Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Debate between Lord Deben and Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb

Report stage
Wednesday 13th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, we ought to remember that we are discussing the amendments that the Government have put before us, rather than a committee report that we have not got and which will, no doubt, be of great interest.

We have to recognise that there may well be an issue here that needs properly to be addressed. My concern is that this is not the way to address it. The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, suggested that when we deal with the environment, we should consider it very carefully, go out to consultation and make sure that what we are doing is right. None of that has happened here. The Government have put down a whole series of amendments to this Christmas tree of a Bill and some of us are suggesting that we should not do this—although, were they to come forward with something that met the particular problems in a way that was not so manifestly bad, I am sure we would be supportive.

I rather object to the fact that the newspapers say that I am a Conservative rebel. It is the Government who are the rebel here, because they are not being conservative over this. First, they are asking local authorities—I can hardly believe it—to disregard the facts. This is the kind of attitude that we see in the Republican Party in the United States, the people who do not believe in climate change, the anti-vaxxers, who say “Don’t look at the facts”. The second thing that local authorities are being asked to do is encourage ignorance: not only “Don’t look at the facts” but “Don’t look at any evidence or find any evidence—just do what the Government say should be done”.

The argument the Government have put forward is that we need this to build more houses. I was the Secretary of State responsible for that. I had a long history of dealing with the housebuilders, who tell us that this will increase the number of houses. The number of houses built has nothing to do with this at all—it is about whether the housebuilders think that that number will keep the price up at the level at which they have it. The housebuilders are not building the houses they have already got planning permission for in areas which are not in any way affected by this. We know that perfectly well. It is a canard, if I may use a foreign word, to suggest that this will have any effect on the number of houses. The number of houses in this country is not reaching 300,000 because the housebuilders have bought the land at a price which means that they can sell only at a level which is too elevated for the present time, with mortgages as they are. Let us not kid ourselves that, by voting against this, we will in some way reduce the number of houses, because we will not.

I find it extremely difficult when I am told that the housebuilders should not pay for the damage they do. Three arguments are used. First is the housemaid’s argument: it is only a very little bit—“It is only a very little baby”—and therefore we do not have to take it into account. As a former chairman of the Climate Change Committee, I have to say that that is the argument everybody uses every time you want to do anything—“It isn’t me”; “They are bigger than we are”; “Don’t do it in Britain because of China”; “Don’t do it because of the farmers”; “Don’t do it for anyone, but don’t ask me to pay for my pollution”.

Secondly, I thought that the Conservative Party was in favour of the polluter pays. Were my noble friend the Minister canvassing in the Mid Bedfordshire by-election at this moment, would she turn to an elector and say, “In future, housebuilders building in the Wye Valley or near the Monnow will not have to contribute for the cost and the damage they do, but you will through your taxes. You, the Mid Bedfordshire voter in the by-election, will now be asked to subsidise the housebuilders”? That is what these amendments are about—the subsidising of the housebuilders.

In the end, we could go even further. Why do we not have a Bill to say that housebuilders can ignore health and safety arrangements because then more housing would be built? Why do we not say that local authorities must not know what the health and safety laws are and must not investigate what they might be so that houses might be built?

This is one of the worst pieces of legislation I have ever seen, and I have been around a long time. It is entirely unconservative. If all this was so obvious so long ago, why was it not included in the Bill in the first place, or in some other Bill? As we have, in my view, some pretty peculiar legislation on ex-EU laws, why have the Government not used their powers therein?

I sat through debate after debate on how we were going to protect the British people instead of the court in Brussels and on how we would have proper protection against government mishandling of the environment. We were assured that Glenys Stacey and her department would be treated with all the respect that one would have expected. We were told that she would have all the powers necessary for the Government to take her seriously. What have they done? Two pathetic letters, and no statement—this is a judgment that you should make and we will change things because that is why you are there. That means that the British people are now less protected from government mistakes than any country in the rest of Europe. I make no comment about Brexit, but that is where this House and the other place have left the people of Britain.

