Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 22nd May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow what I have to say are two very important speeches. They were from two expert contributors and I have nothing to add except to say that they have certainly convinced me that there is grave cause for concern here.

I want to speak about another government amendment, Amendment 467F, about requiring local authorities to transfer land to academy trusts. We have to look at this in the context of the huge privatisation of public land—2 million hectares, 10% of the entire British land mass—over the past few decades. In 2018 prices, that was estimated to be worth £400 billion. It is also in the context of the Government in the past month having apparently won—certainly in the High Court anyway—a legal tussle with Annington Homes, owned by the private equity firm Terra Firma, over the privatisation of the Ministry of Defence housing portfolio, which the National Audit Office estimated had left the Government between £2 billion and £4 billion worse off.

The amendment is quite long and quite technical and I have done my best to grind my way through to make some sense of it. What we are seeing here is a swap. What is the Government’s assessment of the risk of this swap and of the lack of clarity that might occur in terms of local democracy and local understanding?

I have a couple of other things to ask about this amendment. Proposed new paragraph 9A(7) talks about the local authority bearing the costs of this swap. Why? There is also the underlying concern of many local residents around the country and many local authorities that potentially an essential resource disappears from public space for the interests of private profit. One of the case studies for this was the Durand Academy, a particularly infamous case in Lambeth where the Department for Education terminated an academy’s funding agreement and it maintained that it still owned the land on the school site, and accommodation and a leisure centre had been built there.

Speaking as a former school governor, I am well aware of the complications that have arisen from school buildings that are also mixed with private accommodation, private accommodation that is leasehold and private accommodation owned by the council. Very complex situations are being created so I am really seeking reassurance from the Minister that this amendment is not going to add further risks in terms of the transfer of lands to academy trusts.

[The Lord Bishop of Chelmsford]

My Lords, following the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, I rise to speak in favour of government Amendment 467F and at the outset say that my right reverend friend the Bishop of Durham, who leads for the Church of England on education, very much regrets that he cannot be in his place.

We are grateful to the Department for Education and the department for levelling up for working together and with us in the Church to fulfil the Government’s commitment to bringing forward legislation to safeguard statutory protections relating to issues arising from the occupation of land by Church academies. The decision not to progress the Schools Bill might have meant that this uncontroversial but important change to legislation would have been lost, so it is very good to have the amendment in this Bill, which will maintain the important legacy of educational endowments that provide land for the purposes of a school with a religious character. This is important for all schools with a religious character, not just Church of England schools, and it will remove a significant barrier on the journey to academisation for Church schools, which is vital in the Government’s policy aims, as such schools make up one-third of the entire school sector and seek to serve local communities up and down the country.

As boards of education implement their strategies for the development of the family of Church schools in each diocese, they need to have confidence to do so in a way that ensures the security of that provision for the future. That still requires further work on governance arrangements which we are developing in partnership with the DfE through the use of the Church model articles, but it also requires legislation with regard to the way land is held on separate charitable trusts for use by academy companies. This amendment provides that legislation and captures clearly the issue as described in the fact sheet that accompanied the now withdrawn Schools Bill.

We therefore welcome this amendment to preserve trustees’ existing land interests once schools whose sites are held on educational endowments become academies. This amendment is a vital step towards ensuring that school sites continue to be used for original charitable purposes, enabling schools with a religious character to engage with the changing educational landscape. It will give greater certainty to the sector, the Catholic Education Service, the Church of England Education Office and our dioceses that together serve nearly 2 million children today and are at the heart of communities across our villages, towns and cities. It ensures that the distinctive Christian ethos of Church schools will be protected in the long term by reassuring the sector that on conversion to an academy, the nature and purpose of the trust deed of the school site will continue to be preserved if the academy needs to relocate. We therefore wholeheartedly support this amendment.

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Amendment 478 is on rooftop solar. I look forward to the new report from the Campaign to Protect Rural England, The Rooftop Revolution: Unlocking the Potential of Rooftop Solar in an Energy, Climate and Cost-of-Living Crisis, which will be launched tomorrow. It is such a shame that we have pre-empted its launch by a day. I am sure that it will strongly reinforce the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. It is good to know that since this amendment was first tabled, the Government have made positive commitments on solar, including taking forward the recommendations in the Skidmore review calling for a gear shift in delivery to achieve renewables targets, including the solar and onshore wind revolution. That is all well and good, but more must be done to achieve the Government’s “70 gigawatts by 2035” ambition. It is vital that the new solar taskforce take forward industry recommendations at the pace and scale needed.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan. She has made a powerful case for ground source heat network trials, so I will not pursue that, except to note that the case is clearly much more overwhelming than the weak to non-existent case for the hydrogen trial the Government seem to want to pursue.

I will speak to Amendment 478, which has full cross-party and non-party support, and which the Green Party would have attached its name to had there been space. I note that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, with his Amendment 504GJE, is on to an important and crucial point. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, I was going to refer noble Lords to the CPRE report, which is due out in about nine hours’ time, so we are pre-empting that a little. I also reference something that shows where we could have been—the Primrose Hill solar village in Huddersfield, which was built nearly two decades ago. Driven by pioneering local Green councillor Andrew Cooper, 79 affordable homes were built there on a brownfield site. For two decades the people there have been benefiting from the kind of housing we should have been building everywhere in the country, all of the time. That it is in a very deprived area of Huddersfield, classic levelling-up territory, demonstrates how much people have suffered because of the policy failures of the past two decades.

Rather than repeating what other people have said, I want to make a few additional points. The number of households that are retrofitting solar panels has reached its highest level in more than seven years. More than 50,000 installed them between January and March, which shows how much people want solar panels. They are going for it, but through the much more expensive, difficult and complicated method of retrofitting, rather than buying a new home that already has them on the roof, which is what Amendment 478 would provide for.

I will cross-reference certain points rather than go through everything. My honourable friend in the other place, Caroline Lucas, had a Westminster Hall debate on 22 March on rooftop solar for homes. The point was made that about two-thirds of what is currently fitted is ground mounted. It is nonsensical that we are using up ground for that. Earlier today, your Lordship’s House debated the land use strategy and the establishment of a land use commission. Surely, such as commission would be saying that there are so many things we could be doing with that land that we should not be using it for that until every roof—certainly every new roof—has solar panels fitted to it.

I want to pick up on some points that might be made in opposition to this amendment, perhaps pre-empting the Minister. Yes, it could add cost to a new property, but there would also be an estimated saving of between £974 and £1,150 per year per home. Taking into account the cost-of-living crisis, the cost would be rapidly recovered by the people living in these homes.

We want to talk about having affordable housing, and part of affordability is being able to afford to run the home on a year-to-year basis into the future. Plus, we are in a climate emergency, the world is not meeting its carbon targets, and this is one obvious way that Britain should be making a further contribution.

In the debate in the other place, it was suggested that there are other ways of doing this, and that maybe solar panels are not the answer. Of course, this amendment refers to the appropriate housing; it is not saying every single house but, more than that, solar panels do not preclude also having ground source or air source heat pumps. In fact, the combination of those two things is absolutely valuable.

There has been talk of global supply challenges, but the right political will would ensure that it is possible to source these materials outside China, where the bulk of the current issues—particularly human rights—regarding solar panels lie. There is also the question of sourcing silicon, but there are alternatives to that and breakthroughs are being made all the time. It has been suggested this may stifle innovation somehow. This is not just about delivering the basic fabric of a building that should be there; it does not mean that we cannot do many additional things as well, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, has so clearly suggested.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, for introducing this group of amendments and her amendment in particular. We strongly support amendments that aim to increase renewable energy sources. This is a levelling-up Bill. One of the missions laid out in the White Paper is to increase well-being. When we think about the cost of energy at the moment, surely having well-heated homes has to be a measure of well-being in society. By supporting these amendments, we can make steps towards meeting that mission. As the noble Baroness said in the introduction to her amendment, it is simple but sensible. We completely agree.

The amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, is again really important. There is such huge potential for solar panels on commercial buildings that we completely miss. The thing that sprung to mind when I read his amendment was those colossal warehouses that can be seen along the motorways when driving along. They are in completely open space, and surely there is huge potential for putting solar panels on their roofs.

We know that, by 2050, the United Kingdom has a target to cut emissions of CO₂ by 80%, but we also know that the Government are way off achieving that target. Again, as the noble Baroness said, it is really good that the Government are beginning to realise the importance and potential of solar power, following on from the Skidmore review, but as she also said, what we need is action—to make the potential of solar power a reality. If new-build homes had solar panels and the ability to store energy in batteries—which is, of course, something that we have to develop further—as a country we would clearly benefit from a fairly significant reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide. To me, it seems completely obvious: the more energy we harness from the sun, the less we need to get from fossil fuels.

