European Council

Debate between Lord Deben and Lord Davies of Stamford

Monday 23rd March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords—

Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Lord Deben and Lord Davies of Stamford

Monday 28th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben]

I am not sure that I entirely follow the noble Lord’s point, but it is true that the Treasury is keen on hypothecation when it suits it and against it when it does not, and this is one of those occasions. The trouble is that hypothecation ought to be between the payment of the bill and the advantages from the bill, but in this case it is not that, and many of those who have to pay the cost of Section 106 agreements are only just above the level of benefiting from them. It is because this is a fundamental flaw in the whole system that I come to be extremely disappointed in the Growth and Infrastructure Bill. As I have said previously, it is a pretentious title for a series of very small alterations, some of which are not terribly helpful.

However, there is a big alteration that we ought to make if we really want people to have housing, which is to say seriously that the cost should not be a tax on a small number and those who are most vulnerable; the cost should be a tax that we all bear for a proper social end. In case the Opposition say that I am moving in their direction, I say that they are as guilty as anyone else. They have imposed taxes in this area that are just as large and always excuse it as a tax on the developer. The developer does not pay taxes; he charges the cost to the people who buy his houses. That is the nature of the market; there is no way of avoiding it. I am very happy to support the drive of the amendment, which suggests that, if we are going to do this, we may as well make sure that we get bang for our buck by tightening it and toughening it. But, my goodness, what a disappointment it is that yet another Bill comes before this House masquerading behind this fraudulent concept that supported housing should not be supported by the nation as a whole but should be a price borne largely on the shoulders of first-time buyers. It is not right, it should not be and we ought to find a different way of dealing with it.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Deben, has taken a broad interpretation of the scope of the amendment. I am glad that he has and the Committee should welcome an opportunity briefly to debate Section 106, because it is an enormously important factor in housing development in this country and the House is unlikely to have another, foreseeable opportunity, either during the passage of this Bill or otherwise, to discuss it.

The noble Lord, Lord Deben, argues, and I think that I can follow his argument fairly clearly, that since there is clearly a cost for developers in entering a Section 106 agreement, whether it is to build affordable housing or to meet some other condition that may be imposed by that agreement, that cost must be reflected in the price of the houses that they sell and therefore be borne by those who buy those houses, who happen to be a limited part of the population. I am sure that that is the noble Lord’s argument—I am sure that he will interrupt me if I have got it wrong. He leaves out an important factor in the equation, which is that if there were no Section 106 agreements fewer houses would be built. Affordable houses are built and receive planning consent only because of Section 106 agreements. If more houses are built, there is a greater supply in relation to a given demand, and that will be factor in the equation bringing down the average price of housing, although not necessarily by the same amount as the other factor in the equation brings it up. The noble Lord should take that point into account if he is to try to design a model for how the housing market works.

The noble Lord, Lord Best, set out his amendment with great lucidity and very persuasively—he of course knows a great deal about this subject. I thoroughly agreed both with his analysis of the situation and with his rather ingenious compromise solution, which we may well want to adopt at this particular moment, having got as far as we have. I deeply regret for two reasons that the Government have decided retrospectively to waive Section 106 agreements. First, it will deprive a lot of people of affordable housing. That is a very bad day’s work. It is just the opposite of what we need in the present situation and an extraordinary reflection of the Government’s priorities. The noble Lord, Lord Deben, was concerned also about people who can afford to buy a house which is not designated an affordable house. He might dispense a little bit of his sympathy for those who could not dream of buying a house which was not deliberately built to be an affordable house and was in other words at the bottom end of the market and a good deal cheaper than average houses in this country.

The second reason why I regret what the Government have done is that it seems to falsify to whole system of planning in this country. As I have just explained, many Section 106 agreements result in land being designated for development which otherwise would be not be so designated. The local planning authority, normally the local council, has quite rightly to make a choice, an arbitrage, between considerations, on the one side, as to whether giving planning consent for, let us say, development on green belt areas or areas outside the existing curtilage of towns and villages represents the loss of an environmental amenity, but, against that negative public interest, as to whether there is a positive interest which outweighs that, which in present circumstances is the need for affordable housing. Therefore, the planning authority in the discharge of its responsibilities has quite reasonably weighed those different aspects of local communities’ interest and come out in that particular direction. Now, of course, if the Section 106 obligations are retrospectively withdrawn yet the development goes ahead, it becomes no longer a balance but entirely a one-sided gift to the developer and the community loses both ways. On the one side, it loses through the loss of the land, the loss of the environmental benefit, the loss of the amenity benefit and the visual impact of the development, whatever that may be; on the other, it loses the benefits of affordable housing or the other benefits of the Section 106 agreement which has been entered into. That is a doubly bad deal for the local community.

I dealt with a lot of Section 106 agreements when I was in the other House and on one occasion took the initiative in brokering a major Section 106 agreement between a landlord, a developer, a district council—South Kesteven District Council—and Lincolnshire County Council as the highways authority in order to finance the southern bypass of Grantham. There was no way in the world that the southern bypass was going to get into the then Government’s road programme—it would not have the met COBA thresholds—but it could and was financed in that way. It took a long time and a lot of negotiation, but it was well worth doing. However, it would have been most extraordinary if, retrospectively, we had said to the developer and the landowner, “Well, that’s alright. You can have the planning consent, but you do not need to build a bypass any more”. That is effectively the sort of deal which this Government are now offering developers.

