a levelling-up Bill. One of the missions laid out in the White Paper is to increase well-being. When we think about the cost of energy at the moment, surely having well-heated homes has to be a measure of well-being in society. By supporting these amendments, we can make steps towards meeting that mission. As the noble Baroness said in the introduction to her amendment, it is simple but sensible. We completely agree.

The amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, is again really important. There is such huge potential for solar panels on commercial buildings that we completely miss. The thing that sprung to mind when I read his amendment was those colossal warehouses that can be seen along the motorways when driving along. They are in completely open space, and surely there is huge potential for putting solar panels on their roofs.

We know that, by 2050, the United Kingdom has a target to cut emissions of CO₂ by 80%, but we also know that the Government are way off achieving that target. Again, as the noble Baroness said, it is really good that the Government are beginning to realise the importance and potential of solar power, following on from the Skidmore review, but as she also said, what we need is action—to make the potential of solar power a reality. If new-build homes had solar panels and the ability to store energy in batteries—which is, of course, something that we have to develop further—as a country we would clearly benefit from a fairly significant reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide. To me, it seems completely obvious: the more energy we harness from the sun, the less we need to get from fossil fuels.

Solar panels mean that, for certain parts of the year, households can enjoy being completely self-powered. This would of course bring a significant reduction to their energy bills, helping to meet that mission of well-being—yet, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, said, there is no target for this yet. If you are going genuinely to deliver and make a difference, you need to set targets.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 24th May 2023 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle]

481: After Clause 214, insert the following new Clause—
“Local authorities: report of land contamination(1) Within 24 months of the passing of this Act, the Secretary of State must publish a review of the incidence of land contamination in the UK.(2) The review must—(a) publish the reports in subsection (3),(b) have regard to the reports in subsection (3),(c) identify the resources required to bring all land contamination in England to safe levels, and(d) identify any necessary legislative changes to bring all land contamination to safe levels.(3) Within 12 months of the passing of this Act, local authorities in England must report to the Secretary of State on the overall incidence of land contamination in their area, and the resources needed to bring this contamination to safe levels.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would require the Secretary of State and Local Authorities to identify the level of contaminated land in England and the necessary resources to bring contamination to safe levels.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 481, I shall also speak briefly to Amendment 483, the other amendment in this group. It has not been introduced yet, so we can regard this as perhaps an amuse-bouche—a taster of what is to come—given that we are talking about growing food, as well as other things. Last week, I was at the Sheffield Festival of Debate, talking about just access to land. People were saying that what we should be doing in the House of Lords was speaking up for the right to grow food. I am looking forward to the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, and others speaking to that amendment, which really sets out an important principle.

Amendment 481 is my second attempt to bring in what is generally known as Zane’s law, named after Zane Gbangbola. The Truth About Zane campaign is still working, with a wide range of support, to get on the record the truth about the seven year-old’s death in Chertsey in 2014, when floods swept hideously toxic hydrogen cyanide into the family home. That is not what the inquest verdict concluded in 2016, but the inequality of arms in legal representation in that inquest and the illogic of the verdict—given that Zane’s father, Kye, was at the same time left paralysed by hydrogen cyanide—means that it will surely have to go back. That very much highlights a broader issue, which is why I, the family and many others are campaigning for Zane’s law.

To go back in history to set out the legal background to this issue, in 1974 the Control of Pollution Act first took control over waste disposal. When that came into effect, many historical dumps were quietly closed and, essentially, forgotten about, except perhaps by people in the local community. EU regulations on waste and pollution came in through the Environmental Protection Act 1990, tightening up controls. In particular, Section 143 provided an obligation for local authorities to investigate their area and draw up public registers of land that may be contaminated. Section 31 of that Act also gave local authorities powers to inspect and close landfills and clean them up if necessary.

The fact is that lots of housing developments are and continue to be on old landfill sites. There were three consultations between 1991 and 1993, which eventually decided that Section 143 of the 1990 Act would not be implemented and all plans for public registers of contaminated sites were to be dropped. The explanation was that it was about the cost and desire not to place “new regulatory burdens” on the private sector. Limited powers were brought back in 1995, although they did not come into force until five years later, which meant that when developers found contamination problems, public authorities had to pay. But the situation further worsened in 2011. As part of the Cameron Government’s bonfire of red tape to reduce statutory burdens, the right of the enforcement authorities to use the law was further reduced. The emphasis was on voluntary clean-up by developers, with no real power to check that it had been done.

Amendment 481 attempts to return to the situation that we would have been in if Section 143 had been implemented. In discussion about this, a noble Lord asked me who was going to pay for this measure—the big question. Being in your Lordships’ House, where we are not allowed to allocate spending, I have not addressed that issue directly in this amendment. However, proposed new subsection (2)(c) would make it the law to

“identify the resources required to bring all land contamination in England to safe levels”.

I would therefore say in answer to that question that I am going as far as I can.

The last time I brought Zane’s law before your Lordships’ House was during a debate on the Building Safety Bill in this very Room. The Labour Front Bench, albeit different from today, expressed some interest and support for the amendment—as did the Lib Dem Front Bench—but asked, “Is this really a problem?” Of course, we have the tragic death of Zane to point to and we are in a climate emergency situation, seeing increasing levels of flooding, increasing temperatures and erosion around the sea where there have often been landfill sites at sea level. These are increasing problems.

I will give the Committee some practical examples—just three cases that have been highlighted in the media in recent weeks. First, near Cedar Avenue in Coseley, Dudley, there are plans to build 72 homes on a former landfill site that was once home to hundreds of tonnes of toxic waste. It was an old open-cut coal mine that became a fishing site and then, in the 1970s, became a landfill site. Some of the things that locals recall being dumped there were fruit machines, vegetable and medical waste and up to 220 tonnes of toxic metal compounds, including industrial waste products such as mercury, arsenic, cyanide and asbestos, all of which, as I do not need to tell the Committee, are seriously concerning. There are plans to put 72 affordable homes on that site, which are currently on hold because of local controversy, as far as I am able to establish.

Secondly, in the village of Somercotes in Derbyshire there are plans to develop hundreds of homes on a patch of land dubbed the most contaminated site in England. It is supposed to include particularly highly toxic dioxins, which have been illegally dumped there in the past. My third case study is the 263-home Coppenhall Place development in Crewe, Cheshire, where it is feared that the homes have been built on a contaminated site.

We have a very clear issue here, and an approaching issue with the Government talking about building hundreds of thousands of new homes and the rightful desire to put them on brownfield sites. The first thing we have to know is what is on those brownfield sites and whether they are suitable for housing, in view of the potential contamination problems. That is what this amendment would do. It is not particularly new or creative; it simply seeks to bring in something that decades ago was thought necessary and is clearly even more necessary now.

I will keep pushing this. I would love to think that the Minister will leap up and say, “Yes, you’re absolutely right”, but I ask the Government at least to look at this issue, because there is a problem here that clearly affects many people and presents an enormous risk to their lives. Surely, a basic duty of the Government is to ensure the security of people in their own homes, which, quite frankly, they are unable to do now because they are not empowering, directing and resourcing local authorities to ensure that they know what is in their land. I beg to move.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 483, which is in my name and those of the noble Baronesses, Lady Scott of Needham Market and Lady Young of Old Scone, and the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. I am very glad that this group of amendments has been reached today, because otherwise we would not have had the noble Earl with us. That is great.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

It is a bonus.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

My Lords, in response to Amendment 481 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, of course this Government support lessening the risks from contaminated land. Indeed, I well remember our debates on Zane’s law throughout the passage of the Environment Bill and the noble Baroness’s passion for this subject.

