Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023 (Consequential and Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2024

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2024 Grand Committee

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her introduction to this instrument. I refer to my interests as recorded in the register.

We have been pleased to support the implementation of the regulation of social housing, including the revised consumer standards which will be required of landlords from April. The introduction of Awaab’s law is particularly important, as evidence of the harms of damp and mould continues to accumulate; as is the building safety work since Grenfell, although I think we all agree that it could be going more quickly, and we will continue to raise the issue that buildings under 11 metres are still not addressed. We look forward to further consideration of some of the key ownership issues when we debate the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill later this month. We totally support the principle that social tenants should receive and deserve the very highest quality in the homes they live in and the service they receive from their housing provider.

I am sure the Minister will be pleased to know that we recognise that these technical amendments are entirely uncontentious and will therefore not object to or raise lots of issues on them. However, it would be wrong in any discussion related to social housing not to highlight the ongoing funding issues facing councils, with their housing stock, and housing associations. For councils, the increasing burden of regulation—important as we all understand it to be—places an increased financial burden on them. With the capping of rent increases and the fact that in the current cost of living crisis any significant increase in rents would place an unmanageable burden on our tenants, the cost of meeting these additional regulatory burdens is a significant pressure. This is in addition to the costs of decarbonisation and retrofitting. While government contributions to this are welcome, at the current rate of funding it would take many decades to complete the work, well beyond the target for net zero.

Lastly, I take this opportunity to mention, as there has not been a chance anywhere else, the unfathomable decision that emerged from the small print of last week’s Budget—that the Secretary of State has terminated the ability of local authorities to retain 100% of right-to-buy receipts. This returns us to the awful travesty around right-to-buy sales. I take the example of my authority, which had a council stock of around 30,000 social homes, and now has only around 8,000. Some years ago, we were offered the opportunity to buy out our stock from the Government, which you could argue we already owned, but I will leave that argument for another day. We borrowed £240 million to do so, and that loan is being paid off through the housing revenue account. Not only does the removal of the 100% retention of receipts remove the resources we would have had to replace the homes sold under right to buy, but it also eats into the income stream we had to pay off the loan we had to take out to buy back our own homes.

Local Regeneration: Industrial Areas

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Armstrong on securing this important debate. I first met her back in 1997, after the general election; she was incredibly kind to me then and has inspired me ever since, so I thank her for that. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, for the memory of a sweet-shop; my great-great-grandparents had a sweet-shop in the East End of London, which is also a happy memory.

This afternoon, we have heard about Teesside, Barnsley, Newcastle, Bradford, Dumfries, the East End of London, Sheffield, and seaside towns, and I am going to talk about new towns. The debate has demonstrated yet again, as did yesterday’s sticking-plaster Budget, a Government who have no clear plan for the economy or a cogent and comprehensive industrial strategy, or effective national devolution, and will simply fail in their vital task of ensuring that our country achieves its full and very considerable potential. Meanwhile, the so-called levelling-up mission runs into the sand, with cancelled projects, piecemeal funding bids, Ministers who cave in too easily to their Back-Benchers, failure to deliver the skills that business needs, and a devastating failure to deliver infrastructure, which means, for example, developers waiting longer to get a grid connection for one development—in some cases, eight years—than it took to build the whole core of our motorway network in the 1950s and 1960s.

Regeneration is needed across our country, a case clearly set out by my noble friend Lady Donaghy. Many areas are plagued by the sort of inequalities that the right reverend Prelate referred to so powerfully.

Although I do not come from one of the former industrial parts of the country, I can speak about regeneration from first-hand experience. Our new towns—a marvellous innovation of the post-war Labour Government—designed to provide the right conditions for the technological revolution that was taking place, and to provide good-quality, affordable housing for the skilled workforce that would be needed, were delivered over a relatively short timespan. Of course, if you build an entire city or town over a period of little more than a decade, some 50 years later it will need extensive renewal and regeneration all at the same time. I always think of it like putting new light bulbs in your house when you move in; then they all go at the same time.

We also had to create the right conditions to allow the town’s industrial base to move from the heavy manufacturing and engineering in the defence industry, which had provided the employment of the early decades, to developing the life sciences cluster—now the largest in the world outside the USA—and an established space, defence and communications cluster. In case noble Lords did not know, one in three of the satellites up in space, processing our phone and data signals and guiding our GPS and satnavs, is made in Stevenage in Hertfordshire.

We have not dragged our heels on housebuilding either, because we understand the co-dependency between housing and the economy which is deep in our new-town roots. That co-dependency was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. Our new-town pioneers got their homes and their jobs together, enabling them to truly have a vision of a good life for them and their families.

We have also seen the decline and hollowing out of our town centre. This is the same problem faced across so many of our towns and cities in the UK, but exacerbated for us by the fact that when the development corporation was wound up in the 1980s—and in spite of determined local action to try and prevent it happening—all the property in our town centre was handed over to investment houses and pension funds. We ended up with a complex web of over 60 large landholders, with the council retaining only the expense of the public realm maintenance.

