Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Baroness Turner of Camden Excerpts

Tuesday 8th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Turner of Camden]

My Lords, of course I support steps in favour of growth and the employment that it should bring. But does this Bill cope with our current economic malaise? I do not think so. The first part of the Bill, as we know, gives the Minister the power to remove from local planning authorities the ability to decide planning operations. Why is that? Planning applications will thus bypass local communities. At present, local communities are involved. In my area, there is local consultation; I am involved in such a consultation at the moment. We believe that this should continue. The Government claim to be in favour of localism, so why interfere with local arrangements that already exist via elected local authorities? In the countryside, as we know, this could well involve threats to the local environment.

There is no indication that these arrangements will improve the availability of social housing. In London and the south-east, there is a crisis of affordable housing and the Bill does little about that. In fact, the section on affordable housing is so complicated that it is likely to make the provision much more difficult. The right to buy council housing was fine for some, but nothing was done to replace the affordable housing that became privatised as a result. House prices are so high that they have put mortgages out of the reach of many young people and private renting is also quite desperately expensive. There was of course a housing crisis in the years following the Second World War, because of the bombing, and it is interesting to recall how subsequent Governments, both Labour and Conservative, dealt with it at the time. There was a campaign to build cheap housing—the so-called prefabs —many of which still exist. There was also a restriction on the level of rents, with rent tribunals to which recourse could be made if there was overcharging. Rents were thus kept within the range of affordability for ordinary wage earners. Without those policies, many would have been rendered homeless—in fact, most were not.

The Bill before the House does not tackle the problems of the housing market; nor does it give a necessary boost to the construction industry. Indeed, other government legislation under consideration by the House—the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill—actually has a clause undermining health and safety at work law, which would make inherently dangerous work even more dangerous for the workers involved in construction.

Unfortunately, the Bill now before us follows what has become a normal course with this Government: employment rights of any kind are viewed as something to be undermined or removed. Hence, businesses are to be allowed to buy the rights of workers, to slash them: “Beecroft by the back door”, as my noble friend Lord Adonis has already said from the Front Bench. I absolutely agree with him. However, it will not work. The Government seem to hope that unions will disappear, but they will not. A sensible approach would be to realise that economic recovery needs the support of workers and their unions. Removing hard-fought-for rights will not achieve this.

Moreover, any plans for growth must include a plan to rebalance our economy by a government campaign to boost manufacturing industry. Many areas have a great deal of unemployment because the factories and workshops that once provided employment, often for skilled workers, no longer exist. The report of the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, made reference to this. He, too, is in favour of a more balanced economy. My union, Unite, has been involved in the development of the Automotive Council, which has worked with employers to promote the motor industry, the supply chain, and the training and skills of the workforce. As a result, the industry is doing relatively well.

There are issues that must be dealt with if growth is to become a reality rather than simply rhetoric uttered by government Ministers. It involves co-operation with the workers and their unions, rather than attempts to remove hard-won employment rights as proposed in the Bill before us today.