Solar panels mean that, for certain parts of the year, households can enjoy being completely self-powered. This would of course bring a significant reduction to their energy bills, helping to meet that mission of well-being—yet, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, said, there is no target for this yet. If you are going genuinely to deliver and make a difference, you need to set targets.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 18th May 2023 Lords Chamber

However, if the Government are determined to tidy up this instance of duplication, I hope my noble friend will find my amendment a helpful and simple solution. It would ensure that environmental outcomes report regulations can replace habitats regulations requirements only if they are functionally the same. This would take away any risk that a future Government would weaken these essential environmental laws, while clarifying the Government’s intention to reduce duplication. I hope my noble friend will agree to this simple solution.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge, and I am sure the entire Committee will join me in saying that we are delighted to have him back with us. I also commend the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, for the huge amount of work that has gone into this. So much is having to be filled in from the Opposition Benches and indeed the Back Benches on the other side, because this is such a skeleton Bill.

We have not only a shortage of birds, mammals and insects, but we are running into a shortage of Henry VIII metaphors. We have Henry VIII on steroids with rockets strapped to his boots—I have run out of additions to that one. The Bill as before us now would put into law an extreme right to Ministers to do whatever they would like. It is interesting to be having this debate in the context of the just-completed Report of the retained EU law Bill, because then your Lordships’ House expressed very clearly a desire to see non-regression in environmental regulations, but we need amendments such as these to the Bill to deliver the will that the House has expressed.

This group also made me think of debate on the economic crime Bill, where we were recently discussing the issue of freeports. There is a great deal of fear and concern in the community that these are places of open slather, where businesses will be allowed to do whatever they like and destroy whatever they like, where all the rules are taken away. As the Bill is written, that is what environmental outcome reports will effectively be doing: taking away EU-derived protections and leaving nothing written down in their place.

I will not run through it in detail, but if any noble Lords have not seen it, I point them to Wildlife and Countryside Link’s excellent report going line by line through a number of the amendments and explaining their importance. I pick out a couple of points. Amendment 372 concerns the climate. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, said, we are in a climate emergency, and how can that be missing from this crucial Bill? We are supposed to be talking about a levelling-up Bill. These changes to environmental protection around the country seems a long way from levelling up, but that is where we are. If we think about the protection of nature and the impact of the lack of nature on public health, people’s well-being and communities, it is of particular interest to communities generally seen to be in need of levelling-up support.

I particularly pick up one element of Clause 141: the fact that it destroys the mitigation hierarchy. The environmental mitigation hierarchy starts with “avoid”: do not trash things in the first place. We are one of the most nature-deprived corners of this battered planet and should be absolutely avoiding environmental damage. At the moment, we are doing the opposite. I think of how often my social media feed and my email queue are full of desperate people saying, “How can we be cutting down this ancient tree to build one house?” or, “How can we be destroying this hedge when, with a bit of initiative and creativity, we could leave the hedge and build some houses as well?” There is so much we are not doing, and the way the Bill is written allows open slather to that.

I just note one point on Amendment 388, which introduces a super-affirmative procedure for regulations. It is an inadequate backstop: it is a backstop, but not nearly good enough. We need to write the essential protections into the Bill. That would mean that the Committee is following the desire that the House expressed at Report on the retained EU law Bill.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to three amendments in my name in this group: Amendments 378A, 378B and 386A. They are designed to try to ensure that this part of the Bill works effectively, and I hope will be regarded as helpful by my noble friend on the Front Bench. Not everything I have had to say has always been helpful, but I hope this is—it is all intended to be helpful, of course.

I remind the Committee of my registered interest as chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum. In that context, members of the forum from BDB Pitmans helped me with the construction of these amendments. Amendment 378A relates to Clause 142(3), which provides for informing the public and for “adequate public engagement” to take place in relation to the exercise of functions under this part. The effect of this new provision could be to extend public consultation requirements to the exercise of permitted development rights, because of the use of “proposed relative consent”. These are consents.

The present situation does not require such consents to be the subject of such a consultation requirement. In the legislation as it stands, adequate public engagement does not imply no public engagement. This would therefore increase the burdens on utilities, for example, in exercising a consent for a permitted development right in relation to telecommunications, highways, rail, et cetera. Amendment 378A would enable the Secretary of State to disapply the requirement where it would impose a disproportionate burden on development. Alternatively, page 174 mentions

“proposed relevant consent or proposed relevant plan”

in relation to “adequate public engagement”. If “proposed relevant consent” was replaced with “EOR regulations”, it would serve the purpose perfectly well, and save the problem that might otherwise arise.

Amendment 378B relates to Clause 142(1) on non-regression. It is a pleasure to welcome back to his place my noble friend Lord Randall of Uxbridge. We have heard from him about the

“overall level of environmental protection”.

This is defined by reference to the European Union law when this Act is passed. My Amendment 378B would enable the Secretary of State to take into account, in exercising this responsibility to maintain the level of environmental protection, any urgent need for energy resilience. It is worth remembering that Section 20 of the Environment Act 2021 provides for environmental legislation to be introduced with a statement that

“will not have the effect of reducing the level of environmental protection provided for by any existing environmental law”.

There is then in that section a statutory provision enabling the Secretary of State to make

“provision that is different from existing environmental law”

and

“might provide for the same or a greater level of environmental protection”.

Why then is there no equivalent provision in relation here to the making of EOR regulations? The inflexibility of this provision is particularly illustrated by the prospect in the European Union of the introduction of a streamlined environmental assessment process for low-carbon technologies. I have reflected this in the phrase

“urgent need for energy resilience”.

This would enable Ministers to take account of such a process to advance low-carbon technologies and not be tied specifically to a level of environmental protection defined by current environmental law. I encourage my noble friend to consider either my amendment or something similar to the provision in Section 20 of the Environment Act 2021.

Amendment 386A refers to Clause 150, which makes the consequential amendments to this part. It is about the proposed repeal of Section 71 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, which is what provides for environmental assessments. As it stands, that section will be repealed two months after this Bill passes into law. Existing environmental impact assessment regulations will then subsist from that moment until such time as the EOR regulations can be made, following the entry into force of those regulations.

But how long is the gap? How long will it be between this Act coming into force and the making of the EOR regulations? It could easily be well over a year and possibly two. For the greater part of that period, no power would remain to amend the environmental impact assessment regulations, pending the environmental outcomes reports regime. The EOR power is not able to amend the EIA regime until that stage.

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Recent rumours, suggestions and stories suggest that the Government are now thinking again and may, at best, propose an extension to the deadline rather than its elimination. To that, I reply that I have been in this House long enough to know that, when half a loaf is available, you should take it. However, such a decision does not help to resolve the basic reason for the delay, which is the inability, incapacity or unreadiness of local authorities to process the applications already made. The Ramblers, other interested voluntary groups and, indeed, individual walkers such as myself have no power to influence events. They watch powerless from the sidelines as this valuable national asset is put at risk. Surely, to remove the cut-off date and end this suspense would cause no real difficulty. I therefore look forward to hearing from my noble friend the Government’s considered response.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, and to continue the trend of the afternoon of unusual coalitions across your Lordships’ House after my noble friend Lady Jones agreed fervently with the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, on the last group. I entirely agree with everything that the noble Lord just said. I also very much agree with the two initial speeches in this group on Amendment 387, to which the Green group would have added our backing if there had been space. In the interests of clarity and making progress, I will constrain myself to speaking to four amendments: Amendments 467H to 467J in the name of my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb —she unfortunately cannot be in your Lordships’ House because she has had to dash off to an emergency dental appointment; I think that we all feel her pain—and my own Amendment 480.

I have a slight structural problem in that those first three are amendments to government Amendment 467G, so I shall try to explain the situation—I hope the Minister will forgive me if I cross over some ground on the government amendment as well—and then briefly set out the details. The background is that maps of access land show people where they are allowed to exercise their current very limited right to roam in England. Public access to these areas of mountain, moor, heath and downland are mapped according to criteria drawn up by Natural England. These maps were published in 2004. The Countryside and Rights of Way Act requires them to be reviewed every 10 years, so this review should have happened in 2014. Then—we are back to the issue of deadlines—the Government extended that deadline by another 10 years and are now seeking to extend it to a full 25 years after the maps were first produced. The first maps took only four years to produce, so why is there this delay in updating them, especially in the light of the Government’s commitment to ensure that everyone lives within 15 minutes walking distance of a green or blue space?

The Government admitted in the other place that

“not all downland was mapped satisfactorily”.

This concession proves what organisations such as the Ramblers have said for a long time: there are areas of the countryside where people should and do have the legal right to roam but are wrongly prohibited from exercising that right because of the failure of the maps. The organisations that have been working on this issue have extensive lists of mapping errors and omissions, many of which have been recognised by Natural England but cannot be corrected until the mapping review takes place. Examples of this span from Cumbria to Northumberland, Somerset to Sussex.

