Disabled Children: Tax Credit

Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts

Wednesday 30th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

That is a question that I asked myself earlier this morning. The answer is that HMRC cannot by law backdate beyond the present tax year except in exceptional circumstances, and the circumstances where someone has failed to claim do not qualify. So there would be a risk of legal challenge were HMRC to compensate people in the way that the noble Lord has suggested.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)]

My Lords, when people have been denied five years of benefit and the Government are willing to backdate that for only six months, who would make that challenge, should HMRC do what is right?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I understand the problems of these 28,000 families, by definition with a disabled child and on low incomes, who have failed to get up to £5,000 a year. All I can say is that, if I were still in another place and one of those 28,000 families came to see me at my advice bureau, and I knew there was a legal problem, my advice to them would be to refer the matter to the Parliamentary Ombudsman.

Government and Parliament

Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)]

My Lords, first, my apologies for these glasses; my proper ones are somewhere in the Adriatic sea.

We, Lords and Commons alike, are increasingly failing the public. The Commons, of course, determines legislation but in the light of Lords scrutiny—with our delegated powers and scrutiny committees, and the time we spend debating SIs—we are better placed to do so.

The reason for our failure to the public can be described in two words: skeleton Bills. A skeleton Bill endows the Secretary of State with whatever powers he deems necessary, to do whatever he deems necessary, whenever he deems it necessary to do so. Bills, therefore, are future-proofed for any future Secretary of State in a future contingency to take any further future action without any further proper parliamentary scrutiny.

To take the recent skeleton Housing and Planning Bill, we floundered our way through it. When we probed to find out some detail about how many, how much—central issues one might think—the Minister could not say. She would say, “That will be in regs”. What would those regs contain? She would reply, “We don’t yet know”. Why not? She would say, “Because they are out to consultation”. When did that consultation start? We would be told, “Recently”. When will we get its findings? The reply: “Later, after the Bill becomes law”. We would ask, “Then how can we know what this clause will do?”. We cannot because the Minister cannot—not will not, but cannot—tell us. When regs finally appear, perhaps at odds with our limited understanding of the Bill, we cannot get at them; we can only bleat.

In other words, SIs are being abused in a way that destroys the very purpose of this House: our scrutiny role. As a Chamber we are not democratic, but we are rather useful. That is our justification. How, then, without seeking to challenge the primacy of the Commons, do we ensure that, through our scrutiny, the Government remain accountable to Parliament and therefore to the public, and do not seek to use SIs as a convenient shortcut through controversy?

I suggest four steps. First, consultation should precede—not parallel, let alone follow—legislation. We need to gather the expertise out there, expose policy intent and analyse impact beyond the half-baked gesture statistics we get served in lieu of a decent impact analysis. Secondly, following consultation, policy must be fully embedded and transparent in the Bill, and open to amendment, not left to SIs for future debate. Thirdly, SIs should therefore be relegated to their proper role—the adjustment of technical detail only, as the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, has regularly argued. Finally, those affirmative and perhaps more controversial SIs that come before us must be effectively scrutinised. How? We cannot amend them, obviously, without engaging in a ping-pong that treats them like primary legislation. To vote against destroys; to regret is to be ignored. We cannot get at them.

Instead, we must have the power to pause. Over the last 15 years we have had several major reports proposing that the Lords might wish very occasionally to delay the automatic passage of an SI carrying a heavy public policy load and ask the Commons and the Government to think again, and, when they have, of course the Lords acquiesces. The usual channels would sort out urgent matters, including security, where delay would be wrong. We need that power to press the pause button for a meaningful period, perhaps for 28 sitting days. The Government could wait it out, and the SI would become effective. But they might also—especially if Commons Back-Benchers are increasingly perturbed, as with tax credits—use that delay, in my view rightly, to change their mind.

In summary, there must be no skeleton legislation. Consultation should precede, rather than parallel or follow, parliamentary scrutiny; otherwise what is the point? Policy is to be embedded in the Bill, not carried by subsequent ungetatable SIs, which should be restricted to technical and minor detail. Draft regs or written statements of what those regs will contain should be published between Second Reading and Committee so that Bills can, if necessary, be amended accordingly. It can be done. The noble Lord, Lord Freud, worked with Committee members during the passage of the then Welfare Reform Bill in 2011-12 to do precisely that. We worked on and developed regs together. It can be done—if, of course, the Lords Minister is a player, not merely a messenger.

Finally, affirmative regulations that this House believes carry previously unexplored or controversial policy content could be paused for further reflection—I suggest for 28 sitting days—by a delay Motion, which then accepts the primacy of the Government in the Commons. This set of proposals would allow us to scrutinise public legislation, as we should. Asking the other place sometimes to think again on SIs, as we do with primary legislation, would help to justify our role as an unelected House, while ensuring that the Commons retains the last word. It would produce infinitely clearer and more transparent legislation, and those whom that legislation affects will know where they stand from day one; that is impossible with regs out there somewhere in the ether, which may be drawn down or not. Above all, it would allow us to serve the public as we should, for we have no other purpose and no other reason as a House for our existence.

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[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

We can move measurements if we like and start counting pages, but it is a statement of fact. I cannot go back and count all the pages of pieces of secondary legislation from 20 years ago, but I can tell noble Lords that we certainly dramatically reduced the amount of secondary legislation in the last Session.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, we talk about clauses, SI numbers and pages, but what matters and what the noble Baroness has so far not addressed in her constructive response is whether they are heavy-duty SIs carrying a policy load. Nobody has any objection to a number of SIs that technically adjust things such as the timing of when things will be brought in. What matters is whether they carry policy and therefore, by virtue of being SIs, put that policy beyond proper parliamentary scrutiny.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

We can get into a debate on the detail. I have looked at the content of secondary legislation and how the Government performed in the last Session against the Governments of which the noble Baroness was a member. If she likes, I can trade a range of different examples of where previous Governments were criticised for inappropriate use of secondary legislation, but we are trying to move forward.