Under Part 2A of the Environmental Protection Act 1990, local authorities already have a duty to inspect their areas “from time to time” to identify and require the remediation of any land prior to any housebuilding. Current statutory guidance states that a local authority’s approach to inspection should “reflect local circumstances”. This enables a flexible approach to providing value for money and to protecting the environment and human health. There is also a duty for the Environment Agency to report on the state of contaminated land “from time to time’, or

“if the Secretary of State at any time so requests”.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Bennett and Lady Taylor, and the noble Lord, Lord Foster, expressed concerns about resources. The 2012 contaminated land statutory guidance outlines the polluter pays principle, enabling, where possible, costs of remediating pollution to be borne by the polluter. Under Part 2A of the Environmental Protection Act 1990, the Environment Agency may inspect on behalf of a local authority if a local authority identifies contaminated land that it considers will meet one or more criteria for special site designation, as set out in the Contaminated Land (England) Regulations 2006. If the land is determined as a special site, the Environment Agency will become the enforcing authority and responsible for requiring appropriate remediation to the site.

If no polluter can be found and the site is not designated as a special site, the local authority must investigate and require appropriate remediation of the site. The Government recognise that the costs of remediation, including landfill tax, can be a financial barrier for local authorities seeking the remediation of contaminated land. Defra is currently developing a grant scheme to help local authorities to cover the cost of landfill tax in land remediation projects. In 2023, Defra will publish a revised Construction Code of Practice for the Sustainable Use of Soils on Construction Sites, which will empower and inform industry to protect its sites’ soil health, prevent contamination and mitigate soil being deposited in landfill. I hope that that provides a modicum of reassurance.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

May I finish? Not all land contamination may be able to be remediated, for a variety of reasons. A risk-based approach is used to define contaminated land, where regulators are required to intervene in cases where land poses an unacceptable risk.

The cleaning up of contaminated land ensures that brownfield sites are safe for their intended use, such as housebuilding. Land contamination has been successfully addressed in many cases through the planning system. In the majority of cases the risk is likely to be very low and the value of the land may not be high enough for remediation to be economically viable.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I thank the Minister for giving way. She identified cases where there is an application for building permission and a case where something is drawn to the attention of the Environment Agency. The problem is that we know that there are many hundreds of sites out there that present a risk to the local community and perhaps to houses built on it. Unless there is a survey to identify the problem, the first time we will know that there is one will be in tragic cases such as Zane’s.

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

Much of that may be down to limited resources. The grant scheme Defra is putting in place should help ameliorate that by enabling local authorities to take more proactive action if they realise their costs might be covered by the grant scheme.

On Amendment 483, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, the Government agree that community assets play a vital role in creating thriving neighbourhoods. These are places where we meet, connect and spend time with our neighbours.

The Localism Act 2011 already enables communities and parish or community councils with the right to register a building or a piece of land as an asset of community value if the asset’s principal use furthers their community’s social well-being or social interests and is likely to do so in future. I was pleased to hear the noble Lord, Lord Foster, refer to this. The assets of community value process also provides communities with the opportunity to raise finance and bid to buy a local asset of community value. This could include land for cultivation. Local communities should determine which spaces and places are most important to them.

I agree that meanwhile leases sound interesting. I certainly had not heard of them before. I should like to discuss them with the officials in Defra, whom I am afraid could not be here to respond today.

I hope this provides sufficient reassurance, and that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, will feel able to withdraw her amendment and the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, will not press hers.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank everyone who contributed to this debate, which was fairly brief on my side but extremely rich on the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. The case was overwhelmingly and passionately made on that amendment.

On my amendment, I thank in particular the two Front-Benchers for acknowledging in different ways that there is an issue that needs to be addressed. I hope that is something both parties will consider taking forward when they think about their manifestos for the election that we know is not too far away.

I am afraid the Minister might find that I will come back on the same issue on the next available Bill, because I do not want another child to die like Zane did. I think that the Government have a responsibility. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 481 withdrawn.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 18th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I remind the House of my interests as declared in the register, which are that I am a serving councillor at both district and county level and a vice-president of the District Councils’ Network.

My Amendment 67 would permit local authorities which wished to do so to establish bus companies and would expand the powers that local authorities currently have to franchise bus services, which are currently available only to combined authorities. We have tabled this amendment to highlight the recommendations drawn out of the Select Committee report Public Transport in Towns and Cities and subsequent discussions of that report in your Lordships’ House in April. Fundamental to the recommendations of the report was that a firm link be established between local plans and transport plans. Our amendment would give local authorities the powers that they need to enable that link.

Last week I attended a select committee meeting in my local authority on bus provision. It was a long session in which members were keen to point out the considerable difficulties caused to our constituents by the combination of unreliable, infrequent or non-existent bus services. The Conservative county councillor who holds the cabinet responsibility for transport was open in saying that the privatisation of bus services that happened in the 1980s had not helped local authorities to ensure that there were efficient and effective bus services provided for their areas. I have no doubt that such scrutiny of bus services happens across the UK, because bus users are utterly fed up with the level of service they receive.

Your Lordships’ House recently published a very detailed report on Public Transport in Towns and Cities. During the debate on that report, the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, described the Government’s performance, measured against their pledge to bring public transport up to standards in London. The Government had done:

“The brief answer is, not terribly well”.—[Official Report, 17/4/23; col. GC 147.]


He set out some mitigating factors as to why that would be the case, but surely we must all ask ourselves whether in the current circumstances, and with bus services failing passengers in so many places across the country, we can carry on with the vague expectation that eventually—they have already had four decades to do it—the private sector will start to deliver the level of service we know is needed to persuade far more people to leave their cars at home.

As Manchester has been able to go further with this than other local authorities, it was interesting to read Andy Burnham’s evidence to the Select Committee. In advocating franchising, he pointed out that his case was strengthened

“because large subsidies are being paid at the moment to various operators in the deregulated model, which in my view delivers very limited returns for the public”.

He also asked whether public operators would be allowed to take part in the franchising schemes as well. We agree that they should be able to do so.

During the debate on the report, it was pointed out, as it has been many times in this Chamber, that buses provide two-thirds of public transport trips in this country. The evidence shows that passenger numbers grow where services are of sufficient frequency and reliability to mean that passengers can just “turn up and go” without consulting a timetable. This is common practice in London but very unusual outside the capital, where sometimes the very fact a half-hourly bus has turned up at all can be subject to comments on social media. Councillors often take the brunt of these failures when services are late or cancelled at short notice or routes are taken out with no notice or consultation.

I also have to say a word about rural bus services, which are rapidly falling into extinction. Telling people who may have only one bus a day—or in some cases one bus a week—that the aim is to provide London-style bus services will most likely be greeted with derision. Some good work is being done to pilot on-demand bus services for rural areas, but these may prove too expensive for many users. Most rural users like those in towns just want to know that there will be a bus service and that buses will turn up on time.