Another failure in the current maps is that there are access islands, where the public have a legal right to roam but no legal means to access the land. Unless you can parasail yourself down into it, there is no way of getting there. These valuable recreation spaces could be opened up and connected to the access network. One example is Letcombe Bassett in Oxfordshire. The mapping review could also open up more downland, particularly in southern and eastern England, which has much less right to roam than upland areas. For example, only 0.6% of land in Kent has a right to roam, compared to 72% of the Peak District.

This mapping review might also open up access to waterways and woodlands, such as the majority of Forestry Commission land that has been voluntarily dedicated as open access land. This could open up access for a good half of the population who do not have it now. The need for a mapping review is clear, as it will give more people rights to access incredible nature sites. Given that it took only four years to do the original mapping, it is nonsense that it should take almost eight more years for the first review to be completed.

The government amendment seeks to remove the duty to conduct further reviews after this one—it will set things in stone when this final review is done and that is it. This looks like an exercise in the Government removing a statutory duty that they have continually failed to deliver, rather than having any real justification. These reviews should be regular and seek continual improvement, because there will of course be mistakes that are not recovered until after the next review. Noble Lords can read the details for themselves but, very briefly, Amendment 467H would allow five years instead of seven to complete the mapping review, Amendment 467J would allow extra rights for appeals and Amendment 467I would allow for a continuous review process. Those are the amendments in the name of my noble friend.

I come now to Amendment 480 in my name. It is interesting that it is very rare that the two Houses are talking about the same issue at the same time: my honourable friend Caroline Lucas had a debate today in the other place on the right of access to nature, which is fitting for these issues that people are very concerned about and which are very much at the forefront of the public’s mind. This Bill gives us the opportunity to address them.

My amendment is a “Let’s have a review” amendment. Noble Lords may say that this is a sign of your Lordships’ House modifying my instincts and making me look for a middle way, which goes entirely against my instincts. In September 2021, when we were debating what is now the Environment Act, I put down an amendment that said: “Let’s have a right to roam in England”. That is still where I want to go, but I am looking for others to back me and ways in which we might make progress in your Lordships’ House, so all this amendment does is say: “Let’s have a review in England about people’s right of access to nature”. Let us not forget that in Scotland, people have the right to roam over most of the countryside: not in front gardens or gardens, not in places growing crops or where you will do damage, but otherwise you can go where you will. By contrast, in England 1% of the population owns half the land—quite a few of them are very familiar to your Lordships’ House—and the other 99% have the right to roam on just 8% of the remainder. My noble friend’s earlier amendments would marginally improve that situation; this is looking for a really big improvement.

I will not talk at length, as I am aware of the time, but I have three quick points on the benefits we could all see from a right to roam. I was at an event this morning where the Rural Policy Group released its annual Sustainable Food report, and we were talking about citizen science, which the Minister was just praising in wrapping up the previous group. We were also talking about the internet of things; someone said how brilliant it would be if we could plant electronic sensors all over the countryside. Someone pointed out that we would have to really fix rural connectivity to the internet before this would go very far, but we could use those electronic sensors to map the numbers of dragonflies, certain birds or butterflies. Of course, if we had a right to roam, we could also have groups of citizen scientists roaming around the countryside doing that mapping for you at considerably lower cost and without all the issues around electronic technology.

Also on the Environment Act there was a great deal of discussion about litter. Much of the litter in the countryside is blown or washed there, and people exercising their right to roam can clean some of it up. Undoubtedly, the biggest argument of all is the issue of public well-being and public health. We know so much now about the need for public health to improve, and we know that the right of access to nature gives that improvement.

[Baroness Scott of Needham Market (LD)]

My Lords, I support and shall speak very briefly to Amendment 471 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson. It is really important to recognise at the outset that his amendment is about one specific thing. It is not about the merits or otherwise of public access; it is about the future of the estimated 40,000 miles of historic public rights of way that were omitted from the definitive map in 1949 because the mapping was done in a great hurry. It is not about creating rights that have not previously existed; it is really important to recognise that.

I have form when it comes to public rights of way. For a decade, I chaired Suffolk County Council’s rights of way committee and have spent many happy hours looking at public map modifications and all the things that go along with that. These things are very time consuming, and there are a number of reasons why. One is the complexity of rights of way law. I do not think we are ever going to tackle that, because it would be really difficult to know where to begin; it has been built up over so many decades and centuries and it is a very complex area of law.

There is also the matter of the historical record and the time that needs to be spent going to the Public Record Office, looking at tithe maps and other documents and so on to get an understanding of whether something is or is not an historic public right of way. That is important because, in highway law, when something has once been a highway, it will always be a highway until there is a legal Act to stop it. There are some very lengthy statutory processes. All these add up to a huge demand on local authorities, which have less capacity than they did back in my day. Finally, there is the capacity of the Secretary of State and the appeals process. All these mean that every claim takes a long time to process.

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[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I thank my noble friend. He and the noble Baroness made very important points, but this is a question of resourcing and of prioritisation in local authorities. Of course, some local authorities are inundated and others are less so. It is about supporting them to register these rights of way. I will work with him and all interested noble Lords to make sure that we assess how this is going against the new timescale.

Amendment 475 would have the effect of permitting the right to wild camp on open access land. The Government understand concerns about the ability to wild camp in Dartmoor National Park, as raised by the noble Baroness. As a result of the local court judgment, this has come into much clearer view for the wider public. Private Members’ Bills in the other place also seek to make similar legislative amendments to those proposed here.

For the record, it is worth saying that Dartmoor has never banned wild camping: there was just never a right to it. It is a question of which end of the telescope you look at this issue from. There was what I thought was a very fair report on “Countryfile” a few weeks ago, which gave the perspective of both those who want that access as a right and those who very often end up clearing up the mess from the small proportion of those who act irresponsibly and damage our natural environment. The amendment would have negative impacts, including potential legal conflict and complexity surrounding the rights of private landowners, concerns about health and safety and the liability of landowners, and the risk of damage to the natural and historic environment.

Amendment 480 requires the Government to review recreational access to land and open access land. The Government are already required by law to complete a review of open access land under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000, and the next review is due by 2024-25. We will consult on extending the rights to open access land after having completed the review of our existing maps of open access land; this point was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. I understand the point that she raised, and I have been active in providing access to land close to where a lot of people live. I understand the tensions and problems. Much can be done by good joint working between land managers and the people who wish to use it. I am very happy to continue that debate.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I thank the Minister for giving way. I have a point of clarification. The term “recreational access to land” may have been interpreted as meaning open access land. This amendment is meant to mean all land, not just open access land, and I think that the way it is written shows that.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I understand the campaigning point that the noble Baroness makes. That is perhaps for another occasion in this House; I am very happy to have that debate. I want to see more access but, over the next six years, the recovery of species in this country has to be our priority, as there has been a catastrophic decline. We have to work with people to give them more access where it is appropriate, but we also have to protect our countryside and rare habitats and make sure that hotspots of biodiversity are allowed to thrive, because the benefits from those will spill out right across our country.

Amendment 504GJC, so ably spoken to by my noble friend Lord Lucas, enables local communities, landowners and organisations to contribute directly to the 30 by 30 target through an internationally recognised structure—namely, the other effective area-based conservation measure. We understand the intentions behind this amendment. I provide reassurance that, as I said earlier, the Government are committed to protecting 30% of land for nature by 2030 and to developing the most appropriate approach to increasing and enhancing our protected areas and other land of value to nature.

We are working with partners across the country, including members of the public, the environmental sector, academics, farmers, landowners and the private sector, to deliver against this commitment. The nature recovery Green Paper sought views on our approach to 30 by 30. This included our plans to explore how land that is delivering for biodiversity outside of our designated protected areas can contribute to our 30 by 30 target. Many of the reforms explored in the Green Paper have fed into the Government’s environmental improvement plan, our delivery plan for protecting nature. The noble Lord is absolutely right to raise these points. More areas will be developed for nature as part of our reforms, and I very strongly believe that these should be included in our 30 by 30 calculations.

Government Amendments 467G, 504O, 509E and 515 address the requirement for Natural England to review the maps of open access land in their entirety at set intervals, with the first review currently due to be delivered by 2024-25 and subsequent reviews to be completed every 20 years following this date. These amendments allow Natural England to complete proportionate reviews, focusing on areas that were mapped incorrectly or have changed status, on an ongoing basis. While much open access land is already mapped correctly, some mistakes were made during the initial mapping process, and a first review of these areas is required to establish an accurate baseline. The amendments do not remove the first review deadline completely but move it to 2031 to allow for sufficient preparation of the review.

As I have said, we recognise the importance of enabling access to the countryside. That is why we have established 13 community forests, alongside substantial programmes to create more green open space and significantly expand national trails. We have also created and restored some 360,000 football fields of habitat since 2010. Our response to the Glover recommendations made clear that we will not consider whether CROW rights should be expanded until the review of the CROW maps is complete. Our stakeholders have been clear that reviewing the maps is a necessary first step before any consideration of expanding rights can be made. Once the first review is completed and a baseline established, the amendments will enable us to move to a continuous selective review system. Any changes in land use can be amended on the maps in good time rather than needing to wait up to 20 years for further review.

