Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

John Redwood Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 17th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Maclean]

The hon. Lady makes some good points. As I said, we agree on the importance of those services, particularly for the rural communities that we represent. That is why we are pushing through with the other work being done by our colleagues in the Treasury, and with the banking services model.

Turning to combined county authorities, the Government have heard the strength of feeling in both Houses about combined county authority associate member voting rights, and the combined authority boundary changes. The Government are therefore content to remove the ability to vote from associate members of both combined authorities and combined county authorities, the latter of which is called for by Lords amendment 14. We are also content to accept the requirements that must be satisfied before local government areas are added to an existing combined authority for the first nine months after Royal Assent, as proposed in Lords Amendment 18. The Government have accordingly tabled amendments in lieu, which we hope the House will support.

The core feature of combined county authorities is that only upper tier local authorities can be constituent members. That principle is essential to ensuring devolution, and its benefits can be expanded to two-tier areas. The House will not need reminding of several previous devolution deal negotiations for combined authorities that have failed in these areas, despite majority support for the deal. Allowing non-constituent members of a combined county authority to become full members would undermine our efforts to address the problem in future and would reduce the effectiveness of devolution in those areas. We remain of the view that combined county authorities must engage all relevant stakeholders, and wish for district councils to have voting rights on issues pertaining to them, but they must be established at local level. Let me reassure the House that the Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Jacob Young), who is next to me on the Front Bench, is having detailed discussions with districts on that point.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Given the Minister’s enthusiasm for devolution and the wish to spread investment more sensibly around the country, what extra powers will local communities have to decide what is a realistic number of new homes in any given area?

[Rachel Maclean]

I will address that matter in due course, so I hope my right hon. Friend will allow a little patience.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Anum Qaisar (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)]

This is my first scrutiny of Lords amendments as the SNP’s levelling-up spokesperson, so I would like to start by thanking my hon. Friends the Members for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) and for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) for their work scrutinising the Bill so far.

The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Sarah Dyke) is making her maiden speech today—I made mine just two years ago. With your indulgence, Madam Deputy Speaker, if I were to give her any advice, it would be this: watch out for the grey hairs—you will get lots of them. Work in a collegiate manner—the public think that we in this place all hate each other, but we really do not. And wear trainers where possible.

I felt a tad left out earlier, because when the Minister went on her bizarre monologue about Labour and the Liberal Democrats, she left out the SNP. Does that reflect the fact that she does not think Scotland matters? That remains to be seen. The intention behind the Bill—to help areas across the four nations—is admirable. However, as per usual with this Tory Government, their aim is commendable but their journey towards that aim is terrible. The Bill is muddled, confused and not fit for purpose.

The Tory track record on levelling up is weak at best and politically motivated cronyism at worst. On the SNP Benches, we have been clear from the start that the Bill is simply not good enough. But, because of the approach that the Government have adopted, it is now doomed to fail, arguably like most of their policies. It pushes funding, which is so desperately needed in struggling areas across the four nations, to be allocated to boost support in politically beneficial regions.

Take Scotland, for example. The second round of levelling-up funding in January 2023 saw only £177 million distributed to a nation that was promised very much more. In Scotland we are continually told that we are in a Union of equals, yet that figure is only 8.4% of the possible £2.1 billion, meaning many local authorities, including North Lanarkshire in my Airdrie and Shotts constituency, have been left behind and forgotten by this Government. The Conservative Government cannot be trusted to level up Scotland. They have neither the will nor the desire to do so.

[John Redwood]

rose—

[Ms Qaisar]

I wish to make some progress, but I shall give way in a bit.

It will shock no one that the UK Government have sought to reduce the measures that are designed to increase scrutiny of levelling up. Lords amendment 1 would require the Government to produce a statement on their initial plans for levelling up within 30 days of the Bill becoming law. If levelling up is such a fundamental aim, then I do not quite understand why the Government are unable to produce such a statement to the House. The Minister’s opposition to Lords amendment 1 is, to my eyes, another example of this Government trying to evade scrutiny.

It should be noted that the Bill aims to tackle issues of the UK Government’s own creation. They say that they want to level up, but it is their policies that have resulted in years of austerity that have run infrastructure and services into the ground. There is little doubt that the situation has been made worse by the gross mismanagement of the economy by successive Conservative Governments since 2010.

I am also not surprised that the Government have sought to change Lords amendment 2, which would have ensured that reducing child poverty was a levelling-up mission. Instead of seeing this as an opportunity to expand the impact of levelling up, the Minister seeks to drop this amendment. The Lords amendment was narrow in scope, seeking only to reduce the proportion of children living in poverty rather than seeing its complete eradication. Tackling child poverty is desperately needed. The Government’s action in this area stands in stark contrast to the efforts of the Scottish Government, for whom tackling child poverty and inequality more generally remains their main priority, with £4 billion being spent on targeted social security support. The Tory Government could look to copy the lead of the Scottish Government and prioritise tackling child poverty through levelling up, but they have made a conscious decision not to do so.