There is such a simple solution to this, and that is to extend the powers currently granted to combined authorities, which can both establish bus companies and franchise services to meet customers’ needs, to all transport authorities. If we do not hear from the Minister that some movement has been made from the Government, I would like to test the opinion of the House on this. I beg to move.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, having attached my name to Amendment 67 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, I will speak briefly while noting my position as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, has overwhelmingly made the case for this, but I want to reflect on a number of things. She referred to the importance of reliability, and I can share her reflections on how rare that is. I was in Gloucester on Friday with Learn with the Lords and I waited for a bus—and it turned up at the time it was supposed to. I was quite shocked. It is such a rare occurrence, particularly when you are in a town that you do not know and you hope to rely on the timetable but you have no idea whether it is going to work. We cannot continue to have that situation.

Of course, that is an issue for visitors and for tourism but, overwhelmingly, it is an issue for local people. It is about reliability. I know of many people who have not been able to take jobs. We are greatly concerned at the moment about the shortage of labour supply in some areas, but you cannot take a job if you are not sure whether there is a bus or that the bus is not going to turn up reliably. You tell your employer, day after day, “Well yes, I was at the bus stop at the right time, but the bus did not turn up”. That is simply not a sustainable position.

On the idea of having local control, buses are a public service. They are essential to the operation of our communities. They should be controlled and run by local hands for the public good, not for private profit. There is no doubt. I do not believe that anyone can get up and say that the situation we have now, with buses being run for private profit, has been anything but a disaster. It is time to give back and—dare I borrow a phrase?—allow local communities to take back control of their bus services.

I can certainly assure the House that the Greens are firmly behind this amendment. I urge the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, to push it through if we do not get a strong response from the Minister because I think that, were we to hold a referendum—dare I use that word?—across the country, we would get an overwhelming win for this amendment to the levelling up Bill.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I wish to state our strong support on these Benches for this amendment; indeed, had I been confident in advance that I was going to be able to be here to speak this afternoon, I would have added my name to it.

In 2017, I put down a similar amendment to what was then the Bus Services Bill. The similar issue was one that we raised from these Benches in Committee. This levelling up Bill gives us an opportunity to halt and reverse the decline in bus services outside London, which has been evidenced since the so-called deregulation of bus services in the 1980s. I will not repeat the points made by noble Baronesses, but it is clear to us all that urgent and radical action is needed to stem the crisis.

The problem in 2017 with the Bus Services Act was that the Government could not bring themselves to concede that deregulation had played a key role in the decline of bus services. The Act allowed franchising and other forms of additional control for local authorities but only for larger authorities; it did not trust smaller authorities to do this. With support, there is no reason why they should not be able to do this. Further, the Act did not allow local authorities to set up their own bus companies, which is totally contrary to the evidence. Some of the very best bus companies in Britain are those heritage bus companies that are still owned and run by local authorities.

Let me give one example of the sort of thing that might happen if local authorities had this power. If a local authority of modest size finds that its local commercial company is going to cut the vital bus services that enable links between the town centre and the local further education college, it might set up its own bus company specifically to enable young people going to that college, as well as shoppers going into the next town, to use those services—it does not always have to be on an enormous scale. Who understands better than the local council what will work in local neighbourhoods? The local council is the organisation that understands local traffic patterns, the best routes, where to find most people with no access to a car and so on. If we truly want to level up, we have to improve bus services, which are disproportionately used by the oldest, the youngest and the poorest in our society, in order to enable them to access work, education, health and other vital social services. I support the amendment.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 4th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I fully support what the noble Lord said about the need for climate change to be in the Bill. I will speak to my Amendment 246A in this group. It is on the topical issue of wildfires, which have been exacerbated by climate change. As all your Lordships will know, wildfires have caused an enormous amount of death and disruption, with huge social, economic and environmental impact, across the world this year. You only have to see the regular news about what is happening in Greece and Canada to know what a problem it is. This year, we in the UK have been fortunate that we have not had fires on quite that scale—although we have had fires.

This debate slightly follows on from Committee, since when I have been in correspondence with the Home Office. We have a Minister for Fire there, but, in his reply—I think it was to me; it was addressed wrongly but it landed at my address, so I guess it was—he immediately referred me to Defra. So we have at least two departments in government involved, and although there is a Minister he is not in the department of most interest: Defra. That is why I have tabled Amendment 246A. Subsection (1) of its proposed new clause would require the Secretary of State, together with the Home Office and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, to produce

“a national wildfire strategy and action plan”

within six months of the passing of the Bill. It is ludicrous that, in a country that has suffered, and continues to suffer, the wildfires that we have, we do not have an overall action plan.

Action plans are all very well and good, but they have to be implemented at local level. Therefore, in proposed new subsection (3) I suggest that each local planning authority produces a wildfire risk assessment plan in conjunction with the fire and rescue services. This is a local matter in the end, and it is vital that the local authority and local people are involved, as we have heard in two recent amendments. The noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, waxed lyrical about it. My noble friends Lord Deben and Lord Lansley also mentioned how important it was to have up-to-date plans that were approved by local people.

In proposed new subsection (4), I list some of the things that need to be included in the proposed strategy and action plan. One of the issues is

“a map identifying the areas of current risk produced in accordance with the Met Office Fire Severity Index”.

At this stage, I ask my noble friend on the Front Bench—I think my noble friend Lord Howe is going to answer this—whether he considers this to be a valid index.

The current index, known as the MOFSI, helps us to plan for and react to fires but, unlike a fire danger rating system, MOFSI gives an indication of fire severity based only on the meteorological data and does not fully account for the varied fuel types that we see across the UK. Although MOFSI can indicate whether conditions are worsening or improving, its primary role is to determine whether open-access land should be closed to prevent the spread of fire. However, MOFSI does not always work effectively. For example, during the dry summer of 2018, in some regions the indices did not rise sufficiently to trigger land closures in areas that went on to experience severe wildfires. That proves to me that we need a different system of assessment and a fire danger rating system. Does my noble friend agree with me on that?

I do not want to pursue the arguments I used in Committee. I want to look at this issue briefly from another point of view—the insurance point of view. I do not know whether the Government have given any thought to insurance. We have had huge insurance problems with floods. There is a lesson to be learned from that, which is that we must act in advance when it comes to fires.

As I said, we have not had a repeat of the fires of last year, but on 18 and 19 July last year there were 84 wildfires affecting 28 of the 46 response areas, and it overwhelmed the fire and rescue services to such an extent that there was very little spare capacity for other emergencies. If that was not a warning to us that we need to improve the situation, I do not know what other action the Government need to be presented with.

That brings us to the question of insurance. The insurance industry is beginning to look at this in a serious way. As we continue to build, the urban/rural fringe is going to be hugely important. This will be the critical area of damage to the most property. There will be, and has been, damage to properties in rural areas, but the urban area is now most at risk. The expert report on wildfire in the UK for the third climate change risk assessment advised that wildfire and sources of ignition from outside of buildings should be considered in future planning actions and in building regulations and mitigation measures put into action. That is a relevant issue. Marsh McLennan, one of the experts on this, has quantified the benefit of fire buffer zones for the rural/urban interface. In the report it produced, it stated that wildfire

“risks can be greatly mitigated and reduced to a level that is both livable and insurable”.