Amendment 467G inserts a new provision into the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 regarding when Natural England must carry out reviews following the issuing of open access maps, and the matters that such a review must cover. The amendment also makes provision for regulations to set out the procedure on a review and makes consequential amendments.

I hope noble Lords will support these important amendments. A substantial amount of planning is required if we are to ensure that the reviewed maps are fit for purpose, so that we can then switch to a system of limited continuous review rather than the periodic reviews required at present. Amendment 467H would reduce, by three years, the time we have to make sure that the first review of maps is completed to the standard needed. The Government have tabled amendments which remove the scope for regulations to push back the deadline for the review, so I offer the noble Baroness assurance that this date will not move again.

Amendment 467I would insert a legal requirement to make regulations to enable subsequent reviews of the open access maps. Once the Bill has achieved Royal Assent, the Government intend to make regulations to enable a continuous review following the completion of the first review, which I hope will reassure the noble Baroness that the ability to do this will not be lost.

Amendment 467J would take the opposite approach of the government amendment by returning to the existing power to invoke the original appeals regime so that it applies to the review process. The Government feel it is important that we have the flexibility to fit the details of the appeal regime to the very different circumstances of the review, and therefore do not feel able to support this amendment.

Voter Authority Certificates

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords—

[Noble Lords]

Greens!

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 18th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

It might be covered in the national model design code, but I do not think that is how it looks at the moment. The purpose of this document last year was to say, “Put it into the national model design code”. Logically, if you are going to do that, you have to at least signal its importance in the National Planning Policy Framework. Otherwise, all your guidance —because, technically, that is what it is—simply does not cohere together. What we have discovered, which is at the heart of many of these arguments, is that in large measure we do not yet know—we are still to debate this—how far what the Government say in the National Planning Policy Framework will be national development management policies and, by extension, cannot be varied from in local plans. So we have this inexorable relationship between things that we do not know and how it is going to turn out in the future.

Amendment 222 is very simply saying, because we do not know and cannot find evidence of the centrality of these environmental principles to the national model design code or the National Planning Policy Framework, let us put them in the Bill. All I am doing in this context is saying that, at this stage, I want to know that they will be central to the design approach—and if they are not, they ought to be. I hope that Ministers will be able to reassure me on that point.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise to offer Green support for all these amendments. On the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, it is worth reflecting that if you design a space, a community or a building that is accessible and welcoming to everybody, that will be a really good building for any person to enjoy. This is the same principle that applies to accessible public transport and many other areas.

I mostly want to speak to Amendment 222 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. I commend him both on tabling this amendment and on his excellent introduction to it. He was perhaps reading the mind of the Committee on Climate Change, because he must have tabled this amendment before its report about three weeks ago, which really stressed the nation’s utter failure to prepare for the climate reality that is now already locked in—what is now known in shorthand as adaptation. Another Member of your Lordships’ House, the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, said:

“This has been a lost decade in preparing for and adapting to the known risks that we face from climate change”.


It is very clear that what we should be doing now is making sure that we design, build and deliver buildings, infrastructure and communities that are actually fit for—as the noble Lord said—the next century. To take a practical example of this, the APPG on Wetlands has done a great deal of work and spread the word about how crucial wetlands are. We think about all the issues the Government keep facing all the time on sewage and what is spilling into our rivers and oceans. Sustainable urban drainage systems and just the smallest-scale wetlands—something that I have seen NGOs presenting with—can be a way of enriching biodiversity and addressing the kind of issues that this amendment does. They also create a much more pleasant environment for people and do something to tackle all the issues we have with water distribution in our country.

It is not just the Committee on Climate Change. Yesterday your Lordships’ House gave strong support for the amendment to the Energy Bill saying that we absolutely have to deal with retrofitting—with the adaptation that is necessary for existing homes. That very much addresses this amendment as well.

I will offer one constructive suggestion to the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, and something to think about. We have now got to the stage where pretty much everyone, including the Government, is talking about the climate emergency and about biodiversity in nature. These are just two of the very big issues we face in terms of the planetary boundaries. A year or so back, the Stockholm institute concluded that we have exceeded the planetary boundary for novel entities, which is shorthand for pesticides, plastics and pharmaceuticals. I suggest that the next step—which everyone will be talking about in a few years, but we can get ahead of the curve now—is to say that we need design codes that ensure we are living within all the planetary boundaries, which includes things such as geochemical flows and protecting fresh water: a whole range of issues that come under the planetary boundaries model. If we are indeed to be able to survive and thrive on this poor, battered planet, we have to design to live within those planetary boundaries.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, is quite right to raise the issue of accessible and inclusive design. Everyone benefits where design is accessible and inclusive for everyone, so all planners and all local plan strategies should bear that in mind as a prior consideration. The noble Lord has our complete support.

We must say two things to the Government that the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has said several times today. We need the content of both the National Planning Policy Framework and the national development management plan before we get to Report, otherwise we will have to include in the Bill content that may later appear in either of those two important plans. We cannot operate in this vacuum of lack of knowledge and information about the content of two absolutely fundamental building blocks of strategic planning. We need to keep raising that—I think it was also raised today by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage—and I hope the Minister has heard the pleas from across the Committee.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 27th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I want to speak to Amendments 186 and 187B in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham. When we concluded the debate last Wednesday, my noble friend the Minister explained the Government’s reason for the introduction of the national development management policies. I reiterate to my noble friend that I very much welcome and anticipate a further response to clarify how the NPPF and NDMP relate to one another, perhaps by particular reference to the example of the chapter on green-belt policies.

If I can paraphrase, my noble friend said that a key reason was to make local plans more local. She said that, when making a determination of a planning application, the local plan policies will “sit alongside” the national development policies. But what if they are not consistent? This group of amendments looks at that question. The present position is that applications for planning permission must be made in accordance with the development plan, unless material considerations indicate otherwise. Clause 86 of the Bill inserts

“and any national development management policies.”

Therefore, applications must be made in accordance with the development plan and any national development management policies. The material considerations would need to “strongly indicate otherwise”. We argued that point last Wednesday.

Section 38 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 states that, if a policy

“in a development plan … conflicts with another policy in the development plan the conflict must be resolved in favour of the policy which is contained in the last document”—

so it is simply a matter of which is the most recent. In future, that conflict may be between a development plan and the national development management policies. The Government, to resolve that question, state in Clause 86(2):

“If to any extent the development plan conflicts with a national development management policy, the conflict must be resolved in favour of the national development management policy.”

We have heard from the noble Baroness moving Amendment 185A that it proposes that proposed new subsection (5C) created by Clause 86(2) be deleted. Amendment 192 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, would give precedence to the development plan. This turns the Government’s intention on its head. However, I have to say that it runs a serious risk of undermining national policies by virtue of local plan-making and turning the whole problem the other way around.

My Amendment 186, tabled with my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham, would add the word “significant” to make the phrase, “if to any significant extent” there is a conflict. That would have the simple benefit of avoiding the disapplication of development plan policies because of an insignificant difference between that and an NDMP. It would run the risk—I have to acknowledge—of debate over what “significant” means. However, if the Minister were to object to the insertion of the word “significant” because of the risk of litigation, I will return to the question of the litigation that might arise through the insertion of the word “strongly”, which the Government resisted on those grounds.

Amendment 187, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, would reverse the primacy of NDMP over the development plan where there is a substantial set of devolved responsibilities given to a combined county authority. These are, in effect, the planning powers of the constituent local planning authorities, so I have to confess that I am not at all clear why, if the powers are vested in a CCA, as opposed to a local planning authority, the primacy should be switched simply on those grounds.

Overall, we have a group of amendments here that illustrate the problem but do not offer a solution. The development plan should not be inconsistent with the NDMP. The new Section 15C of PCPA 2004, to be inserted by Schedule 7, states this. On page 294 of the Bill, it can be seen that the intention of the Government is that there should not be any inconsistency between the two. However, in practice, such inconsistencies will arise in relation to specific planning applications. That is where the problem emerges. When they do, as the Minister herself made clear, this is a plan-led system, and a decision should, so far as possible, be made in accordance with the development plan. As the NPPF makes clear, where there is no relevant plan policy or no up-to-date plan—our Amendments 187A and 187B are relevant here about the necessity of an up-to-date plan—then the decision should be made by reference to the national development management policies, which will continue to be given statutory weight, by virtue of this legislation, even if the plan is out of date.

Therefore, I ask the Minister to reflect on this question and whether the primacy of the national development management policies should be achieved through the plan-making process—that is, sustain that question of there being no inconsistencies—but also where no up-to-date plan applies. However, if there is an up-to-date plan, then that should be the basis of the decision. That would retain the principle that those seeking planning permission should do so in accordance with an up-to-date local plan. I hope that the Minister will consider whether, when we come back to this on Report, that might be the basis for amending the Bill.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I will speak particularly to Amendment 187, to which my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb has attached her name. She is mostly handling the planning parts of this Bill, but she is otherwise engaged at this moment. The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, made a very interesting speech. It comes down to the question of what we mean by “inconsistency”. Do we mean that the local plan is trying to set higher standards than the national guidelines? If that is so, what we should have are national plans that set minimum standards. It should be within the power of local authorities to set higher standards if they so desire and if they think those are appropriate or necessary for the local area.

