Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 15th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mann (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I support this amendment and reiterate my perplexity at how the politician loves to know better than the people. The higher the politician goes, the more that politician loves to think that they know better than everybody else. That is not a powerful model of democracy. The idea that somehow jumbling around boundaries and structures, and who has which powers, will advance anything positively for society, or for the people, is a perplexing notion.

Some people have kindly suggested that I might want to stand for mayor of some body called Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. I cannot think of anything more appalling than being stuck in some office, trying to influence an incoherent geographical structure that, if anything, thrives on its rivalry rather than on what brings it together. It is a nonsense. The notion that bigger is best for how to change things in society, whatever the Government’s agenda, is a nonsense.

I cite one example, referring, as I have before, to where I live. In neighbourhood planning, planning for rail and community planning, which district council has more such plans in place than any other? I know the answer: Bassetlaw has the most. Why does it have the most? I take a little personal credit for going out and spending many, many weeks—probably months—persuading local people that this was a good idea. It originated under a Labour Government but was put into practice with enthusiasm by coalition and Conservative Governments. I went out and sold that model to people: “Here, you can determine, at the most local level, what should happen in your area”—and people love it. The Government’s objective, which they hid away—I was more up front—was to bring forward more housing. Strangely, when local people decided what happened in their local area, they said, “Here’s where it should go” and, “That would be good”. There was not just small consent but huge consent behind it. There were remarkably high levels of agreement.

This modest amendment is on the same principle. Of course district councils have some flaws; for example, in their ability to recruit the highest grade of staff in a very competitive market. If they have someone brilliant, but it is a small unit, that person can easily be poached by a larger unit and paid more. There are some inherent weaknesses but not in the principle of where democracy lies. I would say that, across the country, the overwhelming majority of lifelong Conservative Party voters would wholeheartedly endorse this amendment, as would many more people who support other parties whole- heartedly or whose votes would float all over the place. However, if the Government do not listen to this, they are hitting their own heartland in the heart, which is not a very clever move.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I shall briefly respond to the cogent arguments made by the noble Lords, Lord Hunt and Lord Mann. They made me almost sentimental for our time in the other place and I was taken back to the comments and speeches there from the noble Lord, Lord Mann.

Although, superficially, I can see the merit of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, he does not take the concept of subsidiarity into account. This is what district councils are best at doing and it is at the lower level, although the functions are important. The purpose of the Bill is to leverage funding for strategic economic benefit. It is about inward investment, strategic transport and returns to scale from, for instance, police forces and fire services working together. It is not about diminishing the role, heritage and historical legacy of district councils.

My own area, Peterborough, in 1968 was a small, semi-rural, cathedral market town. No one imagined that it was ready to become a new town and have the significant growth that it saw between then, when it was designated a new town, and the 1990s. There was massive residential housing growth, big industries coming and the expansion of Perkins Engines, Thomas Cook, et cetera. My point is that, when it was a small district council, Peterborough could not have brought that economic powerhouse and growth itself; it had to work with other agencies and the Peterborough Development Corporation.

I am not arguing for a reconfiguration of development corporations, although the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, knows a lot about how they benefited Stevenage. My point is that you have to work with these larger bodies, which are below national but above small district council level. Take another example from the county of Suffolk. Local authorities, such as St Edmundsbury and Forest Heath were tiny; they could not deliver the core functions, in a globalised world, to bring jobs, opportunities, apprenticeships and new businesses to their areas. That is the point of this legislation; it is not about diminishing the role of district councils, but about helping them better fulfil their roles and responsibilities.

I can imagine the noble Lord, Lord Mann, becoming the mayor of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. I cannot think of a better candidate and am sure he would stand a good chance.

Oxford is a slightly strange example because it is, in effect, a world city. Three or four of our universities are in the world top 10, and Oxford is at the very heart of the success story of British academic repute. So Oxford is not a good example, but it obviously functions as a very important part of the greater Thames Valley, as an area of economic regeneration.

Having been a local councillor for eight years, albeit for a London borough, my heart is with the points of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, but I think that the Government’s endeavours go in the right direction. Only if we can think big, work together and collaborate can we generate the economic activity, jobs and skills that will, eventually, we hope, regenerate local government and complement central government.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, it has been an interesting debate and I am grateful for noble Lords’ contributions. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, made very clear the key part that district councils play, in particular in local communities but also in the bigger architecture of local government outside the big cities. It is an argument that the noble Lord and these Benches have advanced before and we support it.

