Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Debate between Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist and Baroness Randerson

Committee stage
Thursday 23rd March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

I do not accept the noble Lord’s points at all, but I will continue my answer to the noble Lord, Lord Collins. Of course, we would rather have a negotiated agreement on minimum service levels, but the Government resist these amendments. I hope that I have been able to reassure noble Lords—I feel I have not entirely—on “may” versus “must” and the compulsion, the statutory discretion or the statutory duty. With those comments, I ask the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

I thank the Minister and all who took part in this useful debate. We started with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, who pinpointed the persistent erosion of devolution. He called the Bill “Henry VIII on stilts”, and the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, called it “Gis a power”—I think both phrases will stick in our memories. The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, said that of course the devolved Administrations will be consulted, but the problem is that, persistently, they have not been consulted at the right levels and the right point in time. There has been a thin façade of last-minute, low-level consultation, and this has not worked—it is not consultation in the proper sense of that word. The Minister did not reassure me when she said that it was complete nonsense that elected mayors should need to give consent—that shows a lack of understanding of the concept of proper consultation.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bryan, gave us a useful long list of recent Bills that have undermined devolution—I will copy it out when I read Hansard so that I remember each one. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, took the points further by raising the fear that UK Ministers would use powers in the Bill for political ends. The truth is that this is a heavily political issue and, in England, the wrong sort of political interference has created problems in industrial relations that have not existed in Scotland and Wales to the same extent, because industrial relations have been handled with more sensitivity there. I have no doubt that the UK Government have their own reasons for wishing to sharpen relations with the unions, but that is nevertheless a political issue.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Debate between Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist and Baroness Randerson

Committee stage
Wednesday 8th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

I have listened carefully to the Minister’s response. When I spoke earlier, I said that the letter from the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, was very helpful, but I have not had a specific answer, taking my example of fragments of plastic in bottles of water, as to whether the Government would respond to that requirement for change in food and food safety legislation. Would the Government regard it as a technical advance, which the Minister referred to, or as unduly onerous regulation, which she also referred to? What would happen if, for example, the Welsh Government decided they wanted to go to a higher standard of plastic in water bottles but the UK Government decided they did not want them to go to that higher standard? If the Minister cannot answer that now, could she give us a commitment to write with that worked example and give us an indication of what is unduly onerous EU-based legislation and regulation and what is technical advance?

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

I am happy to write if I do not give a satisfactory answer now. It is up to the relevant department to look at the proposed amendment and consider whether it meets the criteria for the use of the update power. The Government will always maintain the power to increase standards. Any more than that I will take back, and I will write in fuller detail.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Debate between Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist and Baroness Randerson

Committee stage
Thursday 2nd March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

We will bear that in mind, but I cannot give specific criteria: we want to retain the ability to exclude specific pieces of legislation, as I have said, within a specific category.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords—

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

I think I have taken enough interventions and I would like to make progress, please.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

I just make the point that, by definition, to be included in a common framework, the legislation concerned has been extensively examined by all the Governments concerned in the last couple of years. Therefore, it will not be subject to the sorts of anomalies that the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, referred to in our last debate.

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

I take the noble Baroness’s point.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Debate between Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist and Baroness Randerson

Committee stage
Thursday 23rd February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fox (LD)]

It is not in the Bill.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

I cannot resist, I am afraid, intervening on this. I was in a Common Frameworks Scrutiny Committee meeting this week when it was indicated that the dashboard was just a tool and, as far as I understood it, did not have a legal status. While I am on my feet, can I ask where and in which bucket the legislation passed by the devolved Administrations is—which are, I believe, at a very much earlier stage in identifying the numbers for the dashboard?

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

I know that this is of concern to a number of Members in the Committee, but officials from the UK Government are working very closely with those from the devolved Governments in order to identify the REULs that cross over devolved competences. I know that there is a general concern within the devolved Governments that they simply do not have the manpower to look at all these EU laws themselves, so we are helping them in that process. That is an ongoing job of work being done from official to official.

