Transport: Buses

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Thursday 24th October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

I am pleased to be able to agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson. It is critical that we have a national bus strategy. The Government have already announced that we will put in place such a strategy. Going alongside that will be our commitment to long-term funding for the bus sector.

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome the news of this bus strategy, but will the Minister look at vulnerable groups, in particular parents who are in temporary accommodation such as hostels and bed and breakfast accommodation? Very often, they can be extremely isolated and may have to make many bus journeys to see their family and friends. Will the Government please look at that in their bus strategy?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

I thank the noble Earl for raising this issue. As the Minister for loneliness in the Department for Transport, I know how important it is that we make sure that our transport system is able to get those people to where they need to go. We are currently scoping the bus strategy. I shall certainly include that within its remit.

Gatwick Airport

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Thursday 20th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, as I said, this is an ongoing police operation and we will have to see how that develops through the day. We encourage all passengers who are due to travel from Gatwick Airport to check with their airlines before they go to the airport and also to look at the Gatwick Airport website where the most up-to-date information will be provided.

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, what requirements are placed on airports to be ready for these circumstances? Will the Minister be checking that other airports are prepared to meet these circumstances should they arise?

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, of course we work carefully with airports on all their operational contingency plans. The priority on that is safety and as I said, once this event is closed the police will be investigating fully. Of course, we will be looking at our response and working with airports to avoid such an incident in the future.

Railways: High Speed 2

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Wednesday 18th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, I can confidently say, looking at the size of the body of documents that was disclosed with the hybrid Bill, that the Government have been putting out more data than most people have ever seen around a project of this size and interest. It is crucial that we are open and transparent and, although there will be times when we have internal discussions, the transparency has been quite exceptional in this case.

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, will the Minister look at the very successful National Grid Transco young offender programme, which has trained more than 1,000 young offenders to become workers in the utilities, and see whether it can be applied in this instance? Will she also consider whether young people leaving care, who are overrepresented in the NEET category, can be drawn into this?

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, we are looking at this infrastructure project in an exciting way. Rather than treating it within a transport silo, we are looking much more at the regeneration possibilities. The idea raised by the noble Earl has real potential and I will definitely take it back.

Cyclists: Safety

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, we want to do everything we can to increase the level of cycling because of the health benefits. To require someone to carry identification when riding a cycle would be an unnecessary burden. There can be incidents with pedestrians, for instance, when it would be good if they carried identity, but we do not require them to do so, so we do not see why a cyclist should carry identity either.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, what is being done to encourage children to wear helmets? Is the Minister aware of the particular fragility of the skulls of young children?

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, we are acutely aware of this problem. We strongly encourage children to wear helmets. However, again because of the difficulty of enforcing the wearing of helmets for children, we do not want to make it compulsory—a legal requirement—but we strongly encourage children to wear helmets and we think it is a very good idea for adults to wear helmets as well.

Localism Bill

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, the noble Lord referred to the 75 per cent tax levied on the proceeds of right-to-buy sales. It is interesting to note that at the moment there is a good deal of pressure on the Government to abandon the 50 per cent tax charged on those with substantial incomes and that, indeed, at least part of the coalition Government is interested in a mansion tax, which I suspect would be levied at substantially less than 75 per cent. In the context of housing, we should not be thinking in terms of taxation. The nation is paying a very heavy price in terms of housing need for the refusal of Government, initially in the 1980s, to allow any of the proceeds of the sale of council housing to be reinvested in housing and, it must be said, for the somewhat belated and modest change that was made to those rules by the previous Government. It does not seem to make any kind of economic sense.

The money raised by the right to buy would be ploughed back into housing provision. That would have two effects, the first of which would be that it would create assets on the balance sheet; it would not disappear into thin air. Secondly, it would give a much needed boost to the construction industry and therefore to the economy at a time when, as the Chancellor has belatedly conceded, things are not looking good in terms of the projected growth rate. Thirdly, it would lead to employment being taken up and thus a reduction in the cost of paying benefits. Most particularly, I suspect that the result would be that houses would be built rather more quickly than through the hoped-for gains to be made by the proposals in the national policy planning framework, which seem to assume that planning is the reason for the low number of houses being built, whereas of course the key issues are in fact finance and people’s capacity to buy.

Looking at it purely in housing terms, the noble Lord’s amendment makes a great deal of sense. I hope that the Government will rethink their position because it would make an immediate and much more significant contribution to dealing with the housing problem, as well as helping with economic growth without damaging the balance sheet. Indeed, in some respects it would strengthen the balance sheet with assets that are likely to appreciate.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I hesitate to speak, having not taken part in previous work on this Bill, but my noble friend’s amendment and his words bring to mind some research that was brought to my attention some years ago into lone mothers living in isolation with their children, scattered around cities. They were often forced to live a long way from their communities and extended family because there was insufficient housing stock to enable them to be placed closer by. So if my noble friend’s amendment will help local authorities to supply enough housing to ensure that parents—more often than not mothers—bringing up children on their own had easy access to their communities and extended family, I certainly want to support it.

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, I also strongly support this amendment. First, if we look retrospectively, had this provision applied from the start of right to buy, much of the pressure on social housing, and by extension on other housing sectors, would not have arisen. I am not saying that it would have completely resolved it, but it would have made a major contribution to stopping us being in the position that we are in.

The second point, which the noble Lord, Lord Best, emphasised, is that it would have enabled a lot of our worst housing stock to develop the manner of mixed tenure, creating a stable, reliable and interactive community instead of the isolation into which some of those estates have fallen.

The other point, also made by my noble friend Lord Beecham, is that I do not understand the economics of this. It would be an asset on the books of part of the public sector. Economically speaking, the deficit relates to the totality of public borrowing. In international opinion, raising money relates to the total deficit on public spending. The fact that it is in the Treasury’s accounts rather than the local authorities’ accounts economically makes no difference. It makes a bit of difference to the credibility of the Chancellor of the Exchequer from time to time, but economically this has always been nonsense and it is nonsense that we should now end. If we are to interpret localism and self-financing of the housing activities of local authorities effectively, surely this anomaly needs to be rectified. I hope, therefore, that at some stage the Government are going to recognise that.

Travellers: Dale Farm

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, if Basildon Borough Council had not carried out a proper impact assessment of all the consequences of its action, it would probably fail in the courts.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, is the Minister aware of the deep concern that many Traveller children are not being well engaged in the education system, that they are being failed and that the generational impact of continued failure is being perpetuated? Is consideration being given to the education of these children and what steps can be taken to ensure that they have continuity of education and, if possible, stay in the same school?

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, the noble Earl makes an extremely important point. If we carry on not properly educating Traveller children we will never break the cycle, because it is very difficult for Traveller families to engage in fully legitimate economic activity if they have not been properly educated. I referred to undertakings in my answer to the noble Baroness: the local authority has to deal with these issues.

People Trafficking

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, when UKBA officials intercept a child being trafficked in France or Belgium, that child is quite properly handed over to the French or Belgian authorities. We are confident that they have the necessary procedures and facilities in place because they are signed up to the same conventions as we are.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, will the Minister assure the House that the UKBA officials in the juxtaposed zones in Belgium and France have the right capacity to identify people perpetrating this, given the difficulty that he has highlighted in doing so? Is there social work input into what they do? Perhaps he might write to me with the details of their training.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I am convinced that UKBA officials are specially trained to be able to detect children being trafficked. There are tell-tale signs when something is wrong, and I am confident that they are properly trained in that respect.