It would be sad if the Government put us in a predicament in which people could not get insurance.

I have stressed the urban/rural fringe for one particular reason. Part of Defra’s agricultural policy is rewilding land, which leads to more abandonment, trees closer to rural areas and a much higher fuel load. It is the fuel load that is absolutely critical. We are blessed in this country with a wide diversity of geological stratas of soil, reflecting the countryside. Because of our maritime climate, we have very high fuel loads at certain times of the year and in certain places. The concern is that these are not assessed at the moment.

If we want to consider whether the fuel load matters, we can take a brief look back at the Saddleworth Moor fire, which was on peat and on very long, unmanaged and unkempt heather. When it burned, it produced something like 36,720 tonnes of carbon. In real figures, that equates to the annual emissions of 86,000 passenger cars—and that was one fire alone. The key in all this is the fuel load and how it is best managed. To do that, it is important that the local planning authorities have the appropriate plans underneath an overriding national fire strategy for England and Wales. I hope that the Government will support this amendment.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I offer Green support for all the amendments in this group, but in the interests of time I will restrict myself to commenting on just two of them. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. Due to my Australian origins, I feel I am constitutionally obliged to make a contribution on wildfires, which for most of my youth I would have called bush-fires. In the British context, from 2009 to 2021 there were 362,000 wildfires, with nearly 80,000 hectares burned. The estimate is that, if we were to go to 2 degrees of global warming—something that we cannot afford—the number of very high fire risk days would double. That is because there is less rain in summer and it gets hotter and drier. As the noble Earl just said, if you have a wet winter and a spring that has a great flush of growth, that presents one set of risks—and, of course, peatlands, in which it is extremely difficult to extinguish fires, are another area of serious risk.

When people assess the risk in the UK, we think about those rural areas—those uplands and peatlands—but there is very serious risk, particularly in the south of England. I point noble Lords to the desperate and horrendous events in Hawaii. Noble Lords may have seen the photo of the now famous red-roofed house, which was one house that was not burned in the midst of blocks and blocks of houses. The two key things with that house were that it had a tin roof, rather than the asphalt roofs that most of the houses had, and they had cut back the vegetation. That is a demonstration of how preparation is so crucial in planning and guiding the thinking of people in the UK, who are really not very used to thinking about fires, to prepare for the risks ahead.

I point to a not terribly recent example but one that demonstrates the dangers, as Hawaii did, to urban areas—the peri-urban fringe but extending quite a way into urban areas. The Swinley Forest fire in Berkshire in 2011 burnt 300 hectares and 300 firefighters had to work to stop it getting into Bracknell, population 110,000. So, this is a modest but really important amendment that really is for the age of shocks, the age of the climate emergency we now live in.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I have an illustration—as ever, from Eastbourne—of what is going on with solar panels. We have in the middle of town about 400 hectares of grazing marshes. There is a proposal to build a solar farm on a chunk of that, right next to 100 hectares of industrial estate. None of the firms have solar panels and nor do their car parks. There is clearly a local demand for solar electricity and the grid connection needed for it, but nothing is happening to provide solar panels on the existing space, which could so easily be used for them.

The Government’s policy is pointing in the right direction, but it is inadequate. It needs reinforcing. They need to give a much harder shove to putting solar panels on existing commercial buildings and commercial space. I very much hope that, if the exact wording of the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, cannot be accepted, the Government will commit to bringing something back at a later stage or finding another way of doing something about it, because where they are at the moment will not do.

Exactly the same applies to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, which I have great sympathy for. Therefore, I do not see the virtue in Amendment 191B, the wording of which seems very strange. I do not think that “should” bears the meaning that my noble friend tried to put on it; it is an imperative in legislation. Statements such as

“all new homes should be secure and built in such a way as to minimise the risk of crime”

mean that we would need to have eight-inch thick concrete blocks with tiny portholes for windows, because these are absolute words and not the much more open and discursive words employed in Amendment 198, which I therefore favour.

I also like the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale. We need to look seriously at embodied carbon. If that involves new construction methods, we need to learn from the lesson of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete. It was the miracle of its time, but that wonderful new method of doing things has not worked out. If we are going to introduce new methods and new structures extensively in housing and other buildings, we really must go back to not only testing them to destruction but monitoring how they are working in the environment. We used to do that with new building methods; we need to get back to it now.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise very briefly to offer the strongest possible Green support for all these amendments, which really fit into the intersection of Green policies on public health, climate and poverty eradication. I will make just three brief points.

First, on solar panels on a suitable new homes and buildings, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, for pursuing this for so long. If I look on Twitter, the question I am asked most often is, “Why do new homes not have solar panels?” It seems such a no-brainer to the public, and they cannot understand why. Of course, the answer to that goes back to 2013 when David Cameron had gone from “hug a husky” to referring to “green crap”. The plan to bring in this effective regulation was abandoned a decade ago. This means that more than 2 million British households are now paying vastly more for their energy than they need to be paying, while also emitting more carbon than they need to be emitting.

Secondly, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and others have been extremely powerful on the parlous state of public health and the relationship that has to housing. It is interesting that if we go back to the start of the NHS in 1948, Aneurin Bevan was Minister for both the NHS and housing. Those two things were seen as intimately interrelated. Somehow or other, we seem to have lost the plot with this. To quote some figures from the Building Research Establishment, it is estimated that poor housing costs the NHS £1.4 billion a year—money that could be saved.

Thirdly and finally, I acknowledge the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Best, about his awakening to the issue of embodied carbon. This is something that has been largely ignored. There has been the shallow approach of “That’s a terrible building. We’ll knock it down and build something better”. I have just come from a conference in Zagreb—an international conference with a lot of European speakers. I was hearing of so many amazing projects that are happening across Europe and looking at how we can build in innovative new ways while using existing materials.

I shall quote just one example of this. If a building needs to be knocked down, how can we reuse those materials, rather than just throwing them away? In Copenhagen, there is something called Resource Rows: housing has been built largely with slabs of bricks cut from existing buildings that had to be demolished. Those slabs are cut out and put into the walls of the new buildings. They have recycled materials. The timber is coming from where they have put a new Metro extension in. The timber frames that went around the concrete pieces for the Metro then go into building housing right beside it. They have greenhouses for growing vegetables on site, made from old windows. This is the kind of innovation that is happening elsewhere because they have the regulations that demand it. We are lacking those regulations; we are lacking this guidance from the Government. Just look at what we are building now.

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

I refer noble Lords to my interests as laid out in the register and as a director of Peers for the Planet. In the interests of time, I will address just two amendments in this group, but that is not to detract from my strong support for the remaining amendments.

First, Amendment 282H, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, which has support from across your Lordships’ House and to which I have added my name, simply calls for the Government to require all new domestic, public and commercial buildings to be fitted with solar PV and will include existing public and commercial buildings, subject to appropriate exemptions and criteria. Frankly, I do not understand the Government’s opposition to this very sensible measure. I spent four consecutive years on the planning committee while I was a councillor for Kew ward in the London Borough of Richmond. My experience there taught me absolutely to recognise that progress on this issue will be vastly expedited if the decision is not left to construction companies whose sole concern, at least for the majority, is profit.