Nevertheless, in spite of one false start which crashed with the rest of the economy in 2008, we put our minds and very considerable efforts to the task of comprehensive regeneration. Helped by the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, our community, our local enterprise partnership and an amazing collaboration between local leaders across public, private and community sectors, as well as party-political boundaries—there was no one-party state here, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, talked about—we are now in the midst of a successful £1 billion regeneration which is transforming the heart of our town.

We are using town centre development to build a considerable number of the homes we need, which helps us with the constraints of tight town boundaries. We have optimised the opportunities that our east coast fast rail links bring by co-locating a new bus station, and both benefit from being linked into our 45 kilometres of cycleways. We are bringing the success of our cell and gene therapy cluster into the heart of the town, with lab space above the retail area. We set the conditions which enabled us to secure the £65 million European headquarters for Autolus, an American cell and gene research and development company. That scheme was taken from concept, through planning and a land deal, and on to site in eight months, so do not tell me that councils cannot move fast enough when they need to.

However, in the last 14 years it has felt too often that keeping the pace of this regeneration going from local government has been a battle and has been in spite of the conditions set by government, not because of them. The Centre for Cities has identified some of the barriers that areas face, and I recognise many of these. First, on risk, the private sector will lead where it is certain of a clear financial return, but often in the areas in most need of regeneration the risk for the private sector is too great on its own, so some level of public intervention will be needed. Too many government pump-priming funding pots—even where they are available—require sums of local match funding that are just unrealistic, and we do not have a system of local/regional investment funding in this country, as there is elsewhere in Europe, that could help.

Secondly, it must be recognised that social return—jobs, skills, local infrastructure and affordable housing—will need to be realised as well as private return, and that this is likely to need support. Andy Haldane, commenting on yesterday’s Budget, said that until we resolve the issues around millions of our workforce in this country not having the skills needed in our economy, we will not resolve our productivity and growth issues.

Planning and policy uncertainty are a real barrier for the private sector, as is access to essential infrastructure such as grid connections, water and high-speed data. The lack of a proper industrial strategy means that these are a real barrier to growth, and they are a barrier now. I have spoken before in this Chamber of my personal pain at having our local growth plans stalled, as our local plan was held for over a year on a holding direction by the Secretary of State. These kind of interventions really have to stop.

The Centre for Cities put it very clearly when it said that

“public-private cooperation can best maximise the private and social returns from a project”.

This is vital so that the people of the local area benefit, as well as those who have invested for profit. My noble friends Lady Armstrong and Lady Chapman, and the right reverend Prelate, have already mentioned, when they spoke about Teesworks, what happens when this balance gets tilted the wrong way. At the heart of that issue are the people of Teesside and the public assets formerly owned by them that should have been regenerated for their benefit to generate jobs, employment and industry. They should also be receiving sufficient return for their investment of land and the other value of the site. The governance of the project should have ensured an appropriate sharing of the risk taken by private sector partners to justify the returns that they have already accrued, as mentioned in the recent review.

The report’s scathing assessment and its 28 recommendations highlight the need for reviews of financial regulations and the make-up of the board, better oversight and scrutiny, reporting to the board, and for the public interest test being foremost in terms of transparency. The report also highlighted that not enough attention is paid to conflicts of interest, including those of the mayor. Seriously, the report highlights procurement issues, including the decision mentioned by my noble friend Lady Armstrong to change the balance of ownership in favour of the private owners to a 90/10 split, and the balance of risk between the public and the private sector, when to date the public sector seems to have taken the bulk of the risk and been responsible for the costs invested while the private sector has had the benefit of the profits.

There are very serious questions to answer about whether it has all been in the best interests of the people of Teesside. Have they had value for money for their public investment? As my noble friend Lady Armstrong indicated, the report asks more questions than it answers, questions that the people of the north-east deserve and have a right to have answered. As the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, said, why will the Government not accept the offer of the National Audit Office for a forensic financial assessment of what went on?

It is time for a reset on regeneration to ensure that it delivers for people in so many areas across our country who genuinely feel that they have been left behind—because they have been left behind. I hope that the Minister agrees with me on what is needed, a programme that the Labour Party have set out very clearly. We need a stable industrial strategy to create the conditions that businesses need in order to invest. We need to move away from insecure, low-paid jobs and strengthen our programme of apprenticeships, skills and training, and employment rights, to make sure that work pays. We need a national wealth fund to generate the private investment that we need. We need to get to work on building the affordable housing that we know we need as a matter of urgency. We need to speed up our critical infrastructure projects to get Britain moving again. There needs to be a complete reform of the planning system, so that it works for the builders not the bureaucrats, and investment in clean British power for cheaper bills and energy security.

We are all hoping on this side that the general election will come soon so that the British people can decide whether they want more of the decline of the last 14 years or a Britain where growth comes from the grass roots, where growth serves both people and businesses—a Britain with its future back.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Swinburne) (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong of Hill Top, for tabling this important debate on local regeneration of former industrial areas across the whole of the United Kingdom. We have visited a very large swathe of the United Kingdom in today’s debate, also talking about the challenges constraining such regeneration. I thank all noble Lords for their considered and insightful contributions today, some of which I agree with—not all, but I am sure that we can work our way through them.

