Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 18th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I will talk briefly to Amendment 282F which is in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, and to which I have put my name. It is on the subject of allowing communities access to small areas of land that are available only on a temporary basis to foster schemes for growing vegetables, plants and flowers, not only to produce local food but to give multiple benefits to people’s health and mental health, and to community cohesion and engagement.

In her absence, I thank the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, for her session with me and the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, last week. We were disappointed that she saw this as a local and not a national issue. The problem with having this lodged at a local level is that these small, ad hoc community initiatives are, in many cases, very informal, and do not have a lot of oomph behind them in an understanding of how local government works or of who to talk to at local authority level. Indeed, there often is no one at local authority level for whom this would be a job. They falter, and then the lawyers get involved with the lease issue, if it gets to that point, at which stage these small community organisations collapse totally under the bureaucracy and strain of not having lawyers of similar firepower to the local authority.

I was delighted to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, talk about “Gardeners’ Question Time”, which is taking place in the House this evening. A very famous television gardener tried to get one of these schemes going in Birmingham, with a very determined national public servant. After three years, even they could not make it happen.

This simple amendment would require local authorities to identify those patches of land that they have, either in their own ownership or others that they know about, that are available for a defined short or medium term; people can grow a few things on them, have a good time and become cohesive communities. It would be a splendid idea if the Government were to accept this.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, raised an interesting issue. I will briefly comment on it because, to me, it seems that the fundamental issue is not just a visual aspect; it is also the fact that by using paving on front gardens you greatly increase the risk of flooding, because the run-off from paved-over front gardens is a serious addition to flooding problems. The issue here is not just whether you have pretty flowers in your front garden. There are complex issues, such as those which the noble Lord referred to around access to home charging, which will be very important in the future. There are excellent porous products that can be used instead of hardstanding. If local authorities are to have a role, it ought to be in specifying to ensure that porous products are used, not just in front gardens but in the creation of any car parks, because they work perfectly well.

I will briefly refer to the issue of aviation and the provision of airports. The concentration of so many large airports in the south-east of England is one of the most obvious manifestations of inequality in the UK, as well as making it extremely difficult to build modern public transport links to those airports to reduce their impact on the environment. The UK is generously supplied with airports, in comparison to most other countries. Many of them have spare capacity. I would urge that what needs to be done is to take these two factors together. Therefore, there is no justification for the expansion of airports in the south-east, and, in particular, no justification for expanding Heathrow for a third runway.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, there are a number of quite disparate amendments in this group, so I will speak briefly to them.

The first is Amendment 281 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, to which I added my name, on a register of disrepair in schools and hospitals. This raises a very serious issue. She introduced it very clearly and in detail, so I will not repeat what she said other than to endorse her remarks. We are completely behind her amendment and what she is trying to achieve with it. If the noble Baroness wants to test the opinion of the House, she will have our strong support.

Turning to the other amendments, I notice that the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, is now in his place. His amendment, around creating a new partnership model for town centre investment zones, has not really been mentioned. We had quite a discussion about this in Committee, in which we expressed our support. I express that support again and urge the Government to work with the noble Lord on how this approach can be taken forward. We need to do something to support many of our town centres, and his suggestions are worth exploring.

My noble friend Lady Young spoke to the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, around local authorities publishing a list of publicly owned land which is suitable for community cultivation and environmental improvement. I totally support the principle of this; it seems like a sensible way forward to improve local growing and the environmental purposes of land.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, introduced the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, around reviewing the air transport sector. We must really think about our approach to this when we look at climate change. Obviously, we must support this important part of our economy. However, there is so much more to consider. I come back to this over and again: why is it so much cheaper to fly than it is to go by train? This has got to be at the core of how we approach this, particularly if you look at what the French Government have done regarding internal flights. It is something we must take a much stronger look at.

Finally, I was going to make the same point as the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, about surface water flooding. If we are going to pave over more of our towns and cities, we are going to have more of a problem with surface water flooding—it is just a matter of fact. I support the intention of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, to see what we can do to stop so many of the gardens in our towns and cities being paved over. It is not just about the aesthetics—although, obviously, they are lovely; there is a practical reason to consider this more carefully.