The Government’s argument is that it is happening anyway. That fails to demonstrate that they take the need for urgent action on climate change seriously. Anyway, where is the evidence that it is happening already at effective rate? Is the figure for new-build solar PV 10%, 5% or 50%? What is the Government’s policy on this? Can the Minister tell me? Who keeps account of these figures? Surely the Government’s policy must be 100% solar PV on all new buildings and, if not, why not?

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 4th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My noble friend Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville—it is late. Planning at all levels generally requires mineral extraction. In Somerset, many quarries provide both aggregates and stone of various types for housing construction, and we will need more of it. Some of this comes from the Mendip Hills, some from the blue lias quarries at Hadspen and a smaller proportion from the Ham stone quarries. Not to have the authority whose responsibility it is to license the extraction from these quarries involved in the preparation of the joint spatial development strategy is, my noble friend would say, foolish in the extreme. It could lead to divisions among not only the authorities themselves but the residents they represent, because such an operation involves lorry movement, hours of operation and community facilities to compensate local communities for disruption. We could all provide loads of examples of where such collaboration is vital.

Casting a glance at the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, I say that I was probably the only leader in the east of England—there were possibly two of us—who did not celebrate the scrapping of regional strategies. They were abandoned just as I had begun to learn the value of them and how they would enhance everywhere.

We fully support the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, in his efforts to get this amendment to the Bill and hope that he will be successful, for the sake of all local authorities, which have a legitimate role and a right to be involved. On the other, negative, side of the coin, it could impact adversely if they are not. If the amendment cannot be accepted, perhaps the Minister can explain why not.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise briefly, having attached my name to Amendment 192 in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell. The case has comprehensively been made by the noble Lord and the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, so I shall be extremely brief. I note that representations from the County Councils Network over the recess led me to attach my name to this amendment, because I thought that it too comprehensively made the case. At this point, I declare my position as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and the NALC.

I wanted to make a link to some of our earlier debates before the dinner break. In the last group, we were focusing on the need to tackle the problems of unhealthy communities and making communities healthier, and the mood all around your Lordships’ House was very clear, including from Government Benches and even the Front Bench. Of course, health is a county council responsibility. We talked about part of that being walking and cycling networks, for example, and about things being joined up. We also talked very much, in an earlier group, about the need for planning to consider the climate emergency and nature crisis. Local nature recovery networks are very much a growing area that needs to be absolutely joined up.

It is worth saying that this is not a political amendment; it is an attempt to make things work, to make this Bill hang together and to make sure that it works for local communities. I join others in very much hoping that we will get a positive message from the Minister.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, remember the days of the regional spatial strategies, and long debates in EELGA over housing numbers particularly. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, I did not celebrate when they got the kibosh, because I thought that there was a lot of good in them—particularly in meeting the housing needs in the east of England but also on the economic development side, which was as important. A great deal of very good work was done in pulling together data and information for the whole region, in order to look at where and how best to develop particular clusters and where they would work well. So there was a lot of merit in that very strategic-level thinking.

It has moved on a bit since the days of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, in Hertfordshire, with the Hertfordshire Growth Board looking at issues outside the remit of the straightforward local planning authority. For example, there is the mass rapid transit system that south and south-west Hertfordshire was looking at, which covers a number of different local authorities. Then, there is working with the local enterprise partnerships, as we did on the Hertfordshire Growth Board. There was a clear drive towards the consideration of travel-to-work areas, which was why I spoke so strongly in favour when we discussed this issue before.

I am convinced that we need to work jointly, with joint authorities, involving them in particular in the early stages, as the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, said. It is no good waiting until a draft strategy has been produced and, if there is a major game-changer in there, expecting local authorities to pick it apart and change it. It is much better for them to be engaged and involved from the very start.

The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, mentioned government Amendment 201B, which we will debate on Wednesday, which will allow combined authorities to take on planning powers. I am not going to start the whole discussion now, but we were very concerned about this. We will have a debate about it, but it seems like a very slippery slope indeed. It is far better to include local authorities and all the component parts that make up the combined authority and their neighbours in the discussion from the early days of the joint spatial development strategy.

I absolutely support the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, on the inclusion of districts and councils in a very real way in the decision-making on JSDSs. I think it emphasises the points we made in earlier debates, in Committee and on Report, about the importance of the full membership of combined authorities—for both tiers in two-tier areas. Those organisations are then involved right from the start, and they have a democratic mandate to be so involved.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, made the important point that there are elements that will be included in joint spatial development strategies that do not stop at boundaries, and so it is very important that we work across those boundaries on such things as climate change, healthy homes, sustainable transport and biodiversity. All those things do not come to an end when you get to the end of your local plan area, so we all need to work together on how we tackle those key issues.

We are very supportive of the amendment put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. I am interested to hear the Minister’s answer as to whether the part of the schedule that covers this would stretch to make sure that this very important early-stage consultation could be included as a requirement within the Bill.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 6th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise with pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, to speak to Amendment 201, to which I have attached my name. Essentially, I associate myself with everything that they said. I will seek not to repeat them but just make a couple of additional points.

Democracy demands clarity. We all know that we are heading into a general election, in which discussion of affordable housing will be right up there at the top of the agenda. We need to set out a definition about what we are talking about, if we are to have a sensible debate about our housing policy future.

For any noble Lords who have not seen it, I recommend the excellent briefing from the House of Commons Library—if I am allowed to recommend that—on the definition of affordable housing in July this year. One of its top headlines is:

“No agreed definition of affordable housing”.


It notes that the most commonly used framework is that of the National Planning Policy Framework, used by local planning authorities, which takes in social rent, as well as a range of so-called intermediate rent and for-sale products. As the Affordable Housing Commission of 2020 concluded, “many” of these so-called affordable homes are “clearly unaffordable” for those on middle or lower incomes.

This being the House of Lords, we should look for a second at the historical framework of this. If we go back to 1979, we see that nearly half of the British population lived in what were clearly affordable homes—they lived in council homes, with council rents. That reality is not that long ago. We have since seen the massive privatisation of right to buy, and a move towards treating housing primarily as a financial asset, rather than as homes in which people can securely, comfortably, safely and healthily live. That is what brings us to this point today. This amendment is not going to fix that but it would at least set out the clarity of terms for us to be able to talk about this in a practical kind of way.

I looked at the Green Party policy for a sustainable society. It starts with the absolute foundation, stating that it is

“a universal human right to shelter which is affordable, secure and to a standard adequate for the health and well-being of the household”.

That is why we are now saying today: right homes, right place and right price. We need to think about what that price means. In the Green Party we have set out very clearly what we believe the right price is. On purchase, we should be looking to move towards a situation where house prices are not more than four times average salaries. On rent, where the real extreme levels of suffering are now, there should be a living rent—a definition backed by many of the NGOs. Genuinely affordable housing means that median local rents would not take up more than 35% of median local take-home pay. That is what I would set out.

I could perhaps have put down an amendment to set those figures out, but that is not what I have done. What I have said instead is that we need to set out the terms of this debate, as this amendment does. I strongly commend Amendment 201 to your Lordships’ House.

[The Lord Bishop of Southwark]

My Lords, the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman and Lady Bennett, and the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, have all spoken eloquently on Amendment 201, which I support. I thank them for tabling it.