I too grew up in a former industrial area, in south-west Wales. I went to school during the miners’ strike as the granddaughter of a miner. I spent a large number of my years as an MEP supporting Welsh economic developments through the EU’s convergence funds, looking at how you regenerate some of those industrial areas. Therefore, I have some first-hand experience, share your Lordships’ aspirations for these areas and support their redevelopment.

However, as we all know, over the last 50 years the UK has seen fast and extensive deindustrialisation, with a lasting impact in many areas, including, as we have heard, the north, Yorkshire and the Humber, my own country of Wales and certainly the Midlands. That is to name but a few. We have heard today even more examples of where this has happened.

Although London and much of the UK have flourished under the new economic trends, former industrial centres that were once the beating heart of the Industrial Revolution have struggled, and continue to do so. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, and all sorts of other noble Lords here, that this is not right. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, average wages in London in 2019 were 60% higher than those in Scarborough and Grimsby, with the top 10% of earners in London earning nearly twice as much per hour. Half of working-age adults in London and Brighton have university degrees, compared with less than one-fifth in places such as Doncaster or Mansfield. We are under no illusions about the scale of the challenge to regenerate these former industrial areas, and that is precisely why we have made it central to this Government’s levelling-up agenda.

I know that the noble Lords will have heard this before, but it bears repeating: for this Government, levelling up means ensuring that your life chances are not determined by where you grow up. It means addressing entrenched regional disparities to unlock economic growth everywhere and ensuring that people benefit from these rises in living standards and well-being. Nowhere is this more important than in our post-industrial heartlands—places where once, a location meant a life path. Now, while celebrating the cultural history and heritage of these places, we are committed to unlocking their full and wide-ranging potential.

Before turning to specific issues that noble Lords have raised in the debate, I will talk through some of what the Government are doing to try to make this happen. We are rolling out gigabit broadband across the UK; introducing education investment areas; opening freeports; increasing the national living wage; launching the long-term plan for towns and the anti-social behaviour action plan, while recruiting more police officers; and, importantly, delivering through our extensive local growth funds, including the levelling up fund and the UK shared prosperity fund. Through the third round of the levelling up fund, we are investing a further £1 billion in 55 projects across the length and breadth of the UK.

As many noble Lords have mentioned, we are using the levelling-up needs metrics to target funding at the places that need it the most, ensuring that every part of the country benefits. Multiple projects in former industrial areas are benefiting, such as the £20 million South Shields riverside transformation project, the £19.5 million River Tyne regeneration infrastructure project and, as the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, will appreciate, the £19.8 million project in Bradford to support and enhance Keighley’s engineering, manufacturing and economic role in the region, to name but a few. We have granted town deals exceeding £20 million to a number of other former industrial areas. As well as Barnsley, Doncaster and Wakefield, we are including 12 more that were announced yesterday by the Chancellor. They will receive £20 million each to invest in community regeneration over the next decade; it will be led by local people in order to be determined by local need.

Beyond our funds, post-industrial areas in the Midlands, such as Stoke-on-Trent and Mansfield, are being supported by bespoke and intensive levelling up partnerships. Levelling up requires a multifaceted approach, as many noble Lords have said today, from catalysing industrial clusters in the sectors that will drive the future economy to supercharging our city regions, to supporting our struggling towns and local areas.

We know that the challenge is large and recognise that it is not a simple task. It will not be achieved through quick wins. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich said, restoring pride in place across all areas of the UK, including those with a strong historic cultural identity, will take time. The current economic context makes this even harder, but even more essential, and so this is why structural and systemic change is so important, not least the empowerment of local leaders. I agree with many noble Lords who have spoken today that local decision-making is best. To this end, we have set ourselves a clear mission that, by 2030, every part of England that wants one will have a devolution deal, with powers at, or approaching, the highest level of devolution, with a simplified, long-term funding settlement.

Since 2022, we have announced nine new devolution deals, many of which are for post-industrial areas. These include, as many noble Lords know, a new mayoral combined authority deal for York and North Yorkshire, as well as Hull and East Yorkshire, the first ever mayoral combined county authority deal in the east Midlands and a second mayoral combined county authority deal announced with Greater Lincolnshire.

This May, the north-east will become the first region to be entirely covered by a mayoral devolution. A new north-east mayoral combined authority will be established, which will mean that every person in the north-east will have their own authority and elected leader, making decisions in their best interests. English devolution currently covers about 14.2 million people, taking the proportion now covered by a devolution deal to greater than 64%—up from 40% just a few years ago.

I turn to some of the other issues that were raised. We also recognise the challenges facing the local government sector and have committed to reducing the complexity of local government funding. I note the comments from many noble Lords. We have listened to local partners. In July 2023, we published our plan to simplify the funding landscape. Through this, we are delivering a more transparent, simple and accountable approach to funding and we are beginning to put this into action. For example, we have adopted a new approach to the third and final round of the levelling up fund, which has moved away from competition and made use of the large number of high-quality bids submitted in round 2. This was designed to reduce burdens on applicants and maximise efficiency.

