King’s Speech

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by congratulating, from the Opposition Back Benches, noble Lords opposite on their election victory. I wish them well in the challenges that lie ahead. In particular, I welcome the Ministers here today and congratulate them on their appointments. As someone who was recalled to the colours way past my retirement age on many occasions, I am delighted to see the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, back on the Front Bench, particularly with the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman and Lady Taylor, whose speeches in the last Parliament I will reread for any unguarded commitments.

Further to the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, on your Lordships’ House, I note in passing that the last time we had a King’s Speech with a Labour Government, your Lordships’ House had 863 Members, including 99 Viscounts, 175 Earls, 39 Marquesses, 26 Dukes and four Peers of royal blood. However, that is a matter for our debate on Tuesday, and I want to focus on the humbler end of our constitution: local government and housing.

Labour’s election manifesto states:

“Labour will not increase taxes on working people”.


What does that mean for next year’s council tax? As the name clearly implies, it is a tax, and it is clearly paid by working people. Keeping that commitment can be done only by a generous increase in the revenue support grant in December. But the Institute for Fiscal Studies tells us that, far from having more resources at their disposal, unprotected departments such as DLUHC face a real-terms reduction of between 1.2% and 2.9% over the next few years. Reserves of local authorities are low; eight have gone bankrupt, many other well-run local authorities are in some difficulty, and there is relentless pressure from adult social services and children with special needs, whose fortunes the Government rightly want to improve.

I would like to be a fly on the wall when Angela Rayner, Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State at DLUHC, meets Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, for a bilateral on the RSG. Irresistible force meets immovable object. The fiscal rules are not negotiable; Liz Truss discovered what happens when you spook the markets by overborrowing.

I believe that that commitment on tax will be broken. That should concern noble Lords opposite, not just because of a broken promise but because, while income tax, national insurance and VAT are progressive taxes—VAT is not levied on essentials—council tax is regressive, taking a higher proportion of the income of the less well off than of the more well off. The council tax on Buckingham Palace is less than that on the average three-bed semi in Blackpool and, perversely, Labour has ruled out rebanding. When she winds up, perhaps the Minister will explain how the dilemma I have just outlined might be resolved.

On a happier note, I welcome the commitment to restore housing targets for local authorities. That was my party’s policy until an inexcusable aberration some 18 months ago. I recall saying many times that you cannot rely on the generosity of local councils to provide the homes the country needs. This is a welcome return to an essential component of a national housing strategy.

That commitment was confirmed by the Chancellor last week, but was I alone in finding it strange that a keynote speech on housing, planning and onshore wind was given by the Chancellor and not the Deputy Prime Minister, who is Secretary of State at DLUHC, in charge of housing and planning? I ask myself: is there some “Succession”-like power struggle going on between the two most powerful women in the Government for control of the Labour dynasty?

I also welcome the decision mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, to recruit an additional 300 planning officers. There is a shortage, impeding the prompt processing of planning applications and the preparation of local plans, but this is a short-term fix. There were proposals in the last Parliament to allow local authorities to increase planning fees to cover their costs instead of the fees being determined centrally by Whitehall. Will the Government consider that, as part of their policy of returning autonomy to local government?

I also welcome the re-introduction of a renters reform Bill. Crucially, however, that Bill should be accompanied by measures to increase the supply of rented accommodation. In Europe, long-term institutional finance provides well-managed rented accommodation with security of tenure; here, it provides only 2%. We need to progressively reduce our overdependence on the private landlord—who is withdrawing from the market, pushing up rents—and get the pension funds and insurance industry to invest in long-term good-quality accommodation for rent. Historically, that would have done better than equities. Will Ministers get those institutions in the room with the Treasury and unlock those barriers to growth?

The manifesto promises to

“prioritise the building of new social rented homes”.

I welcome that but, given how the business model works, if you prioritise the building of new social rented homes over homes at affordable rents, you get fewer houses because the social rented homes require a bigger grant. That will make the Government’s target of 1.5 million homes harder to achieve. This is an even more ambitious target than the previous Government’s one of 300,000 homes a year, which we never got anywhere close to reaching. Given that the UK housebuilding workforce has shrunk post Brexit and that new investment in skills and capacity is needed, how confident are Ministers that they have not overreached themselves with that target? If the Prime Minister is really in favour of the builders and not the blockers, perhaps he should revisit the nutrient neutrality rules, which are blocking 100,000 homes.

Finally, there is unfinished business on building safety and leasehold reform. On leasehold, who can forget the impassioned contributions of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, in the last Parliament on abolishing this feudal system? His most recent one was less than two months ago, on 24 May:

“I certainly hope that, whoever is in power, the necessary action is taken and the leaseholder problems are dealt with”.—[Official Report, 24/5/24; col. 1317.]


His hopes were met with a draft Bill, which I welcome. However, a particular problem faces leaseholders in blocks with safety issues post Grenfell. This cannot wait, and it is an issue on which I and others campaigned in the last Parliament. Of the 4,329 buildings identified with unsafe cladding, over half had not started remediation at the end of March this year, seven years after Grenfell. Only 23%—976 buildings—have completed remediation work. The manifesto says:

“Labour will also take decisive action to improve building safety”.


Can the Minister outline what decisive action Labour will take to help the many thousands of leaseholders who are in difficulties, living in unsafe buildings and facing bankruptcy and repossession, as well as those living in blocks under 11 metres, who get no help from the Building Safety Act? The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, understands the problem, and I hope she can make progress.

There is much to be done, and I wish the Government well. I shall provide the same critical support to this Government as I did to the last one.