The noble Lord asked why this should apply particularly to CCAs, given that they are essentially a compilation of existing powers. The situation is that, where you have a CCA that has been created and handed the highways, environmental and other powers, certainly in local perception, in the understanding of people who have elected people on to those local bodies, the power that has been handed to this local body should rest in that local body.

Here, we have to look at the context of what it is like on the ground. I spent the weekend visiting various local areas outside London and hearing lots of complaints about local councillors’ lack of power to do what local residents want them to do. National planning rules have become far too bloated, and local councillors simply do not have the power to shape what happens in their local community in the way that residents expect them to. For example, people are surprised at how little power councils can have over the types of business established on a local high street. Massive international chains such as Starbucks can undermine the character and charm of a local scene, and the local planning authority and councillors are left wrestling over how the signage looks—which is not the issue that local people are most concerned about. There are more than 550 Green councillors around the country now, and this probably gets to the heart of what I hear from them so often: expressions of frustration at how power is centralised here in Westminster.

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Placing targets in legislation is something the Government have said time and again they believe in. They have done it for a whole range of things, including for the Climate Change Act itself, yet they refuse to do it for the energy-efficiency target. The amendment that the noble Baroness introduced places those targets into legislation and offers an opportunity to get together to find and work on a way forward to help the industry rapidly build up the number of staff to do the work. I hope that, on this occasion, the Government will listen.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I hope the Lords spiritual will forgive me for borrowing from their script, but I feel like I am in green heaven, because everything I have just been hearing from all sides of the Committee is what I and the Green Party have been banging on about for the last decade and, indeed, much longer. I was looking back at an interview I did with Red Pepper just after I was elected as Green leader in 2012, talking about how people were being left in cold homes, mourning something that has not been mentioned tonight but that we really should talk about: the hideous level of the UK’s excess winter deaths. That picks up the point from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, about the way our society is going backwards in life expectancy, particularly healthy life expectancy.

Green policy for decades has said that environmental and social justice are indivisible. By environment, we mean the physical built environment as well as the natural environment. So you will not find any Green names on any of these amendments, because we did not need to be there. Nearly all these amendments have full cross-party backing, including from the Conservative Party, and non-party backing—and I join many others in applauding the huge amount of work done by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, on the issue of buildings. All this fits together. In Oral Questions earlier today, in a debate about diets, the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, said that it is not just about diets; it is also about exercise. Well, how about we have homes built with active transport in mind; how about we have walking paths, cycling paths and safe ways to get around?

The noble Lord just referred to access to nature and a children’s right to nature. How about we write that into law and say that every child has that right? The proposals in this amendment point us in that direction and put them, crucially, into the Bill. I am not going to repeat everything that has been said, because so much has been said. The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, picked up something I have long been banging on about, and that is security by design. Rather than talking about bobbies on the beat, rather than trying to deal with the problem we have already created, let us build out the problem of neighbourhoods that work for people and that are secure.

I am going to really restrain myself here, because I could just get so excited hearing so many things that I agree with from every side of the Committee, but I will not: I am going to do the classic Green thing and point out some hard truths. One of these is that, while I said this was green heaven, the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, put some silver sprinkles on that heaven by bringing up growth. We have had growth for decades; we have chased GDP growth and look where it has got us. Look at the actual fabric of our society, the utter ill health, mental and physical, of our society. I say to both of the largest parties, who are currently waging a political duel about who can offer more growth: let us talk about the healthy society that the amendments here would collectively put together in the Bill.

The other awkward truth is what is behind all this. Who is building these homes that immediately need to be retrofitted to be even basically liveable and healthy? Who is building these homes in places where there is no public transport and no provision for active transport? We have a handful of mass housebuilders who are driven by profit. It is the legal responsibility of the directors to maximise profit, which is why we need these amendments to the Bill. All parts of our society need to see that there are controls on the profit motive, so our society works for people and planet and does not keep being milked for profit at the cost of the rest of us.

We have to have these controls and rules, and these rules have to come from government, and from Parliament if they are not going to come directly from government. I would say that your Lordships’ House has a huge opportunity with this Bill, and not just this Bill: tomorrow, we will be on the Energy Bill; and how about Caroline Lucas, the Green MP, who has a big drive on for solar panels on every suitable new home? Why on earth not? We need to join all this up and make it happen: this is our responsibility to the people of today for the climate, and our responsibility to the people of the future.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I have been listening to an excellent debate, and I just want to say one thing that relates to Amendment 484 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, and others. I just hope that, when my noble friend is responding or takes some of these very important points away, he responds not simply to the question of what is required in Building Regulations but what is achievable in terms of the sustainable framework for buildings. I declare a registered interest as counsel to Low Associates, which, between 2018 and 2020 was working with the European Commission on Level(s), which is a European Commission sustainable framework for buildings.

Such certification schemes exist. In this country, we have the Building Research Establishment’s environmental assessment method; the Americans have Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design; in France, they have gone further and legislated in RE 2020. The point I want to make is that, yes, we should focus on what is needed in order to secure an assessment of whole life-cycle carbon emissions in a building, but actually that is not enough, in my view. We should be increasingly looking at greenhouse gas emissions in total, at a circular economy and the reuse and recycling of materials, including in the demolition of buildings or the repurposing of buildings. We should be looking at water use and water resources. And we can put these, as many organisations increasingly do in certification schemes, in formats that are also very relevant to the performance assessment, including the cost assessment, of buildings, for those who have to invest in buildings, and indeed, in the public sector for those whose job it is to procure buildings.

We have structures that are available. We can see both voluntary schemes and—in the case of France and one or two others—legislative schemes that can focus on the broader environmental, health-related and social objectives of our buildings. These schemes recognise that, across Europe, 36% of greenhouse gas emissions are derived from our building stock. We have to deal with this; it is a central part of our environmental objectives. I hope Ministers are looking at both the statutory minimum requirements and a certification process that encourages the whole industry to move to a higher level of performance.

--- Later in debate ---

With these explanations and assurances, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, will be happy to withdraw Amendment 188. I am sure that these are matters to which we will return on a regular basis, but I hope that noble Lords will not feel the need to press their amendments in this group when they are reached.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I want to make one point on the quality of building, in particular the safety of new-build homes. In 2021, the average new-build property had 157 defects, up 96% from 2005. Would the Minister care to tell me when he thinks we might get back to the defect levels of 2005 and how the Government will achieve that?

[Earl Howe (Con)]

I would love to tell the noble Baroness how that is to be done. I will consult my officials and do my best to do so.

Leasehold Reform

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 23rd March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I certainly hope that we get our Bill in before the noble Lord’s.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, community land trusts, co-housing schemes and co-operatives offer different models focused on building community, delivering for the common good rather than focusing on individual profit. Will the Government look into how they can strongly support these creative, innovative models of housing?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

The Government do support those forms of housing. We will continue to do so and will look into how we can support them more in the future.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 20th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tope (LD)]

My Lords, I accept that a mayor, were he or she so minded, could act in that way. However, I have to say that the current mayor has shown no interest whatever in conceding anything to any of the boroughs, let alone to one single borough. We could get to a state in which the mayor allows one borough—I will not name one, although Bromley comes to mind, remembering the trouble we had with the introduction of the Freedom Pass—to opt out and the mayor could accept that, but I would not want to put that responsibility on some future mayor.

It would be much better if we stuck to the majority principle that we were talking about just now; the boroughs should have the right themselves to opt out of the scheme. I would hope that they would not do so, but they could have the right to opt themselves and their area out of it, but not the right to either stop it for everywhere else or rely on the benevolence of the mayor—little of which we have seen recently—to opt that borough out. So a much better way would be to reword the amendment. I suspect that the noble Lord is not going to press this to a vote tonight, although a lot of people in London think he is: much better that we come back on Report with clearer, better wording to try to achieve what we want to do.

I think, as the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, said, that what this amendment is actually about is the relationship between an executive Mayor of London—in a sense, a presidential system—and the borough councils, which are essentially a parliamentary system. Nobody has given enough thought, and there are many other examples, to how we match the mismatch between a presidential and parliamentary system. We have a situation now where the boroughs are all, in a sense, elected parliamentary bodies, with borough council leaders playing an increasing role through London Councils in the running of London, and a presidential-style elected mayor who has all the power vested in the mayor, with none vested in the boroughs and none, for that matter, vested in the London Assembly either. I say that with some regret after serving as an assembly member—indeed, as the leader of the Liberal Democrat group there—for eight years.