On the point raised on Henry VIII powers, I was pleased that the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, disagreed with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge. Like her, that is not something from which I take any pleasure. She is right to point out that it would be impossible for us to do without Henry VIII clauses completely, but that does not mean Parliament should not be very watchful of the Government’s use of such powers. Some are appropriate, in that they are used in appropriate circumstances. For instance, the noble and learned Lord referred to one in the Children and Social Work Bill, which is about to receive its Second Reading in this House. That is designed for a specific purpose. Clearly, as that piece of primary legislation goes through, we will have to debate whether that power is appropriate for what it is designed to do. We can and should have a proper debate about these things but I would not necessarily argue that all of them are open to criticism just because they exist.

As the House knows, the Government have not yet responded to my noble friend Lord Strathclyde’s review of secondary legislation. This was acknowledged by the noble Lord, Lord Butler. We are still considering that report and all the Select Committee reports alongside it. In looking at all these things, as my noble friend Lord Wakeham said—I think this is where we have real agreement in the House—we do not want this House to diminish its influence but we need to ensure that the elected House, the House of Commons, has the final say on all legislation, not just on primary legislation. This is a topic that I know we will continue to discuss and consider.

I note what my noble friend Lord Trefgarne and others said about the conventions that were so hotly disputed. The problem is that we still have among us a lack of agreement on where we are with those conventions. That does not mean that we cannot try to seek some clarity and agreement between us.

The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, made a number of constructive suggestions about steps that could be taken to address these matters. As I say, I think we all agree on the importance of what we are trying to achieve, which is for this House to continue its very important role of scrutinising and revising legislation, and holding the Government to account. I will reflect carefully on some of the noble Baroness’s specific proposals. I note that a lot of the issues she raised—such as Cabinet Office guidance, full impact assessments prior to Secondary Reading debates and draft regulations prior to Committee—are what should happen anyway. That means there is a lot for me to take away and think about. The process is there but I need to ensure that the Government understand their responsibilities in proceeding with and fulfilling that. I will reflect as well on the noble Baroness’s idea of a particular committee to look more broadly at how we prepare for legislation and our various scrutiny procedures in this House.

More than anything, I want to conclude by reinforcing to noble Lords just how much I share with them the objective of trying to make sure that this House is able to do what it exists to do. Like all noble Lords who spoke today, and many more sitting here in the Chamber, we all feel very passionately about the purpose of this House. Noble Lords have heard me say many times that I describe it in this way: this House exists to give the public confidence in the laws that ultimately Parliament makes. I want to ensure that we are always equipped to do that. I will take away the very constructive comments and contributions made today. I will carefully read Hansard again; as noble Lords know, often when one is sitting on the Front Bench it is hard to keep up with everything being said. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for her introduction to this debate and for everything that she said today about my ministerial team and their efforts to respond constructively to the scrutiny given to the Government’s legislation. I thank all noble Lords for their contributions.

Housing and Planning Bill

Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts

Wednesday 13th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Redfern (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 51. This new, reinvigorated right to buy will certainly help housing associations to retain their independence, and will, I am sure, bring about a new era for building and bring an end to the housing crisis. Associations are a vital piece of the housing predicament jigsaw and together, working closely with government, will help to bridge the generation gap and give that boost to those Britons whose overwhelming ambition is to become home owners.

Housing associations are professional organisations that have sound commercial and social principles and manage their estates extremely well. The important fact to emphasise is that they are well established, intuitively know what type of housing is best suited for their area, and know where their new build is in greatest need.

Another part of the jigsaw is job opportunities—a possibility that turns people’s ambition into reality for the very first time. That is why it is so important for tenure to be taken locally. A voluntary agreement with the National Housing Federation and the housing association sector gives the flexibility to replace nationally, since housing associations know their customers’ needs best. Because of that, it is particularly important that an agreement also gives them flexibility and discretion over sales of properties in rural locations.

My noble friend Lord Young alluded to housing associations having the inner knowledge and expertise where local demand is required. As we know, different parts of the country have unique demands. Therefore, government should not be instructing them where to build replacement homes; rather, it should recognise the importance of ensuring that rural communities are protected, but believe that the best way of doing that is not by preserving them exactly as they are now. Instead, we should be supporting living, working and sustainable rural communities, with tenants having real choices about where and how they live. Allowing rural tenants the same opportunities to access home ownership as other tenants is a good thing.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)]

My Lords, the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Young, confused me. Will the Minister very briefly clarify them in her response? The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans mentioned in particular the situation of a housing association such as Hastoe, which is well known as a rural housing association that did not sign up to the voluntary deal, is opposed to it and did not want to participate in it. Now what will happen? We may or may not get rural exception sites and so on, but even there my understanding is that the Government proposed that any tenant in such a position would port a discount to somewhere else where they would be able to buy. However, if an entirely rural housing association that is opposed to the voluntary deal and may wish to exercise its discretion not to engage in it has no property that is non-rural, can the Minister clarify what is then the situation? If a housing association is opposed to the voluntary deal, who will ensure that, if the Government deem that this is the right course forward, none the less sales will go ahead? Secondly, if it is entirely rural, with no property to which a tenant can port the discount, what happens then?

I would be glad of some reassurance because the description given by the noble Lord, Lord Young, of what goes on in rural areas bore no resemblance at all to my experience as a former chair of a housing association that was largely rural.

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[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. I fully understand the desire of the noble Lords, Lord Kennedy and Lord Beecham, and others to ensure that affordable housing is not lost to an area, and the concerns raised by the right reverend Prelate and others relating to rural issues.

Extending right-to-buy discounts to housing association tenants was a manifesto commitment taken forward through a voluntary agreement with the sector. This is about opportunity—social tenants having equal access to the opportunities for home ownership. I am sure that noble Lords agree with that. The other place was supportive of the agreement. The National Housing Federation and the housing association sector came to government with this offer. It is entirely voluntary and represents 96% of stock.

