Non-Domestic Rating (Lists) (No. 2) Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 18th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I welcome the return of the Non-Domestic Rating (Public Lavatories) Bill and hope that it will now rapidly complete its passage into law after the delays that it has suffered since its introduction. I declare a strong local interest, in that Saltaire is a village that is also a world heritage site, attracting hundreds of visitors—most often schoolchildren or retired people, both of which groups naturally ask where the toilets are as they get off the bus.

Bradford Council, faced with continuing cuts in its transfers from central government, closed most of its public toilets three years ago, including those in its three tourist destinations—Haworth, with the Brontë parsonage, Ilkley and Saltaire. I do not blame the council, which has found itself up against extremely painful choices in trying to sustain essential services. It has attempted to transfer the costs of providing these basic facilities on to the local communities, which in turn raises the question of how local councils can raise sufficient funds for services such as this when principal councils have found themselves unable to do so.

The history of local government in England is intimately connected with public health, public and private toilets and the prevention of disease. The history of Bradford and the building of Saltaire were shaped by public health concerns. Typhoid and typhus were rife in Bradford in the early 19th century, as a result of overcrowding and the contamination of water supplies. Titus Salt therefore decided to move his entire works and workers out to the countryside, specifically building clean water and the regular emptying of privies into the design of the village. But Titus Salt did not regard such provision as purely a private affair; he was also a local councillor and twice mayor of Bradford, and he raised local rates to pay for public improvements in water supply and sewage disposal.

It is a sad indication of the peculiar mix of anarchic libertarianism and authoritarianism with which the Conservative Party has now become infected that some have questioned whether the provision of toilets is a public duty. We have heard suggestions that visitors can use local shops instead for toilet breaks—not an easy option in a Victorian village such as Saltaire, where toilets were originally in back yards and are now either in basements or upstairs, meaning no access for the elderly or disabled. At a time when our country is gripped by a pandemic, with the Prime Minister regularly reminding us all to wash our hands as often as we can, the suggestion that people away from home should not have easy access to toilets and washing facilities takes the idea of the privatisation of public services to a dangerous extreme.

There are wider issues here about the future of local government finance—and the future of local government and local democracy as a whole. We have all witnessed the bias against local government that the Conservative Government display, painfully evident in the way that they turned to multinational outsourcing companies to set up the test and trace scheme for Covid-19 last spring, rather than turning to local authorities and their public health officers, who would have known how to do it. Government plans to parcel up bits of Whitehall to dispatch outside London, rather than devolving decision-making power to regional and local government, demonstrate a similar engrained authoritarian centralism.

The Prime Minister’s pledge to level up the neglected communities and regions of this country will not begin to make a difference unless the funding, and the powers, of local authorities in these regions are transformed. The Treasury is now undertaking a fundamental review of business rates, as the Minister noted in his opening speech. But questions of the relationship between local and central government in England, including the fiscal and redistributive aspects of that relationship, go much wider than those of business rates alone, of which the provision and financing of public toilets is itself only a small part. The Government have promised us a devolution White Paper. I look forward to the publication of that, and I hope that Ministers will be open to a wide debate on the future of England’s local and regional government when at last it appears.