Affordable Housing: Supply

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 25th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is an honour and a privilege to follow the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, whom I will call my noble friend because constructive, co-operative politics has to be the way forward in this changing, challenging world. I am delighted to congratulate her on her spectacular maiden speech. The voice of Wales has very definitely been heard, as it so often has been heard from the noble Lord, Lord Wigley. The arrival of Doc Martens has been duly noted. We need to hear many more younger voices in your Lordships’ House, and I hope that she will not be the youngest Member for too long. She and her peers are the experts in the experience of being a young person in the world today. It is crucial, and I have no doubt at all that she will bring so much of that voice to us.

As we have just heard, and as the noble Baroness told the Times, she plans to stand up for the people of Wales. Of course, as a former chief of staff for Plaid Cymru in the Senedd, and having worked in the European Parliament, she brings great experience and knowledge from that. We are also talking, of course, about the balance of representation. In respect of gender, we are still a very, very long way from the 50:50 Parliament that the excellent campaign group of that name is calling for. There is also an issue about age. We desperately need these experiences. The newspapers have also got very excited about the noble Baroness’s desire—which I share—to replace your Lordships with an elected body. She, with greater cause than me, has great reason to ensure that she does not have a life sentence in your Lordships’ House.

I thank the noble Viscount, Lord Chandos, for giving us the opportunity to debate this absolutely crucial issue, and particularly, as the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, commented, on the way the debate is titled in talking about “genuinely affordable housing”. That qualifier is needed because, of course, we now have something of a word soup of terms relating to the kinds of housing tenure. There is the Government’s term “affordable rent” and the related “intermediate rent”. Affordable rent was introduced in 2021, set at 80% of market rates, inclusive of charges. Intermediate rent is also available, but at levels of about 20% lower than the market rate, primarily to lower-income households in London and the south-east. We have the London living rent, introduced to help middle-income earners save for a deposit to purchase a house. We have shared ownership—a form of tenure that, all too often, we increasingly hear, is not so much a step up on to the housing ladder as a great weight around the neck of people who are unable to escape from service charges and unaffordable mortgages. We have the first home scheme—a kind of discounted market sale house offered at a minimum reduction of 30% against the market value. We have to hope that there are not too many people in the current level of mortgage rates who find that also a great burden.

We have to look at this in the context of how genuinely affordable housing rent—what has been termed a “genuine living rent”—can be calculated. The general rule is that households should not have to spend more than 30% of their monthly income on rent. That is in a broader frame of what is known as the 50:30:20 rule: households should be able to spend 50% of their income on their needs and 30% on their wants, and have 20% available for paying off a debt or saving. There are very few households in the UK today that are in that situation—the situation that we should actually aim for.

If we look at some figures from the National Housing Federation, we see that it estimates that by the end of the next Parliament, one in five households—more than 4.8 million households—will be forced to spend more than 30% of their income on rent. That is an increase of 30% on the figures now.

Of course, the other end of this rather disastrous housing pipeline is rough sleeping. We all see this every day—we see it on the streets around your Lordships’ House. There has been a 20% increase in rough sleeping in the last year, and 280,000 households in temporary accommodation.

I have done the depressing stuff; I want to focus on the positive—just a hint of what is possible. For this I am going to Lewes District Council, and Fort Road in Lewes. In 2020, the council took a disused council office building there and replaced it with an award-winning block of 13 council-owned apartments, providing safe, spacious, bright apartments with a very high level of building performance and a renewable energy strategy. Designed using fabric-first principles, they have a large solar photovoltaic array, with 13 individual domestic batteries. That means that the electricity costs are estimated to be 60% below the normal level. The house also, importantly, has fire safety features which are currently not required but are anticipated for the future, with fireproof materials and cutting-edge suppression systems. These are not only affordable quality homes but are very safe to live in—something we need to think more about.

I point to this because it is not simply a one-off. I go to announcements made by the Green leader of Lewes District Council, councillor Zoe Nicholson, who in March pointed out how the council has purchased brownfield land around the Peacehaven golf club and is hoping to also develop a council-owned brownfield site in Ringmer. Twenty-four homes will be built on the Peacehaven site and more homes on these other sites. The council is also looking at old garage sites: 11 locations that could see 45 new homes.

I focus on that because both the noble Lords, Lord Best and Lord Whitty, focused on a centralised, national approach to solving our housing crisis. There is no doubt that resources and changing regulations and rules need to come from the centre, but I argue that we need to resource local authorities to provide the housing they need in their local community according to their local desires, rather than having something enforced from the centre.