I like the noble Lord’s amendment, of course, but I want to move on to what the noble Lord, Lord Mann, had to say. He was, I think, claiming credit for neighbourhood plans. I am delighted to hear that, because I usually claim credit for them and I know a number of Conservatives who always claim credit for them as well. They have been remarkably successful and have done just what they said on the tin. I have a tip for the Government; it is one that I keep making but they keep forgetting. Neighbourhood plans have been so successful that they have designated more housing sites than the local plans that they supersede in their areas. Rather than some of the gimmicks that flow through Whitehall and get into Acts of Parliament, neighbourhood plans have actually done the job and filled the gaps. I hope that that point will be registered strongly.

The noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, made a sound point about economic development. It is clearly very important, but that brings me to my criticism of the Government’s intentions as far as it is concerned. Economic development is one of the core functions of district councils. If they are not going to be seen as an important component in delivering it, something has been missed out of the system. Clause 86(2) says that

“regard is to be had to … the development plan, and … any national development management policies.”

It would make an alteration to a preceding Act; the addition is

“any national development management policies.”

My point is that the development plan is there. If you want development, it is going to be in the development plan. Who is responsible for that? It is the district council.

We have a situation where the development plan is in the gift of the local planning authority, which is the district council in two-tier areas. The district council has statutory responsibility for housing, economic planning and, for that matter, the location of social infrastructure such as clinics, schools, colleges and so on. They are in fact integral to delivering levelling up. I cannot understand—I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us this—what the architecture is for the delivery of the national development management plans, which, as far as Clause 86 is concerned, clearly sit bang alongside the local plans of the district council.

On the face of it, the CCAs are completely bypassed. They do not have a role in deciding what the national plan is, nor in deciding what the local plan is. The connection is straight between the local planning authorities and district councils, not CCAs, when it comes to those planning decisions.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

Would not the noble Lord concede that a large number of functions at the district council level, such as environmental health and planning, are delivered through the collaboration of district councils together for the reason that individual district councils do not have the resources in staffing or money to deliver them on their own? Therefore, a complex district plan being delivered by just one local authority may have been the case in the past but is not necessarily happening at the moment.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

One part of what the noble Lord says is certainly true, because a lot of local plans are not happening at the moment. All I say is that the Bill restates that development plans are a key lever, together with national development management plans. Those are in the custodianship of district councils, albeit that they may well work alongside other district councils or, for that matter, in combination with the county. I am simply making the point that the legal architecture in Clause 86 links district councils’ local plans to the national development plans, while the CCAs are not in the picture. Clearly, CCAs are intended to be the absolute economic driver for levelling up; that point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Jackson. It seems odd that the principal vehicle at the local level for setting that scene—the development plan—will be outside the grip of the CCAs, for better or worse, and that the people who do the district plans will be outside the CCAs. There is a disconnect there that, frankly, disables the whole process. There I am completely with the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. Surely they should be at the heart of the process and, by the logic of that, should have the capacity to at least put forward a proposal, which would still be subject to the Secretary of State’s decision about how it might develop.

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[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I want to make a brief contribution to this debate, because it goes to the heart of the discussion about whether we believe in decentralisation and about the role of local government in a decentralised country.

The levelling up White Paper says:

“We’ll usher in a revolution in local democracy.”


Later on, it states that local leaders in other countries have

“much greater revenue-raising powers”,

a point that the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, has just made. As I said at Second Reading, there is nothing about greater revenue-raising powers in the Bill, and the probing amendment that we have just heard moved puts that right by initiating a broader discussion.

I welcome some of the announcements in the Budget about devolving more powers to mayoral authorities and allowing local authorities to retain more of the business rates, but devolving greater ability to spend central government money and keeping more of their own money is not actually the move towards a more self-sufficient, independent and confident local government that many of us would like to see.

I take this opportunity to briefly restate a suggestion that I made in January. Over the next 10 years, some £25 billion in fuel duty will disappear as we all buy electric vehicles, and the revenue foregone will be met by road pricing, now made possible by in-car technology —a transition that successive Governments have ducked but, I suspect, will not be able to duck much longer. However, that revenue from road pricing should not go to the Treasury or central government; it should complement the existing revenue from parking and congestion charges, where it would logically sit, and go to the larger units of local government which we have been debating today. That would give local government greater autonomy and a sounder basis for local taxation than the increasingly discredited and out-of-date council tax.