Under the terms of the agreement, housing associations will deliver an additional home through new supply nationally for every home sold under the voluntary right to buy. This will increase overall supply and housing associations will have discretion not to sell particular properties, including where those properties would be difficult to replace. As a number of noble Lords said in Committee, to legislate would go against the voluntary nature of the agreement and introducing controls would present a classification risk.

While I appreciate the strength of feeling on this issue, the Government cannot accept Amendment 51. Placing restrictions on housing associations in implementing the voluntary right-to-buy agreement by requiring replacements to be of the same tenure and in the same area would, we believe, fetter their ability to deliver housing in accordance with local need. Under the terms of the voluntary agreement, housing associations will have the flexibility to build replacement properties where they are needed. Governments should not instruct them where to build replacement homes, nor specify what tenure the replacement should be. I pay tribute to housing associations, which have a history of delivering new housing supply that this country needs. Setting arbitrary rules without any reference to local conditions is likely to hinder not help them in delivering new affordable homes. They are best placed to determine what type of housing is best suited to a community and it is only right that decisions on tenure be taken locally.

The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, raised the issue of Section 106 properties. We are engaging with the sector on the implementation of the voluntary right to buy, including what is provided under Section 106 agreements. He also asked about monitoring. Regular statistics are published about property sales by councils under the existing right-to-buy scheme. Clause 64 allows for the monitoring of housing association sales under the voluntary agreement and I can confirm that replacements will also be monitored.

The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, asked about engagement with charities. I can confirm that officials and the National Housing Federation have held working groups with charities to work through the issues that he raised. My noble friend the Minister and I would be very happy to meet further on this matter. I can also confirm that almshouses are exempt from the right to buy.

Amendment 52 relates specifically to rural areas and would require at least one replacement property in the same or an adjoining parish as the property sold. I completely agree that we should support strong and sustainable rural communities. As my noble friend Lord Young rightly said, the voluntary agreement, as well as giving housing associations the flexibility to build replacement properties where they are needed, already gives them discretion over sales of properties in rural locations. My noble friend Lady Williams will shortly talk in more detail about rural needs. It is clear from our engagement with the sector that associations are intending to exercise their discretion not to sell properties in rural areas where they would be difficult to replace. These are organisations that have well established and supportive relationships with the local communities that they serve and, as the noble Lord said, often have charitable status that ensures that they will deliver housing that the community needs. However, they also have to operate within the confines of what is practicable—for instance, in terms of land assembly and planning permission. They need the freedom to find the best opportunity available for delivering for local housing needs.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, asked what happens when a housing association has not signed up to the agreement and all its properties are in a rural area. As I have said, the deal is voluntary; housing associations, whether signed up to the agreement or not, do not have to sell any home, whether rural or not, where this is not in the interests of the area. She also asked about exercising discretion and the portable discount. Where a housing association exercises its discretion not to sell a home, the housing association will provide an alternative from its own stock or that of another housing association. Housing associations would work together to develop joint arrangements to enable this to happen.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

I thank the noble Baroness for her comments and for allowing me to intervene. I am still puzzled. If a housing association is entirely rural, is not signed up to the deal and therefore does not wish or feel it is appropriate to lose or sell any of its stock, has no property to which it can attach a portable discount for one of its existing tenants to move to, and does not necessarily have a collaborative arrangement with another housing association—why would it?—what happens then?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

As I have said—and I am afraid I can go no further than what I have said—properties in rural areas, or indeed any other area, do not have to be sold where this is not in the best interests of the area. However, it is right that this should be a local decision.

Our manifesto commitment to extend right-to-buy discounts to housing association tenants is being taken forward through a voluntary agreement. As the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, said in Committee:

“It is in the nature of a voluntary agreement that it is very hard to build in statutory protections without taking yourself straight back to the issue of regulation. That is the problem: in a sense, we are trying to put statutory protections into a voluntary agreement. In the end, this is a voluntary agreement that is going to have to rely on a great deal of trust”.—[Official Report, 8/3/16; col. 1212.]

I think that noble Lords would trust housing associations to have the best interests of their tenants and local communities at heart and to build replacement properties where they are needed. To legislate would go against the voluntary nature of the agreement and restrict housing association decision-making on what is best for its organisation and local communities.

To introduce controls and restrictions in legislation would also present a classification risk. The noble Lord, Lord Best, raised this concern in Committee, when he said that,

“we are not out of the woods entirely on this aspect of the reclassification issue. The case still has to be made to the ONS that housing associations are genuinely independent of government control over the sale of their homes. The ONS must not be faced with a statutory right in all but name. Therefore the more that is left to the boards of housing associations to decide, and the less that is set out in statute, the better”.—[Official Report, 8/3/16; col. 1203.]

On the basis of the comments that I have made, I ask that the noble Lord withdraws his amendment.

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[Lord Deben]

I do not think that I was entering into a discussion on how it was spent and where it went—although I could, I do not want to get into that. I just want to say that we should all be ashamed of the fact that, over many years, we have not delivered what we ought to in housing—not council housing: housing. In one of the earliest moments of my political life, I remember listening to Harold Macmillan say that he was going to build houses, and that it did not matter where you built them in terms of the levels, because there were so few that people would move into one and up to another. What you really needed was numbers of houses, and that is what the figure of 300,000 houses a year was about.