The need for change in the centre comes to one particular issue that I want to focus on in this speech, which is right to buy. That has been one of the enormous privatisations, continued over decades under Governments of different hues, that has done great damage to our national social structure and our communities, and continues to do so. I spoke about the exciting things happening in Lewes; similar things happened a few years ago in Norwich, in Goldsmith Street, where ultra-low-energy Passivhaus homes just outside the city centre were built in 2019 and won the RIBA Stirling Prize for architecture. However, after three years, the tenants have the right to buy, and it now looks as if Norwich will lose a number of those brilliant social homes to the private sector.

Of course, this has happened to 2 million homes since 1980. Norwich has more than 4,000 people on the waiting list, yet there and all around the country, we are still losing more social homes than we manage to build. I have a question for the Minister: what is the current rate of loss of social homes to right to buy? I also have a question that perhaps noble Lords on the Labour Front Bench might like to address: why do they not plan to abandon this disastrous policy of privatisation?

I come now to some of the other costs. I should perhaps declare my position as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. Councils are spending £1.74 billion a year on temporary accommodation. This situation is a large part of what is driving councils towards bankruptcy. On LGA figures, 10,896 homes were sold in the last financial year under right to buy, and only 3,447 were replaced—a net loss of more than 7,000 homes. Since the scheme began, £7.5 billion has been handed out in discounts through right to buy.

I am not sure that many people know about this, but it is worth highlighting that, in desperation, Wandsworth Council in south-west London is offering £120,000 help to tenants to buy a house anywhere in the UK—or anywhere in the world—provided it is not a council property. The council is so desperate to save its homes that it is offering people this very large sum of money. I note that four in 10 of the homes sold off under right to buy are now owned by private landlords. I talked about the cost of temporary accommodation, but we also have the massive cost of commercial-level rents on what were council homes for which the state is having to pay housing benefit. This is, clearly, a disastrous policy.

We knew that from the start because the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, back at the origins of this policy, said that

“no single piece of legislation has enabled the transfer of so much capital wealth from the State”.—[Official Report, Commons, 15/1/80; col. 1443.]

That is, under that ideology, a description of reducing the size of the state, but of course what we are actually doing is making all our communities and our societies much poorer.

What we should be doing is moving towards a housing policy that treats homes as comfortable, affordable, secure places to live, not primarily as financial assets. So my final question to the Minister is about community land trusts, co-operative housing and other alternative tenure models. I absolutely champion council housing, but there are other models that can protect communities from the government policy of right to buy. What are the Government doing to encourage them?

Impact of Environmental Regulations on Development (Built Environment Committee Report)

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Friday 19th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Best, with whom I usually agree, but on this occasion I am afraid that I will come to a point of disagreement. Yes, of course people need homes but they also need healthy homes, which requires those homes to be in a healthy environment. The level of pollution in our rivers means that that is just not available at the moment; you cannot have a healthy home without a healthy environment.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, and his committee for this excellent report. I also thank him for this introduction to this crucial debate. I stress that what is clear from the whole report is that this is a failure over decades. I often hold the Government responsible for many things that they have done in the last 14 years; I do in this area as well, but the current mess we are in is not just this Government’s fault.

We are, as the noble Earl, Lord Russell, said, one of the most nature-depleted corners of this planet. We also have an enormous housing crisis, with both a lack of housing and its incredible cost. The Green Party says that we need the right homes in the right place at the right price. The part of that most relevant to this report is the right place, which means essentially a healthy place. To get to all those requirements, we need a total turnaround in policy.

I learned about extraordinarily bad planning in Australia, where there is no green belt. I grew up in Sydney, a city that just sprawls and sprawls, destroying everything in its path, so I really want to stress the value of the green belt. It is there to protect land but also to keep urban centres compact, close to public transport and shops, et cetera. The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, referred to the potential biodiversity value of brownfield sites and we really have to take account of that. Those who are inventing a new term of “grey belt” might want to reflect on some of those issues.

I also want to refer to biodiversity offsetting, which I have debated with many other Ministers, so I will not go in depth on it now. But with the local elections approaching, I have been travelling around the country a lot by train recently. Looking out the window at new estates, with biodiversity net gains often being off-site, we are all too often looking at biological deserts—homes set on tiny pocket-handkerchief lawns, while for street after street there is not a tree or even a shrub to be seen. Increasingly, we know that that has massive negative impacts on human health.

For the next part, I should probably declare my position as vice-president of the Local Government Association to pick up the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, about the resources available to local councils. I have to note the Government’s response to paragraph 59 of the committee’s report:

“A well-resourced local planning authority is crucial to the delivery of all planning functions”.


I can hear the hollow laughs in councils up and down the land at this moment. We know that local authorities have been starved of resources and of the power to make decisions.