I do not believe that the Government can do these things and not expect future generations to say, “If they could do that on this issue, what about other things?” They could say that local authorities can ignore this, that and the other and do not need the facts. Indeed, we do not have the facts here—there is no proof about these houses or any of this; it is an assertion by the Secretary of State.

I am not a Conservative rebel—I am a Conservative. Therefore, I am voting for the principle of the polluter pays, for facts and for knowledge, and I am not voting for ignorance and the disregard of facts.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

The noble Lord, Lord Deben, is not an easy act to follow, but I shall try.

We were lied to in this House. Our Government promised us repeatedly that there would be no lessening of environmental protection at any time. They promised us that and they lied. As a result of Brexit, we are now almost unprotected. Loads of us knew at the time that they were lying.

Illegal Migration Bill

Debate between Lord Deben and Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb

3rd reading
Monday 10th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to ask the Minister to make a correction. He said that there were divisions between the two sides of the House, but surely what has been true about this Bill is that large numbers of people on this side of the House have been very unhappy about it, have voted against it or have not voted with the Government. It is very important that the Minister takes back to the Home Office the fact that this Bill is not supported by the House as a whole, even by those of us who recognise the great need to have strong immigration control.

If I may say so, the Minister’s comments about the drawings on the wall made me very unhappy. If it were his child in that place, he would know that his child would have been uplifted by those paintings. What about the people who did those paintings? They did it to make life a bit better for those people who find themselves in a position that we all ought to thank God that neither we nor our children are in. Until the Government understand that feeling, and recognise the unhappiness across the House, they will have missed the whole tone of what this House is about.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, this is a bad Bill. We have done our best in your Lordships’ House to improve it. However, it is quite obvious that the Government, when we talk about kindness, compassion and humanity, seem to think that these are weaknesses. I argue that they are actually strengths. It is part of our British psyche to give that sort of kindness, so the Bill does not work for anybody in Britain. It certainly will not work for the Government to stop the boats. I just wish the Government had more common sense.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Debate between Lord Deben and Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb

Committee stage
Thursday 18th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to support every word that the noble Viscount has just said—a rare event.

I have recently joined a group of people who meet monthly to assess the health of the chalk stream that runs through their village by counting river flies, and the experience has been a real pleasure. There is nothing as satisfying as seeing a healthy ecosystem, and luckily theirs is.

However, as the noble Viscount has pointed out, chalk streams are extremely vulnerable. In fact, the amendment should not be necessary at all because we should automatically be protecting the health and well-being of our chalk streams. So I very much support the amendment. I hope it comes back again and again and we vote on it—or perhaps the Minister will snap it up as a good thing to do.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I too am not always in agreement with the words of my noble friend, but I strongly support the amendment.

The key point is that chalk streams are more vulnerable than almost any other water because they are concentrated in areas of considerable development and they are subject to considerable abstraction and the results of sewage disposal. There is therefore a particular reason for isolating them as opposed to other things.

The crucial reason is that we are fortunate enough to have the majority of the chalk streams in the world. Britain needs to be very careful about protecting those few things that we have almost uniquely. I have to say to the Government that, awful though the REUL Bill is, this subject is clearly not going to be part of it, so this is an ideal opportunity to make that statement.

I fear that I know precisely what the civil servants will have said to the Minister. First, they will have said: “First of all, we really need a wider range of things here. We need to apply this much more carefully because otherwise people who will not be covered by this will object”. Secondly, they will have said: “It’s very difficult to isolate chalk streams when we are not covering this, that and the other”. Thirdly: “There will be other opportunities to do this in other legislation”. Fourthly: “This is a very big Bill already and we don’t want to burden the system with anything more”. Fifthly: “This particular amendment doesn’t cover all the chalk streams that ought to be covered, and therefore it would be better to wait until we can cover them all”.