I hesitate today to ask for a reconsideration of the government of London—I am not sure I would want to go through all of that again—but that is, in essence, what this amendment is about. If we can agree a slightly different form of wording for this to come back on Report, I should be happy then to give it my support.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise to speak only to Amendment 178B, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, in the interests of embracing an extraordinarily rare consensus. It would be ideal, for the Green group, for my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, former London Deputy Mayor and long-time London Assembly member, to be here, but unfortunately she is otherwise engaged, so you get me, a resident through many of the years that the noble Lord, Lord Tope, was talking about. I say “embracing a rare consensus” with enthusiasm, because I was buoyed last week by the fact that we saw the Government table their own amendment to the UK Infrastructure Bank Bill following a Report stage at which the noble Lord, Lord Vaux of Harrowden, had put down an amendment. The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, and I had both signed it, and that actually ended up in law. So, you never know; maybe the same kind of unusual consensus of the noble Lords, Lord Moylan and Lord Greenhalgh, the Greens, the Lib Dems and others all backing Amendment 178B might get to the same outcome. We can but hope.

I think the case has already been very strongly made for this: this is democracy. But I just want to make one additional point, which is that the London Assembly is, of course, elected through a proportional system, so the majority there reflects the views of the majority of the public. That is unlike local authorities, which are elected by first past the post systems yet need only a simple majority to overrule the administration’s budget.

We heard a lot in our debates on the Bill earlier today about tidying up and fixing up past inequities and infelicities; well, this would be a real democratic addition and a real tidying up. I entirely back the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, and all the others who have signed this amendment. Let us see where we can get with it.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I rise to support Amendment 176, in particular, in the name of the noble Lords, Lord Moylan and Lord Greenhalgh. Beyond the focus of the amendment on low emission zones, I think in this Bill—which promotes, after all, outsourcing a range of decisions to greater numbers of local and regional bodies—one area where local authority decisions are clashing not just with mayors but with local citizens, in terms of their needs and wants, is in restricting and controlling people’s car use and movement, in the name of tackling the supposed triple threats of air pollution, climate change and congestion.

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[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise for not being able to take part at Second Reading.

Amendment 178A, in my name, is about the City of London, where local authority housing functions are carried out by the City of London Corporation through its Court of Common Council. The City is subject to the same member rules governing participation in discussion or voting on local authority housing matters, where a member has a pecuniary interest, as those which apply to councillors of local authorities. These rules are contained in the Localism Act 2011.

The rules include an ability for local authorities to issue dispensations to allow councillors to participate and vote where it is right for them to do so to fulfil their democratic responsibilities. However, this ability to issue dispensation does not apply to the City because an additional provision, contained in what is now Section 618(3) and (4) of the Housing Act 1985, bans City members outright from voting on such matters. The contravention of this ban constitutes a criminal offence.

The history of the Housing Act provisions have been examined by the City’s law officers and discussed with officials, but their origin remains unexplained. They have simply been repeated without comment in successive consolidations of housing legislation over the years. My amendment seeks to address this anomaly by removing them. This will make the City of London subject to the same regime as local authorities. It is clearly only right that City residents should have the same entitlement to be represented in housing matters as applies elsewhere. I hope that my noble friend will agree. I beg to move.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, with apologies, and being aware of the hour, I will be brief. I oppose in the strongest terms the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Naseby.

The City of London is the last rotten borough. The elections to the City of London can in no way be described as democratic. There is also the City of London cache, a massive fund amassed over many centuries and explicitly excluded from freedom of information. The last figure that I have, from 2012, is of a £100 million per year income.

The rights of the City of London go back to William the Conqueror, who said that he would maintain all the rights and privileges that the citizens had hitherto enjoyed. It is about time that we finally modernised and got past that. In 1894, it was recommended by a royal commission that the City of London Corporation be abolished. I put on the record my desire to work with any noble Lord who wishes finally to reach that obvious conclusion.

[Earl Howe (Con)]

My Lords, as my noble friend has explained, Amendment 178A seeks to remove voting restrictions on either housing issues or related planning decisions applying uniquely to members of the common council of the City of London who are also tenants of the City of London Corporation. Sections 618(3) and (4) of the Housing Act 1985 mean that, while an individual can be a councillor of the City of London if they are a housing tenant of the corporation, they cannot apply for a dispensation to vote on housing or related planning decisions. Voting in breach of Section 618 is a criminal offence. This is not dissimilar to the regime that applies under the Localism Act 2011 which also creates a criminal offence where a member fails, without reasonable excuse, to comply with the requirements to declare their disposable pecuniary interests, and takes part in council meetings.

Councillors in any authority elsewhere in England, operating under the disposable pecuniary interest regime in the Localism Act 2011, can apply for a dispensation to vote on matters where they have a declared interest—but there is no such discretion for the City of London to grant a dispensation where Section 618 applies. In short, this means that City of London councillors are being treated differently from all other councillors in England. I am aware that the City of London has raised the issue on previous occasions. I am grateful to my noble friend for his amendment. Between now and Report, I undertake to give the matter proper consideration and would be happy to arrange a discussion with my noble friend if he would find this helpful.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 15th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, we have begun the debate. That is the intention of this probing amendment, because we must have it.

Today’s Budget decentralises—but does not devolve—some powers, although not fiscal ones, to combined authorities, which is welcome but comparatively minor. In other words, if a combined authority was able to adjust a block grant and make different decisions on how to commit expenditure from it, that would be welcome. However, it is not a fiscal policy. As the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, said, it would be helpful if the Government could explain their thinking on devolving real fiscal powers.

I would pick up the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, on one statement. He said that we are not a unitary state. That would be hard to explain in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, and it goes to the heart of the problem as I see it. Substantial devolved powers, including fiscal ones, reside in Scotland, Wales and, theoretically, Northern Ireland that do not apply in England. Yet England is a country of 56 million people. It is far too big to operate out of centralised control in Whitehall, but there is a very strong argument for saying that, in terms of Treasury control and the Government’s desire to do things on a hub and spoke model in which all the financial resources are controlled in London, England is a unitary state.

I want to add one thing to the excellent contribution from my noble friend Lord Scriven and the other contributions from the noble Lords, Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Jackson of Peterborough, which I really appreciated. Can the Government explain why Scotland and Wales can have fiscal powers but no constituent part of England is permitted to have them? That is the nub of the problem, and it is why starting the debate on this issue is very important.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise to add to the political breadth of this debate and to offer Green support for the introduction of this amendment from the noble Lords, Lord Scriven and Lord Shipley. Localism is at the absolute heart of Green politics, but I think we have seen right across your Lordships’ Chamber a great desire for an end in England to the incredible concentration of power and resources in Westminster.

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[Baroness Harris of Richmond (LD) [V]]

I agree with everything that my noble friend Lady Pinnock has just said. I put my name to her amendment because in my rapidly disappearing district council of Richmondshire a motion was almost unanimously agreed to support a system of voting proportionately. It was proposed and seconded by two of my colleagues on that council, Councillors Richard Good and Clive World. It is almost unheard of to have a council in Richmondshire vote together on an issue as contentious as this, so I was delighted when they agreed to forward a letter to the Government requesting a move away from the first past the post system to a fairer and more representative way of voting.

As it was, only two Conservative councillors voted against the motion. The motion they presented was as follows:

“First Past the Post (FPTP) originated when land-owning aristocrats dominated parliament and voting was restricted to property-owning men … In Europe”,


as we have heard,

“only the UK and authoritarian Belarus still use archaic single-round FPTP for general elections. Meanwhile, internationally, Proportional Representation (PR) is used to elect parliaments in more than 80 countries. Those countries tend to be more equal, freer and greener … PR ensures all votes count, have equal value, and those seats won match votes cast. Under PR, MPs and Parliaments better reflect the age, gender and protected characteristics of local communities and the nation. MPs better reflecting their communities leads to improved decision-making, wider participation and increased levels of ownership of decisions taken … PR would also end minority rule. In 2019, 43.6% of the vote produced a government with 56.2% of the seats and 100% of the power. PR also prevents ‘wrong winner’ elections such as occurred in 1951 and February 1974 … PR is already used to elect the parliaments and assemblies of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. So why not Westminster? … Council therefore resolves to write to H.M. Government calling for a change in our outdated electoral laws to enable Proportional Representation to be used for general, local and mayoral elections.”

I could not have put it any better myself. I fully support my noble friend’s amendment and hope that the Government will consider it seriously before Report.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baronesses, Lady Pinnock and Lady Harris of Richmond. I will really restrain myself and not make general comments about PR but speak only about a specific element of democracy.

I am tempted to make a one-sentence contribution, which is, “Democracy: it would be a good idea, wouldn’t it, if we had it?” We are talking about a local area deciding how to elect its own representatives. The amendment does not say, “You have to have proportional representation —the system that we know means that the number of councillors matches the number of votes and that the council or the Parliament reflects the views of the people, and that we know produces a better quality of governance.” It does not say any of those things. It merely says that each local area should be able to decide the system under which it governs itself.

