Lord Howard of Rising
Main Page: Lord Howard of Rising (Conservative - Life peer)Localism Bill
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Lord Howard of Rising
Lord Howard of Rising
My Lords, in moving Amendment 137 I shall also speak to Amendment 138. These amendments would allow a local authority to decide for itself what assets should, or should not be, included in that authority’s register of assets. Surely this is what localism is about: allowing decisions that affect the community to be taken by that community rather than being dictated to by central government. I cannot see much localism if a local authority “must” include an asset, as defined by the Secretary of State. Would it not be more in keeping with the sentiments of the Bill to allow local authorities to decide themselves what is best for their local communities? It might well be that, for reasons peculiar to that area, a slightly different consideration is more appropriate for what asset needs to be included on the register. By setting the parameters, the Secretary of State can prevent abuse by local authorities, while the discretion that these amendments provide would allow for a modest amount of flexibility to suit local circumstances. Decisions taken locally is what this Bill is meant to be about. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about this. I beg to move.
Lord Patel of Bradford
I have just a very short point to make about the noble Lord’s amendment. One would think that it would be better to be clear about what a local authority must do rather than introduce further doubts or a lack of clarity. That has already been debated considerably today. It goes back to supporting the Government’s intention to have clarity about what must be done rather than leaving any vague options open for the possibility of any misinterpretations. It would be good if the Minister could address that issue.
Lord True
I understand the point made by my noble friend the Minister, but I have some sympathy with the amendment, for reasons that she will understand from my previous interventions. I do not think that this is easy, and I look forward with interest, as many other noble Lords in this Committee will, to seeing the regulations and the guidance that her department will produce. The Minister was very receptive to that point when it was made by noble Lords two days ago and today. There are circumstances in which a local authority, using its reasonable discretion, could cut short a bureaucratic process that is pre-eminently likely to end in the rejection of a nomination. I really do not see why, taking its local circumstances into account, a local authority should not be given slightly greater freedom than is presently suggested in the Bill. I understand my noble friend’s argument and that of my noble friend Lord Howard, but in many ways I slightly move towards my noble friend Lord Howard’s because I hope that some degree of latitude and discretion will be allowed.
Lord Howard of Rising
The Minister said, “If we get it right for the whole country”. If it were possible for whatever is decided in Westminster to be absolutely correct from Land’s End to John O’Groats, my admiration would be endless and unlimited. The whole point of the Localism Bill is that central government cannot get it right for everyone all the time and that therefore there must be some discretion locally to make things work for each area as it thinks best. Having said that, I can see that the Minister does not want to move on this, so I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Howard of Rising
Lord Howard of Rising
My Lords, this group of amendments seeks to remove the requirement for a local authority to give reasons for not including an asset, which has been nominated for inclusion, on its register of community assets. As has been said by my noble friend Lord True and the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, at a time when officers in local authorities are being stretched to their limits in trying to reduce their authority’s expenditure in line with the Government’s requirements, it is perverse to burden them further. Having to do the work required of them by this Bill is bad enough; if local authorities then always have to justify declining to include an asset, that must inevitably lead to a very strong bias towards officers including assets on the register in order to avoid the extra work that would be involved in justifying a refusal.
I realise, and I know from personal experience, that officers in local authorities have the highest integrity, but there would nevertheless be a strong temptation automatically to include certainly all marginal nominations and probably a number of others. Aside from the unfairness of creating this bias, ultimately it will lead to more arguments and more appeals that will, in turn, lead to much greater expense for the public purse—a worry that already concerns those of your Lordships connected with local authorities.
Over 60 per cent of referrals to the Standards Board were malicious. I should declare an interest in having been a victim of just such an accusation. There will inevitably be a number of malicious nominations for inclusion on a register of community assets. It will be time-consuming and difficult to have continually to be giving reasons for refusing this kind of nomination. Not having to justify refusal will in no way prejudice the ability of genuine community assets to get on to the register, but it will ensure a fairer consideration of what is appropriate and proper to be included on it. I beg to move.
Lord True
My Lords, again, I have some sympathy for my noble friend’s arguments. Any noble Lord who has seen, for example, the papers for a meeting of a licensing committee, with hundreds of voluminous pages of submissions and comments, or who reflects on the fact that I tried to draw to your Lordships’ attention earlier—that the process of a decision on whether an item should be listed is ultimately subject to appeal, as is the matter of consultation—will realise that, inevitably, however light touch it is intended to be in the first place, the process is likely to generate a large amount of natural paperwork.
I also submit that as a strong supporter of committee action, as I hope I will reveal when we discuss neighbourhood planning, I believe that those who wish to propose that a property should be listed should be prepared to take the trouble to attend a meeting and argue their case. There is a high risk that in a process that ultimately becomes subject to a test at law, whether by judicial review or by whatever other process is envisaged under the Bill, these matters will not be able to be decided by officers setting out a letter saying, “Sorry, chaps: we’ve decided we’re not going ahead with this one”. There will have to be paperwork and a process. Adding a further burden on local authorities to send out individual written notices to every body or individual who suggests that an item be listed may be extremely burdensome, in administrative terms. My noble friend Lord Howard of Rising might not have the right mechanism in what he seeks to excise from the Bill but he touches on what is, potentially, a very important matter.
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, five of these amendments look to remove the requirements on the local authority to give reasons for its decisions in connection with the scheme, whether in favour or against. On those five amendments, Clause 77 provides that where a community nomination is unsuccessful the local authority must enter the land on the unsuccessful nominations list and give the nominator written reasons for the decision. Amendment 139 would remove that requirement of giving reasons to the nominator.
Clause 78 deals with notices about the lists. Amendment 140 would remove the requirement for the local authority to give reasons in its notice for removal of land from the list of assets of community value. Amendment 141 to Clause 79, which gives a landowner a right to review of the decision to list, would mean that the local authority would not have to give the owner the reasons for the decision it has taken following the review.