Every time anybody produces a way of doing something better, there is always somebody who gets up and sounds like one of my civil servants, saying, “Better not, Minister. It might go wrong, something might be wrong”. It is about time we said, “Let’s try to make this work”. There are lots of things about this Bill that I am not happy about, particularly not knowing the regulations in advance. That is a constitutional issue, not a housing issue, but we have to give the Government the chance to do something, given that no one has a good argument to say that they have come up with anything much better than the radical proposals before us.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, I wonder whether the Minister can help me understand a little more what she proposes with this swap from “high” to “higher”. I quite understand that going for “higher” rather than “high” will protect some authorities—largely London, but maybe Oxford, Cambridge, Winchester and so on—from seeing most of their stock disappear because, on the national level, they have a “disproportionate” number of high-value properties. We all understand what “higher” means: possibly the top decile or the top 20% of house prices in this country. Obviously, they would then respond to a redistribution across the country, which the Minister, if she wished, could control by having local, district, regional or county controls on that redistribution.

I have a worry, which I hope the Minister can allay, that “higher” will be anything above the median, which effectively means that every local authority in the country will have some high-value stock above the median and some lower-value stock below the median, even though that area may be very poor. Does this mean that the Minister and her officials will determine for each local authority what proportion of housing it must be expected to sell because it is higher than the median? We can tell her now that that will be some 49% in Oldham or Great Yarmouth.

I can see why the Minister is trying to move away from a situation where she redistributes from a few very high-value authorities across the country, but she can address that issue by containing the area within which that redistribution occurs. Instead, by going for “higher”, at the moment, based on my understanding of the English language, she opens up the potential for every local authority to lose up to 49% of its stock because it is “higher”—not “high”, but “higher”—and therefore above the median. That would be utterly perverse.

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

I follow that point with a very brief intervention. Does it mean that a local authority will be told by the Government what percentage of its stock should be sold off—in other words, that there will be a target cap beyond which there is no expectation, but below which the local authority will be allowed to sell up to that cap? In other words, Westminster might be told that 60% of its stock is the cap, Camden might be told 50%, or Cambridge 20%. Is that how this will work in practice?

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The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, is worried that the “higher” value will be anything above the median. I want to put on the record that this is not at all the intention. This approach would spread the cost of the policy more widely, as the noble Baroness recognised, but we are still working through the detail. Noble Lords will have a chance to debate the threshold now that we have committed to making the regulations affirmative. One noble Lord—I think it was either the noble Lord, Lord Foster, or the noble Lord, Lord Shipley—asked me to confirm that it will not be used to raise more income. There was some worry in the media and elsewhere that that was the case, but I can confirm absolutely that this is not the case.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

I would like some clarification on the Minister’s answer about the difference between “higher” and “high”. If as a result of the Minister setting the percentage at “higher” the property is sold, what is to stop the Government—not necessarily herself; it could be a subsequent Minister—coming back and using the regulations to say that the band below that is now the higher-value property, so that there is a continuous accretion of cuts on local authority stock in order to continue to produce more and more money for housing association discounts?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I think the noble Baroness will understand, reasonably, that as a Minister I cannot hold the will of future Governments to account at this Dispatch Box. I can set out only what this Government intend to do and I hope she will take it in good faith. I have confirmed that it will not be used to raise additional income.

The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and other noble Lords have asked what I am bringing back at Third Reading. If noble Lords look ahead to Amendment 64A, I will indicate my intention to return to the issue of one-for-one replacements at Third Reading. I will give more detail on that when we get to that amendment, if noble Lords will indulge me. I am sure we will debate it fully in due course.

A number of noble Lords have made the valid point that not enough houses have been built in this country. I do not think we will get into who it is attributable to this afternoon, but the fact stands: we have not built enough houses and we are now at a critical point. I think all noble Lords will support the intention of producing more houses of different tenures for this country’s residents to live in.

I turn to Amendment 61A, which would remove Clause 67 from the Bill. This clause will require councils to make a payment to the Secretary of State that represents an estimate of the market value of a local authority’s higher value houses that are expected to become vacant. Needless to say, it is a clause that is vital for us to deliver the policy. I have already explained to your Lordships’ House how the payments will work and I will not test your Lordships’ patience by repeating myself.

It is right that local authorities should sell their higher-value vacant housing so that value locked up in these properties can be released and used to fund right-to-buy discounts for housing association tenants and to fund the delivery of additional homes. The clause’s principles are clear and in line with commitments made in the Government’s manifesto. Should this amendment be accepted, I think the other place will be likely to overturn that decision. With this in mind, I hope the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, will feel free to withdraw his amendment.

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[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville]

My Lords, I support the amendment in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Cameron of Dillington, Lord Best and Lord Beecham, to which I have added my name. We debated rural housing at length in Committee and I remain concerned that we will see a radical change in housing in rural areas as a result of the implementation of this Bill, if it remains unamended. I welcome the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, with which I completely agree, as well as those of the noble Lords, Lord Best and Lord Beecham.

I have seen and read the Minister’s letter—not the one that came today—on this subject, and I am afraid that I do not believe that tenants in rural areas will be disadvantaged in the way that she indicates, or be treated differently from other tenants in more urban areas. I regret to say that it often appears that the Government do not always understand the countryside and rural areas. I have found from personal experience, when working in the Palace of Westminster in the past, that it was often extremely difficult to get people to understand the impact of their policies on residents in Greater London, outside Westminster, and completely hopeless to get any understanding of the impact on those further afield. That is especially true if one lived in an area that was considered as somewhere where one went for a holiday and did not actually live your life there. I therefore fully support the amendment and welcome the assurances from the Minister so far on safeguards and exclusions from rural communities, and I wait to hear what she has to say.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

I would press the Minister for some help on this. We have not yet had the details of what seems to be proposed in the Minister’s reply—and we are on Report, which is very difficult, because we cannot behave as though we were in Committee and press her further for elucidations. So we have difficulties, although obviously we welcome the concessions that she might propose to bring forward. However, as I understand it, local authorities, which know their areas, will have to persuade the DCLG, presumably on a case-by-case basis, not that there should be a one-for-one but there should be a like-for-like. I have no doubt at all that the Minister and her Secretary of State have good intentions and will not seek to use this inappropriately, but why should civil servants recommend to a Minister, who has possibly not even visited a particular county, to tell a local authority that they know better than the local authority whether it is appropriate to have not just a one-for-one but a like-for-like replacement? In the name of localism, are we really going to see local authorities argue with the Secretary of State’s officials on a particular property or five properties in a village in some deeper part of the country, whether it be Somerset, Norfolk, Cumbria or wherever? That seems an extraordinary amount of Whitehall power over local government decision-making. I hope that it will be operated in good faith, but what happens when there is a disagreement? The Secretary of State is presumably always not only judge but jury and has the last word in this.

