Almshouses

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, I have pointed out that there are 36,000 almshouses. However, there are 700,000 specialist supported and secure accommodation homes for people in this country. In addition, the affordable homes programme includes 10% towards specialist housing—but I will write further if I can provide any assistance on that point.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, will the current review of the planning system consider exempting almshouses from the infrastructure levy, which is raised at differential levels throughout the country, thereby freeing up the finances of these charitable institutions to continue to deliver homes to those in need?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend makes an incredibly important point: we want them to continue their endeavours without being burdened by the community infrastructure levy. We are currently consulting on the proposals for reform set out in the planning White Paper. We will listen carefully to all representations made, including those from almshouses.

Housing: Rent, Evictions and Covid-19

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Tuesday 13th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, I have pointed to the unprecedented support that we have given to renters, including raising the local housing allowance, which is also important. The housing benefit bill and universal credit housing element total well over £20 billion. However, we need to get the balance right between the rights of renters and protecting and safeguarding the interests of landlords.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend rightly refers to the recent generous increase in the local housing allowance, which will help tenants struggling with their rent. However, the increase runs out at the end of the year and, unless further action is taken, LHAs will revert to the previous, less generous levels in 2021. Does my noble friend agree that that would be a retrograde step, leading to an increase of some £54 a week for some tenants? The right thing to do would be to keep the 30th percentile at current market rents.

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend makes reasoned points. The increase to the 30th percentile of the local housing reliance will remain in place for the duration of the year, until March 2021.

Housing: Rent and Covid-19

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 8th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, I would point out that discretionary housing payments have increased by some £40 million, to £180 million. We do not have great data on rent arrears: the data from the National Residential Landlords Association indicates that about 7% are in arrears. However, I will write to the noble Lord, as he requested.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, in answer to an Urgent Question on this very subject a fortnight ago, my noble friend the Minister said, of measures to help renters:

“They are kept under constant review in the light of evidence of public health, and we are prepared to take further measures as they are needed to protect landlords and tenants alike”—[Official Report, 24/9/20; col. 1948.]


Since then the public health evidence has, sadly, deteriorated significantly, so will my noble friend now introduce the further measures that he then referred to? Might those include the recommendations of Shelter’s recent report, Renters at Risk?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, I assure my noble friend that there is no evidence yet of an eviction epidemic. We have established an unprecedented package of support, and the Chancellor has announced in the other place the Government’s winter economy plan to support people through the winter, and to support jobs, including the new job support scheme. We have increased local housing allowance rates to the 30th percentile, which will remain in place at least until the end of March 2021.

End of Eviction Moratorium

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 24th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, I point out that the domestic abuse ground applies exclusively to the social sector. I will write to the noble Baroness providing clarification. This prioritisation of cases does not extend just to domestic abuse; it covers illegal occupation, fraud, egregious rent arrears, abandonment and anti-social behaviour. That is why we want to strike a fair balance between protecting the rights of landlords and of tenants.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

Noble Lords will recall that in March, under the Everyone In campaign, some 15,000 rough sleepers were successfully housed in emergency accommodation. Many of them will now have moved on into privately rented accommodation. Given the Government’s commitment to end rough sleeping, what assurances can my noble friend give that those rough sleepers can rebuild their lives and that, now tenancies can be terminated, they will not be evicted and return to the streets?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend is right that it is a great achievement that 15,000 rough sleepers have been successfully placed in emergency accommodation. On 18 July we launched the Next Steps accommodation programme, under the leadership of Dame Louise Casey, and we are putting in two sources of funding: £161 million to deliver 3,300 units of longer-term, move-on accommodation in this financial year and £105 million of additional funding to pay for immediate support to ensure that people do not return to the streets. This Government have put in around £0.5 billion to date to ensure that we end rough sleeping and homelessness.

Devolution in England

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, there are ways for government to provide support to the devolved Administrations and across borders. I point the noble Lord to the borderlands growth deal as one such way of being able to achieve that. We are not looking at top-down devolution, but focusing on local city and growth deals as the way forward.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, further to the Question of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, will the White Paper recognise that devolving more powers to local government needs to be accompanied by greater financial freedom to use those powers? Will the White Paper explore alternative means of funding local government, perhaps broadening the base and possibly replacing business rates, which, in their present form, are increasingly difficult to defend?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

I have great sympathy for my noble friend’s point, as a co-author of A Magna Carta for Localism a decade ago. I can assure him that we are reviewing the mayoral combined authority model to identify how to maximise its effectiveness, including such powers as financial freedoms and funding devolution.

Housing: Cladding

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd September 2020 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Young of Cookham]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the progress in removing dangerous cladding from high-rise buildings.