Energy Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist and Baroness Randerson

Committee stage
Monday 19th December 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 173, I will also speak to Amendments 174 to 176, 178 to 180 and 182 in the name of the Minister, my noble friend Lord Callanan.

Amendments 173 to 176 provide clarification and consistency to the definitions of the appliances to which the energy smart regulations will apply. These definitions focus on the purpose of an appliance. Amendments 173 and 174 ensure that energy smart regulations can be made only for cleaning appliances that are most appropriate for demand-side flexibility. This includes, for example, a dishwasher or a washing machine. Amendment 175 allows battery storage to be captured in a manner consistent with the definition of electricity storage in Clause 162. Amendments 176 and 182 clarify that the regulations capture heat pumps, which are essential to the Government’s policy objectives for decarbonising heat.

Next, Amendments 178 and 179 indicate that the Secretary of State may make provision about the recall of non-compliant appliances and may issue guidance about the prohibitions and requirements imposed by these regulations. These amendments therefore provide further safeguards to address serious cases of non-compliance and will support industry to comply with its obligations, aided by guidance.

Lastly, Amendment 180 makes a minor amendment to ensure that the regulations cover additional methods other than ordinary selling for making energy smart appliances available to consumers, such as hire purchase agreements.

Energy smart appliances will play an essential part in the transition to a smarter energy system, enabling consumers to save money on bills and contributing to cost-effective decarbonisation. These amendments provide important clarifications on the scope of these regulations and make certain that they can be implemented effectively in a way that maximises the benefits of smart functionality for consumers and the electricity group.

I will respond to the non-government amendments in this group when we have heard noble Lords’ contributions. I beg to move.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My little Amendment 177 seems to have intruded on this group of government amendments. I tabled it because I was concerned about the practical implications of the Government’s reliance on smart regulations and smart appliances. I am certainly not arguing with the technology but I am seeking to tease out exactly how this will impact on us and the people of Britain as ordinary consumers.

If you read Clause 187, you will see that it is very dictatorial and centralised in its approach. Yet if you look at paragraph 438 of the Explanatory Notes you will see that, in practice, the Government’s intentions are going to be carried out by retailers and manufacturers, and they will face penalties if they do not get it right. My concern is that one size does not fit all. For example, the noble Baroness just mentioned washing machines and so on, but my example would be electric vehicles. We are told to charge electric vehicles at times when electricity usage is low, and we are promised that this will become an automatic default position. The Government are relying on smart usage, in effect, to expand limited national grid capacity. At the weekend, when I was reading some background material, I noticed that there are only two regions where there is currently said to be any level of surplus national grid capacity. The rest of the country is in a very stretched position.

I have been asking these questions for some years. I have been asking how a reliance on telling people when they can wash their clothes or charge their cars will impact on consumers and the way we use our gadgets and run our daily lives. There is a current experiment, not using smart technology but with a voluntary agreement, to get people to opt in to using their washing machines, dishwashers and so on at low-demand periods, with a financial incentive to do that. That is great if it is convenient for these people and they are opting in to do it. I am pleased that the experiment is taking place, as I am sure it will produce some useful information, but I want to float past everyone a couple of potential issues.

First, I do not want to bore noble Lords for long with the details of my domestic life but I have solar panels and an electric car. I want to use my washing machine and dishwasher and charge my electric vehicle when the sun is out; sometimes, that is at a time of peak demand. I am saving myself money, which I regard as a good thing, but, more importantly, I am limiting the amount I draw down from the grid because my solar panels provide my electricity. I am minimising my call on the grid. There are lots of people like me with solar panels; let us hope that there are heaps more in the coming months and years. This issue needs to be taken into account.