There may be other things that civil servants will have told my noble friend, but I suspect that those are the first five. I suggest to him that this is the moment in which he does not listen to, “Better not, Minister”, and puts in, instead of that, “Be off, civil servant!” We need to have this. It is not perfect, but if we wait for perfection, we will do nothing. I just hope that the Minister, in whom I have great confidence, will be able to say, “This is a sensible thing to do and I can’t really think of any good reason for not doing it”—and therefore will do it.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Debate between Lord Deben and Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb

Committee stage
Monday 27th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow 11 minutes of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, explaining the amendments. I have tabled amendments in this group and supported others because of the potential importance of strategic planning in tackling the climate emergency. We need to embed it in everything that councils do, alongside solving the acute housing crisis in this country.

Mine are probing amendments to find out how the Government see the role of county councils within the production of a joint spatial development strategy. County councils sit one tier above planning authorities, but many have strategic functions—for example, transport, health, social care or education. It seems slightly odd that they do not have a planning role as well.

Schedule 7 as currently drafted would need participating planning authorities to consult the county council once a draft strategy has been produced. It seems to me that this perhaps misses the opportunity to involve county councils actively in the development of the strategy, which I think they could very much contribute to. Taken to its highest level, the county council could even initiate the process and convene the planning authorities to work together. It seems to me that that is likely to happen anyway.

I would like to know the Minister’s thinking on how the Government see the role of county councils in strategic planning and whether they might explore the opportunity of more fully involving counties in spatial development plans.

For most Bills, the more I get involved the more fascinating they become. This Bill is an example of that not working at all. I am finding it incredibly difficult, and I sympathise with the Minister dealing with it. It is very difficult to find a coherent thread through this whole Bill. I applaud her and the Labour Front Bench for toughing it out.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

I wonder if my noble friend would accept that it sounds a bit odd to those of us who live in the countryside that counties should be left out. I know why it was; I can see the civil servant saying to her, “Well, you know, counties don’t have planning powers, except for minerals, so it really doesn’t count here. It’s the district councils that have it”. I know what they have said; they would have said it to me all those years ago—that is what they would do. I say to my noble friend that I will not easily be dissuaded from the fact that the county council is crucially important if you go in for spatial planning. I do not see how you do it otherwise.

Take the planning authority for Ipswich. Several of the housing developments and industrial sites that anybody else would have thought were in Ipswich are not; they are outside it, in another district council. The county council has to provide many of the services that service the whole group. If the county council is excluded from this, it is not just a bit odd but it will not work—the county council is crucial.

The second reason why I ask my noble friend to look again is a simple matter. We had the welcome announcement of a new relationship between national and local government. I am distressed by the way that national government often treats local government as if it is a sort of incubus, and I am afraid that civil servants often have a view of local government officers which is other than entirely polite. They say, “Better not, Minister—you never know what they might they do. Therefore, don’t give them any powers without us being able to pull them back.” I am afraid that is the view of many of the civil servants who serviced Ministers and continue to do so, so I want to break into that.

Public Order Bill

Debate between Lord Deben and Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb

Committee stage
Tuesday 13th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of the Environment and Climate Change Committee. I want to ask the Government to listen very carefully to this discussion. We have a very real issue when really serious matters, which threaten all of us, do not appear to some of us to be properly addressed. That is a very serious matter for any democracy, and those of us who are democrats do have to stand up for the rule of law and do have to say that extreme actions cannot be accepted.

But it has a second effect too, and that is that we have to be extremely careful about the way in which we deal with those extreme actions. I do beg the Government to take very seriously the fact that these extreme actions will continue, because people are more and more worried about the existential threat of climate change. The Climate Change Committee spends a great deal of its time trying to ensure that there is a democratic and sensible programme to reach an end that will protect us from the immediate effects of climate change, which we cannot change, and, in the longer term, begin to turn the tables on what we as human beings have caused.