Similarly, the UK shared prosperity fund provides local authorities more flexibility with a three-year allocation that they can choose how to spend on local priorities or projects. The most recent local government finance settlement for 2024-25 makes some £64.7 billion available to councils across the country—an increase in core spending power on 2023-24 of up to £4.5 billion or 7.5% in cash terms. We appreciate that they have more work to do and are therefore trying to fund them appropriately.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

The Secretary of State made an outrageous statement this week about local authorities using consultants. They are used mostly to put together the very bids that the noble Baroness just set out. Can she please take back to the Secretary of State that it is absolutely wrong to criticise local government, which is starved of resources anyway for the reasons we all know about and is desperately trying to get hold of some of the funding to which she referred? The only way that local government can do this is by bringing in consultants to put its bids together; it does not have the resources otherwise. I ask the noble Baroness to take that back to the department and get it to think about this again.

[Baroness Swinburne (Con)]

I give the noble Baroness that assurance: I will take that back to the department. It is my first week in the department, so I do not have an answer for her now, but I will speak to the civil servants and my Secretary of State.

I will continue. The settlement includes additional measures for local authorities in England, announced on 24 January, which will be worth an additional £600 million. We are trying to provide local authorities with as much bespoke support as possible, knowing that they have more jobs to do to deliver some of these programmes.

The work that we have done to create a climate for investment through the development of our freeports and investment zones programmes will drive up living standards and regenerate selected areas. Unlike the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and some others, I think that the freeport initiative will be a source of jobs and investment. So far, we have created 12 freeports, eight of which are in former industrial areas—including in Teesside, the east Midlands, the Humber, Plymouth and the Solent—two are green freeports in Scotland and two are in Wales. All are now open for business and creating jobs.

Freeports are all about securing economic futures, and that of the UK as a whole, by reorienting regional economies towards innovative, low-carbon sectors such as renewables and advanced manufacturing. I believe that we are already seeing some movement here, with 6,000 jobs expected to be created and £2.9 billion of investment promised. They are also creating high-quality jobs across the UK, right in the communities where they are needed most.

Meanwhile, our investment zones programme recognises that the UK has underperformed in leveraging the success of key industries and certain research strengths, so they will be established in places with significant unmet productivity potential, many of which have a rich industrial history. For example, the zones in South Yorkshire, Greater Manchester and the north-east of England are focusing on clusters associated with advanced manufacturing, nodding to their industrial heritage while investing further in high-potential industries of the present and the future.

The Government recognise the crucial role played by the private sector in the levelling-up agenda through schemes such as investment zones and freeports. We aim to enable and empower the private sector to increase investment, jobs and growth at a local level. Good quality, self-sustaining growth will be delivered through capitalising on the growing industries of the future. That includes manufacturing, where our funding is targeted to ensure that UK industry copes with the fundamental changes to remain at the forefront of the global transition to net zero. We are committed to growing the economy and ensuring that funding does not focus solely on the most successful sectors today but looks ahead as we keep pace internationally and build the UK’s expertise for the industries of the future.

In acknowledging many noble Lords’ close ties to the north-east region, I am delighted to draw attention to the recent announcement of a £40 million funding package to accelerate Teesside regeneration. Middlesbrough, alongside Redcar and Cleveland, will receive £20 million each—a total of £40 million—to help ramp up improvements, with targeted projects planned to revitalise high streets, healthcare, transport and education, and to create more affordable housing.

Finally, in County Durham, where I understand that the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, served as Member of Parliament, the market town of Bishop Auckland, which expanded to serve the coal industry, has been awarded £53 million from the Government’s future high streets fund and towns fund to support its development as a visitor destination of national significance. I look forward to visiting, given that my grandparents come from there. This investment will help diversify and enhance the town centre, improve transport connectivity and provide new skills and enterprise opportunities for young people. I hope noble Lords will acknowledge that that is a fitting response to celebrate the town’s proud industrial heritage.

I have a very large number of questions that I will try to zip through. My handwriting is appalling, so please forgive me if I stumble. I really empathise with the pride that the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, has in her home area. It certainly made me think about my upbringing in my area. To date, approximately £1.4 billion in levelling-up funding has been allocated to projects in the north-east and Tees Valley. This funding covers a range of regeneration priorities, including addressing the local skills gap and developing emerging sectors in former industrial areas. Across all three rounds of the levelling up fund, the north-east has received more per capita than any other English region, alongside wider programmes including devolution deals, levelling-up partnerships and our long-term plan for towns. This shows our commitment to level up the region.