I note also that paragraph 120 of the committee’s report states:

“Public bodies are facing challenges recruiting and retaining ecological expertise. It is necessary to bring expertise into the system through recruitment or training”.


Unfortunately, the Government’s response to that paragraph says absolutely nothing about education or training, yet there is an issue with green skills. When I talk to local councillors—noble Lords might be interested to know that 10% of councils in England have Greens as part of their administrations—they basically say that ecologists are like hens’ teeth. It is not that they are not trying to recruit them. These ecologists do not exist, and those green skills do not suddenly pop up out of nowhere. People need to be trained; I do not know whether the Minister is able to comment on that, but it would be very useful.

Finally, I have to come back to the Office for Environmental Protection’s report in January. I am sure that many noble Lords will say, and have already said, that we need housing, but we need a healthy environment for our people to live in. The Office for Environmental Protection said that the Government are well off track to meet their long-term water targets, that there are issues of water scarcity—to pick up what the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, said—and that there is not sustainable resource use. None of this is working and the answer is not just build, build, build; it is to build the right house in the right place at the right price. I look forward to the noble Lord’s maiden speech.

Building Safety

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 27th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Swinburne (Con)]

I have numerous statistics in terms of the number of buildings that are involved in this programme. Of course, what we know is how many of those buildings over 18 metres are left without a programme or have completed their programme. Some 10 are left, and they all have programmes in place, so they will be completed as soon as possible. The highest-risk ACM cladding buildings are being dealt with, so we will get very close, in that 98% of them have now started or completed their works.

On buildings of lesser height, of 11 to 18 metres, because the fund was established only last July some of those buildings will not be known to us. We are still working on an estimated number for those requiring remediation. In England, that number is somewhere between 6,220 and 8,890. That figure is based on an estimation and, therefore, a methodology behind it. We expect those numbers to come forward as that fund is called on; as people utilise it to put pressure on the owners of those buildings to deal with this, we expect that number to rise.

I shall come back to the House regularly to update it on progress. We believe that pressure is the right way here, and pressure across the House is definitely the right way to keep up the work and get this done at pace.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, the Minister has indicated a number of times that the Government are focused on buildings over 11 metres in height and suggested that other buildings are not really a priority. Is she aware of the Moss Hall Grove fire in Finchley, north London, a few weeks ago, where four terraced houses went up in flames astonishingly quickly? There were 70 firefighters there and a significant number of engines had to be called to this blaze. Luckily, it happened at 10.30 am, so eight people were able easily to flee the circumstances, but this has led Barnet Council to recognise that there are significant problems particularly with timber-framed homes with plastic cladding on the outside. This one council in north London has identified 580 low-rise homes in need of urgent remediation. These are mostly 1930s to 1960s-built timber-framed homes with uPVC panels fitted in the 1980s. Are the Government looking into this issue? The identification of 580 homes in one London borough suggests a very large problem across the country.

[Baroness Swinburne (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her question; however, I do not have any data with me on that. I will make sure that the department looks into it and I will write to her with an answer.

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[Baroness Swinburne (Con)]

Of the funds that have been made available, there are a number for different sizes of buildings; the fund for buildings between 11 and 18 metres was available from July last year. Therefore, from that perspective, everyone is open to being able to use them. Regarding how the issue sits as a priority, it certainly sits with me as a priority and, as a new Minister in the department, I will ensure that I do everything I can to monitor progress. The monthly data will be checked and we will put pressure not only on developers but on the enforcement side, with regards to the regulators and the local authorities working hand in hand.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I raise an issue relating to what has happened with high-rise buildings since the Grenfell tragedy. This week, the Independent reported that, in high-rise buildings that have been declared safe, substantial numbers of leaseholders and residents are seeing massive increases of up 1,000% in insurance premiums. To give an example, there is a one-bedroom flat occupied by a single parent and a baby where the insurance has gone up over two years from £274 a year to more than £2,600, making it essentially unaffordable. Will the Government look into why, if buildings have been declared safe, the insurance premiums are going through the roof? Surely risk to life and risk to the fabric of the building, which the insurance primarily relates to, have to be interrelated?

[Baroness Swinburne (Con)]

If there are instances where that is the case, then you can either work with our department, or directly through the Association of British Insurers to alert them to the fact that it is happening. There is an agreement with insurance companies that, if remediation work has been done, the insurance premiums should not be excessive.

With regards to other parts of the insurance market and those buildings which have not yet had full remediation work done, they are also expected to be working with residents to ensure that insurance is affordable. There is a fire-safety reinsurance facility led by the Association of British Insurers, which reinsurance brokers can utilise. There are a number of insurance-led schemes which are supposed to be helping. If noble Lords know of any instances where they are not, please let us know.

