Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Lord Best and Lord True

Tuesday 22nd January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Best]

My Lords, I declare my interest as president of the Local Government Association. We are not actually discussing the stand part debate at this moment. We have a bunch of amendments on which I detect that everyone, including both the previous Secretaries of State who have talked on this, actually agrees—namely, that if the Secretary of State is to have the power to take away powers currently in the hands of local authorities for planning, then we may need to put in place some constraints on the use by the Secretary of State of that new power. These amendments are all about putting some constraints on the Secretary of State, and they seem to be entirely reasonable and proper. Nick Boles, the Minister may get his way; he says quite clearly, and I am sure that he is right to do so, that Clause 1 is intended as a deterrent and that,

“it would, in fact, apply to very few authorities. Indeed, I hope it would apply to no authorities, should they improve their performance”.—[Official Report, Growth and Infrastructure Bill Committee, Commons, 27/11/12; col. 242.]

Fair enough; there may be a requirement on some local authorities to do better than they do at the moment. But if they can show that improvement, then I think we would all be clear that the Secretary of State would not be able to use a new power.

The consultation paper suggests that there are really two criteria here on which local authorities would be judged. The local plan does not feature very prominently but they are about the performance at appeal; quality, which is measured by the approval rate by local authorities; and speed—how fast they do it within the timetables that have been set. On the first of those measures, the performance at appeal, it is fair to say that no local authority at the moment would fail this test at all. If you take account of the fact that a local authority is quite entitled to come up with a negative view, even if the inspectorate goes against it later, it is only really where costs are awarded against a local authority that one could say that that local authority had not been behaving in a proper and sensible manner.

There are so very few cases of costs being awarded that I do not think anyone would fall on performance at appeal. It is speed—timeliness—on which local authorities are likely to be judged to be failing. Here it is possible for local authorities to change their ways in order to speed up. At the moment there is no intimation that those that are already demonstrating in their direction of travel that they are improving their performance will be acknowledged or taken into account. Northumberland County Council’s performance under the speed/timeliness measure has improved in the following way over the past 12 months, for example: it had 30% of its major applications determined within 13 weeks in the third quarter of 2011 and that was improved to 48% the following quarter, 52% the quarter after that and 57% the quarter after that. Improvements can happen. Clearly, local authorities need to be given the time, the space, the opportunity and the support to make those improvements before a very heavy-handed removal of powers ever takes place.

I offer here, as I think that I am mandated to do so, the helping hand of the Local Government Association in trying to secure those improvements. It has furnished me with a whole list of recommendations from local authorities that, in various respects, have been able to dramatically improve performance using the techniques, the peer-group opportunities, that the LGA brings. I think there is agreement in this House—and I hope the Minister will be able to go with this tide of approval—wherever we come from on the bigger point of principle, that there must be constraints and opportunities for local authorities to demonstrate improvement, given plenty of time and opportunity to do that, before the Secretary of State even contemplates doing what we are told he does not really want to do in the first place: use this new power.

[Lord True]

My Lords, I must also declare an interest as leader of a London local council that is a planning authority and as a member of the leaders committee of London Councils, but I should make it clear that I in no way speak on behalf of London Councils.

I shall not follow the Second Reading or clause stand part tone of the debate because I think the noble Lord, Lord Best, has summed up rather well the mood of the Committee on this. My noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding made a very wide-ranging speech which cited a series of people with great acronyms and of great importance, including a professor, saying that the planning system is a great economic drag on the country and we must do something. One could say such things of employment law, health and safety, transport regulations or any number of things. It is not in itself an argument to remove elements of a system. The question that we must ask in this Committee is whether the remedies are proportionate, whether their administration is going to be objective and whether, overall, they will be conducive to the public good. I actually think that some of the things in the Bill answer that test positively and a number, as I said at Second Reading, resoundingly negatively. We must find the balance in Committee.

I must apologise to your Lordships in advance that I will be limited in the time that I can be present in the Committee, which may come as welcome news to some. I have a council meeting this evening. Doubtless I shall pass the scoutmaster’s hut on the way to the council meeting—that was something for the chairman of my party to note. I will also be unable to participate in Committee sittings next week. I apologise to your Lordships and to the Minister for that. I know the Minister will be listening courteously, as she always does, to everything said.