The independent Archbishops’ Commission on Housing reported in March 2021, and your Lordships’ House may recall the debate that the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury secured on 24 March 2021, on the subject of housing. I simply wish to highlight a few points from that which I believe are relevant to the debate on this amendment.

The first is that the object of central government policy and of legislation should always be the ready provision of good housing—homes in which people want to live, in areas capable of flourishing. Too often, sadly, that is not the case, and we build among the smallest dwellings in Europe. Secondly, we require a bipartisan approach that enables a consistent policy to be followed across decades, and not one that is beholden to the sort of interests that have so limited housebuilding. It is worth remembering, as has already been mentioned today, that the last year in which we achieved house- building at the current target of 300,000 was 1969, over 50 years ago. Thirdly, we require a definition of affordable housing that relates specifically to income. Without this, any policy on affordable housing will fail. I support Amendment 201.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Mendoza (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register as the new chairman of Historic England and as provost of Oriel College, Oxford, which is in the middle of applying for enormous amounts of planning permission and listed building consent to do a great deal of work. I thank noble Lords for their good wishes, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, as a former chair of the commission when it was known as English Heritage.

I did not speak in Committee so I will keep my remarks brief. On Amendment 202A, building preservation notices are used relatively sparingly, as I understand it, but they are a powerful tool to protect against damage and destruction of local heritage, particularly when the building itself could be listed. They are almost like an immediate but temporary listing in order to give the local planning authority some time to sort it out.

I hope that the addition of this clause will allow local planning authorities to continue to consult Historic England so that this tool will not be used vexatiously or overzealously but will be used where it is absolutely necessary. I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, for pointing that out. Dialogue with local planning authorities is something that Historic England does a great deal of.

In terms of the amendment that my noble friends Lord Northbrook and Lord Bellingham spoke about, there is already a great deal of engagement between Historic England and local planning authorities. They already pay a lot of attention to the advice that Historic England publishes. However, my understanding from much of this debate is that there is even more that we can do. I am very happy for Historic England to work with officials at the department to ensure that we can do more to help local planning authorities make the right decisions and be acquainted with all the published advice that they need to be aware of.

On a happier note, the Minister’s amendment to allow the blue plaque scheme to be extended throughout England is a wonderful and very simple amendment. I hope that it goes through. It is a fantastic scheme run excellently, so far, by English Heritage, as the Minister said, for 150 years. As he said, there are plenty of other schemes around the country from place to place, but they are not consistent. So, would it not be wonderful if we had a consistent scheme, judged by the same criteria, allowing members of the public to nominate people they care about in the places that they love to allow deeper involvement in the heritage and history of our country? I think that from 2024 people will be able to nominate in their areas to encourage a greater connection to place, which we know is so important. It has been described here. The “Crooked House” is a fantastic example of a building that was not listed—it was being considered for listing—but meant so much to so many. That is not unusual. People really care about the heritage of their places.

I will briefly pay tribute to Sir Laurie Magnus, who chaired Historic England for a decade, going beyond his allotted two terms because of Covid. He chaired the organisation in an exemplary fashion, with his customary passion, verve, brio, courteousness and deep care and attention to the heritage of England. I know we are all very grateful to Sir Laurie. He has obviously now gone on to much more glamorous things as the Prime Minister’s Independent Adviser on Ministers’ Interests. Of course, we wish him well with that very serious task. I thank noble Lords, and I will now sit down and be quiet.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I will briefly comment on two of the amendments. First, the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, introduced Amendment 204A so powerfully. I share others’ strong preference for this amendment, rather than the weaker Amendment 204B.

I want to emphasise the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, about embodied carbon. These structures that were built in the past are there for us. Knocking them down and building something again has environmental costs, which we have to start to take seriously. Along that line, I want to pick up a phrase used by the noble Earl, Lord Lytton. He spoke about how we might want to knock things down and replace them with tidier looking buildings. I ask your Lordships’ House to think very carefully about the word “tidy” because heritage and history is seldom tidy, just as nature is not tidy. Straight lines and very even frameworks—the idea that tidiness is a virtue—has done enormous amounts of damage. It is something we really need to challenge. With a lack of tidiness, there may well be character, diversity and reality rather than something new and artificial.

My second point is to commend government Amendment 271A on the extension of blue plaques. I take this opportunity to invite the Minister to comment from the Dispatch Box and reflect on the fact that currently in Greater London only 14% of blue plaques commemorate the lives and contributions of women. I looked into this to see whether I could get a plaque for Moll Cutpurse or Bathsua Makin. Unfortunately, the buildings with which they were associated do not survive. However, will the Minister take this opportunity from the Dispatch Box to reflect on the need to ensure the encouragement of women and greater diversity in the lives which are commemorated?

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, I will very briefly add to the salutations rightly directed at my noble friend Lord Parkinson for his important amendment extending the blue plaque scheme. One moment my noble friend is expounding issues related to online safety, and a little while later he brings forward a major heritage measure, which I think will have given him great personal pleasure because of his considerable interest in matters related to history.

The extension of the scheme will surely stimulate added interest on a considerable scale in localities throughout our country and extend knowledge of individuals who contributed within those localities and, in many cases, at national level too. The scheme will not be appropriate in every single case. For example, in Birmingham there is a fine memorial to Joseph Chamberlain. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, will know it, as will the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, with whose remarks on the preservation of buildings I agree strongly.

On the Joseph Chamberlain memorial, there is a suitably inscribed plaque recording his important work. The city council has agreed in principle to a proposal from the noble Baroness, Lady Stuart of Edgbaston, and me to add plaques to Joseph Chamberlain’s two sons, Austen and Neville, who contributed greatly to the life of Birmingham and, of course, at national level. In Neville’s case, rather controversially, but he was above all the greatest social reformer the Conservative Party has ever produced. It would be right to ensure, as I think we will, that the new plaques blend in satisfactorily with the existing one. However, I think that in most cases, the blue plaques shining forth in their localities will do so much to stimulate historical interest throughout our country. For that, I salute my noble friend.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 6th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests set out in the register. It was a delight to listen to my noble friends Lord Goldsmith and Lord Randall describe the importance of swift bricks to the preservation of this species and to stopping their decline. I am delighted to be able to support it.

Installing these bricks is an absolute no-brainer. They cost between £25 and £35. Last year, the big four housebuilders—just four of them, Barratt, Berkeley, Persimmon and Bellway—made profits of £2.749 billion. I am sure they can afford a £25 brick for the 300,000 homes they might or might not manage to build next year. Installing the bricks is a no-brainer.

I learned today—I hope, wrongly—that the Government may be opposed to this measure. That, too, would be a no-brainer if they are. I wonder where the opposition has come from. I hope they have not been lobbied by the Home Builders Federation—the organisation which lied, lied and lied again about the Government blocking the building of 145,000 homes because of nutrient neutrality. That was totally untrue. Of course, housebuilders are sitting on more than 1 million planning applications and are land-banking until they can release them gradually and make maximum profits. If that is legitimate, so be it, but let us not let them attack the Government for holding up housebuilding when it is not the Government doing it.