Secondly, more importantly, there is a host of people whose working patterns require them to charge their cars and do their washing at peak times. A care worker working nights has to fit their domestic life around those daily patterns, which might be peak demand times. This is not just about just care workers; it is about health workers, district nurses or anyone working on shifts—the police, firefighters and taxi drivers. We want taxi drivers to drive electric vehicles but they are going to run out of electricity half way through the day; they must be enabled to carry on their work.

We have all, I am sure, experienced a situation where we have had to take our phone or laptop to the technical experts because it is doing something strange, behaving in a way that is beyond our understanding. We are normally told that it is the factory settings or an automatic download. I am now aware that, because they are so automated, electric vehicles adopt patterns that one might not necessarily understand fully because they have downloaded a new program and so on. As the technology becomes more sophisticated, in reality, consumers will find it more difficult to understand what it is doing, why and to override it when they need to.

My big question is that any reliance on smart charging and smart usage must be able to be adapted for that large body of people for whom it is not convenient. In days of high energy prices, most of us can probably be relied on to know what is best for us financially and, therefore, what draws least from the grid. I am concerned that the way in which this is expressed allows no latitude, judgment or option for consumers to make that decision for themselves.

Subsidy Control Bill

Debate between Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist and Baroness Randerson

Committee stage
Monday 7th February 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

I think a lot of this overlaps with the internal market Act, which we will debate at length on a later group of amendments. All I can say is that the set of principles will cover the position of the Herefordshire farmer.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

This has been an interesting debate. The noble Lord, Lord Wigley, will understand my point when I say that, as a former Assembly Member for Cardiff Central, I did not think I would be leading on a debate on agriculture—at one point I still had a farm in my constituency, but they built on it.

I learned a lot about agriculture as a Minister in two Governments. I learned about the concept, which comes up time and again, that farming is a way of life. It is a way of life wherever you are a farmer. I have lived in East Anglia and it even applies there where you have the grain barons, because if your farm fails, you lose your home. That is what makes things different from most other occupations. All speakers, with the exception of the Minister, have echoed my concerns.

I want to pick up a couple of points very briefly. Clause 41 refers to a specific amount of money for subsidy below which you will not have transparency. That amount of money is astronomical in relation to subsidies for farming and totally inappropriate. If those figures are used, there will be no transparency even for subsidies of the largest order for the largest farms. That cannot be right.

This is, of course, a probing amendment and I am specifically seeking information on how the special circumstances of agriculture will be dealt with. I hope the Minister will send us some very long letters to explain the situation because there are so many complexities and contradictions in the Government’s position. The EU treated subsidy as exceptional, in general, and something that must be justified, but it treated agricultural subsidy as normalised within a strict policy structure. The WTO treats agricultural subsidy as normalised, but the Government are now apparently applying the approach where subsidy is exceptional for agriculture. That is the basis of the seven principles. You cannot apply those seven principles in the same way that you do to other industries and businesses. Agriculture is not subsidised because of market failures; it is subsidised to ensure supply of a basic requirement of life at a reasonable price. The complexity of the Government’s situation is made worse because of the uncertainties already being felt within the market from the trade deals with Australia and New Zealand which provide additional hurdles.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

There are a couple of points I would like to address now, and obviously I will cover the other points in greater length in writing. Just to reassure the noble Baroness, on the minimum financial assistance in the Bill that she referred to, for most subsidies, including agriculture, it is £315,000 rather than the figures in Clause 41. If the figures are far too high for agriculture, then they will simply be exempt from the requirements and none of those concerns will apply. We are looking at whether the £315,000 is set at the right level, and we have the power to change it for specific sectors.

In answer to the noble Baroness’s question, I am afraid that we did not ask respondents to the consultation where they were based because it is a UK-wide regime, but we will write with more detail if we have it back in the department.