There are other ways of raising local revenue, and the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, touched on a few. However, in replying to this debate, I wonder whether my noble friend can show just a little bit of ankle on the Government’s thinking—whether they are really interested in empowering genuine local democracy by giving the sort of powers implied in this amendment.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I wish to speak briefly to this very good and interesting probing amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, and it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Young, who I know has great expertise in local government. We represented different parts of the London Borough of Ealing in different capacities over many years.

The noble Lord, Lord Scriven, has not compared apples with apples but apples with pears. We are a unitary state—we are not a federal state like Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy or France, where they have regional government and a culture of accretion of power to the local level. Therefore, we have to have some central sanction and control of the disbursal of funds. So I do not think that the noble Lord is necessarily comparing the situation that we are in wholly accurately.

However, the noble Lord makes a very astute point about the hoarding of power, particularly financial power, by the Treasury. Any Minister will tell you that, over the years, the Treasury has not wanted to give power away and has wanted to bring in power. The noble Lord is absolutely right that far too much of the funding of core local services is in effect subject to the begging-bowl approach, as enunciated by Andy Street, the executive mayor of the West Midlands.

The problem with the situation that we now have—the disparity of local councils being responsible to their electorate for decisions, in effect, taken centrally—is that central government of whatever party is in power gets the income in and can make those judgments based on its manifesto, but it is local councillors and officers who are accountable and often take the brickbats for failures. For instance, many people have argued for many years about residential real estate investment trusts leveraging private sector money to provide new, good-quality housing for young people in particular. The Treasury has never really advanced that properly, and local government could be very much involved in it. Social care is another area. All Governments should look at tax breaks for providing extra care facilities—in terms of nutrition, housing, exercise and so on—for old people from the age of 60 all the way through to death, as many countries have across the world. That is an example of a central government policy that could also help local government.

I have great sympathy for the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Scriven. I hope there is further debate on it. It cannot be right that we cannot follow other modern liberal democracies such as the United States where local authorities and mayors have the capacity, for instance, to raise funds for the issuance of bonds, local infrastructure and capital projects. We have very restrictive financial and legal rules in this country that prevent us doing the same. On that basis, we have begun a good debate and I look to my noble friends on the Front Bench to run with it and, as my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham said, show some ankle, as it is long overdue.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, we have begun the debate. That is the intention of this probing amendment, because we must have it.

Today’s Budget decentralises—but does not devolve—some powers, although not fiscal ones, to combined authorities, which is welcome but comparatively minor. In other words, if a combined authority was able to adjust a block grant and make different decisions on how to commit expenditure from it, that would be welcome. However, it is not a fiscal policy. As the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, said, it would be helpful if the Government could explain their thinking on devolving real fiscal powers.

I would pick up the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, on one statement. He said that we are not a unitary state. That would be hard to explain in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, and it goes to the heart of the problem as I see it. Substantial devolved powers, including fiscal ones, reside in Scotland, Wales and, theoretically, Northern Ireland that do not apply in England. Yet England is a country of 56 million people. It is far too big to operate out of centralised control in Whitehall, but there is a very strong argument for saying that, in terms of Treasury control and the Government’s desire to do things on a hub and spoke model in which all the financial resources are controlled in London, England is a unitary state.

I want to add one thing to the excellent contribution from my noble friend Lord Scriven and the other contributions from the noble Lords, Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Jackson of Peterborough, which I really appreciated. Can the Government explain why Scotland and Wales can have fiscal powers but no constituent part of England is permitted to have them? That is the nub of the problem, and it is why starting the debate on this issue is very important.

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[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

The noble Baroness is making a very good point, but she will no doubt agree with me that sometimes things go wrong— for instance in the recent experiences in Slough and Thurrock —with inappropriate spending or error. In the absence of the Audit Commission, which I remind noble Lords on the Liberal Democrat Benches was abolished under the coalition Government, surely there must be some sanction at central government for inappropriate expenditure. It may be just incompetence, and not even at a criminal level. In the absence of an equivalent to the National Audit Office for local government, there must be ways for Ministers to exercise discretion on financial issues in local government on behalf of taxpayers.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I do not disagree that audit is required. We debated that earlier on the Bill. The authorities mentioned are Conservative authorities, as in Northampton, where my good friends in Corby lost their council because of the actions of a council of another political persuasion. That is a political point, which I probably should not make here.

A proper consideration of the role of further fiscal powers, with full engagement of local government— I am not suggesting that this is done to us because it would go against all the principles that we are talking about—could provide the basis for an empowered, innovative and dynamic shift for CCAs and their constituent members, sitting alongside the completion of the fair funding review, which has been outstanding for years now and which we have discussed previously.