I would have liked to see more confidence expressed in local authorities, perhaps because it is monitored through the local plan—or, alternatively, perhaps the Minister will respond with the proposal that we will have a report back to Parliament two years after the Bill takes effect to see what exactly has been the response of local authorities and to what extent central government has been able to respond positively to local authorities’ description and assertion of their local need.

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[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville]

My Lords, I rise to support Amendment 71C. As has been said many times during the passage of this Bill, its implications will have very wide ranging consequences. It is therefore necessary to monitor those consequences adequately and consistently, and not leave it to hearsay and conjecture. The Secretary of State should conduct a proper review of the composition of the housing stock of local authorities and housing associations after three years. By then, it should be possible to ascertain exactly how many new homes have been produced, the state of the affordable rented sector, and what measures will be needed to redress any gaps in the market or enhancements needed to fulfil the Government’s aim of addressing the current housing crisis.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, I also would like to support this amendment. I do not mean to be impertinent to the Minister, but I think that she owes us this—and I will say why, if I may. There have been considerable worries around the House as to just how “skeleton” this Bill is. We have been promised regulations which, although they may now be affirmative thanks to the good efforts of our colleagues on the Cross Benches, will none the less come in after the Bill has become law because the consultation exercises on which they are based started two-thirds of the way through the parliamentary process. We all know that they should have been concluded before the parliamentary process, so that they could have shaped the form of the Bill and thus been amended in an appropriate way.

In area after area we do not know what is going to happen. We do not know what is going to happen with starter homes, with the potential take-up or with the priority order of the money from local authority sales. We do not know what number of properties will have to be sold and levied to meet that, or how the sums are going to add up. We could make a shopping list of the things we should know and the Government should know, but that we have not been told. I think that that is because the Government do not know. All this work should have been done, in my view, long before this Bill took shape. This is the result of having, in the first year of a Government, a Bill that should have been delayed, as a Member of the Benches opposite said, for at least a year while some of this evidence was collected. We could then have had a more informed and sensible debate in the long hours of Committee and now at Report.

At Report, the Minister and the Secretary of State are beginning to respond to a lot of the arguments raised in Committee, and we are very appreciative of that. However, the Government could and should have foreseen those arguments at the Commons stages; they could and should have foreseen them at Second Reading; and they could and should have had answers in Committee. What we are now getting are promises at Report. We will come to Third Reading and, if those responses are not adequate, we will have to go into questions and the consideration of ping-pong, which will then put a question mark over the whole timetable of the Bill.

Through no fault of the Minister, the department has failed to put in the preliminary work on this Bill. There are many people in this House who have been Ministers and taken Bills through it who know how much preparation is needed to have a Bill that is informed with the proposed regulations in draft. The LegCo committee, as was, would not have allowed this Bill to go forward in my day with the regulations as vague as they now appear to be because we are still awaiting the results of the consultation exercise.

At the very least, therefore, we need a proper, evidence-based, data-collected report three years down the line on whether all these offerings, suggestions, proposals and possibilities that we all see and argue for in this Bill actually come to pass or whether, as a result of skeletal scrutiny of a very skeletal Bill, we have missed out major issues which then bear heavily on people who can ill afford to see their housing need pushed ever further back in the queue. I therefore suggest to the Minister in all gentleness that she owes us this amendment.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, think that this amendment is important and I hope that the Minister will be able to accept it. My view is that this Bill is littered with unintended consequences. However, I may be wrong about that; they may be intended consequences. The answer is that we simply do not know, because so much of the Bill has not been brought forward in a way that allows us see what exactly is intended; we do not know what will be in regulations and so on. So we do not know what the consequences will be, whether they are intended or not. That is not a sensible position to be in.

If one takes at face value the objectives the Government have enunciated—what they want to do to address the housing problems that affect many parts of this country—there has to be the opportunity to take stock of the way the changes included in the Bill will work through the system. My noble friend’s amendment would at least enable that to be done. It would of course have been much better if the Bill had been properly produced in the first place after a proper assessment of all the evidence, and if it had been made clear to Parliament what all its various components would be. But given that we are not there, if this amendment is accepted, we could before the next general election have some of that information before Parliament and before government. The Government might even decide that they want to unpick some of what they are trying to do here, or they might recognise that remedial measures are necessary; but in any event there would be a generally and publicly available report so that, near the time of that general election, there could be an understanding of the Bill’s consequences and of how we need to move forward to achieve balanced and adequate housing provision in all parts of the country. I am pretty certain that this Bill, with all its consequences, whether intended or unintended, will not provide us with that; we need the evidence and the information. Indeed, I would have thought that good government, of whatever colour, requires that such data be collected and made available.

Strathclyde Review

Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts

Wednesday 13th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)]

My Lords, I very much welcome this debate and look forward to the maiden speeches that we will enjoy later, particularly that of my noble friend Lord Darling, my former boss at the time when legislation on tax credits was introduced in this House.

Why have this review? Is it because of tax credits? As I think has been conceded, that was a delay Motion and, happily, the Commons did indeed reconsider, as this House wished. But even if it had been fatal, which it was not, it would not have been a constitutional threat, as is acknowledged, because between 2000 and 2010 the Conservative Opposition, under the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, ran 11 fatal Motions against the Government. Five of them were led by former Ministers, including a former Leader of the House, and two of them were successful. No one had a tantrum; no one called for a review; no one proposed to legislate on the subject; no one threatened to create 100 Peers. The only difference now, as my noble friend Lady Smith said, is that the then Opposition are now in government.