I understand that in the Commons the Government said they could not mandate this nationally and it must be left to local voluntary discretion. Housebuilding left to local voluntary discretion? You cannot build a house anywhere in the country without the Government almost dictating the colour of the curtains. Look at the national regulations on every aspect of housebuilding: electrics; plumbing; the type of cement; the way the damp-proof course is laid; the tiles and insulation. Nearly every mortal thing of importance in the house—the width of the doorways, the bannisters, the boilers you may install after 2030—is dictated by central government, and rightly so. I am not complaining about that, but I am complaining about the apparent hypocrisy if the Government I support are now saying “Oh, we can’t order every house to have a little brick installed because that is taking national government interference too far”. If that is the case, I think that is nonsense.

I know that some Government Ministers have already installed these bricks. They have done it voluntarily, without guidance. If it is good enough for some Ministers, quite rightly, to save swifts out of their own volition, then it should be quite right that the Government support a measure to impose this nationally.

If it is the case that the Government are opposed to this, I would really like to know where that opposition came from in government. If it is true then some idiot—an adviser, spad or civil servant, but hopefully not a Minister—has decided to oppose this. I exempt my noble friend the Minister, as this is an environmental matter and nothing to do with her brief, but why in the name of God should a Conservative Government oppose this?

In the first three years of this Government, under Michael Gove and George Eustice in environment, we made the biggest strides forward in environmental and nature protection that this country has ever seen, with the 25-year plan and the Environment Act. Now we could lose that good reputation because of a trivial thing if we oppose installing a 25-quid brick in a house wall to save swifts.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 221A on swift bricks, as your Lordships might expect. My noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb has, in the terms of the noble Lord, Lord Randall, flown back from a nearby cavity just to be here for this debate, but she could not be here at the start, so your Lordships get me instead.

This is something that I have been talking about. I was on TalkTV, talking to Julia Hartley-Brewer about restoring biodiversity. I happened to mention swift bricks in that discussion and the presenter said in response, “Isn’t that just a small thing? Don’t we have to do much more?”. Of course that is true, but, if you are a swift then a swift brick is not a small thing. The fact that you need somewhere to make your home and raise your young is a matter of life and death. As the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, said, there has been a 60% decline in the population in the last 25 years. These beautiful and utterly amazing creations of nature depend on having a place to rest and raise their young, and we are closing those spaces off.

The noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, also made an important point about human well-being—how much we all benefit from having swifts around and what a wonderful addition they are to our environment. Think about young people, such as the toddler who says, “What’s that?”, and has it explained so that they learn more. That is crucial.

The state of our biodiversity is absolutely parlous. We are one of the worst corners of this planet for nature. As we heard passionately from the Benches opposite, surely the Government cannot oppose this—they cannot oppose what was said by MPs in the other place and is being said by so many petitioners. Please let us have some common sense here.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I too wish to support Amendment 221A. Swifts, by their nature, nest in holes in trees but took advantage of the advent of human buildings to transfer their allegiance in our direction. Now in our towns, any tree with a hole in it is immediately felled as a danger to people and we are blocking up the places where swifts used to nest in buildings. We need to do something about that—it is absolutely our obligation.

We also have to deal with the quantity of insects, so bringing 30 by 30 into towns is really important too, but swift bricks seem to me an absolutely symbolic act. We would be saying that we will start to make room for nature around us and in our habitations. It would involve people, as Dasgupta wished, in direct contact with nature, rather than nature being somewhere else where they do not have to go if they do not want to. That makes this a really important symbolic advance.

I like the amendment: it is just that you put in a swift brick. There are no downsides, no penalties and no rules. You could fill it with cement a year later and no one is going to prosecute you. I have got scaffolding on my house at the moment, so we are putting up some swift boxes because it is not suitable for swift bricks. The best supplier I found said, “If you’re buying a swift box, why don’t you put a bat box on the back?”. I looked up the regulations as to what would happen if a bat actually occupied that box, and it is ridiculous. It would be tens of thousands of pounds off the value of the house, and all the regulations mean that you cannot do anything without bringing in a bat person if you have bats in a bat box. I could not paint it or shift it; I could not paint around it; I could not make noise next to it. The contrast between bat regulation and this proposal on swifts is stark. I am not putting in a bat box—I am not bats—but I am putting in swift boxes.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 18th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly, largely in relation to Labour’s amendment. As the noble Baroness may recall, some of us spoke about the provision of early years facilities in Committee. I want to return to that issue briefly to see whether we can tie up one or two loose ends.

I am most grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Scott and Lady Barran, for the correspondence and meetings that we have had between Committee and Report. The meeting with the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, had the largest number of advisers in the smallest room that I have ever been in; that would not have been possible under Covid. The new DfE advice to local authorities, Securing Developer Contributions for Education, is a great improvement on its predecessor. It is much clearer and on several occasions makes clear and specific mention of early years provision.

However, the response from the department of the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, was slightly less clear. Given her background as an effective head of a local authority, I think she assumes that all local authorities are run as well and professionally as her one was. All I say is that the evidence from a range of local authorities is that their ability to provide early years facilities is not good.

An article last week indicated that local authorities are sitting on a grand total of £3 billion of unused Section 106 money, £420 million of which is for education. It is somewhat disappointing that the LGA spokesman’s response to that said just that doing this is “a complex process” that takes a lot of time. I thought that was local government’s job.

I have four specific questions for the Minister, of which I have given her advance warning. The first is: what we are going to do to monitor whether these funds are being used to expand childcare provision, because there is no central collection of data at the moment. Please can we do something about that?

Secondly, there is an expectation, which is clear in the advice, that existing or new spare primary school capacity will be repurposed for early years services. How will guidance be flexible to ensure that, if there are changes in the birth rate, we do not end up with nurseries closing and have the same problem?

Thirdly, how can we make sure that we are also looking at early years settings that are convenient for people’s work? It is one thing to have early years provision near where you live but, for many working women, it is far more useful and a more efficient use of their time to have early years provision near their place of work. Could the Government say whether they are aware of this potential issue and, if so, what they are doing to try to mitigate it?

Lastly, how will the Government make sure that all local authorities can use this funding on new stand-alone provision if they deem it appropriate, without being reliant on private providers, which may or may not want to operate in the area? This applies to the new infrastructure levy but also to existing sources of funding. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, in following the noble Lord, Lord Russell, I should declare my position as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and of the NALC. With the greatest respect to the noble Lord, I point out that the impact of austerity and the slashing of central government funding to local government left departments utterly eviscerated and a lack of resources to take actions that may be desperate.

I have two reasons for rising. One is to express the strongest possible Green support for the amendment in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman of Ullock and Lady Twycross, to allow local authorities to provide their own childcare services. These are public services in the community; having them under democratic control is surely an extremely good way to proceed.

In noting that, I have a question to put to the Minister, which arises from issues that I have raised with her previously, on the involvement of private equity and the financial sector in childcare provision. It has been described as becoming a “playground for private equity”. In the last four years, investment funds have more than doubled their stake in Ofsted-registered nurseries. Now more than 1,000 are fully or partially owned by investment funds, which is 7.5% of all places—up from 4% in 2018. Those 81,500 places are being run for profit. We know from their involvement in the social care sector that those companies will have stripped out huge sums and introduced massive instability. We think of what happened with the collapse of Southern Cross and Four Seasons Health Care. Financial engineering is so often behind that.