I turn to some of the remarks that many noble Baronesses and noble Lords made with respect to the Teesworks controversy. Following the concerns raised about Teesworks and the actions of the Tees Valley Combined Authority, we commissioned an independent external review, which was published on Monday 29 January. This found no evidence of corruption or illegality but made a series of constructive recommendations regarding the governance and transparency of the project. For the two recommendations relevant to central government, we will carefully consider how to support the continued success of the mayoral development corporation across the country and the recommendations regarding the landfill tax. The Secretary of State made a written request to the Tees Valley mayor, asking him to set out how he intends to respond to the panel’s recommendations by 8 March. This has already been done, and we hope to publish all this in a very short time.

I have been asked why the National Audit Office should not examine this. I have a note here to tell me that the NAO’s role is not to audit or examine individual local authorities, and its powers would not normally be used for that purpose. It would therefore be inappropriate to expand its role so significantly by asking it to lead this inquiry.

The panel that did this investigation was made up of individuals with significant experience in assurance and local government. The panel spent months investigating thoroughly, and found no evidence of corruption or fraud. Its report has been published; I am sure noble Lords have all read it, as they have alluded to. It was published a week after we received it. We welcome the constructive recommendations and are actively considering the way in which these relate to central government.

Domestic Violence Refuges: Charities and Local Government

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, in the last couple of months we have given £600 million extra to local authorities because we understand the pressures they are under. We are keeping an eye on those pressures, and we encourage all local authorities which have difficulties with their budgets to talk to us early on, so that we can work with them. Local authority budgets have been increased by 7.5% this year, and as my noble friend said, local authorities prioritise domestic abuse victims in their budgeting.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a founder and patron of Survivors Against Domestic Abuse. Last Thursday, my honourable friend Jess Phillips read out in the other place—as she does every year—the names of 98 women killed as a result of violence over the last year: a heartbreaking tribute to lives broken and lost to violence. After every case of domestic homicide, we are told that lessons will be learned. Does the Minister agree that providing safe spaces to live for women who flee violence—a project we started in Stevenage, and which now provides 35 homes across Hertfordshire—is vital? However, it is in serious danger of being stopped because such local authority spending is discretionary. Will she meet with me to hear more about this work?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I would be more than happy to meet the noble Baroness to learn about that, and I thank her for everything she is doing in her county. As recently as this weekend, we heard so much about violence against women. The Home Office is taking this issue extremely seriously and a large amount of money is going into extra police training, particularly on tackling domestic abuse. Some £3.3 million has been committed over the next three years to support delivery of Domestic Abuse Matters training to police officers. Let us hope that this changes things.

Housebuilding

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage Excerpts

Wednesday 28th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

As I have said previously, SMEs play a critical role in housebuilding and in the housing market in this country. Through the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act, we have made changes to the planning system that will support SMEs to build more homes by making the planning process easier to navigate, faster and more predictable. The Government have recently announced policies that will support SME housebuilders, including an expansion of the ENABLE Build guarantee scheme, Homes England’s pilots of SME-only land sales and updating the community infrastructure levy guidance. So we are in the same place as my noble friend and we will be working with this sector very closely in the future.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, there is a specific recommendation in the excellent CMA report regarding targets:

“More objective and effective use of targets to ensure housing need is met”


are needed. With the Government caving in to pressure from Back-Benchers in the other place and scrapping housing targets, and the developers putting profit before people’s homes, will the Government now reinstate those housing targets and make a long-term plan to deliver the homes we need, preferably in the new “new towns” that the Labour Party is promoting?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, let me make it clear that we have delivered 2.5 million extra homes in the last 14 years. Since 2018, we have also delivered the four highest annual building numbers for 30 years, and we are on target for 1 million more homes in this Parliament. We are delivering, but we have been through an economic crisis. We are coming out of it, and we will start to build more homes in the future.

Non-Domestic Rating (Rates Retention: Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2024

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2024 Grand Committee

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I draw the Committee’s attention to my interests as a councillor and a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I thank the Minister for her detailed introduction. The Liberal Democrats support these technical changes. I do not know how we could oppose them without having a very detailed understanding of all the complexities of the changes that the Minister has outlined today. As she said, the purpose is to ensure that local authorities receive the correct payments from business rates, which are a very important source of income for local authorities.

This is indeed a very technical SI, and the formulae for calculating the redistributive mechanisms are also very complex, as I have read in the paper that we are considering. However, it seems to me that the greater the complexity, the greater the likelihood of unintended inequities creeping in. So my first point to the Minister is this: the Explanatory Memorandum states:

“There is no, or no significant, foreseen impact on the public sector”


and that the intention is to

“minimise the impacts on local authorities as far as is practicable”.

Now, as the Minister will know, local authorities are in very challenging financial times, so every penny in the council coffers will make a difference. Can the Minister put parameters on

“as far as is practicable”?

Are we talking thousands or hundreds of thousands of pounds? I hope it is not millions. What are the parameters that the Government have used for describing

“as far as is practicable”?

I appreciate it will never be absolutely precise, because it is so complex.