It is not always easy to do that in the light of others who are desperate that we should move faster and that we should do more; who are desperate because they are seriously frightened and are not sure that those who are in charge have really got the urgency of the situation.

It is very difficult to imagine that we are not going to have to cope with the uprising of real anger on this subject. As a democrat, I want us to cope. As a parliamentarian, I want us to be able to deal with these issues and ensure that the public are not threatened. I echo the Deputy Chancellor of Germany, a Green Member of Parliament, who makes it absolutely clear that the kinds of actions we have seen in this country from Extinction Rebellion and similar things in Germany are not acceptable in a democracy.

The other side of that argument is that we have got to be extremely careful about the way in which we enforce the law and how we deal with this issue. Journalists play the key part in this. They must be there to report on what happens. It is in our interest as democrats that that happens. If they are not there and cannot say what needs to be said without fear or favour, none of us can stand up and deal with the arguments of those who argue that democracy does not work and that somehow they have to impose their will.

I want the Government to recognise the importance of this. In this country, a journalist must have access without fear or favour. The police must not treat them in a way that has happened again and again, and which must stop happening. As the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, said, it is not happening because of what is in this Bill, which in general I do not have an objection to; it is what happens in any case. The fact that the police could hold a journalist for five hours knowing that they were a journalist is utterly unacceptable. You cannot do that in a democracy—and nor can we talk to other countries about these things if that happens here and we do not do something to enshrine in law the fact that it should not.

Earlier, I had to deal with the question of not opening coal mines in order to be able to stand up in the world and show that we too will carry out what we ask other countries to do. This is another, even more serious, case of that. We cannot talk about repression if we in this country can be shown not to have protected journalists in these circumstances.

It is a terribly simple matter. We must put on the face of the Bill, referring to all actions, that journalists should be in the position that the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, suggests. It may be that her amendments could be better done; it may be that the Government have a different way of doing it. The only thing that I ask, in order to protect democracy and ourselves—those of us who are moderates and believe in the rule of law—is that we need to have this assertion.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

What great speeches; I am almost embarrassed to follow them. I support Amendments 117 and 127A. I wish I had signed Amendment 127A. I speak as the mother of a journalist and as somebody who had misfortune to be on a panel with the PCC for Herts Police—the force that arrested the journalist and the cameraman. His name is David Lloyd. He was saying “Yes, yes, yes, I’m all in favour of free speech, but the media have to be careful that they are not inciting these protests”. I pointed out that that was free speech on his terms, which is not actually free speech.

These amendments are crucial. I take the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, that if the Government do not want to accept any of them, they could probably accept Amendment 127A without too much pain. The noble Lord, Lord Deben, said that you cannot do this in a democracy, but actually the police did do it. They thought that perhaps they could get away with it, and that has happened before. So we really have to send out a signal that this must not happen.

It is crucial for people to be able to observe protests and see that the police and protesters are behaving properly and not inciting violence. Legal observers from organisations such as Green and Black Cross document police actions against protesters and provide support during any legal proceedings that follow. That is an incredibly important role. We need statutory protections to prevent police from harassing and arresting journalists, legal observers and others. This is extremely important.

Environment Bill

Debate between Lord Deben and Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb

Report stage
Wednesday 8th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, because I know from my experience as chairman of the Climate Change Committee why it works. It works because there are statutory targets to be met within reasonable times. If the target date is 2050, no Minister presently serving will have to be responsible for it. Indeed, I remind my noble friend that when a former Labour Party Administration announced a date for net-zero houses which was some 10 years later, there was ribaldry on the Conservative Benches on the basis that that would mean that they would not have to do anything during their period of office.