With that in mind, regarding government Amendment 259 on services in wholly non-domestic premises, the Minister talked about local community centres and village halls. Picking up the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, provided that they have the right facilities, I do not believe that anyone would have any objection to those kinds of premises. However, following the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Russell, about places near where people work, I think it is possible to imagine that we might see private equity invest in building or repurposing a facility, so that it is designed for a lot of small groups of childminders to come together, with private equity and the financial sector sucking huge amounts of money out of that. Could the Minister, either now or perhaps in writing later, tell me what the provisions for non-domestic premises actually mean? If someone set up a for-profit setting, what kind of controls will there be to make that that is not exploitative of the childminders or the children and their parents?

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to this group and to Amendment 276, in the name of my noble friend Lady Hayman of Ullock. I thank the Minister for her time last week in explaining the government position. It was really appreciated, and I hope I can persuade her of the merits of Amendment 276 today.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Monday 23rd October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to offer the strongest possible Green support for Motion J1 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering. I have stepped out of an important Peers for the Planet ecocide meeting to do this because at the Green Party conference and in consultation with the National Association of Local Councils and the Local Government Association—I declare my position as a vice-president of both—I was lobbied again and again. It was the biggest topic that came up. People are very concerned about how many people are being excluded from being local councillors by the Government’s failure to adopt a simple, common-sense measure.

In surveys by the LGA and the NALC, over 90% of councils at all levels supported this—and here we are talking about parish and town councils as well as higher-level councils. In the NALC survey, a third of respondents knew of councillors who had stood down since May 2021 due to the return to person-only meetings. Of those, one in five cited childcare commitments as one of their top four reasons for wanting to attend meetings virtually. So this is very much a gender issue. We have a huge problem with the underrepresentation of women in councils. Allowing this simple measure would be a big step forward. Reflecting that, Mumsnet is calling for the return of virtual meetings through its Keep Council Meetings Accessible campaign and a change.org petition has more than 11,000 signatures.

I have one final thought. The Government often like to say, “We want to learn from business and do things the way business does”. Over the past few years, business air travel has dropped by over 50% and there has also been a huge drop in business rail travel. People in business are operating remotely. It is a huge democratic block to not allow these meetings under tight rules. As the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, said, the Government can put all kinds of tight rules on this. It is a very modest measure and a step for practicality and democracy. As is reflected by the two sides that have spoken on this, this is not a party-political point; it is point of practicality.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I briefly intervene on this group to make two points, one on Motion F1 and one on Motion J1. I am prompted on Motion F1 by what the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, was asking about South Cambridgeshire. I declare an interest as I am chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum and used to be the Member of Parliament for South Cambridgeshire.

To set this in context, the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough combined authority is a mayoral combined authority and is not intending to be a county combined authority, but this does prompt a question. One of the essential problems with a mayoral combined authority is the difficulty of there being both a combined and a county authority infrastructure. For many people in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, this is too confused and duplicatory a structure.

For the sake of argument—this is not one that has been advanced in Cambridgeshire, but it might be—let us say that it moves from a mayoral to a county combined authority. As the legislation is presently constructed, one could clearly not do that as it would, in effect, disempower district councils in the process. So if my noble friend Lord Howe is saying that the nature of a county combined authority requires that it is for upper-tier authorities only—in this context, the county and Peterborough, and not the district councils—and if the local devolution settlement were found to be unsatisfactory and a change were desired locally, why are there no legislative provisions to allow that to happen? That is the question I put to my noble friend.

Secondly, I support my noble friend Lady McIntosh. Her Amendment 22B very reasonably says that the Government may make regulations relating to remote participation in local government meetings. That creates an opportunity for Ministers to think about this and, if necessary, move slowly. It is clearly not their wish to move rapidly but, without dwelling on the detail, there are physical, demographic and personal circumstances that mean that members may wish or need to participate in meetings remotely. Frankly, there might also be meetings where there is a relatively modest need for everybody to come together. As we know, there can sometimes be large numbers of meetings in local government that are not places where large numbers of votes happen and it would be perfectly reasonable for Ministers to enable such meetings to take place remotely. Given the permissive nature of Amendment 22B, which my noble friend has put forward, it is rather surprising that she was not able to find a compromise.

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[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise very briefly, aware of the hour, to offer the Green group’s support for all the alternative amendments in this group and to reflect on how your Lordships’ House is still trying to fix some utterly extraordinary holes in this Bill. If you think of what the holes are that we are filling, they are related to climate but also to public health and the cost of living crisis—the issues that are of great concern to people all round this country, but particularly those in the areas that the levelling-up Bill is most supposed to be addressing.

I must note that at about the same time that we are speaking, in the other place there is a Statement on the impacts of Storm Babet. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, referred to this. We have had tragic deaths. Huge numbers of people have seen their lives torn apart by flooding. There are now 1.9 million people living in homes at significant risk of flooding. That figure will double by 2050. We have a huge problem with public health. We often hear in your Lordships’ House the concern about getting ill people back to work. We must get productivity up. These are issues that the Government are talking about all the time and issues that these amendments are trying to address.

So, once again, we are trying to help and we can only hope that the Government will listen.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Motion ZH, the government amendment in lieu of Lords Amendment 329. The intention of the earlier Lords amendment was to make local plans more specific in spelling out the housing needs of each locality and the ways in which those needs are to be met. This would identify how homelessness and temporary accommodation can be eliminated over a reasonable timescale. The amendment, devised by Shelter, detailed what the local plan should cover, including the needs of all those registered on the local housing authority’s allocation scheme. This would mean all local plans highlighting the need for, and the steps to provide, the homes sought by those now in increasing difficulty as opportunities to buy or to rent have become alarmingly scarce.

The government amendment seeks to take this on board in a somewhat condensed version. It requires the local plan to

“take account of an assessment of the amount, and type, of housing that is needed in the local planning authority’s area, including the amount of affordable housing that is needed”.

This takes us into the same territory as my amendment and would sharpen up local plans to provide more precision in identifying and addressing the need for housing for those who are homeless or in temporary accommodation or on the never-ending waiting list for a home that they can afford. What is on the face of the Bill will now need to be buttressed by guidance for local planning authorities, to put a bit more flesh on the bones of this legislative measure. It would be good if the Minister could provide an assurance that this ingredient will be incorporated in forthcoming planning guidance.

The government amendment in lieu also raises the thorny question of defining “affordable housing”, which has been debated in this House on numerous occasions and not resolved. The government amendment adds that “affordable housing” means social housing as it has been defined—very broadly and often misleadingly—since 2008. However, the amendment adds some new, encouraging words that “affordable housing” could mean housing of

“any other description of housing that may be prescribed”.

This is helpful. It opens the door for a new definition of affordable housing which, in the future, this or another Secretary of State may prescribe. It would be good to see whether agreement can be reached in the months ahead on a more satisfactory definition, to update the old one from 2008 in readiness for the first opportunity to substitute a better version.

With these comments, I say that I feel that the Government have made a serious effort to take on board the need to sharpen up the local plan in respect of meeting housing need. I am grateful to the Government, and to the Minister in particular, for this change that they are willing to make to the Bill.