I want to make a relatively narrow point on important amendments that my noble friend Lord Tope and the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, have tabled. We will come on to discuss the criteria in the next group. The point that the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, made about the criteria is accurate. I made the same point at Second Reading. It is not enough for a current Minister to say, “I will only use these criteria”—which we have not yet seen—“for a limited number of purposes”. A future Minister given extraordinarily wide powers by your Lordships could use them in a very different way. I am sure that is something that we will examine later as we proceed. As Committees of your Lordships’ House have said, greater defences need to be built into the system.

I also think that a period of notice is a useful and important defence to build into the system, not only for the reasons that have been cited. I am not going into the question of whether it should be 18 months or 12 months or of what it should be, but what the noble Lord, Lord Tope, has put before us is a very important point, as the noble Lord, Lord Best, said. That period is a safety margin in which a local authority can improve, but it is also a brake on precipitate action by the Secretary of State. It may be that I can be disabused by the Minister either now or on Report, but it looks as though the Secretary of State can just pop up, presumably on the basis of the criteria that we will have seen by Report, and say, “Toytown Borough Council, you are hereby designated”, and the next day a developer can whack in an application to the Secretary of State and, heigh-ho, off we go, everybody is happy, particularly the developer. It may be that in existing law and in the Bill there are things that prevent that, but if that can happen, there is a great moral hazard in any Executive having this sort of power. The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, used a phrase: he said that people might “game the system”. I do not know whether that is true, but I dare day that there are ways in which you could game a system to make it look as though a local authority was not performing well.

I am slightly more worried that somebody might play the system and say, “We are having terrible trouble with these people”. Perhaps they would go along to the Treasury or some other place and say, “Well, Toytown Borough Council is not performing. It needs to be designated”. Somewhere—I would prefer via Parliament by law, in either primary or secondary legislation—there should be some brake on the moral hazard of the Executive saying, “We are designating these people, and we are going to do it tomorrow”.

That is another potentially useful aspect of time. When we have a planning application before us, we have to put online all the representations that are made. Where will be the representations that are privately being made to Ministers about bad authorities? Will they be placed online by the department as they are submitted, prior to the Secretary of State making his decision? I do not know, but I think that this aspect of potential designation should be considered. A pause, a warning, or a period in which the Secretary of State can be challenged to justify the action he proposes to take, beforehand as well as afterwards, would be useful.

There is a case for Clause 1. I do not agree with those who would like to see no long-stop power. However, the line of argument which the noble Lord, Lord Tope, has opened up is very fruitful. It would be good for local authorities and the planning system, and it might be good for future Governments as well.

Local Government Finance Bill

Debate between Lord Best and Lord True

Monday 22nd October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord True]

My Lords, I also spoke at Report so I will be brief. It gives me some distress to say to my noble friend Lord Tope that, when he said that this amendment addresses the arguments against the amendment that we debated at such huge length on Report, I cannot agree with him. It does not address certain fundamental points of principle. I acknowledge that it is supported widely within the Local Government Association and by many council leaders who will be glad for a penny if they can get hold of one. However, the reality is that when you are making decisions about council tax you are not making decisions within a single box relating to benefit, you are looking at the totality of a local authority’s budget and budgetary decisions.

I hear my noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding, who I unreservedly admire and whose expertise on these matters the House respects hugely. With respect, however, I must say that I think he is wrong to try to construct a doctrine whereby the Government are saying that because they had not consulted, Parliament cannot determine—because of course Parliament can determine. I made that point on Report. I say as a local authority leader that we have not consulted on this matter. We have not asked the public about it because it was not within the parameters of the scheme that was proposed.

Were Parliament suddenly to decide that this new broadening of the tax base should take place, it would be an enormous surprise to the council tax payers in almost every authority up and down the land suddenly to discover that a new tax was falling on many single person households. While I acknowledge that the popular and sensible move to protect pensioners is being taken, that only means that this change will bear down more heavily on other people involved as recipients of this discount, such as lone parents. We discussed that on Report. The amendment would mean that it would fall even more disproportionately on those heads.