Of course, I have to make some reference to the better quality of governance which is demonstrably the result of proportional electoral systems, and indeed to look at the other side of this, which is what has just been happening in Plymouth City Council, where a Tory council has gone out in the middle of the night to cut down more than 100 mature trees in the city centre, despite significant local resistance. That, of course, is a replay; they seem not to have learned at all from what happened a few years ago in Sheffield, where a Labour council, again in a one party state-type set-up, did the same thing, sneaking around the streets in the early hours of the morning to try to ensure that it could cut down trees against the will of residents. So we have there a case study, which is not even slanted in any particular political direction, of our current system not working.

Again, I stress that the amendment does not say that it will force the change on anyone; it simply says that people should be able to decide for themselves. In the previous group of amendments, we focused on the lack of power in local government because of its lack of resources. Well, take back control: that was crucial and remains a very strong, passionate feeling among the British people. This amendment gives a chance to take back control at the local level, which is clearly urgently needed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 157, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, seeks to enable each local authority to choose its own voting system. In doing so, the

“local authority must have regard to the benefits of reinvigorating local democracy in its area.”

We agree that a vigorous local democracy is vital; however, we take a different view as to how this will be best provided for.

First, we are clear on the merits of first past the post as a robust and secure way of electing representatives. It is well understood by voters and provides for strong, clear local accountability. It ensures a clear link between elected representatives and those who vote for them, in a manner that other voting systems may not. For those reasons, we have provided that, from this May’s elections, first past the post will also apply in voting for local authority and combined authority elected mayors, and for police and crime commissioners.

Secondly, we do not believe it would be right for the voting system to be a matter of local choice for particular councils. It is important that the voting system be clearly understood by electors and that they have confidence in it. Having different systems for neighbouring areas risks confusing electors, and any such confusion risks weakening public confidence in the electoral process.

A council being able to choose its voting system would also risk political manipulation. For example, the current controlling group on a council could seek to choose a system that it believes would favour it. While I accept that there could be various safeguards to mitigate that risk, I do not consider that it could be entirely removed.

Elections are the foundations of local democracy, which is central to our values and our being a free society; we should protect and nurture it. I recognise that all noble Lords in this Committee share that view, but I am afraid that what this amendment envisages would in practice be the kind of tinkering with the foundations of local democracy that I am clear we should avoid.

Finally, there are already relevant provisions in place under the local government and public health Act 2007 which enable district councils to change their scheme of elections. Those councils electing by thirds, where a third of council seats are up for re-election in each of three out of every four years, can move to whole-council elections, where all council seats are re-elected at once, every four years, and some councils currently holding whole-council elections, which formerly elected by thirds, can resolve to revert to electing by thirds.

Perhaps more importantly, experience has shown the merits of whole-council elections: facilitating stable, strategic local leadership, and delivering a clear programme for which the council can be held to account by the electorate. We encourage those councils still not holding whole-council elections to consider using the powers which Parliament has given them to switch to such elections. We would not wish to see councils which have not previously done so moving to elections by thirds.

Before I finish, I will just remind noble Lords that we had a referendum on changing first past the post in 2011, and 67.9% of the population voted against any change.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Would the Minister acknowledge that that was not giving the public the choice of a proportional representation voting system, where the seats would match votes?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

But it was about a change in the type of election and there was a very clear result against it. I consider that to be a very clear result in support of first past the post.

Therefore, although I appreciate the intentions behind this amendment, for all of those reasons I hope I have said enough to enable the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, to withdraw her Amendment 157.

Building Safety Update

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 14th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I thank the Minister. She answered my question, and I look forward to hearing from her on PEEPs in the future.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I have three interrelated questions, and I am going to relate them to the 1,100 buildings mentioned in the Statement, not the rather breathtaking figure from the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, of 13,000 buildings. The Statement rightly says that leaseholders will want work to start without delay on all 1,100 buildings, which are, by definition, significant buildings. Are the Government confident that there are sufficient skills and ability, as well as the sheer workforce, to deliver this in any meaningful kind of timeframe?

Although most of the focus since the awful tragedy of Grenfell has been on external wall systems, there are also huge and quite complicated problems that have been discovered with fire-stopping systems, particularly breaches of compartmentalisation in the way buildings have either been designed or built. Fixing that is not going to be a simple matter of taking some cladding off and putting some cladding on; it is going to require a very high level of skills to make sure that you are genuinely fixing the problem and not, goodness forbid, making it worse.

In that context, the Health and Safety Executive recommended the golden thread principle, which I think probably applies here, of ensuring that there is a responsible person who is in control, really understands what is happening and has all the necessary documents and understanding.

I also note that this week the consultation closes on what is known as approved document B, which is the new and improved iterative process of fire safety standards. That is only going to apply to new buildings and will not affect existing buildings. Are the Government really committed to ensuring that we get the best possible standards in these buildings? People have now been living in fear for years, and they need the confidence to know their buildings are as safe as possible.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

Skills is an interesting issue. As I said to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, we expect developers to remediate these buildings at pace and we will be on their backs to do that. They also need to be doing the work properly. To that end, we will be checking the quality as well as how quickly they have done it. We will be checking it for two years after the work as well, so that we make sure that it has been done to the highest possible standard. Obviously, if the sector brings up skills as an issue, then we will have to look into it and deal with it. As far as I know, we have not been told as yet that there is going to be a skills shortage for this.

On the accountable person, the noble Baroness is absolutely right. We are looking at the regulator and we have just today put through some SIs about accountable persons. They are going to be critical because they are going to be the people in these buildings who are responsible to the regulator to say that they are going to do everything that had to be done, monitored and checked under the Fire Safety Act. We put the SI through today and, once those regulations come into force, I think we will have a much better idea of what is happening in all of these high-rise, high-risk buildings.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 13th March 2023 Lords Chamber

I cannot speak on this issue without referring to last year’s news about two-year delays and fundamental questions over the future of HS2. That proves that this Government are tone-deaf about the significance of that project. It is the key to unlocking the private and public sector investment that must be made if levelling up is to have any meaning at all. The fact that there is now serious doubt over the project is one of the greatest failures of this increasingly muddled and confused Government.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I offer Green support for the direction of travel of this whole group of amendments. I was not able to be here for the previous group, but I offer support for Amendment 469 in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Pinnock and Lady Randerson, about allowing local authorities to run their own bus services.

I turn to the specific points in some of the amendments in this group. We have already heard the case set out. I agree with pretty well everything that has been said by the previous speakers about the parlous state of local transport in the UK, particularly in England, and the way in which we are so badly trailing other parts of the world. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, talked about electric buses. I was just looking up the stats. The most recent ones I could find for the EU are from the end of 2021. There were 8,500 electric buses in the EU then, and I have no doubt that that figure has grown significantly. That is based on my own experience of arriving in a number of small European cities and finding that a line of little electric hopper buses, as we might call them, taking people from the bus station to the train station or around the city is just normal—yet for us that would be a rare and amazing pilot scheme.

I shall pick up some specific points. Amendment 93, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, would allow residents of the combined county authority to petition their authority and the Government for new transport infrastructure. Creating that democratic framework, explicitly putting it in the Bill, would be useful. We know how much hunger there is in local communities. Mostly they are trying to defend the bus services that they are about to lose, but in many places if people saw the potential for a route towards a new service that everyone knew was needed, the petition would provide a mechanism for that.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, said, Amendment 94 refers to the assessment of the sustainability of transport infrastructure. With 27% of our total emissions coming from transport, and 91% of those from road vehicles, heading towards public transport and indeed active transport—cycling and pedestrian routes—is crucial. To ask the CCAs to put down on paper where they are at and where they are aiming to go is also crucial.

Sustainability also means looking at the issue of resilience. We are in the age of shocks, climate and other, and as I was listening this to this debate I was thinking about the situation at Dawlish and the number of times that we have seen that crucial rail route cut off. That first really came to public attention in 2018, and we have got precisely nowhere on that issue since.

Amendment 97, which we have not yet heard formally introduced, would mean that CCAs could formally designate rail, bus and particularly cycle paths as key routes. If we are going to have the kind of modal shift that we need to see in transport then bus routes and cycle paths are crucial. We need to give CCAs the power to take control over those, see the way forward and make sure that they are secured and treated as important in the same way that we do, far too often, with the main road network.

This is all fine detail and not the kind of stuff that is ever likely to set the headlines ablaze, but it is crucial if this levelling-up Bill is going to go anywhere towards delivering what the Government say is its aim.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, this has been rather a depressing afternoon. We have had a long debate about where money was coming from, and the answer is, “There isn’t any”. Now we are on to a debate about another vital aspect of levelling up: you need the money, but you also need a transport policy that works. Reference has been made to the mission statement. I am becoming increasingly concerned that in every debate we essentially get the same message: the Bill is not about implementing the mission statement, delivering on the five pillars or any of the stuff that was in the White Paper, but about something completely different—and so far it has completely eluded me what the something completely different is. Here we have an opportunity to put a bit of substance in the Bill, which this set of amendments would certainly do.