The Minister will appreciate that business rate income is a very important source of funding. On the other hand, councils have a responsibility to ensure vibrant high streets. The result of that is councils wanting business rate bills to be reduced to help retailers. There were some changes in the last piece of legislation to which this SI refers to do that. It was reported last year in the Times, and referenced on Report on the Bill, that some retailers have business rates bills that are equal to or higher than their rental costs. That cannot be right. It leads me to suggest that root and branch reform of the business rates system is urgently needed.

Part of the solution to this gross unfairness is the way that the existing system overly favours online retailers that operate from very large warehouses. An example could be Amazon. The Minister will repeat that the Government have adjusted business rates so that these giants of the retail world pay a bigger share towards the local services they use, but these changes were minimal, resulting in a drop in the financial ocean for large online retailers. For example, it cost Amazon £29 million when its business model is in the billions. Yet the system still overwhelmingly favours online retail, despite government commitments in the levelling-up Act to reinvigorate the high street.

A radical change to create a fairer balance between what is known as “bricks and clicks” would go a long way to achieving what the Government are committed to doing—and which I support—as regards the high street. So can the Minister provide any hope at all that such a change is somewhere on the agenda? It is a key lever in reinvigorating our high streets and ensuring that major online retailers pay a fair share.

The Minister in response may point to small business rate relief. She would be absolutely right that many small shops have 100% rate relief, but that just further emphasises the point that I make. Any system that relies on substantial reliefs and complex redistribution mechanisms while failing to capture income from completely new business types—the online businesses—is ripe for fundamental reform.

I appreciate that this has gone slightly off-piste but, when we are considering the redistribution of business rates, which are a very important element of local government funding, it seems to me that we should use any opportunity we can to remind the Government that, to achieve some of their key objectives, a fundamental reform of business rates is absolutely essential. However, I support the technical changes that are introduced by this statutory instrument.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my interests in the register as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and as a serving councillor on Stevenage Borough Council and Hertfordshire County Council. I thank the Minister for her introduction to this statutory instrument and I am very grateful for her explanation of the relaying of it, which was informative.

I suppose that this instrument is necessarily complex and technical in content, but, if we look through it, we see that in many ways it demonstrates exactly how far business rates—or non-domestic rates, as we have to call them—have got from their objectives. They are intended to ensure that businesses make a contribution to the communities that allow them to thrive, to link them with the people and public services of their local area. They should recognise the differentiation between small, start-up and local businesses and the multinational corporates, when in fact non-domestic rates sometimes penalise them in inverse proportion to their ability to pay. They should also ensure that areas wishing to improve, increase or regenerate economic activity are able to vary the business rates to incentivise according to local circumstances.

Looking through the pages of mathematical formulae and complex calculations in this SI, I say that it would not be surprising if any average business doing so felt that we had somewhat lost the plot. The complexities of the system do not really benefit most councils, either, although we appreciate the funding that comes from them. For example, my borough raises over £61 million in non-domestic rates but, after all these calculations and the turning of the Government’s sausage machine, we get around £4 million of that—in spite of having three of the most deprived wards in the country.

So we need to refocus business rates back on to what they were intended to do. That is why they are part of Labour’s plan to support the vast majority of businesses in this country that are SMEs. They employ 16.7 million people and boost our economy by £2.4 trillion; they breathe life into our high streets; they deliver services that make our life easier: and they provide the goods we need to thrive. While SMEs welcomed the support they got during Covid, many of them now feel neglected as they struggle to survive the cost of living crisis, the recession and the complexities of this business rates system, which can seem utterly overwhelming, as the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, set out.

Labour’s plan for small businesses will be an important milestone in recognising their value to the economy and the essential role that they have in ensuring the economic growth that we need. We will undertake a fundamental reform of business rates, which will reshape this antiquated system and refocus it on business not bureaucrats’ objectives. We want to make sure that bricks-and-mortar businesses do not continue to pay disproportionately more than their online competitors. We want to take the burden from high streets and the businesses that sit at the heart of our communities, such as the local café that makes our morning coffee, the mortgage broker on our high street who went above and beyond to help you get your first home, the plumbers who come out of hours when you have water pouring through the ceiling. We want a new system that incentivises businesses to invest, rather than discourages them doing so. Our plan for business rates sits within a comprehensive plan for small business, which tackles all the issues that our many conversations with those businesses have told us are key to their future.

We had the chance to speak on the wasted opportunity to revise non-domestic rates during last year’s debates on the Bill, as the Minister said. We recognise that, for now, this technical paper is necessary to put in place the mechanism for the current system, so we will not be putting forward any formal objections, but I have some questions for the Minister. Can she comment any further on the Government’s plans to shift the current disproportionate burden of non-domestic rates taxation from small local businesses to online corporates or, potentially, on alternative forms of income for local government, including an e-commerce levy, with the funding retained by local government?

The retailers that we know and love on our high street, such as M&S, Boots, WHSmith and small, local businesses, seem to have a dramatic penalty in the business rates system over big online retailers such as Amazon. The current top-up and tariffs system is now outdated and, in view of the extraordinary cuts to which local government has been subjected, it often penalises areas of deprivation just because areas around them may be more economically vibrant. Can the Minister comment on what recent assessment has been carried out on the validity of the tariffs and top-up system?