Regardless of whether the provision is a doctrine of government, I do not think that the amendment addresses the problem. I have said throughout the course of the Bill’s passage that I would have preferred for this to be wrapped up in universal credit. I have been open about that. But it is a bit like the lady who swallowed a fly and then had to swallow a spider to catch the fly. It would make a further structural change in council tax benefit, which by definition has not been thought through or considered, to impose taxation on a large subset of single-parent households. I do not know whether we are talking about 8 million or 5 million of them; it could be fewer. Perhaps the Minister will tell us. But I do not think that that is a good way to make policy. It seems to be making policy on the hoof. Some of us might think that we are having rather a lot of that lately and I do not think that this House should add to it.

[Lord Best]

My Lords, I rise to support this amendment. Indeed, it would be very strange if I did not support it since I have worked on this issue for some months. With help from my indefatigable colleagues at the LGA, we have formulated this revised version of my earlier amendment after last week’s debate. So perhaps I should explain why it is not me who chose to bring this back before your Lordships.

The original amendment would have given full discretion to local authorities to vary the single person discount. This would have enabled councils to raise the necessary funds to compensate for the Government’s 10% cut to council tax benefit, making it unnecessary for them to start levying council tax on the poorest non-pensioner households. The modifications in this new version of the amendment, as set out by the noble Lord, Lord Tope, seek to address the criticisms raised in the debate last Tuesday. They limit the flexibility for councils to reduce the single person discount from 25% to no less than 20% and maintain the full 25% discount for single pensioners, regardless of their income. These constraints would very probably have been adopted by local authorities in any case, but having them in the Bill means there can be no cries of, “It’s a widow’s tax” or “It could mean lone parents being asked to pay another £5 per week”. The revised amendment means that most widows would be excluded and virtually everyone paying council tax in the bottom council tax bands would be charged well under £1 per week more. The relatively few single people in the most valuable properties, those in the top council tax bands, would be likely to see an increase of only a little over £2 per week if their council chose to use the discretionary power to the full. Since the single person discount reduction would come in a year when the Government are requiring another freeze for the overarching level of council tax, the reduction from 25% to 20% could not be even a fraction as painful and problematic as cutting council tax benefits by £3 to £5 or more for the poorest.

I had hoped very much that the Government and those of your Lordships who were hesitant to support the more open-ended amendment would be brought on board by the modified version. The LGA has articulated the very strong support of council leaders for this amendment, most particularly those leaders representing less affluent areas where more people are in receipt of council tax benefit and there are fewer opportunities to raise more taxation from high-value empty properties or second homes. This is the lifeline that could save councils from having to cut services or support to the most economically and socially vulnerable.

I promised my Cross Bench colleagues, who have been incredibly supportive, that if I failed to secure any movement in the position of the Government or the Labour Benches, I would not try their patience further and take up the time of the House with a battle that could not be won. Sadly, the Minister has made clear to me that despite the strength of feeling of the LGA and local authorities of all political persuasions, the Government will not budge. Equally, noble Lords on the opposition Front Bench have remained adamant that despite the strongest representations by Labour councils, they cannot support any change to the fixed 25% single person discount. I have had to conclude that my efforts have failed and it is not for me to bring back this matter to the Floor of the House. It would be like entering Frankel for a final race in the knowledge that he was bound to lose. However, I entirely respect the efforts of the noble Lords, Lord Tope and Lord Shipley, in continuing the fight, and of course I am hugely appreciative of the magnificent support that I and the LGA have had from the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, throughout this lengthy saga.

Maybe there will be a last-minute change of heart by the Government or the opposition Front Bench. Certainly, all concerned have had a chance to see if the Government’s transitional £100 million grant could save the day. The verdict, I fear, is that although it will put back the day of reckoning for a year in some areas, it will not save the day in the least well-off areas, and for future years, of course, the position remains untenable in very many more places.

It may be that all that is left is a protest vote, but if protesting is all that we can do at this stage then protest I do. It is terrible to impose on councils the task of collecting taxes from people who do not have the money to pay; and it is terrible to subject those already struggling to survive on the very lowest incomes to a further reduction in their living standards. I do protest and, of course, I strongly support this amendment.