Was the tax credits issue, none the less, a constitutional outrage because it dealt with financial matters? No, that will not run either. Most of what our work involves concerns finance, whether it is defence, transport, childcare or social security. The Government know perfectly well that SIs are not financially privileged and do not need to be if they are used, as they should be, for fairly minor matters according to our conventions. So in my view, it was not the tax credits vote that strained our conventions but the Government in the first place using a statutory instrument for a highly controversial measure that would take millions of pounds away from millions of families, despite the Prime Minister’s election promises to the contrary.

With tax credits, an SI was used not to apply the original policy intent of the Bill, which is what SIs are for, but to subvert it. As has already been said, that task should have been done by primary legislation, if that was the Government’s intent. Having chosen an SI route, which cannot carry financial privilege and to do what SIs were never intended to do, the Government then claimed retrospectively that financial matters come under some sort of informal financial privilege, which, even though it had not been sought, they wanted us to respect as though it had been—when it had not. That is indeed a straining of conventions.

Why then do we have a review? Is it petulance from the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde? Surely not. But the Government do seem to feel hard done by, victimised, with their 30.5% of the vote. As Ministers, we had 31% of the vote. We did not whinge, despite huge majorities down the other end; we worked for our votes the hard way. No, the issue that really matters is not the tax credit vote, as the noble Lords, Lord Strathclyde and Lord Wakeham, have acknowledged. The issue is the expanding role of SIs and their lack of scrutiny. Thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, this debate allows us to discuss this more fully, to which I now wish to return.

More and more, we have framework legislation—for social security, childcare, the Cities and Devolution Bill—where key decisions are to be carried by SIs beyond reach of amendment, sometimes drawn down months, even years, later. That role was never intended: nor, I believe, is it appropriate. Bills are now being future-proofed for future Secretaries of State with open-ended SIs that place future policy development beyond effective scrutiny.

The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, calls for greater clarity and certainty surrounding SIs. That is nice—for the Government. But what is really needed is effective scrutiny. I doubt that the Commons can do it, and I think that we can and that we should. Only we have the admirable delegated powers and scrutiny committees, and your Lordships have relevant expertise. We spend twice as much time as the Commons on debating SIs, even though we all know that we are wasting our time. As the Hansard Society says, we have the interest, appetite and time to do effective scrutiny.

So why do we not? We know why. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, is right: we should, but do not usually, get draft SIs during the process of the Bill so that we can consider them. We cannot, as a result, amend SIs that are passed and brought to us subsequently. Motions to Regret deplore and are ignored; fatal debates debate and destroy. However, in certain circumstances, either may be appropriate.

However, in 65 years, the Lords has rejected only five of the 169,000 statutory instruments before it. In 35 years, the Commons has not rejected one. As the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, said in his report on page 147, why bring SIs to Parliament at all if parliamentary scrutiny makes no difference? The noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, called for a suspensory veto to “force”—which he italicises—the Government and the House of Commons to take our concerns seriously. They were strong words from the noble Lord and he was absolutely right. Every review of Lords practices has called for a power of delay requiring the Government to think again while ensuring that the final say rests with the Commons.

Would option 3 in the report of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, do that? It could, but only if it specified, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, said, the period of delay—say 30 sitting days—before the SI returns to the Commons. Otherwise we could pass a delay Motion and the Government could take it back to the Commons, without reflection, with irritation and within 48 hours. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, assures us that a Government would never behave like that. You think? He writes that the Commons may need to override the Lords rapidly in cases of urgency. If something is indeed urgent—such as national security —would we really delay? It seems deeply implausible and, in any case, the usual channels would sort it.

He then fears that the specified delay might run past the proposed implementation date. That is pretty feeble, too. With the Library’s help, I checked the 60 or so statutory instruments we have had so far in this Session. As we know, they have three stages: they are laid, debated and implemented. I agree that with perhaps four of those 61 there was less than six weeks between laying the SI and its implementation date—for example, the Northern Irish election order last July and the Asian banks immunity order last October—but most of the rest were laid three to six months before their implementation date. There is adequate time for a delay Motion if those SIs are debated in good time. What struck me was the length of time, often three months or more, between laying and debating them. However, that can be sorted by effective departmental and business management; it is not a pretext for denying us and the public effective scrutiny.

The only real argument against a specified delay period is the one the review will not admit to: that it would be highly inconvenient for the Government. Yes, it is meant to be. I would not expect a delay Motion to happen very often—perhaps half a dozen times a year—but the fact that it might—

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt but the noble Baroness might be aware that the guide time for speeches is six minutes.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

It is an advisory time and I am coming to the end.

I would not expect a delay Motion to happen very often—perhaps six times a year—but the fact that it might would transform the value of our scrutiny; it would transform the care with which departments bring SIs to this House. The Lords would be doing exactly what it should by asking the Government and the other place to think again and then respecting their decision, as we should, when they have done so. So I hope that we can move down that path but with appropriate specified delay periods.

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)]

My Lords, perhaps I may interrupt before the next noble Lord rises to speak and add to the comment of my noble friend. We put in the guidance time because we know that the House will wish to rise at around 10 pm. We can do that only if everybody respects the speaking time. So I urge noble Lords to co-operate. When I get to my bit at the end I shall try to be brief but I know that the House will also want me to be fulsome in my reply.

House of Lords: Strathclyde Review

Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts

Thursday 3rd December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

Another noble and learned Lord gave evidence to the same Joint Committee—the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer. He said this about secondary legislation:

“The question is not: is the power there to vote against it? The question is: is there a convention that says constitutionally we should not do it?”