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[Baroness Swinburne (Con)]

Sorry, bear with me for a second. I need to go back to an earlier section—I have ripped all my papers out and therefore they are in the wrong place—to allow me to help the noble Lord.

The commitment made by the ABI and its members is that the premiums should reduce where buildings have completed remediation, or have achieved the PAS 9980-compliant external wall assessment, and have therefore shown a reduction in risk. We are working with the insurers to build a better understanding of these building standards, and we expect insurers to honour their commitments and ensure that premiums are fairly priced and appropriate to the level of risk after remediation.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Since there is time, I will follow through on that—for public information, really. If it is not happening, and if we have a case such as the one I cited, from £270 to £2,600, who does an individual or a campaigning organisation go to in the Government? What are the actual steps to say that this is not happening and the ABI is not delivering? What is the mechanism that can be implemented?

[Baroness Swinburne (Con)]

In the first instance, I suggest that they go to their insurance company directly and notify it of the requirement that this should be fair and assessed based upon the existing current risk rather than prior risk. If that does not yield results and the ABI is unable to help, I am more than happy, as the Minister here, to have those sent to me.

Local Government Finances

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, and to agree with her about the importance of parish and town councils. In travelling around the country, as I often do, I see so many of them stepping up to the plate where the larger-scale authorities—the principal authorities—are simply not able to continue as they do not have the funds. That is crucial. Keeping public toilets open, managing areas of grassland, and even keeping tourist centres open are the kinds of things I have seen.

Like other noble Lords, I begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for securing this crucial debate. There is hardly anything more central to the declining quality of life in the UK—the broken Britain that we talked about when we were debating the Budget—than how much local government is struggling. I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and of the National Association of Local Councils.

In April, we are coming up to about 75% of councils making the maximum increase that the Government allow, according to the County Councils Network. That means a £99 increase for a band D average property, with bills going to more than £2,000 a year. At the extreme, things are absolutely desperate. The obvious example is Birmingham City Council, which is looking at a council tax hike of 21% over two years as it struggles to find savings of £300 million. This is in a context where councils and councillors are acutely aware of how the cost of living crisis is affecting so many of their residents, but we are in TINA land: there is no alternative. For councils to keep meeting even their statutory requirements—requirements that are put on them by Westminster, about which they have no choice—they have to put those increases in.

I suspect that, if one were to search this debate, “one in five” would be the phrase that comes up most often. I make no apologies for repeating the phrase, because one in five councils is at risk of going broke. That is 20% of councils in the country. This is an absolute crisis, yet our media is so focused on what happens here in Westminster, particularly in the other place. A media that focuses on London will fail to grasp the scale of the crisis around the country, and I am afraid I do not think the Government have truly grasped the scale of the crisis either.

I referred to the rise in council tax, but the proportion of money that councils get from council tax has risen from 40% in 2009-10 to 60 % now. Where else do councils get money from? Often, they can charge for certain services, such as leisure centres and parking, and they can generate income from the sales of property and from certain types of waste removal. But think about those services, and put them at the intersection of the cost of living crisis: yes, they can increase the cost of the local swimming pool or the gym, but that means that more and more people will not be able to access them.

We can think about the issue of sales of property. We have seen, since the election of Margaret Thatcher, the sale of 50% of what was publicly owned land—a large amount of that being council land. Once it is sold, it is not coming back. You close the library; you sell the building and the land. When times get better, you cannot bring them back—it is gone. That library is so much a part of central meeting places. Even as technology changes and IT comes in, it is a public space that could have been dedicated to public purposes in the future, but we have simply lost those spaces. Communities do not have places to gather any more.

It is also worth highlighting—I do not think anyone has picked this up yet—that we have seen austerity right across central government, cuts to Civil Service workers’ pay, and to the real level of benefits. That increases poverty and ill health, which puts more pressure on councils to provide services such as social care. This is literally a downward spiral in which we are trapped.

The list in the Library briefing is worth looking at; this picks up points from the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, and others. We have seen the following spending cuts from 2010-11 to 2019-20: cultural and related services cut by 37%; planning and development services by 37%; non-school education—we keep talking about the need for skills—down by 32%; housing services by 25%; highways and transport services by 24%, which picks up the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, about potholes and the general state of the roads; and environmental and regulatory services down 10%, just at the point where we are starting to realise what an incredibly parlous state our natural world is in and that it desperately needs to be boosted, in its own right but also to improve public health.