Lastly, as the noble Baroness brought up the difference between the WTO and the EU regimes, I just say that the Agreement on Agriculture within the WTO and the new subsidy control regime fulfil very different purposes. The AoA is an international agreement aimed at reducing distortion of international trade in agriculture; the proposed domestic subsidy control regime facilitates compliance with our international commitments but goes beyond this by protecting UK competition and investment. The WTO provisions are no substitute for a domestic subsidy control regime. The EU is a case in point of a system that has both WTO subsidy commitments and its own internal regime, and this is the approach that we are taking for subsidies in all sectors in the UK.

I will write with any further responses that I need to make, having reviewed Hansard in the morning.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

I thank the Minister for that. I fear that she makes my point for me in terms of Clause 41. My argument is that there needs to be transparency on this, and the amounts of money are set so high that there will not be that transparency. If this scheme is going to work on a farm-by-farm basis, which is what it will have to do, the Government will need to set separate, different and lower figures for agriculture. The Government really need to go away and look at this again.

Please could the Government consider applying some real-life worked examples of how this would apply in different parts of the UK—even within different parts of England? They need to be worked through, and public authorities need to have further information on how this would work. I urge the Government to discuss this issue with local authorities and the devolved Governments before the walls of our systems are bulldozed through in the latter stages of the Bill. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Non-Domestic Rating (Lists) (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist and Baroness Randerson

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 18th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Randerson (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I wish to concentrate solely on the Non-Domestic Rating (Public Lavatories) Bill and, in doing so, express my regret that these two Bills have been harnessed together. They may sound similar, but their impact is very different. I declare an interest as a member of an, as yet, informal campaign group trying to improve the quality of public toilets through the introduction of a toilet hygiene rating scheme.

I will start with a quote:

“The main results from the enquiry are 1) the quite inadequate free provision for women. This is perhaps the most outstanding defect at present existing in London in relation to this important matter.”


The inquiry referred to was undertaken in 1928 by the London County Council. This inequality was made worse by the Public Health Act 1936, which allowed providers of public toilets to charge women but not men for using facilities. That particular injustice stopped in 2008, but the inequalities in provision for women continue. Indeed, official advice from the Health and Safety Executive on workplace toilets still embodies this discrimination, setting in print a recommendation for a ratio of male to female facilities which greatly favours men.

It is a biological fact that it takes a woman approximately twice as long to use a toilet as a man. In addition, an average woman has approximately 480 periods in her lifetime, each lasting three to seven days. Some 14 million people in the UK are estimated to have some kind of bladder dysfunction. Women are more prone to this than men, because of the impact of childbirth. I share with very many women a lifelong sense of injustice that we are continually disadvantaged in this way. When did you ever see a queue outside the gents’ toilets? Modern changes of attitude recognise the argument for gender-neutral facilities, but sadly these are sometimes being provided only with the loss of facilities for women. Women from some faith and cultural backgrounds find it simply impossible to share facilities with men.

Of course, this is not the only shortcoming in our public toilets. There are still far too few changing places toilets, as my noble friend Lady Thomas referred to, with both the space and the high standard of hygiene required for severely disabled people and their carers. There are too few well-appointed toilets for disabled people generally. I also want to make a complaint on behalf of fathers. Far too many sets of public conveniences assume that all childcare is done by women, so baby-changing facilities are in the women’s toilets. Men on their own with children often face an impossible dilemma on where to change their child’s nappy.

I have campaigned on these issues since the 1980s and clearly I have failed, because the number of public toilets has dwindled. When the public complain that their cleanliness and condition are poor, local authorities facing financial problems find that the easy solution—the only solution—is to shut them down.

The Covid crisis has heightened awareness of these issues. First, we all became aware of the need for the highest standards of cleanliness. Combined with pressures on staffing, this posed a dilemma for local authorities, which too often simply shut them up completely. Over the years, as the number of council-run facilities has dwindled, we have increasingly relied on toilets in shops, pubs and cafés, but these have been shut for large parts of the last year. This led to some pretty horrifying situations, which hit the headlines when the Prime Minister suddenly decreed that we could all drive as far as we wanted for our exercise. It was midsummer and the weather was lovely. Hundreds of thousands of people set off for the coast without considering whether there were toilets for them to use during their day out. That incident revealed that good, clean public toilets are an important part of our tourist industry.