The answer to the question must be, and is, no.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)]

My Lords, surely the Minister would agree that this was in no sense a constitutional crisis merely because the House of Lords did what it was supposed to and should do, which is to scrutinise and, where appropriate, ask the Commons to think again. That is what this House decided to do—not to destroy the SI but to delay it to allow the Commons to think again. Once the Commons as a body had thought again, following the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the constitutional crisis disappeared and we all got a result which was welcomed around the House.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

My Lords, I am sorry, but I disagree with the way in which the noble Baroness represents what happened in October. This House withheld its approval from that statutory instrument and issued a set of demands: it overruled the House of Commons. It did not ask the House of Commons to think again; it overruled a decision that the other House had already considered and decided.

Housing Associations: Right to Buy

Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts

Tuesday 9th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, I recognise the problem that my noble friend talks about. Recognising the challenges that these leaseholders face, my department introduced a new law in August 2014 that caps the amount that councils can charge leaseholders for repairs to their home. This is called “Flo’s law”. It limits the amount that can be claimed by councils from local-authority leaseholders in a five-year period to £10,000 outside London and £15,000 inside London for government-funded works.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of Broadland Housing Association. Housing associations are mostly charities. As the chair of Peabody said:

“Peabody’s assets belong to us. They are not the government’s to sell”.

Does the Minister not agree that the forced sale of charitable assets at knock-down prices damages the housing chances of those desperate and on the waiting list, damages rural communities, damages the stability of housing finance and damages the very concept of a charity, what it does and why it even exists?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, this is not about seizing the assets of housing associations. The right to acquire currently operates on the basis that receipts from homes sold enable housing associations to reinvest in new affordable housing.

Business

Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts

Tuesday 16th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Laming]

My Lords, I am disappointed that the noble Baroness raised the first point, because she knows that the matter has been referred to the independent Commissioner for Standards. It is absolutely right, and in fairness to my colleagues involved in this, that the matter is handled in accordance with the procedures agreed by this House and away from the Floor of the House. I hope that all Members of the House will respect that.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, perhaps I might comment on the second part of the noble Lord’s reply to my noble friend the Leader of the Opposition, on the Local Government Finance Bill.

Yesterday afternoon we learnt from the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, that the Government were making available £100 million. It was courteous of her to give us a briefing session; we were very pleased that she did so and we are grateful for that. However, a number of the amendments today were based on the assumption that no such transitional moneys would be forthcoming. Because they are, it raises serious issues; for example, about whether local authorities that have already gone out to consultation on their schemes, which the Bill says they must do, would now be required to go out or possibly face judicial review.

Secondly, with the benefit of that grant, we are now talking about collecting extremely small sums of money from reluctant and sometimes recalcitrant payers, of £1.50 or £1.75 a week, and in many cases the cost of collection will exceed the money collected. I for one wish to get guidance and steer from legal and finance officers of local authorities so that we can have a proper, informed, sensible and cool debate, while being respectful of and grateful for the additional moneys coming to local authorities. But we cannot do that overnight. As a result, I shall be withdrawing at least one if not two amendments in my name because I cannot argue them until I have got the information we now need in light of these changed circumstances.

In previous times, when many of us have been Ministers, we have made arrangements perhaps to go from Report back to Committee or from Third Reading back to Report, because this is a self-regulating House. All that my noble friend is asking—and we were given assurances by the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, yesterday that this would happen—is that we have the flexibility at Third Reading to table amendments that may introduce new material, because new material was introduced by the Government yesterday.

Housing

Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I agree very much with my noble friend. The Government are doing just that. Public sector land is being freed up as we speak. As I am sure the noble Lord knows, there is a plan across all departments to free up any spare land, including Ministry of Defence land. There are also now policies to ensure that, where planning permission has already been given but the plans have not been implemented, there will be greater encouragement to those people to ensure that the land is developed. We all recognise that there is a great demand for housing. We very much appreciate the problems that first-time buyers are suffering, and the delivery of more houses—on which we are determined—should help.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, is the Minister aware of the effect of housing supply on jobs? As my noble friend Lord McKenzie rightly said, each new house built generates two and a half years-worth of job—one year for the construction and one and a half years for the supply of materials, the furnishings, the carpets and the rest. Not only will an enhanced housing programme meet desperate housing need, it will also meet desperate unemployment, particularly among young people who wish to be apprentices.

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I do not think that anybody will disagree with what the noble Baroness said. There is no doubt that the construction industry provides jobs and training for young people and, as she has said, it has many offshoots as a result. It is therefore in everybody’s interests that we manage to ensure that the housing market is boosted, and the Government are firmly behind that.

Procedure of the House

Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2012 Lords Chamber

The reason why I support the Procedure Committee’s proposals is that the exceptional controversial Bills criteria are neither clear nor necessarily useful. For example, only recently we took the Committee stage of the Welfare Reform Bill in Grand Committee. By any measure, that was exceptionally controversial and it came to a vote on the Floor of the House. I believe that most Peers who took part in the Committee stage—albeit it was upstairs—found it extremely useful to have the expertise around the table and to be able to discuss the issues with the Minister.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, the noble Lord is absolutely right in his description of the effectiveness of Grand Committee for the Welfare Reform Bill, but that was not the nature of it being exceptionally controversial. The difficulty was that we had a number of substantially disabled colleagues who wished to take part who were unhappy, with good reason, about the physical layout of the Committee Room. What my noble friends proposed was that the segments of the Bill that affected disability issues should be taken on the Floor of the House while the rest went up into Grand Committee. That would have been a solution, had the usual channels on both sides accepted it, which would have satisfied the entire House and improved scrutiny and attendance.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I wrote to many of the participants and all those to whom I wrote without exception said how well they thought that it had gone. Allowances were made by the House authorities to make the Committee Room more acceptable to those Members in wheelchairs. The point about the presumption is that it would give us the flexibility to make that sort of judgment again in future.