I am afraid I am long enough in the tooth to recognise that the Climate Change Act ensured that no Government could put off the actions they had to take until a more convenient time arose. The brilliance of the Act was to bring together two very different timescales. One is the democratic timescale of four or five years for the renewal of mandate and the other is the continuing timescale of fighting climate change. A democratic society has somehow to bring those two together. The cleverness of it was that by ensuring that Parliament agreed on the interim budgets and therefore they were democratically voted on, the Climate Change Committee was then able to hold the Government to them. They could not be changed without their agreement. That brought these two things in line.

What surprises me about my noble friend’s—and he is a noble friend—reply during the previous debate was his suggestion that somehow everything that is true about the Climate Change Act does not count in the Environment Bill. He does not believe that because he is a great supporter of the Climate Change Act. It is just not possible to hold those two views. I fear that this is the result of some apparatchik somewhere who does not want anybody to be held to anything. All of us should recognise how dangerous that is from the news today. Despite everything that has been said at this Dispatch Box and a similar Dispatch Box in the other House, the Government have bent over to the Australian Government and removed from the agreement the commitment to meeting the climate change figures and temperatures in the Paris Agreement.

If that is so, how can we possibly accept merely the assurances? We have to have it in the Act—we have to have it clearly there, not because we have any doubt that this Minister, this Front Bench, would do what they say they are going to do, but because we have lived long enough to know that if it is not in the Act, in the end it does not get done.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I fully support Amendments 11, 13 and 14. I simply ask: what is the point of having targets if there is no duty to meet them?

Environment Bill

Debate between Lord Deben and Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb

Report stage
Monday 6th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, it is a curious experience to be standing up without being called.

The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, has made the classic Conservative error of separating biodiversity from climate. It is all interconnected: you cannot talk about either without accepting that each has an impact on the other. Every noble Lord must understand that we have a climate emergency, and therefore this government Bill is not good enough. We all know that–it is why there are so many amendments at Report. It is our job to improve the Bill and it is the Government’s job to listen and, I hope, accept our improvements.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

I hope that your Lordships will remember the words of the Pope in Laudato Si’, when he said that climate change was the symptom of what we had done to the world. That brings together bio- diversity, imposed poverty, the lack of fertility in our soil, modern slavery and a whole range of other things. Climate change is the planet crying out for the elimination of its disease.

I was not present for his speech but I read carefully what my noble friend said about his commitment to both these things. I hope that, when he comes to answer this debate, he realises that it is extremely difficult for us in the Climate Change Committee to explain to people why biodiversity is part of the answer—putting that right is just as important as a range of other things, and we cannot divorce them from each other. It is difficult, because we have already started doing that, making climate change one sort of thing and these other things different from it. I hope that the Government will understand why this amendment has been put down and why it is important to connect these things. If I have a difficulty, it is that a lot of other things ought to be connected as well, but these two are particularly important this year, given the nature of international negotiations in this area.

I hope also that my noble friend will think to himself a very simple thing: if the Government will not accept the amendment or rewrite the Bill—my noble friend Lord Caithness may be right; I am not arguing in detail about the particular amendment—it is perfectly possible for them to come forward and make a statement in the Bill which makes it clear that the biodiversity and climate emergencies are intimately and intricately connected. I hope my noble friend will realise that, if he cannot say it, he will be showing that the Government are not prepared to say it. That would be really worrying. The reason the Government have to say it is that there is a fundament problem with government: it has a series of silos, and if we are not careful these big issues get caught up in some ministries and not others. Unless we make it clear that this should be a driving force in, say, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport as much as in the Department for Education, Defra or BEIS, we will not win this battle.

I hope my noble friend will recognise that the House is asking for a very simple statement. If it is refused, I really would not blame people outside for questioning the commitment of the Government as a whole to these two essential parts of the same problem. I look to him if not to accept these amendments then to at least tell the House that, at Third Reading, he will introduce an amendment that will assert publicly the Government’s commitment to these being urgent, necessary issues that deserve the title that we have asked for. I hope he is able to say that; if he is not, it will send the wrong signal, at a time when we should be united in sending the right signals, so that in all discussions people will know precisely where Britain stands.