Localism Bill

Debate between Lord Best and Lord True

Wednesday 7th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Best]

My Lords, I, too, support the role of councillors and their engagement in these processes, but I do not think that this is an either/or. My name is against Amendments 69, 71 and 72. If people do not wish to go to the councillor for any reason, surely they should have the opportunity to go directly to the ombudsman service. My interest is that I have been on the receiving end of the ombudsman’s judgment, complaints having been made about organisations that I have chaired and run, and I think the ombudsman service is great. It resolves complaints that have been running sometimes for ages; the filing cabinet is full of going backwards and forwards, the ombudsman sorts it out, the decision is final. It is a professional service. The British and Irish Ombudsman Association thinks that an essential ingredient in any ombudsman service is that the consumer has a right of direct access to that service.

I chair the Council of the Property Ombudsman, which looks after the private sector, separate from the arrangements for the Housing Ombudsman in the social housing sector. In the private sector, of course, tenants can go direct to the ombudsman; they do not have to go to a council, an MP or a tenant panel. That system works extremely well. I have watched the process from both sides of the fence. Ombudsman services really work and direct access to them seems an important ingredient.

We have one example. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said he did not think that there were any examples of there being a bureaucratic filter of this kind, but I think the Parliamentary Ombudsman is the last outpost of this approach. It applied to the Local Government Ombudsman but was scrapped as it was found to be unworkable and unnecessary, but with the Parliamentary Ombudsman, going through your MP remains. However, Ann Abraham, the Parliamentary Ombudsman, says:

“The MP filter delays the resolution of complaints by the ombudsman and even deters some people from taking their complaints to the ombudsman at all”.

I think it likely, as a result of the consultation now going on, that the filter will be dropped in that last case of the Parliamentary Ombudsman. So let us by all means engage councillors and encourage people to go to their councillor—sometimes that can be the best kind of mediation and local way of organising things—but let us allow people, if they wish, to go direct to the ombudsman service. It is there as a professional body and it sorts things out.

[Lord True]

My Lords, I also declare an interest as a local councillor. I must say to the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, that my aged aunt, who has a great fear of spiders, says, “In September and October never talk about a spider, otherwise you will talk one up”, and one invariably comes up. I heard what he said about the contributions of Members on this side to these debates. When he makes such comments, I have to point out that we made very little progress with groups yesterday and there may be some connection—not with the Conservatives but with other Members in the Chamber.

I wish to follow very strongly what my noble friends Lady Eaton and Lord Tope said. I have visited a number of authorities and it is true, sadly, that in many authorities where there has been large-scale voluntary transfer, there is a growing disjunction between the council side and RSLs. As I see it, aspects of this proposal from the Government may be designed to break that down and to reinforce the role of a councillor. In my authority we have introduced a tenants’ champion system in order to encourage people to use the local resource of the council as a first resource for complaint and redress against social landlords. That is desirable. Surely in the spirit of this Bill things should be settled as locally as they can be. There are all forms of bureaucracy and the ombudsman system in itself is potentially that. I agree that tenants may not need a filter, but in some circumstances they may need a local champion.

I am not quite so absolutist about these proposals as some others who have spoken. However, I hope that my noble friend will listen to the debate, particularly to the points made by my noble friend Lord Tope, and see whether some middle ground can be found that will enable tenants to have this recourse, but perhaps in the normal course of events to encourage people to seek to settle matters locally.

Localism Bill

Debate between Lord Best and Lord True

Thursday 14th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord True]

I have taken some part in this Bill and, on the basis of having spent 13 rather misspent years in the usual channels, I heard what my noble friend Lord Lucas and others have said about potentially sitting on another day. As other noble Lords have said, I would be very willing to do that to make progress on the Bill. I did not hear the noble Lord opposite express similar willingness.

One thing that I looked up, which might be helpful to these discussions, is what has happened in previous years. This is in fact the earliest date on which the House would rise in July since and including 1996, apart from 2003. If one looks at three separate years after the party opposite formed a Government, in 1998 we were asked to sit until 31 July and noble Lords on this side co-operated; in 2002 we were asked to sit until 30 July and noble Lords on this side co-operated; and in 2006 we were asked to sit until 25 July and noble Lords on this side co-operated. I do not think that it is unreasonable to ask noble Lords opposite to show the same willingness as noble Lords on this side have to allow the usual channels some flexibility in considering not only sitting late but perhaps allowing an extra day to complete this important Bill.