If the report is agreed to, the House would remain the arbiter of which Bills and what proportion of the Bills were sent to Grand Committee. In my view, the House is the best judge of which Bill should be sent where, and that decision should be made case by case.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Strathclyde]

Yes, my Lords, my noble friend has got it entirely right. There would still be a Motion before the House and any noble Lord could put an amendment down to it or divide on it.

I see the potential extra hour and a half as an addition of welcome flexibility to the scheduling of Grand Committee and not a requirement to sit to the maximum each day. That was the point that my noble friend Lord Alderdice made. I have already made that clear to the Leader of the Opposition in a dialogue off the Floor. It would sometimes suit the participants to complete a Committee stage in a smaller number of longer sittings than to have to find time in their diaries for a larger number of days. Therefore, my noble friend Lord Alderdice has nothing to worry about.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, said that people would get too tired, but we are already sitting until 10 o’clock on the Floor of the House, so there is no reason why they should not be able to do so in Grand Committee—and, as I pointed out, that would not necessarily happen all the time.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, again, I speak with reference to the Welfare Reform Bill, where the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, who was the Whip, and the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Freud, were admirable in their courtesy, openness and responsiveness to the Committee Members; it was impeccably handled.

The point is that Report is easy, because you have traversed the ground already in Committee. You have the evidence, you have had the meetings, you have had the seminars, you have had the briefings, you are making one speech perhaps to move or in support of your amendment—possibly a minor one to wind up—and that is it. It is easy. The difficult, demanding, tiring and heavily detailed work is done in Committee, particularly on a Bill such as the Welfare Reform Bill, where you are continuously interrogating the Minister in order to get the detailed information so that you can come back to it in subsequent, reiterative amendments. It is hugely demanding, and going on as late as 7.30 pm has meant that some of our older Members and more disabled Members have been severely tired. I have very great concerns about lengthening sitting hours on the grounds that Committee stage is as easy and straightforward as Report; it is not.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, all we are doing here is extending the envelope by which the Grand Committee can sit. It will not necessarily have to sit as long as that every single day. What is more, a presumption towards committing Commons Bills to Grand Committee cannot release any capacity that does not exist already. We already have the capacity to have a Grand Committee sitting on legislation four days a week, and the Companion already enables any government Bill to be committed to Grand Committee, as recommended by the first working group on this subject by Lord Rippon of Hexham as far back as 1994, and even he gave no exceptions.

Meanwhile, the proposed extension in the sitting hours of Grand Committees would affect how the time spent on each Committee stage is divided up across sittings and among Bills. It would not reduce the number of hours spent on each Committee stage and so make room for more legislation.

Last of all, I turn to what my noble friend Lord Cormack called the elephant in the room over the last three days. I have been struck by—indeed, I have been astonished at—the number of Members who have spoken to me in the corridor or have sent me a text message to say that they think that this process is all part of a sneaky government ploy to push through a Lords reform Bill without anybody noticing, and to minimise collateral damage to the rest of the programme —to do it by stealth, said the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd. Well, I have been waiting a long time to find a good wheeze to get such a Bill through the House of Lords without anybody noticing. I assure noble Lords, this is not it. This is not a great ploy or a great scheme; if it were, obviously we have been horribly found out.

If the House agrees this report, next Session the House will decide, case by case, which Bills are considered in Committee here on the Floor and in the Moses Room. The House itself will decide at what pace it progresses and which amendments are made to which Bills. I have every confidence that, if a Lords reform Bill makes it into the Queen’s Speech, the House will take every decision it wishes next Session.

Health and Social Care Bill

Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

The appeal on the risk register will be held in a tribunal on 5 and 6 March, and therefore there might be an opportunity for Members to raise the issue of the decisions of the tribunal, depending on the dates that the Government actually set for the Report stage. Would he care to comment on that? Further, if there is not too much flexibility, has the noble Earl considered what the Companion says on the admissibility of amendments tabled at Third Reading:

“The principal purposes of amendments on third reading are … to clarify any remaining uncertainties”?

The risk register may well raise issues that constitute “remaining uncertainties”. Can we have an assurance that if it is not possible to raise them on Report, there will be some flexibility at Third Reading under the heading in the Companion that I have just read out to ensure that we can have a debate on any issue arising out of the tribunal’s decisions? I am sorry to have to raise the matter in this way, but this is an opportunity to do so.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, perhaps I may ask a question of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. I ask him as the Leader of the whole House—which I know he is very mindful and respectful of—and not just as the leader of a government coalition party. Whenever we deal with a social security Bill—apart from turning negative regulations into affirmative regulations—that almost inevitably involves expenditure, either increasing it or reducing it. That may also apply to health Bills and transport Bills. If, on any choosing of the Speaker and one of the noble Lord’s right honourable friends at the other end in a position of authority, the claim can be made that that is financial privilege—this is before the Speaker has even ruled on it, so clearly there is a government view so far as I can tell; I stand to be corrected—and if any Bill involving any element of expenditure, including on welfare, pensions, health and education, can at the fiat of the House of Commons be ruled as money and therefore privilege, then, taking the noble Lord’s statement that this House is a part-time House, it will become a very part-time House indeed because we might as well go home.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, let me deal with the two questions put by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, and the noble Lord, Lord Grocott. My noble friend Lord Howe, who is an expert on these matters, will respond to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. In response to the noble Baroness, as I said earlier, this is a matter for the House of Commons; it is not a matter for me. It is the Speaker who takes a view on the advice of the clerks. I would not be at all surprised if they had had a discussion with the Government, but there is nothing new in any of this. No procedure has changed and no substantive law or practice has done so. It is perfectly possible for this House to suggest and recommend changes to Bills over a whole range of issues, no doubt including financial ones. How the House of Commons deals with those is a matter for that House.

I thought that the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, were precisely the kind of points that he might make if a “reform of the second Chamber” Bill were brought forward. I would not dream of trespassing on matters which are the preserve of the noble Lord, Lord Richard, and his Joint Committee. I am sure that they will have taken account of what the noble Lord said.