What progress has been made on the Government’s promised consultation on business rates avoidance and evasion? The LGA, for example, has called for a review of exemptions, such as where businesses happen to be located on farms, and further clamp-downs on business rates avoidance, along the lines of those introduced in Wales and Scotland, to ensure that the rules on reliefs, such as empty property and charitable relief, are applied fairly.

The Minister knows that the LGA is also in favour of giving councils more flexibility on business rates reliefs, such as charitable and empty property relief, and the ability to set their own business rates multipliers or, at the very least, to set a multiplier above and below the nationally set multiplier. Have the Government given any further consideration to those proposals? Lastly, could she comment on the glacial speed of the appeals process, which distorts council finances and reserves, as councils often have to hold funds for not just months but years while they wait for the outcome of business rate appeals?

As I said, we understand that this instrument is necessary to move forward non-domestic rates for this year, but we hope that there is an understanding that sticking plasters, even complicated and technical ones such as this, are the problem and not the solution.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baronesses seated opposite for their contributions. A number of questions came up. First, the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, and, I think, also the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, asked about complexity. We accept that the administration of the system has become necessarily complex over time in response to all the changes to policy and tax that have happened. This will be an ongoing thing. Whatever the system is, as changes happen, it becomes more complex. While every mechanism cannot be made accurate pound to pound, as the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, would like, we minimise the risks to the system from any major changes that would affect a local authority’s budget as much as possible. Of course, we are always happy to talk to local authorities if they feel that they have a problem with their business rates.

Hate Crimes

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage Excerpts

Wednesday 21st February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My noble friend is absolutely right that working at a local level is key to giving people more confidence in reporting, but it is also really important in thinking about solutions to these issues. One of the things that my department has been doing, in particular since 7 October, is regular engagement with local authorities to understand what is going on in their area, examples of best practice we can help share, and any particular issues that they are aware of that we can provide more support on.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, news reports this week of a baby’s passport application being returned from the Home Office to its parents with its birthplace, Israel, scribbled out and the application torn, and a statue of Amy Winehouse being defaced with a Palestinian flag sticker placed over her Star of David, are more evidence of the increase in anti-Semitic incidents reported by the CST. The Government’s downgrading of recording of non-crime hate incidents limits the police’s ability to monitor and prevent escalation within communities. Can the Minister tell the House whether the Government will support Labour’s plan to reinstate full collection details for all hate incidents?

Housing: Section 21 Evictions

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage Excerpts

Tuesday 20th February 2024 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to implement a ban on section 21 evictions before the end of this parliamentary session.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Penn) (Con)]

My Lords, the Renters (Reform) Bill is progressing through Parliament. The Bill will bring an end to Section 21 evictions, and our priority is to pass this vital legislation before the end of this Parliament. We will work with the relevant sectors to implement these changes effectively.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, the Secretary of State told the BBC on Sunday 11 February that the Government’s proposed ban on Section 21 eviction would be operational before a general election. However, the Government have repeatedly told parliamentarians that this ban cannot be enacted before reforms to the court system are in place. In response to a Select Committee report in October 2023, the Government said that they would not commence the abolition of Section 21 until stronger possession grounds and a new court process were in place. In Committee on the Renters (Reform) Bill, the Minister has said that the ban cannot be enacted until court reforms are complete. Can the Minister please set out what court reforms are to be put in place and the timetable for delivering them, so that the ban on Section 21 can be operational before a general election?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, we have always set out our intention, in the White Paper that preceded the Bill and in the guidance that goes alongside the Bill, that we will need to give six months’ notice for implementing Section 21 for new tenancies. That is to give time for a number of things to happen. The noble Baroness is right that we need to allow time for the courts to prepare for this, to allow evictions, court rules, forms and administrative systems to be updated. It is also to allow for secondary legislation that flows from the primary legislation to be laid, and for guidance to be put in place. But we are working hard, and we have already provided upfront money to the court system to kick-start that process, so that we can move towards implementation as soon as possible.

East Midlands Combined County Authority Regulations 2024

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage Excerpts

Monday 19th February 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, has raised a number of pertinent points and I am looking forward to hearing the Minister’s response to them. She particularly raised the consultation and the responses. There has been a continuing problem with consultation on combined authorities because the number of people who respond is very low. In the case of the East Midlands, I think Ministers have taken the view that elected councillors would have to make the decision about the mayor. Nevertheless, there is a question about how the Government and combined authorities can engage with people to a much greater degree so that response rates to any question would be much higher than in this case. Having said that, I thank the Minister for her explanation of these regulations. It is very good to see the close working of the local authorities in the East Midlands Combined County Authority. I wish it every success in its work. We want it to succeed.

I have previously raised issues of scrutiny, audit and risk in relation to this combined county authority and other mayoral combined authorities. I noticed that the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee commented on this public consultation. Paragraph 45 of the report cites the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities explaining that

“the Secretary of State has noted respondents’ concerns about the EMCCA’s governance model and the position of a Mayor but is satisfied that these draft Regulations would ‘provide the necessary check and balances on the governance of the EMCCA and its Mayor’”.