[The Minister of State, Home Office and Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Lord Greenhalgh) (Con)]

My Lords, we are continually assessing progress on removing dangerous cladding from high-rise buildings and publish data on this every month. Progress has been made. Almost three-quarters—74%—of buildings with unsafe aluminium composite material cladding are either completed or in the process of remediation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for that reply and for the funds the Government have made available to deal with the problems following the Grenfell tragedy, but the PAC report last week and the Sunday Times article reveal the scale of the problems that lie ahead. Only one-third of buildings with Grenfell cladding have had it replaced with safe alternatives. There are 186,000 other privately owned high-rise flats where the leaseholders are trapped with high service charges, unaffordable repairs and, in some cases, fire patrol costs of £750 a month. Then there are 1.5 million other flats that leaseholders cannot sell because they cannot get the certificates that lenders are now insisting on. Will my noble friend convene an urgent meeting of freeholders, leaseholders, valuers and lenders to come up with a comprehensive and time-limited plan which both ensures safety in these flats and removes the blight?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend should rest assured that we are focused on the pace of remediation. The Secretary of State or I will be speaking to building owners, local authorities and fire and rescue services to press them to accelerate this pace. We are also looking at the interventions that we may need to take as a Government to deal with this blight. We will obviously continue our engagement with all the stakeholders he mentioned in the course of that endeavour.

Housing: New Homes

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Tuesday 8th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

I point out a number of measures. Obviously, the investment in affordable homes of £11.5 billion that I just announced is the largest investment in affordable housing in over a decade. In addition, the removal of the borrowing cap enables housing to be built. Councils have built 10 times more council housing in the last decade than in the previous one.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the Government’s commitment to drive up the construction of much-needed new homes but, with social distancing on building sites, the loss of many skilled construction workers as they return to Europe and the vagaries of the British weather, is the case not stronger now for investing in modular off-site construction, with higher safety standards, higher quality standards and improved productivity? What steps are the Government taking to increase these new methods of building the homes that we need?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend is right in highlighting the importance of boosting the use of modern methods of construction, and we are helping to create a pipeline of opportunities to give confidence to the sector and investors. We are providing financial support for the sector through our £4.5 billion home building fund, and a further £450 million was announced for the home building fund this summer in response to the coronavirus crisis.

Business and Planning Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 13th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover (LD)]

Amendment 18 is in my name and those of the noble Lords, Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Faulkner of Worcester, and of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff. We all want to get the hospitality sector moving again. I remind noble Lords that over 85% of people do not smoke. There is a public health issue here, but there is also the issue of making pubs and restaurants appealing to the vast majority of people. The UK hospitality sector will not recover if we cannot make it an enjoyable experience for the majority of its clients—that includes all those non-smokers and their children—as well as safe and enjoyable for the staff who may already be worried about returning to work.

The Bill proposes that restaurants and pubs should be able to use outside spaces for their customers to spill out into. People are safer from Covid-19 in the fresh air than inside buildings and, given the restrictions on numbers inside, this enables more customers to be catered for. The Government seek to balance economic with public health needs. Thus, in effect, the footprint of the pub or restaurant is expanded outside. We have already debated how these new needs and demands must be balanced with other considerations—the vital need to be inclusive, as the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, and others so passionately put it.

Amendment 18 specifies that pavement licences may only be granted by a local authority subject to the condition that smoking is prohibited in such spaces. It is a simple and straightforward proposition. We all worked together, across all parties and none, on banning smoking in public places. That was transformative for public health, for the prevention of illness through second-hand smoke, for those working in these environments, and for the benefit of families and pregnant women. It is now widely accepted as a benefit and few people seek to turn back the clock.

However, under this Bill, the footprint of pubs and restaurants will, as I said, extend outside. If such an extension, for which there are good reasons, is to be granted, then these newly defined public places must also be smoke free for all the same public health and other reasons that the interiors of pubs and restaurants are smoke free.

The noble Earl, Lord Howe, who shared Second Reading with the Minister, has contributed significantly over many years as we have sought to combat smoking. I hope that both Ministers know that the words that they might have been given to reply to this amendment to the effect that local authorities “can” take such action is a world away from a provision saying that they “must” take such action. As the noble Earl will remember, prior to the introduction of smoke-free enclosed public places in the Health Act 2006 the hospitality trade did not support legislation that was simply local. It wanted a level playing field, provided by national legislation that covered all hospitality venues. That is why we need national action and “must” not “can”.