Many noble Lords will have received the briefing by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, which raises the important point that we think about the cuts to council services and how much is lost—the libraries, the theatres, et cetera—but funding that local councils have given to charities and community groups has also been slashed, and that again is cutting away at the basic standard of quality of life in our communities. Almost three-quarters of organisations are not receiving enough funding to meet the demand for the services they offer. Nearly two out of five organisations have reduced the number of people whom they support. When you think about the Covid pandemic—several noble Lords have referred to the loneliness pandemic—and an ageing population, we are reducing the number of people being supported when it is clear that the need is increasing.

I come, briefly, to two final points—first, that council tax and business rates is a broken, wildly out-of-date system. The Green Party has long held, and continues to call strongly, for a land value tax, which would be levied on the annual value of land itself, excluding any structures or improvement. It follows good taxation practice, it would be cheap to collect and difficult to evade, and it would discourage the use of land for speculation. At the moment, land is an ideal speculative investment, and we can, I am sure, all point to examples where land is not used well, because someone is just sitting on it and waiting for its value to rise.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, talked about elections. Of course it would be lovely to have democratic elections with a single transferable vote system or similar, as there is in Scotland for local councils. It would be great to have local communities fully represented in the House of Commons. But what is interesting and worth noting is that there is a big shake-up happening in local councils: we increasingly see groups of different parties coming together to run councils, which is an exciting development.

Teesworks Project: Audit

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 20th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Swinburne (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his question. I already have an outstanding question from one of his colleagues on his Benches from the debate last week. I am trying to find the exact numbers for how much is in progress, given that there is lag between the money being allocated and being spent. I am chasing that and will come back to the House as soon as I have the number.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, returning to the Teesworks project, in writing to the mayor—the noble Lord, Lord Houchen—the Secretary of State said:

“Improvement takes time, and where the recommendations related to cultural change especially it is important that sufficient time is given”.


But is it really right to leave a six-month hiatus? Should the Government not monitor what is happening much more regularly than that, given the level of concern expressed by the independent inquiry into what is happening at Teesworks?

[Baroness Swinburne (Con)]

Again, I can only give an assurance that this will not be waiting for six months. A number of these actions are required immediately and are therefore ongoing. We will be monitoring it both centrally and locally.

Representation of the People (Variation of Election Expenses and Exclusions) Regulations 2024

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 19th March 2024 Lords Chamber

I beg to move the amendment in my name because we must regret what the Government are doing as, once again, they abuse their power and bend the election rules quite grotesquely in their favour.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise to offer the strongest possible Green Party support to the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Rennard. This is indeed a great cause for regret, although I follow the noble Lord in saying that I entirely accept and agree with the security clarification that, unfortunately, is clearly necessary; I have absolutely no problems with that.

On social media, you know you are catching the zeitgeist, and that people are recognising what you are saying, when it gets repeated back to you. A couple of phrases that I use often on social media are increasingly repeated back to me. One is:

“#democracy - it would be a good idea”.


The other is:

“We get the politics that the few pay for”.


The second is simply and undoubtedly a statement of fact. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, set out such figures as £10 million, but even a donation of £1 million or—in the context of the elections we are talking about —£100,000 are potentially election changing. As the noble Lord said, this is happening at the last minute. The only way that this money will come in is through a few rich people.

We have to ask this question, and I would love the Minister to answer it: why does she think people give a donation of £10 million or £1 million or £100,000? Surely they do not give it for nothing. What do they get in return?

I should perhaps make a declaration of non-interest here since, as far as Green Party election spending is concerned, this is all entirely irrelevant. We were never going to spend up to the old limits, so this does not matter to us at all except that we will face a deluge of paper and social media posts, which will attempt to flood out our modest attempts to reach and speak to the electorate. That is the practical reality.

The noble Baroness, Lady Vere, likes to ask where people will say the money should come from. I very much accept the figure from 2011 of a maximum donation of £10,000. I could set it lower, but that will do for starters. I will say what is often considered the unsayable: we need state funding of political parties and election campaigning. Instead of the few paying for the politics we get, that would mean we get the politics that everyone has chosen.

That is effectively how the Green Party funds things, how we are funding these elections and how we will fund the coming general election: by crowdfunding—people putting in their £10 or £20 and making the choice to support a local candidate. But we have a cost of living crisis. The people who would have put in £20 can now put in only perhaps £10 or £5. Yet the millionaires and billionaires are getting richer, so their donations get bigger and bigger.