Politics is all about choices. The public should be aware that the Government had an opportunity, through Lords amendment 2, to include a mission to reduce the proportion of children in poverty as part of their levelling-up agenda, but they chose not to do so. But am I surprised that the party of the two-child cap has chosen to oppose measures to reduce child poverty? No. Yet this is an issue within the Westminster establishment, and the Conservatives are not alone in their beliefs on this. The Tory-lite Labour party are also supporters of the two-child cap.

The provisions in Lords amendments 3 and 4 would tackle geographical disparities in housing, education, private sector investment, public spending and health. All are aims that should be at the core of an effective levelling-up strategy. The UK Government should follow the Scottish Government’s approach of attempting to tackle geographical disparities and look to emulate their investment of more than £831 million in affordable and energy-efficient housing. The amendment in lieu put forward by the Government is a cop-out and barely pays lip service to countering geographical disparity and inequality.

Lords amendment 10 seeks to improve accountability and make it easier for councils to apply for funding. Additionally, it would put measures in place to prevent the Government from making politically motivated levelling-up decisions. It seeks to put in law that the Secretary of State sets out the application process and criteria for round 3 of levelling up. I do not understand why the Government are opposing that. The amendment seeks to set out measures in greater clarity to ensure that local authorities are in with a chance.

Over the last two rounds of levelling up, my constituency of Airdrie and Shotts has been unsuccessful, so ensuring that there is a requirement on the Department to set out the process and criteria would help my local authority—it is a Labour-run authority, but it would help them none the less—and, ultimately, my constituents in Airdrie and Shotts. If I were a cynic—I am not saying that I am—I would say that the UK Government have treated public funds for levelling up as an election tool, prioritising taxpayers’ money for their own constituencies —a tactic that the Prime Minister was not even trying to hide when he was Chancellor, publicly bragging about taking money from deprived areas and handing it to better-off areas in England. That was, of course, during the Tory leadership election, so perhaps he was hoping that no one was listening.

The system and mechanisms for allocating funding are broken and Lords amendment 10 seeks to fix that. Wales and Scotland are getting less levelling-up funding per person than England. Once again, we are seeing the Tories spending money that should be for Scotland on improving their own areas. We know what the Tories think of spending in Scotland. Those of us on the SNP Benches remember Boris Johnson, former Prime Minister and champion of levelling up, saying that a pound spent in Croydon

“is of far more value to the country than a pound spent in Strathclyde.”

Once again, the Government’s proposed changes to the amendment show the contempt that they have for scrutiny and allow them to continue their political cronyism when it comes to levelling-up funding.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

I draw Members’ attention to my role as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Sarah Dyke) on her excellent maiden speech; I know she is going to join her Liberal Democrat colleagues in being an excellent champion for rural communities. There is a lot to get through, so I am going to restrict my comments to a specific number of amendments that I think are particularly important. However, it is important to acknowledge that 418 amendments were made to this legislation in the Lords, which is testament to the fact that it was a confused piece of legislation and possibly poorly drafted in the first place.

As we have just heard, Lords amendment 44 requires national development management policies to be reviewed through public consultation and parliamentary scrutiny. NDMPs offer a bold change to the planning system, and the Bill grants them primacy over local plans if they are in conflict. However, there was no provision in the initial Bill for NDMPs to be scrutinised by Parliament or the public. The Government have tabled an amendment in lieu, but that amendment still allows the Secretary of State to avoid parliamentary and public scrutiny and block any community intervention in the implementation of policy. We on the Liberal Democrat Benches strongly believe that Government should be scrutinised by Parliament, rather than just being able to dictate planning policy from the top, and that Lords amendment 44 was superior to the Government’s amendment in lieu.

I would also like to highlight Lords amendment 82. Earlier this year, the National Audit Office found that local authority planning services have been cut by £1.3 billion over the 10-year period to 2020. The Government have acknowledged the issue and agreed to increase planning fees by 35% for major applications and 25% for all other applications, but there is an issue with that: those percentage increases do not account for regional differences in cost. Who is left to pick up the bill for all these costly planning applications? As we have just heard from my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper), it is council tax payers. Setting a national percentage increase in planning fees is a pretty sloppy solution: it will not cover the cost of the applications, but it will burden council tax payers who are already struggling with the cost of living crisis. As such, I urge the Government to consider adopting amendment 82, which would allow local authorities to set appropriate fees for planning applications.

On Lords amendment 241, quality education and quality healthcare require quality facilities. Since the start of this academic year, 147 schools across England have been forced to close because their buildings have been found to include reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, or RAAC. That has impacted well over 100,000 students, with many being forced into e-learning at home. This is a generation whose education has already suffered during the pandemic; it is not really good enough to keep them away from classrooms now because the buildings they learn in are at risk of falling down. Of course, it is not just schools that have been found to be in a state of disrepair: multiple NHS trusts have confirmed that hospitals are crumbling around their staff and their patients. For that reason, the Liberal Democrats support Lords amendment 241, which requires the Government to keep a register of schools and hospitals that are in serious disrepair and update that register regularly, so that there is full transparency about the problem and Government can be held to account for ensuring its speedy rectification.

