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.

Small and Medium-sized Housebuilders

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 12th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

As I said in answer to a previous question, we need both. We need everybody, including small builders, local authorities and larger builders, to make sure that we build the houses that this country urgently needs. I am aware that the SME sector is currently struggling with challenges, particularly with the macroeconomic climate. We will continue to prioritise supporting the industry and local areas and delivering the safe, high-quality homes that this country needs.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, the House often discusses problems of labour and skills shortages. Yesterday the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Apprenticeships, of which I declare that I am an officer, put out a report, one focus of which was the difficulties that small and medium enterprises, including builders, are encountering in being able to take on apprenticeships and see them through. What are the Government doing to deal with that pressing issue?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pressing issue. The interesting thing is that we recognise that the SMEs play a crucial role in promoting skills in the construction industry and are responsible for many of the training programmes, particularly for new entrants into the sector. We are supporting construction skills through the Construction Industry Training Board, which last year spent nearly £150 million on training grants and apprenticeships across the sector. It is important that we continue to support them, because we need these skills in the sector and we need to grow it.

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

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
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.

Voter Authority Certificates

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords—

[Noble Lords]

Greens!

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
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.

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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.

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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.

Leasehold Reform

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 23rd March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I certainly hope that we get our Bill in before the noble Lord’s.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, community land trusts, co-housing schemes and co-operatives offer different models focused on building community, delivering for the common good rather than focusing on individual profit. Will the Government look into how they can strongly support these creative, innovative models of housing?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

The Government do support those forms of housing. We will continue to do so and will look into how we can support them more in the future.

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.