I have one final point to make. The security element of this really made me think of things that can get in the way and stop candidates running, and this deserves to be raised in this context and every electoral context. I refer to the access to elected office fund for disabled people, which was closed in March 2020 because of the Covid pandemic. We can discuss the continuation of the pandemic, but I do not think we are in an emergency situation any longer. The Government have failed to reinstate this fund despite its inclusion in the Disability Action Plan. There was an open letter written to the Government in the November by a whole coalition of disability groups calling for this small, modest measure to find a little bit of money to enable disabled people to compete on a level playing field in elections. So my question to the Minister is: will the Government reinstate the access to elected office fund? It is probably too late for these elections—not too late for billionaires, but for disabled people to start to run —but we could at least do it for the next set of elections, which will be the general election.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I add to what my noble friend Lord Rennard said just a few brief comments. First, on the timing, I note that when the committee considered this, the Minister in the Commons said:

“I will be perfectly frank … we could have delayed this until after the elections in May”.—[Official Report, Commons, Third Delegated Legislation Committee, 5/3/24; col. 6]


The Government should at least have asked themselves: how does this looks to a cynical public? Why rush it in just after it has been announced that they have received some huge donations? It looks like last-minute changing of the rules in favour of the Government.

I declare an interest as a Liberal Democrat. I recall the Electoral Commission commenting some years ago that we had a much larger number of donors to our party than the Conservative Party but, of course, a much smaller total of what had been given, because our donations tend to come, at best, in £5,000 or £10,000 chunks, rather than in chunks of £1 million or £2 million or more. It looks bad.

Secondly, as my noble friend has said, the Committee on Standards in Public Life report has been on the table for some time now. It is clear that the political parties ought to be coming to a consensus on what to do about that and what to set as a limit. I am sorry that the Government have not moved in that direction. I very much hope that, immediately after the next election, whatever Government come in will move on that.

Thirdly, we have a severe problem with public confidence in our democratic politics and it is a shame that the Government are not addressing this. The sense that money counts in political campaigns is part of the worry. The whiff of corruption that comes with donors being seen to be close to the Prime Minister, with big donations coming from companies that have made their money out of public contracts given by the Government—all of those things add to disillusionment with our politics, which is fundamentally corrosive of our democratic system.

I add that we now have a right-wing television station that made a loss last year of £31 million but, in spite of making a loss, is paying over £1 million to Conservative and right-wing politicians. The £340,000 increase that my noble friend mentioned is almost exactly the sum that Jacob Rees-Mogg is receiving for the few hours a week that he puts in as a television presenter. That is all corrosive of public confidence in public life, and the Committee on Standards in Public Life is correct to say so.

This SI, coming now, adds to the sense that money is what counts in British politics. We look across the Atlantic and see what has happened in American politics as big money has taken over. We do not want that to happen here, and I deeply regret that this Government are moving in that direction.

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All noble Lords strayed into the issue of donations. Let me make it clear that there is no change to the threshold at which checks on the permissibility of donations and donors are carried out. The level of those checks remains the same, exactly as it was, which is important. Accepting donations from foreign powers, for example, whether made directly or indirectly, is prohibited. There are strict rules prohibiting impermissible donations from entering into our political system through things such as proxy donors. That provides a safeguard against impermissible donations by the back door. Donations are monitored and controlled just the same as they always were.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, the Minister used the term “strayed into” the issue of donations, as if we were going off the subject. Will she acknowledge that the question of where the money is coming from is just as central to this statutory instrument as what the limit is?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

It is, but we already have the Elections Act, which looked at donations and the rules behind them. That part of election law is already being dealt with.

Fundraising is a legitimate part of the democratic process; we cannot get away from that. I am sorry, but the Government do not agree with the noble Baroness opposite that we should have political parties funded by government. That is not a policy of this Government, and I am not sure that it is a policy of the parties opposite.

Within our current system, while there are no caps on donations received, there are limits on what can be spent in order to maintain the level playing field—and the level playing field is the same now as it was in 2000. All reportable donations over the relevant thresholds will continue, as always, to be published online. This allows anyone to see who funds a political party and ensures that a transparent and accountable system is in place for those donations, so nothing has changed in that way.

It is important that people have the opportunity to know about their political parties’ policies. We cannot get away from the fact that that takes money. All we are doing is to ensure that the money agreed in 2000 has the same spending power this year as it had then.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, brought up an issue relating to disabled people. I am sorry that I do not have an answer to that, but I will make sure I get one tomorrow. It is an important issue and I thank her for bringing that up.

I think that I have answered the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire. This is about necessity within democracy; there has to be money to communicate one’s policies.