I draw the Minister’s attention to the Tees Valley Review dated 23 January 2024. I will quote from it, because what it says is important to all combined authorities. The question I pose to the Minister relates to whether any of the deficiencies identified in that report, published a few weeks ago, could occur in the East Midlands Combined County Authority. I quote specifically from paragraph 1.7 of the report’s executive summary, which said that

“there are issues of governance and transparency that need to be addressed and a number of decisions taken by the bodies involved do not meet the standards expected when managing public funds. The Panel have therefore concluded that the systems of governance and finance in place within”

the Tees Valley Combined Authority and the South Tees Development Corporation

“at present do not include the expected sufficiency of transparency and oversight across the system to evidence value for money”.

Recommendation 6 then went on to say that the Tees Valley Combined Authority cabinet should

“review its current delegations and directions to STDC to ensure it meets its statutory obligations, including appropriate oversight by Overview and Scrutiny Committees, to enable value for money to be delivered and evidenced through effective scrutiny of significant decisions”.

The Secretary of State has said that the draft regulations would

“provide the necessary check and balances on the governance of the EMCCA and its Mayor”.

Can the Minister, either now or perhaps later in writing, explain how these draft regulations actually provide the checks and balances necessary to ensure that a report such as that written on Tees Valley could not be written on the East Midlands?

The Minister is aware that I have raised issues of security, audit and risk repeatedly during the passage of the levelling-up Bill and on other occasions, and I find those words in the Tees Valley Review worrying. I hope that this cannot possibly happen elsewhere. I am surprised by what has been said on Tees Valley but, given that, what structure is in place—I cannot find it in these regulations—to prevent a repetition of what seems to have occurred in the Tees Valley from happening in the East Midlands or in any of the other mayoral combined or combined county authorities?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for setting out the basis for this new type of mayoral combined county authority. The regulations establish the East Midlands combined authority and are required in advance of the first planned combined authority mayoral elections in May this year. We consider them to be very important for the economic and social development of the region and its population, so we will not be objecting to this important SI, but that does not mean that we do not have any questions about it. Indeed, we are very excited and hopeful that our candidate, Claire Ward, will be the first East Midlands mayor elected and, as mayors do up and down the country, will make a great difference to communities in the areas that the Minister set out—housing, transport, public health, and education and skills.

We also noted the degree of consultation that took place from 14 November last year to 9 January this year, but further note, as did the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, and the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, that the numbers are very low in these consultations. We need to think about how we engage the public more in these very important discussions about the future of their areas. We also noted that there is a distinctive emphasis in this devolution deal on the combined authority reflecting the local communities within the combined authority area. We can do more of that, and I think that might help to engage people even more.

Leasehold: Property Management Companies

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage Excerpts

Monday 19th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, the Government believe that forfeiture is an extreme measure and should be used only as a last resort. In practice, it happens very rarely and is subject to the right to relief. However, any changes to forfeiture would require a careful balancing of the rights and responsibilities of landlords and those of leaseholders. As a first step, we have asked the Law Commission to update its 2006 report on this matter, given the passage of time since then, and to take into account the implications of the reforms currently under way, so that we can consider what action should be taken.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, it is not just leaseholders who face these practices. What response can the Minister give to freeholders who face the imposition of private management companies charging extortionate and unregulated yearly fees, instead of having public areas adopted by local authorities? I believe this practice is known as “fleecehold”. Effectively, this means freeholders paying twice for maintenance: once through their council tax and again through fees to private management companies. What measures will the Government take to regulate these practices?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, the Bill aims to grant freehold homeowners on private or mixed-tenure estates the same rights of redress as leaseholders in this area—equivalent rights to transparency on estate charges and the ability to challenge those charges at tribunal. I believe the CMA is also looking into this matter, and we look forward to receiving its final report.

Local Authorities: Financial Difficulties

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage Excerpts

Wednesday 14th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I absolutely agree with my noble friend. We made changes to local government financing in January, and we listened to local government and its priorities: £500 million of the £600 million extra that was given is going into social care.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, this weekend, the Local Government Association Labour Group published its latest version of 101 Achievements of Labour in Power, featuring a huge range of initiatives: street support partnerships tackling homelessness in Leeds, Food On Our Doorstep clubs in Mansfield, delivering over 83,000 square feet of lab space to support life sciences in Stevenage, new models of fostering in South Tyneside, and Plymouth City Council launching the first ever national marine park to support conservation of our seas. Remarkably, all this innovation has taken place against the backdrop of a reduction in core spending power of 11% compared with 2010-11. Is it not time the Government recognised the huge value that people place on local services and worked with the sector to deliver a sustainable funding model to support them?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

The Government do appreciate what local government can do, and it is not just Labour local government that is delivering this innovation and great services for local people. At this point, I should thank local government for everything it does. As I said earlier, we listen to local authorities all the time, which is why we put in £600 million more in January.