[Lord Best]

Perhaps a word could be said from the Cross Benches, too. I have quite a lot of the amendments that might detain us further on. Although we must all accommodate whatever the usual channels decide, it is quite late notice for next Thursday suddenly to be removed from our diaries when we had every reason to expect to be on Recess at that time and had other plans. I, for one, would be letting down an awful lot of other people, which I may have to do if we have to sit next Thursday. If it is of any help—and I am sure that we all have our different preferences—I would be quite prepared to go into all hours of the night on Wednesday night and will try to remain fresh, if that is required of me.

Localism Bill

Debate between Lord Best and Lord True

Thursday 30th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Best]

My Lords, Amendment 128B is in my name. I do not think that we have given the Government enough credit for the amendment that we heard of earlier today, because that seemed to me to satisfy, if not entirely—I want to dwell on that—a good deal of the misgivings that we have had about referendums applying to the world of planning. We now have an amendment that will mean that planning applications are taken out of the reach of petitions and referendums. That is an enormous difference from where we were yesterday. I want to place on record my appreciation to the Government for taking that forward. It means that another laboriously prepared speech of mine is now redundant, but the amendment is extremely welcome.

Our hesitations about where we have got to are as follows. We understand that discretion is there for local authorities not to go ahead with referendums if there is a statutory process that gives members of the public opportunities to make representations and a statutory right of appeal or of investigation through a review. However, although that clearly applies to individual planning applications—great stuff—does that apply to all of the processes of preparing local development plans? I think that it must cover the preparation of the local development frameworks. If it did not cover the local authority preparing its local development plan, that would be disastrous. Throughout local government, we are already way behind in getting those local development frameworks undertaken. The abolition of regional spatial strategies means that we will be in limbo if local authorities do not have their own local development plans. We must get on with that. It would be incredibly difficult for the Government to pursue their growth agenda and do the good things that they want to do in terms of the development of renewable energy and the development of new homes if the threat of referendums was hanging over the creation of local development plans.

Beyond that, there are supplementary planning documents. They may not have the full panoply of examination in public and independent inspection in all cases. For removal of doubt, it would be better to have an amendment such as that in my name or in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, that takes the whole of the planning scene out of the referendum process. If we cannot, can we at least have firm reassurance that the process of producing local development plans, with the supplementary elements that go with them—the whole of that process—will be excluded by this excellent amendment?

[Lord True]

My Lords, I am sorry to strike a discordant note, but I strongly disagree with aspects of the remarks of my noble friend Lord Lucas and the noble Lord, Lord Best, in relation to parts of the planning system. We discussed this briefly earlier, and I will not reiterate my remarks then.

My noble friend Lord Taylor undertook to write to me about referendums where a London borough, in the case I gave, may have set up an indicative planning brief but the higher, regional authority intervened with an alternative proposal. I think it is entirely justifiable—indeed, desirable—that there should be a referendum in those cases. It would be most unfortunate if the legislation ruled out such an eventuality. It would disfranchise people on some of the most basic and fundamental issues that affect their lives and the nature of how their community develops.

I certainly could not support an amendment ranging as widely as that of my noble friend Lord Lucas. “Planning matters” is wording far too widely cast. Of course I agree with the point established in Committee; I think that most noble Lords agreed that we do not want to encourage referendums on individual planning applications. I also have very grave doubt about how far we should cast it in relation to local development plans and frameworks.

We have a local development framework at the moment, which it is clear that the public do not find satisfactory. As neighbourhood planning develops, a referendum might well be desired by people or wished for by the council. That is a useful device in an age of localism in involving people in such fundamental issues.

I hope that my noble friend will resist casting that constriction on the right of people to be heard on the neighbourhood and place in which they live. Nothing to my mind is more fundamental in the 21st century to the role of a local authority than the spirit of place. People’s opportunity to express their view about the nature of their place in terms of the broad planning framework under which they live in their communities seems to be absolutely vital. It would send a hard and difficult message if the Committee were to constrict that opportunity in the way suggested by the noble Lord.