Local Regeneration: Industrial Areas

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the brave and challenging speech of the noble Lord, Lord Mawson. He led me to reflect on the impact of the first past the post electoral system in creating one-party states in local government, with some of the outcomes that he outlined. He also inspired me with his wander through the tastes of Yorkshire. I have to mention the wonderful Razan Alsous, a Syrian refugee who came to Yorkshire in 2012 and missed what she describes as her “squeaky cheese”—traditional halloumi cheese that she ate in Damascus. She now has an award-winning company making that cheese in Yorkshire.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong of Hill Top, for securing this debate, particularly for the way she worded the topic—the word “local” in “local regeneration of former industrial areas” is so important here. I thank her also for highlighting the challenges constraining this, particularly local government. I thirdly thank her for her timing, since my visits last weekend to Newcastle and North Tyneside means that I will have the same regional focus as the noble Baroness brought to this debate.

My visit was differently directed towards the Byker Wall estate, a 1970s social housing project with grade 2 listed status that has tried to maintain its existing community from the pre-development streets. There were many issues then and since in making that work. What I saw in my visit to Byker was a real struggle to deal with the problems of litter and isolation and loneliness, but it is also notable that community groups, such as Byker Mutual Aid, Byker Village Tenants and Residents Association, and St Peter’s Neighbourhood Association, have sprung up to try to fill the gaps that have been left by more than a decade of austerity in public services. Byker was the site of the incinerator ash scandal in the 1990s. The incinerator was finally closed due to the action of campaigners at the turn of the century.

Picking up on points that the noble Baroness made, we need to think about the clean-up of industrial and post-industrial areas and to focus on public health. Clean air, clean water and soil are the crucial foundations for a healthy community. We know that, across the UK, we have a major problem with disability and chronic illnesses. Of course individuals need support with that, but what we really need to do is build healthier communities so that people do not get ill in the first place. Figures from the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities show that in the most deprived neighbourhoods in England, which are many of the areas we are talking about, people develop multiple long-term health conditions 10 to 15 years earlier than in the least deprived communities, they spend many more years in ill health and they die sooner.

Another thing we need to focus on in many of these areas around health is warm, comfortable, affordable-to-heat homes. This is a particular issue in Byker, where the cost of heating with a district heating system is considerably higher than in other areas. In so many of these post-industrial areas, the housing stock is poor, yet that is a potential opportunity. The insulation of homes can create a field for many small, independent businesses, provided that they have the certainty of long-term government investment and not the boom and bust that has been induced by see-sawing government policies. I am afraid that the largest current opposition party has see-sawed in its home energy efficiency policies even before it has got into government.

Last month, the New Economics Foundation looked at the data on the Government’s home energy efficiency schemes and showed that, in a single year, rollout had fallen by 40%. The total number of households upgraded by the home upgrade grant—HUG—and local authority delivery schemes has fallen by 40% in the past year. Similarly, the number of households upgraded under ECO, the largest and longest running scheme, has fallen by 55% in the past year. The social housing decarbonisation fund has existed for less than two years, but if we look at the figures quarter on quarter, we find that it is down 41% as well. This is key to Britain reaching its net-zero targets, but it is also crucial to cutting the £2 billion costs for the NHS that come from the poor quality of our housing stock.

Money that has to be spent on heating cannot be spent with local businesses and suppliers. It goes into big multinational pockets. Had the Government brought in community energy schemes, which your Lordships’ House tried to push very hard through the Energy Bill, the money could be returning into communities.

On the importance of local activity, local energy and local decision-making, I want to focus on some good news stories. One of the places I want to highlight is the Valley Project in Holme Wood, Bradford. There was an adventure playground project there, and money was parachuted in from London—the whole plan was parachuted in. Some big high-tech equipment was installed. It lasted a couple of years and then fell apart. Then, a couple of local people, ironically made unemployed by austerity, started small, working with the community. It is now a wonderfully lively, successful project using mostly recycled and donated materials that the children work with to design their own spaces. As a little advert for it, if anyone knows a local source, it is currently looking for some large wooden cable reels for the children to use in their secret garden as tables and chairs. That gives a sense of the kind of project that is working to lift up that community.

I have not yet focused on industrial policy, as I am sure many noble Lords to follow in this debate may well do. To return to Byker, the area has a proud history of glassworks and community artists, a tradition that continues with Mushroom Works, Testhouse 5 and Lime Street. The estate was built with hobby rooms: spaces for people to do activities. The one that I visited used to house a darkroom for the development of photography skills, but they are often not widely used today. We need to see that the resources are there to be put in to work with local people to develop such facilities for modern-day uses. The key has to be to build on what is already there in local communities and focus on their skills, knowledge and capacities, rather than bringing in highly paid outside consultants and grand plans drawn up by them.