I move on to the proposed removal of subsection (5) of the new clause in Lords amendment 231, which prevents regulations under that clause from amending provisions in the Building Safety Act relating to building safety committees and building safety reporting. That is particularly relevant to the condition of electrical installations, stairs and ramps, emergency egress for disabled people, and automatic water fire suppression systems in relevant buildings. We do not need to be reminded that the Building Safety Act was passed only last year. I am at a bit of a loss as to why the Government would want to start undermining its provisions so soon, particularly since lots of buildings have not yet been made safe in the wake of the Grenfell disaster, despite that being so many years ago. I welcome the Minister’s reassurances from the Dispatch Box that those provisions would not be used in practice, but that begs the question: if they are not intended to be used, why are they included in the legislation? Again, I urge the Government to keep subsection (5) of the new clause in amendment 231.

I also want to talk a bit about Lords amendment 6, which a number of Members have already spoken about. Levelling up was meant to spark life across the whole country: not just the south-east or northern towns, but rural parts of Britain that sometimes conceal their deprivation behind a veil of beautiful greenness. Others have already highlighted this issue. I know as a rural MP that, while it is a privilege to live in a rural area, it does not come without drawbacks. Some 13% of my constituency of North Shropshire has hardly any mobile connection, and only 46% of rural businesses have a decent 4G broadband connection. There is only one bus on a Sunday, as Members will have heard me say on multiple occasions, and poor connections throughout the week mean that young people are missing out on opportunities to access further education and, critically, businesses are missing out on the skilled labour they need to thrive and expand.

As the hon. Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) pointed out, the logistics of living in the countryside mean that council services cost more. Council taxes are up to 20% higher than in urban areas, while rural workers are paid 7.5% less on average than their urban colleagues and are faced with house prices that—if we exclude London—are often over eight times higher. Sadly, those differences were not recognised in the original drafting of the Bill. I support the concessions the Government have made in relation to amendment 6: they are taking steps in the right direction, and I think those concessions have been entered into in good faith. While I support them, I would have preferred Lords amendment 6 to have been retained in its entirety.

Finally, I will speak to Lords amendment 329, which deals with local housing. The amendment specifies that

“The local plan must identify the local nature and scale of housing need…and must make provision for sufficient social rent housing, to eliminate homelessness”

and provide a home for the more than 1 million people who are currently on social housing waiting lists. Again, the Government’s amendment in lieu is a positive step, but it does not go far enough in tackling the scourge of homelessness.

I am sure the Minister was avidly watching Liberal Democrat conference at the beginning of conference season, but I am afraid she has slightly misunderstood Lib Dem policy, which offered to deliver 150,000 social homes a year for people who are facing homelessness and temporary accommodation. However, despite our very Lib Dem debate about whether we should set targets from the bottom up or the top down, that policy also emphasised the importance of bringing the local community with us—of building those needs and requirements into the local plan and ensuring that we build the right housing in the right place, with the right infrastructure and the consent of the local community. It is a shame that the Government are criticising us for providing a way for young people to aspire to home ownership and to get people out of the terrible situation of not having a safe and secure home to go to. Amendment 329 needs to be retained in full, and we will therefore be supporting the retention of the original Lords amendment.

In conclusion, the Bill is so long and complex; it has not been a masterpiece of legislation, and there is much confusion involved in it. I urge the Minister to take on board some of the comments that have been made today by colleagues on both sides of the House, who have made some excellent recommendations and suggestions, so that we can improve the Bill a bit before it goes to its next stage.

[John Redwood]

First, I wish to address the question of housing supply in the national planning policy framework, amendment 44 and others. I support the Government in rejecting the Lords amendments—in most cases, those amendments make the Bill worse—but we need greater clarity from the Government about how the national planning policy framework and the definition of needs in any national intervention relate to what is done locally. The Minister has been a clear advocate of more devolved power, and the one power my local community would like is more power to decide how many houses we can fit in and where they could be built. That is not clear yet, and I look forward to further clarification and further documentation.

I am pleased that the five-year supply of land calculation has been amended, because that was causing considerable trouble. Wokingham Borough Council was more than hitting the five-year target, but we were constantly told by inspectors that we were not, because they calculated the numbers in a different, and we thought rather perverse, way. We never got any credit for greatly outperforming the average that we were meant to be building under the local plan, with all the difficulties that were being created by people living on many building sites in the local area.

That brings me on to the amendments and the debate, and the commentary that we have been hearing on the general issue of levelling up—the subject of the Bill—and how that relates to devolved government. I remind all parties in the House who have a fit of enthusiasm for the proposition that more devolved government will naturally lead to levelling up to look at the experience so far. They should understand that there are many occasions on which devolved powers are created or granted when levelling up does not occur or when things even go backwards. I will not argue with the decisions of the many local communities who have voted fairly in a referendum to have various types of devolved government. I am a great supporter of referenda and a great respecter of their results. I am not urging changes to the current complex structure of devolved government, but that should not stop us analysing whether it is working and whether it can be improved within its own terms and in how it operates.