Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Moylan Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 17th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent, on her maiden speech, but it falls particularly to me to give a welcome to my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough on making his first speech in the House—and what a very good speech it was, indeed.

My noble friend became a London borough councillor on the same day that I did, back in 1990, but he was politically much more successful and advanced from that position in due course to membership of the House of Commons. He lost his seat in Peterborough, as he said, but what he failed to say, because he is too modest, is that he won the seat three times before losing it, and in very difficult, challenging circumstances because it is, of course, a marginal seat.

My noble friend has been a great success during his time in the House of Commons, and he has stood up for Brexit consistently throughout the whole of his political career. He has a hidden skill, which I was unaware of until recently: in his earlier life he was a human resources manager—indeed, he has a higher degree in human resources management. No doubt, that explains his legendary emollience and persuasiveness of character. I welcome him to the House, as we all do, and we look forward to further contributions, which I am sure will be greatly valued by noble Lords.

Turning to the Bill, I welcome the fact that this Government actually have a strategy for trying to improve regional development. This is almost revolutionary, so rare is it; we have not seen it for a very long time. To that extent, the Government deserve a great deal of congratulation. There has been far too much carping on other Benches when in fact, we should be saying well done to the Government for trying to do something for the first time in decades.

However, I regret that too much of the Government’s laudable ambition is being subverted into bureaucratic ideas about the creation of new layers of government and new mechanisms for government co-operation. This is a stale agenda. What people want—illustrated by the Brexit vote, as my noble friend referred to—is empowerment in their lives rather than simply new layers of government or new powers for existing government. Part of that empowerment means government getting out of their lives rather than telling them what to do. If we were to address those issues through this Bill, I think we would find it more fruitful in bringing that about.

I draw attention briefly to a couple of matters raised in the Built Environment Select Committee, which I now chair. The first is the register of short-term lets. We looked at this recently in a short study, and it was the unanimous conclusion of members of the committee that registration of short-term lets should be optional for local authorities in areas where it is a particular problem. We saw no merit at all in the idea of a national or compulsory register. The fact is that this is a problem, which can be severe, in particular areas; it is not widespread. It is concentrated in particular areas, including parts of London and certain parts of the country with a strong traditional tourist industry.

Noble Lords have said that the infrastructure levy must not be diverted from housing. Let us remember that the original purpose of Section 106 was to mitigate the effects of development. The concern of the Built Environment Committee is that an infrastructure levy might mean that funds are not available to mitigate the effects of a particular development in its locality because they could be spent in other parts of the local authority. We need to be careful. It is not all about affordable housing; other things matter too, including building road connections, street lights and local primary schools.

I want to express a degree of concern about street votes. I am unhappy about the notion of a free-for-all on pavement licences without any consultation with persons—I admit that I am one such—who might live above premises that could benefit from this.

As we come to Committee, I raise a particular concern about NSIPs and the giving of government permission to large-scale projects which never then advance to achieving a DCO. There is no way of terminating NSIPs, so they continue as a blight on the territory in the adjacent land even though they do not proceed to development.

Finally, I hope that if we are going to have these larger authorities, one benefit might come from them to alleviate pressure on the minicab industry, which is important in many parts of the country. We could try to transfer to larger authorities the licensing of minicabs, so that it is not necessary for firms to apply for multiple licences in quite small areas through district authorities that could apply at a higher level and achieve the same effect with less bureaucracy. I look forward to debating some of these issues in Committee and beyond.