Here, I want to draw a real contrast. The noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, caused me to cross out a significant part of my speech that covered the Teesworks area, so I want to look at the alternative, 180-degrees opposed model. The Preston model of public sector working and community wealth building is focused on the procurement policies of the local authority and other anchor institutions, such as its university and housing providers, to support local businesses, develop new enterprises, encourage better working conditions such as through the real living wage, and increase the socially productive use of wealth and assets, such as local government pension funds. The focus is on genuine prosperity and the creation of wealth in that community, rather than some, often all too artificial, bottom line.

I go back to a figure that I have cited before in your Lordships’ House: 10% of the entire land area of Britain has been sold out of public ownership in the past four decades. That 10% of the entire country was 50% of what used to be public land holdings. We need to see a building up or restoration of public assets, not further privatisation and loss to the public. For example, among the co-operatives in Preston there is the Brookfield retrofit co-operative, led by a community organisation, and a housing co-operative for—and run by—the Traveller community.

What is not the way forward, as the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, set out so clearly, are the freeports. That model encourages corruption, tax evasion and criminal activity. Freeports suck businesses and jobs out of other areas; indeed, the evidence from around the world is that it is a model built mostly on relocating existing businesses, not generating anything new.

I conclude with the words of Ruth Hannan, the former director of the People’s Powerhouse in Preston. She told an event last year that the need for local government is to be as flexible as possible, so that it can improve people’s lives. Ms Hannan said:

“Most of the time, we have to fit into the system, rather than the system adapting to us”.


I suggest that that is also a lesson for Westminster. Westminster needs to get out of the road. It needs to stop providing directions and being a backseat driver, to ensure that local communities have the power and resources that they need to make decisions for their own future, not with direction from what is often far, far away Westminster.

Housebuilding

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 28th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My noble friend brings up a very important point. The Government are already committed to improving redress for new-build home buyers when things go wrong. The Building Safety Act includes provision for the new homes ombudsman scheme to become statutory and to provide dispute resolution to determine complaints by buyers of new-build homes against their developers.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, the report notes that about

“60% of … houses built in 2021 to 2022 were … speculative private development”,

and acknowledges that this has widened

“the gap … between what the market will deliver and what communities need”.

Is it not the case that, to get the right home in the right place at the right price, we have to get away from this privatised model and—to address the issues the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, raised—get better quality?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

That is exactly why the levelling-up Act made such an issue of every local authority having a local plan. That local—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Oh!

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

It is no good the noble Baroness shaking her head. If you are going to have a plan-led system, which is the simplest system to navigate, you need a local plan. You need to know how many houses you need in your area, what types of houses they are and the area of land that you are going to use for housing. If local authorities have local plans, they will deliver more houses in the right place and of the right type that this country needs.

Electoral Commission Strategy and Policy Statement

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2024 Lords Chamber

This statement and the ability to intervene through an Electoral Commission will undermine our democracy; certain people have shown that you can do so very effectively. Our whole democracy is at risk if people do not come forth and be honest with the nation, because other people will go down the same route in the run-up to the next election.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure and an honour to briefly follow the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, and that extremely powerful and important speech. It is important in this debate that the House hears from the insurgent voice, the non-establishment voice, the voice of change, which the Green Party represents. However, I should declare an interest because much of the debate on this statement has been about the place of money in our politics, and the Green Party basically does not have any in comparison to the people we have just been hearing about. We operate on the enthusiasm and the energy of our members, the power of our arguments, the strength of our debate; that is what should determine our politics and be the foundation of democracy. Overseeing that should be the independent Electoral Commission. We have heard again and again that, if we were judging any other country, an independent electoral commission would be the absolute basis of judgment. We should come back to our own Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s statement, in its usual modest terms:

“The House may wish to press the Minister for a compelling justification for the Government’s approach”.


The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, made a valiant effort to put the case and said that the Electoral Commission was not a perfect institution. I do not think anyone here would claim that there was such a thing as a perfect institution. However, I invite your Lordships’ House to consider the classic scales of justice and weigh up a judgment of the independent Electoral Commission versus the Government, with all their vested interests, and say which way should those scales be weighed in the interests of justice and the interests of democracy.

Teesworks Joint Venture

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 30th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, as the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, said, there are many areas of concern that are yet to be covered by any investigation. Indeed, the report notes that many issues raised by third parties were outside the scope of its review, such as those raised regarding wildlife die-off and health and safety. There were, of course, many grave concerns and a tragedy of two men dying on the site. There were subsequent accidents where an excavator fell into the river with the driver inside, and dangerous exposure to benzine. There must be concern about whether the remediation of the site has been carried out properly. What further plans do the Government have to look into all those other issues raised locally, which remain concerns and which the report has not covered?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I do not believe that there are any further plans to cover any further reviews.