I have to say that not many people are doing very well out of this Government in this country. People on benefit are obviously suffering; the public sector has suffered greatly; the private sector has suffered enormously; and our Armed Forces are suffering. Everybody is suffering except, as far as I can see, two categories of people: those who are lucky enough to be earning more than £150,000 a year, whose tax rate has been reduced from 50% to 45%, and now real-estate developers and speculative builders. I have nothing against real-estate developers and speculative builders—far from it—but it is an extraordinary set of priorities which are reflected in what the Government are doing.

As the Committee knows, I was for a number of years in the Tory party myself—far too many years, I have say; I am very sorry and repent of that particular sin—but, nevertheless, I know a little about how it works. I must say that if you went to Conservative associations up and down the country and did an analysis by sector of the business activities in which donors to local Tory associations are involved, you may well find that that particular section of the market comes out very high. I do not wish to establish a causal link between the two things; I have no evidence to enable me to do that. However, I simply state these two separate facts as an interesting coincidence.

I have considerable distaste for what the Government currently propose, but we need a way out of this situation that makes some sense and makes sure that these developments take place and affordable housing is built. In that spirit, I very much endorse the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Best.

European Union Bill

Debate between Lord Deben and Lord Davies of Stamford

Tuesday 3rd May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

I am grateful for the noble Lord’s contribution. I said that it was how some people felt. That was the formula I used; I did not myself endorse the conspiracy theory. The implication was that the conduct of the Government was such as to make it possible for constituents to develop that conspiracy theory. In relation to his most recent remarks to me, I accept that piracy is a matter for international law. Piracy has always been against international law. There should not be a problem there. His implication was that we needed to co-ordinate with the Indians and the Chinese, which we do to some extent. We might need to co-ordinate with them more. That is true and I acknowledged it explicitly in my recent remarks. I said that in this context, as in others—I suspect the noble Lord used to teach this to his students—it is much more effective, if we want international agreement and consensus on a matter, to act as the European Union rather than as one country or as 27 different countries. That is the point I was making.

However, there is a third point that I must make in relation to the noble Lord’s comments to me, which is that I was specifically addressing the need for powers to make it an offence to make ransom payments. I think that he, and anyone with any knowledge of the world, will agree that the chances of getting 150 or 193 countries to legislate identically for anything are virtually zero; that is not going to happen. If you wish to make it a criminal offence to transfer such payments, to collect money for the purpose of paying ransoms, to provide money for the purpose of paying ransoms, to make ransom payments, and to enforce those criminal offences, you need to obtain agreement throughout the European Union as an essential starting point. That is not a matter of international law; it is very much a matter of European law. If we do not have the powers to do that at present, it is very desirable that we should develop them. However, if we needed to develop them, we would run into the issue that, if the Government succeeded in passing this Bill, Article 48 would no longer be usable in that context if Great Britain were to be included.

[Lord Deben]

My Lords, it might encourage your Lordships’ House to hear that I do not intend to talk about piracy; I seek to talk about the amendments that deal with the environment and climate change. These differ from earlier amendments. I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, as it seems to me that most of the areas that he covered were unique competences of the European Union, whereas we are now talking about a number of areas where there is joint competence. I say to my noble friends that if we were arguing that the British Government felt that we had sufficient powers in the European Union to do most of the things that we wanted to do, if we saw no reason to extend powers, and if the Government were going to commit themselves not to do that, I would have real sympathy with that.

If the Government went on to say that there might be occasions on which we have to go along with things that seem to be sensible extensions, I would have sympathy with that too. However, I find entirely unacceptable the concept that we cannot go along with anything unless we have a referendum. I find that unacceptable with regard to the environment, for the reason that I gave when I interrupted the noble Lord. Many of the issues about which we are talking are almost incapable of admitting a question of the kind of which a referendum admits. I do not like referenda. As the Committee knows, I am opposed to referenda on any grounds in any circumstances. I am a believer in parliamentary democracy. One of the sadnesses of this Government is that they have betrayed what seems to me to be a fundamental part of our constitution.

Referenda have always been used in partial circumstances for particular reasons. Napoleon III was the best user of referenda before General de Gaulle. This is a foreign activity much disliked by sensible people in the United Kingdom. I yield to no one in my dislike of referenda. They are always partial and always undertaken for a particular reason. The provision that we are discussing is included because the Government want to make it difficult to do anything in this area. The noble Lord, Lord Pearson, thinks that this is not so. The difficulty is that the Government speak in different ways to different people. They say to some people, “This is a wonderful step forward for those who are Eurosceptic”, and to other people, “This does not matter very much anyway because we are not going to need it”. Therefore, I find it very difficult to take this debate seriously. However, it is crucial with regard to environmental issues.

I have one or two suggestions as to why that is the case. For example, we are going to have a real issue with the transfer of electricity across the European Union. The superconductor systems, which will enable us to pass electricity very fast without losing power, will be very important in enabling us to meet our energy requirements and the requirement to cut the damage we do to the atmosphere and to mitigate climate change. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, does not believe in climate change. He is a sceptic on a wide range of subjects. It will not therefore worry him, but it worries me considerably if we cannot do something about this