Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Stunell Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 20th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I have given notice that I think Clause 77 should not stand part of the Bill. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, for her helpful introduction and explanation of the situation. This is a clause which is out of place in the Bill in the first place, but, more to the point, assuming that we will have to consider it, this is a clause in search of a problem and I cannot find out what the problem is.

If you turn to the impact assessment, the very first questions posed by every impact assessment are: what is the problem under consideration, and why is government action or intervention necessary? The impact assessment for this Bill is 101 pages long; I may not have been a very diligent reader, but I could not find any reference in it to this clause. It would appear that the Government have not answered the question in an impact assessment of what the problem under consideration is and why action is necessary. That has not stopped us getting a clause which is 67 lines long and covers two pages. It has not stopped us getting Schedule 5; I do not suppose too many noble Lords have ploughed through Schedule 5, but what it does is repeal the existing powers that there are for councils to change street names.

So I am none the wiser. Is this clause here to enable residents to change an unpopular street name in the face of a recalcitrant council that will not shift—perhaps they live in Savile Row and the word Savile has dropped out of favour and needs to be changed, but the council will not hear of it? Or is it here to prevent councils introducing an unpopular change that residents oppose? Putting it another way, is the target councils that insist on changing street names or councils that refuse to change street names?

One way or another, I was an elected representative for 37 years on various councils and at the other end of this building and never, in all my time, did I come across a case where either of these things obtained. I did come across cases where people wanted to change names or the council might think it was a good idea to change names. There was a straightforward discussion and consensus reached as to whether it should or should not happen.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

Raspberry Walk.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My noble friend suggests that Raspberry Close might be what we have as a future name. This provision illustrates everything that is wrong about the Government’s approach to levelling up and this Bill. First, it removes an existing power of councils to do exactly what the Government say they want to control. It adds bureaucracy and cost, and it puts in a new procedure which is not needed at all but, just to be clear, is a centralised new procedure. The word “regulation” appears eight times in 42 lines.

It is a make-work clause for people in Whitehall. It serves no practical purpose, but it goes down to the smallest detail in the text. For instance, Clause 77(3) states that, the name having been changed, a local authority may put up a sign. That is a pretty good point; I am glad they did not overlook that. What kind of sign? Well, it can be “painted or otherwise marked”. Yes, that is another good point. I am glad they did not overlook that. Where can it be put? It can be put on

“a conspicuous part of any building or other erection”.

Is this not getting down to the absolutely absurd? Of course, at first I was worried that trees were not included in the places where you could fix a sign—but then I realised that the Minister would tell me that trees will be covered in regulations. In fact, the whole clause is covered in regulations. The whole Bill is covered in regulations. The only consolation I get out of this is that we have not yet been given the department’s list of approved street names—but possibly the Minister will tell us that that is going to come on Report.

This is an unnecessary clause: it is poorly drafted and dripping with red tape and the Minister should take it out of this Bill and let us focus on the real task of levelling up, to which it contributes in no way at all.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Well, my Lords, follow that. After that devastating forensic analysis explaining exactly why Clause 77 should not stand part of the Bill, I rise briefly to add a couple of additional points to the arguments just presented. I very much agree with the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, that this clause should go altogether, but I also understand that the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, is trying to ameliorate the mess to some degree. But I think it is clear that getting rid of the clause altogether is by far the best option, and I note that the Local Government Association has expressed its concerns about it.

I want to add one case study, one piece of analysis and one warning for the Minister and the Government in general. The case study concerns what has happened not with a street name but with a similar story in Stroud. There is what has been described as “an offensive racist relic” clock that glamorises the slave trade. When this became an issue, the council started an eight-week consultation. Some 1,600 people in a town with a population of 13,500 responded to that consultation; 77% said that the clock should be taken down. This is an interesting case study. One issue is that the clock is on a building owned by a trust. It is possible that the Secretary of State may have to be referred to on whether the trust is allowed to have this clock, which the people of Stroud have expressed their desire to see removed. This is my cautionary warning to the Government and the Minister. Do Ministers really want to get tangled up in these stories and issues?

Maybe they do, which brings us to the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, about the purpose of this clause. It would appear that the purpose of the clause is that Ministers can be seen to take a position; that is surely a very bad reason to write law. The other case study warning, which has not been mentioned here but should be, concerns Bristol and the Edward Colston statue. That was a demonstration of what happens when public opinion is not listened to and when there is a strong clinging to tradition. As other noble Lords have said, times have moved on and things put up in the past are now offensive. People will take things into their own hands. It is clear that these are local issues that should be decided at a local level, and the Government really should not be sticking their oar in.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to continue the absurdity that my noble friend Lord Stunell spoke about. Clause 77(6) says:

“An alteration has the necessary support for the purposes of this section only if … it has sufficient local support”—


so one needs to determine what is “sufficient local support”—

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

It is in the regulations.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

Indeed. It continues

“where it is an alteration of a specified kind, it has any other support specified as a pre-condition for alterations of that kind.”

We then move on to Clause 77(7) and, as my noble friend Lord Stunell just said from a sedentary position, it seems to be in the regulations. It says:

“Regulations may provide that sufficient local support, or support of a kind specified under subsection (6)(b), can only be established in the way, or in one of the alternative ways, specified in the regulations.”


These regulations should make provision for a referendum and, according to Clause 77(8)(a), should specify

“the conduct and timing of a referendum and who is entitled to vote”.

So it may not be the whole street; it may be part of the street, the street next door or a few streets next door. Clause 77(8)(b) goes on to say, interestingly, that the regulation may say that it may not be a 50:50 percentage split, or 51%. It says that the regulation will set

“a specified percentage or number of those entitled to vote in the referendum”

and

“a specified majority of those who vote indicate their support for the alteration”.

Clause 77(8)(c) goes on to say that, following the first voting event, at another specific time, through regulation, a second vote could be held, or it could be determined that it could be part of the street or the whole street that then gets voted on in a second referendum.

I totally agree with my noble friend Lord Stunell: this is a most ridiculous clause. It should not stand part of this Bill. It has nothing at all to do with localism. The 1907 Act allows exactly for a street vote to take place if it is required. It seems that the right honourable Oliver Dowden MP in the other place let the cat out of the bag on what the issue is. I do not think it goes back to Nelson Mandela, but to a four-letter word: “woke”. Oliver Dowden said recently that this should stop people getting rid of historical names and putting in “woke” names.

This is a culture war in a Bill; it should not stand part of the Bill. It is not a problem that has been defined. The 1907 Act already determines that this can take place. Doing this through centralised regulations in such a prescriptive way is not what levelling up or devolution are about.