I appeal to the Government just to join up some of the dots in their own levelling-up White Paper and their own set of mission statements, and to look at this piece of legislation as a way of delivering, or at least of outlining how they intend to deliver, these challenging targets. The mission statements have dates attached to them, yet we have already heard that the financial review is going to be quite a long way ahead—probably in the next Parliament, let us be honest. The transport amendments here would give the new CCAs some powers, chances and opportunities to begin to help the Government to deliver on their mission statement. I cannot say I am hoping, but I must surely have some expectation, that the Government are going to rise to that challenge.

I want to remind the Government that one of these aims is to have a similar level of public transport outside London as there now is in London, by an end date. I will leave aside whether that was a promise that could ever be fulfilled, but it would certainly be easier to achieve if you started now rather than starting in two years’ time or whenever the next big Bill or funding round comes.

In light of that government ambition, the Built Environment Committee, of which I was at that point a member, published a report called Public Transport in Towns and Cities outside London at the end of last year. We took a lot of evidence on what the impact of the pressures of single-pot funding are on transport authorities around the country, and some were much more successful than others. As somebody who lives in the area of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and Transport for Greater Manchester, I rejoice in the fact that we usually do pretty well out of all this. But you have only to look across the Pennines to other transport authorities to see some that do not. We took evidence that they have essentially given up bidding because every bid that they have made, which costs money, has been unsuccessful, and they do not get the feedback that they need to improve or find a way through the system. It is single-pot funding which is not delivering levelling up in the way that it should do.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, mentioned Northern Powerhouse Rail and Transport for the North. Plenty of work is going on pointing out to the Government what they could and should do, and how it could be delivered to achieve outside London that London level of public transport. Yet these opportunities are being missed again and again, so I say to the Government that these amendments are a way of getting that process started.

In Greater Manchester, the mayor—not of my political persuasion but certainly with a strong mandate—has been pushing ahead to get public transport to operate in a co-ordinated and fully functioning way across that city. Successive Conservative Transport Ministers have been deeply sceptical of what Greater Manchester has been trying to achieve, and I have challenged the Government on two or three occasions about whether they were or were not actively supporting the model of Greater Manchester and encouraging others to do so. The evidence that was given by the then Transport Minister to the committee was that the Government are completely neutral about all these funding models, and that it is entirely up to anyone to do what they want—except that the Government prefer that they do not do it the Greater Manchester way. Sometimes the Government seem incapable of learning from the practical experience of what works, and allowing or indeed encouraging others to take advantage of the experience that has been developed on the ground. Obviously we see this in Committee, and will see this all the way through it—“If it is not invented here, it cannot be any good.”

From that point of view, I dare say that the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, are doomed to fail today, but I ask the Minister to take a look and go back to the Department for Transport, and whoever else needs to be talked to, picking up the point the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, made. Please can the Government, and not just the department, put some guts into the Bill and make it deliver on the missions and objectives that they have set out, that they are so proud to boast about, and which these amendments could facilitate the delivery for?

[Earl Howe (Con)]

My Lords, this group of amendments relates, as we have heard, to transport functions and associated arrangements of combined county authorities. Before I address the amendments, I say to the Committee in response to those noble Lords who question the Government’s commitment to levelling up in the area of transport—in particular the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, but also the noble Lords, Lord Berkeley and Lord Stunell, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Randerson and Lady Bennett—that the Government are committed to delivering improvements to transport across the north and across the piece. Let there be no doubt about that. We are committed to supporting all forms of transport. Indeed, between 2020-21 and 2022-23 we have invested over £850 million in active travel alone. The Transpennine Route Upgrade is the Government’s biggest single investment in upgrading the country’s existing railway, and is part of our continuing commitment to transforming rail connectivity across the north of the country. I plead with noble Lords to have some faith in the Government’s commitment in this area.

Amendment 92 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, looks to place a requirement on the Secretary of State to publish an annual report on any differences in integrated transport authority functions conferred on combined county authorities, and the rationale behind them. It is of course important to help interested parties understand differences in conferral of transport functions between CCAs. Once established, the combined county authority will become the local transport authority responsible for managing public transport in the CCA’s area.

The functions conferred on combined county authorities from an integrated transport authority to enable the CCA to be the local transport authority will be a merger of those currently possessed by the CCA’s constituent local authorities, with their agreement and consent. These will be agreed with the local authorities as the combined county authorities are established, and this approach will be consistent across all CCAs. Therefore, as this clause relates only to powers already held locally, there is no need for the Secretary of State to produce such an annual report because there will be consistency across CCAs. The Explanatory Memorandums to the secondary legislation will also provide an explanation of transport powers that the combined county authority will be responsible for.

Amendment 93, tabled by the noble Baroness, seeks to allow residents in the area of a combined county authority with transport functions to be able to petition their CCA and the Government for new transport infrastructure. We support residents having the ability to push for new transport infrastructure for their area; indeed, this is already possible. The residents of an area with transport functions are already able to petition their local authorities, including for transport infrastructure, and this will be the same for combined county authorities once created. Therefore, creating this additional requirement relating to transport specifically for CCAs is unnecessary.

I come now to Amendment 94, tabled by the noble Baroness to require a combined county authority to publish an assessment within 90 days, if they are transferred certain functions, on whether transport infrastructure in their area is sustainable. An assessment of infrastructure sustainability in a CCA’s area already forms part of a local transport plan. Where a CCA has been given transport functions, it will include this assessment as part of its local transport plan anyway, so we feel there is no need for a separate time-limited assessment.

Amendment 95 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, would require a combined county authority to undertake an assessment of any company operating a train franchise in its area. There are already contractual reporting arrangements between train operators and the Government, and the train operating companies report their performance publicly on their websites and with key strategic partners, such as CCAs. In line with the Government’s commitment to not create additional bureaucratic burdens, we would not expect to mandate a report on any CCAs. Furthermore, if the CCA feels that it wishes to undertake such an assessment, we would expect it to utilise the existing reporting mechanisms. Given the existing reporting already in place, I hope that she will feel satisfied that the measures are sufficient.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I am wondering how this fits in with local government reporting, in the context of Britain’s legally binding net-zero obligations. This brings to my mind a broader question, but I will understand if the Minister wants to write to me later. How do the actions of the CCA fit within the overall framework of delivering net zero?

[Earl Howe (Con)]

If the noble Baroness will allow me, I will write to her on that, because I do not have an answer that would satisfy her in my brief.

Amendment 96, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, would require combined county authorities to notify the Secretary of State of any plans to begin a local travel survey within 30 days of being transferred functions under Clause 19. There is no legal requirement surrounding a combined county authority’s use of local travel surveys. Creating a legal requirement on CCAs for the reporting of their use within 30 days to the Secretary of State would, I suggest, place an unnecessary burden on CCAs, relative to the benefit.

Noble Lords may be interested to know that the Department for Transport conducts a national travel survey. We would expect CCAs to conduct further work locally to gather evidence in developing their local transport plans. However, we feel that mandating the use of local surveys in this way would be disproportionate, so I am afraid we do not feel we can accept this amendment.

I turn to Amendment 97, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage. It would allow the Secretary of State to make regulations to confer on a combined county authority a power to designate railways, bus routes and cycle paths as key routes. The purpose of a CCA designating a route as part of its key route network is to enable the mayor to direct local councils in how they should use their powers as the highway authority for that route, if they are not carrying out actions agreed under the local area transport plan. For example, a combined county authority mayor might direct local authorities to build a particular bus lane on part of the key route network, which would have strategic, area-wide benefits for the CCA as a whole.

CCAs will already be able to designate bus and cycle lanes that form part of a highway in their area as part of the key route network under the existing Clause 22. The powers that local authorities have as highway authorities do not extend to railways, so allowing CCAs to designate them as key routes would have no effect on their operation. Given that CCAs will be responsible for the local transport plan for their region, we would expect them to identify their key transport routes and plan how to manage these, including railways.

Amendment 98, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, would enable the Secretary of State to confer a power on a combined county authorities to designate their area’s transport infrastructure as in need of regeneration. I would like to reassure her that, once established, combined county authorities, like existing local authorities, will have multiple means through which to petition the Government for improved transport infrastructure for their region. For example, Network Rail is responsible for maintaining the railway and for any renewals to ensure a safe and efficient-running railway. When it comes to enhancements being sought for railway improvements, we follow the rail network enhancements pipeline policy, which sets out how areas can engage with government on rail improvements.

On local roads, the Department for Transport provides local highways maintenance funding through the highways maintenance block and the potholes fund, which provide annual funding for eligible local highways authorities, including future combined county authorities, to locally prioritise investment in local roads and associated infrastructure, such as bridges and lighting columns. The Department for Transport will also maintain regular contact with combined authority areas, which will provide ample opportunity for areas to make the case for transport infrastructure improvements.