This legislation is obviously a good, sensible provision, and I support it, but it is not going to solve any of the problems I have outlined. I note that the estimated cost will be £6 million in England and £450,000 in Wales, which will hardly make up the financial deficit which has reduced the availability of good public toilets over the years. The Minister outlined other initiatives that the Government are taking to improve public toilet provision. We clearly need many more of them. The community toilet scheme that he mentioned started in Wales well over a decade ago, so it is good to see England catching up with this excellent initiative. It is now time for stricter requirements and standards. I note that the provisions of the Bill will not apply to toilets which are part of a larger unit; for example, in a public library. Why not, if they are open for public use? My local public library has the only public toilets for at least a mile and a half in all directions. That restriction seems unnecessary.

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

Can the noble Baroness bring her comments to a close shortly please?

[Baroness Randerson (LD) [V]]

It is definitely not in the spirit of the Minister’s speech, which emphasised how imaginative the Government have been in approaching this issue.

Hydrogen Sector

Debate between Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist and Baroness Randerson

Monday 30th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

The ambitious figures propounded by other EU countries which the noble Lord mentioned often have no actual policy underpinning. The point of the 10-point plan, and of the hydrogen strategy that will be announced in January, is to add some meat to the bones of these initiatives. The UK has already committed £240 million, and some of these carbon capture and storage and hydrogen manufacturing plants will indeed be sited near green energy sources such as offshore wind.

[Baroness Randerson (LD) [V]]

My Lords, the UK has the opportunity to become a true world leader in the manufacture of hydrogen buses. Last week, the Chancellor committed to purchase 800 zero-carbon buses. How many of these will be hydrogen? Can the Minister tell the House when funding will be made available for the rest of the 4,000 UK-made buses that the Government promised last February?

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness is right to point out the progress that we have made on buses. The Government have supported the use of a range of low-carbon bus technologies, including the deployment of 62 hydrogen buses and supporting infrastructure. Our £23 million hydrogen for transport programme is increasing the uptake of other fuel cell electric vehicles and growing the number of publicly accessible hydrogen refuelling stations. We have also been supporting public and private sector fleets to become early adopters, through the £2 million fuel cell electric vehicle fleet support scheme. This initiative is very important to the Government in trying to provide a number of different strategies and support mechanisms, not just financial ones.

Air Traffic Management and Unmanned Aircraft Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist and Baroness Randerson

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard)
Monday 10th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for his intervention. I think he was talking about aircraft slots in that instance, which is not the subject of this debate. Also, Newquay is not subject to the ACP in the same way as other airports; it is outside the master plan.

I hope I have been able to reassure noble Lords that this amendment is unnecessary. We do not anticipate that a situation of loss will arise. Based on these points, I therefore hope that the noble Baroness feels able to withdraw the amendment.

[Baroness Randerson]

My Lords, the responses from the noble Baroness and noble Lords who have taken part emphasise that this is a very tricky issue. I certainly would not disagree that aviation and its passengers have to pay their way, and we would not normally expect aviation to be subsidised by government—although of course, the public service obligation does allow for that.

A key point from the Government’s perspective was raised by my noble friend Lord Bradshaw, who talked about detriment versus benefit. We have been looking at big airports versus little ones. But take two airports —for example, Luton and Stansted—which are close to each other and reasonably similar in size. If an arrangement has to be made on their airspace modernisation that does not please both of them equally, how will that problem be solved financially? I am slightly surprised that the Government have got this far on this issue without having a clear answer to that. Fortunately, this debate has given us the opportunity to think about it in some detail.

I welcome further developments from the Government and am happy to withdraw the amendment.