I first noticed this issue when I saw a petition organised to try to persuade the City of London and Westminster City Council to do this. A number of local businesses support it, but the council has not agreed, and therefore no progress is being made. As soon as I flagged this issue up at Second Reading, only one week ago, with ASH’s help and to my delight but not to my surprise, I secured support from every Bench in this House, as represented by the amendment. I am delighted to say that we also have the support of a former Secretary of State for Heath, the noble Lord, Lord Lansley.

In the space of a week, we have also secured support for this amendment from the 10 local authorities that make up Greater Manchester, including the cities of Manchester and Salford, and from Liverpool and Newcastle, Oxfordshire County Council, and the Local Government Association itself. I am extremely grateful to them all in their clear concern for the pubs, restaurants and citizens in their area. This needs to be national.

The Government have said that they want to achieve a smoke-free England by 2030. There is a danger in this Bill of things going backwards and not forwards. For those who think that the urgent measures taken in the Bill should not be impeded, such as perhaps the noble Baronesses, Lady Noakes and Lady Neville-Rolfe, I remind noble Lords of the numbers: 85% of people do not smoke. If we are to encourage them back to using pubs and restaurants, let us make it easy for proprietors to implement this measure, so that they can make their establishments as attractive as possible.

I hope therefore that the noble Lord will see the case and has already heard the strength of feeling on this issue in the House. We banned smoking in interior public places, and that ban must be sustained as we redefine in the Bill what public places are. I beg to move.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I put my name to the noble Baroness’s amendment to indicate cross-party support, and I now add a brief footnote to her excellent speech.

Winding up the Second Reading debate last Monday, my noble friend Lord Howe said, in connection with another section of the Bill:

“The Government are clear that workers should not be forced into an unsafe workplace and that the health and safety of workers should not be put at risk.”—[Official Report, 6/7/20; col. 970.]


One of the principal reasons for the Health Act 2006, which banned smoking in pubs, was to protect employees from the health risks of passive smoking, as well as from the irritation and smell of the smoke. Under the Bill, employees of pubs will have to deliver drinks and collect glasses from the pavements, and they should be entitled to continue to work in a smoke-free atmosphere, as set out in the Health Act 2006.

In response to the case made last week by the noble Baroness, my noble friend Lord Howe said that

“the local authority can impose locally-set conditions on licences … that … can include restricting smoking in areas not designated for smokers.”—[Official Report, 6/7/20; col. 971.]

I do not believe that this is good enough. When Parliament considered banning smoking in pubs, it rejected the policy of leaving it to local discretion. It was to be a clear, national public health policy, and so should this be. As the noble Baroness said, the Local Government Association does not want local discretion. Doing that would blunt the public health message and lead to uncertainty among customers. From the industry’s point of view, it is right that there should be a level playing field.

I urge my noble friend to think again and give a positive response, otherwise I fear that, for the first time since I joined your Lordships’ House, I may be obliged to vote against my party on Report.

Covid-19: Local Government Finance

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Tuesday 7th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh]

My advice to the Secretary of State would be to focus on the three pillars of support that we need to give councils. We are covering demand pressures through the Covid-19 pandemic and we have announced an income support package. Councils are also facing irrecoverable tax losses, and the principle of sharing that between national and local government has been agreed, but not the precise proportions. I would therefore encourage my right honourable friend the Secretary of State to agree that with the Treasury as part of the spending review.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con) [V]]

My Lords, further to the Question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, on financial stability, local authorities borrow substantial sums of money from the market. While some local authorities have recently had their credit rating reduced, most have so far maintained high ratings, enabling them to borrow cheaply. Will my noble friend do all he can to take the necessary steps to ensure that this remains the case to avoid further pressures on local authority budgets?

[Lord Greenhalgh]

My noble friend is right to say that the credit ratings of local authorities remain strong, and where there have been some downgrades, that happened before the pandemic. I have made an undertaking to see that local authorities continue to get access to funding. However, we should recognise that the main lender to them is the Public Works Loan Board, which is an agency of HM Treasury.

UK Shared Prosperity Fund

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 21st May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh]

Yes, I can give the noble Lord an assurance that the amount of funding will be at least at the same level as all the European structural funds it replaces. I cannot say any more about the timing, and I refer to my previous point about the importance of the comprehensive spending review.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, the assurance that the Minister has just given on funding is very welcome. Do the Government propose to invite competitive bids for the prosperity fund in England and make decisions centrally, or to allocate funds to the areas and regions concerned and promote local decision-making?

[Lord Greenhalgh]

I thank my noble friend for his question. This is a unique opportunity to provide the right priorities for the United Kingdom and to design something that levels up the four nations and our less developed regions. It is a great opportunity to do that and the details will be forthcoming. I note my noble friend’s point.