Amendment 141A also concerns the right to review in Clause 79. At present, if the local authority decides on a review to remove the land from the list of assets of community value, it must give a written copy of the reasons for the review decision to the person or body whose community nomination had previously been accepted. Amendment 141A would remove this requirement. Clause 80 concerns a list of unsuccessful nominations. Amendment 142 would remove from this clause the requirement for the local authority to include in the entry the reasons for not putting the land on the list of assets of community value.
These amendments would all remove an essential guarantee of transparency from the scheme. We of course expect local authorities to behave reasonably and tell a community organisation why its nomination was refused, or why an asset had been removed from the list. We would also expect them to tell an owner who had asked for a review of the decision on listing the reason for the decision. These are basic provisions that we consider essential for all community groups and landowners to be able to expect in every case if these measures are to be effective in giving communities real power. That is why we think it is important that these requirements are set out clearly in the Bill, and stay there.
Amendment 141B concerns what should be included in the procedural regulations for the review of listing. This also relates to Clause 79. At present, the Bill sets out matters which the Secretary of State or Welsh Ministers may include in these procedural regulations. The amendment would mean that these matters must be included in the regulations. This appears to take a contradictory approach to that taken in the previous amendments, as there is a request for prescription of the process but no intention to tell the owner or the nominator of the outcome. In every case it is the Government’s intention to make procedural regulations and to ensure that they contain those details that are necessary for the effective operation of the scheme.
Finally, Amendment 140A appears to be seeking to amend Clause 79, so that where an owner requests a review of the decision to list, the time limit, if any, set for the owner to make this request is not as provided in regulations. We believe that this would be unhelpful to owners of listed land as it would create uncertainty as to how quickly they should act, and would again reduce the level of transparency. I hope that, with that explanation, the noble Lord will be happy to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Howard of Rising
I cannot say that the explanation thrills me. What is proposed will create an immense amount of work and a very strong bias to go in a certain direction. Existing freedom of information legislation would enable the transparency to be maintained. I do not suppose that there will be any assistance from the Government in funding this work or, indeed, in creating the lists in the first place. It would be nice if the Government would consider removing this provision, thereby reducing the amount of work that will be necessary for overstretched local authorities to carry out. I might want to return to this subject later. Meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Howard of Rising
My Lords, Amendment 145 seeks to place a time limit on how long a community interest group is given to purchase a community asset. Again, this amendment was tabled before the Minister deposited her paper in the Library. Having read her paper and seen that she is minded to have a window of six months, I imagine she will be falling over herself to accept this amendment.
I spoke earlier about the importance of excluding measures from the Bill that might affect the value of property. As I mentioned then, the erosion of property value is far more important to the less well-off, for whom such an asset might be all they have in the world. Uncertainty over the length of time an asset must be held while local interest groups find the necessary cash to make the purchase would very seriously damage the value of any asset. Banks and financial institutions will not lend if the sale of the asset concerned could be delayed for an unknown period. Having a fixed term in the Bill would give the measure of certainty that is needed to enable banks, mortgage companies and other financial institutions to provide the funding for the sale and purchase of the sort of asset that the Bill is aimed at.
It is no help that the time available can be altered by regulation by the Secretary of State. The Minister, when responding to my Amendment 134 earlier, commented that regulation would come before Parliament, but in practical terms this is a formality. In no way does it have the strength of having to introduce primary legislation. Who knows what some future Secretary of State might decide is an appropriate length of time? I have the utmost confidence in my right honourable friend the present Secretary of State not to do something unreasonable, but he will not be in that position for ever and it is important that the Bill does all it can to avoid creating doubts over the value of assets included in the register.
Mortgages and other forms of long-term finance usually extend over the life of more than one Government. The protection given by having a maximum period of six months for a community interest group to raise finance is essential if property values are not to be badly damaged by unreasonably hampering the ability of owners to sell their possessions. There is an argument that the Human Rights Act would prevent a community interest group having an unreasonable length of time to find funding, but this would in no way be an adequate substitute for including a time limit in the Bill. I recall that it has been Conservative Party policy to abolish the Human Rights Act.
Baroness Thornton
How would the noble Lord feel if a vicar leading a group to turn the local shop into a community shop run as a co-operative missed the deadline by two weeks? Is he suggesting that you have a six-month cut-off point and that is it?
Lord Howard of Rising
Yes, that is precisely what I am suggesting. There would be nothing to prevent a local interest group starting long before an asset came on sale. We should also remember that assets of the nature we are talking about usually come up for sale only because the local population, or community, has not been using them. As someone who has subsidised his local shop for the past 30 years, I can tell you that there is a frightful squeal if people think that it will close, but while it is open they all go off to Tesco or Rainbow or wherever and never use the shop, so my sympathies are rather more limited.
I think that six months is a perfectly adequate amount of time for people to put together such a bid, bearing in mind that they could start long beforehand. In my view, it would be perfectly adequate to allow three months, which I hope is the time limit that will appear in the regulations. My amendment mentions six months as a maximum only so as to give the Secretary of State room for manoeuvre. I might also say that, whatever period of time is chosen, the point that people would feel rotten if they missed the target by two days would still apply. If we made it 20 years, people would still say, “Oh, how terrible, if it was 20 years and two days”, so that is not an argument.
Lord Patel of Bradford
Before the noble Lord sits down, could I just ask a question for clarification? Did I hear correctly that it is his party’s policy to do away with the Human Rights Act?
Lord Howard of Rising
I did not say that that is my party’s policy. Let me just see from my notes what I said—I did think about this before raising it. I recalled that it has been Conservative Party policy to abolish the Human Rights Act.
