Local Authorities: Financial Difficulties
Lord Dubs Excerpts(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Scott of Bybrook) (Con)
My Lords, we have listened carefully to local authorities about the pressures they are facing. That is why, in January, we announced additional measures worth over £600 million. Taking into account the recently announced local government finance settlement, that makes available up to £64.7 billion, an increase of 7.5% in cash terms on last year. The department continually monitors the sector, and we stand ready to talk to any council with concerns about its finances.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, what the Minister said is of course welcome, but it is still a drop in the ocean compared to the cutbacks local authorities have faced since 2010. The Government keep talking about cutting taxes in a forthcoming Budget, but is not the real issue that council tax payers also pay taxes? Surely, council tax increases will have to make up for cuts in income tax. This is not honest.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, for many years we have had a cap on council tax increases. It remains at 2.99% for the general fund, with 2% extra for councils that want more money for social care funding. However, the department is establishing an expert panel to advise local government and the department on local government financial sustainability into the future. The panel will include the LGA and the Office for Local Government, and we look forward to its findings.
Holocaust Memorial Day
Lord Dubs Excerpts(3 months ago)
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Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, this is an emotional day for me. I welcome the comments made in the very interesting, important and solemn introduction. I agree with every word that was said.
It is possibly appropriate to reflect on the film that has come out recently about Nicky Winton, the person who saved 669 Kindertransport children from the Holocaust. It was a film that drove me to tears. I am sorry for pausing here—I find this a very difficult occasion. I watched the film, and I thought the actor who played Nicky Winton got his part perfectly. It was a very emotional film. I was asked to write a review of it, and I found it difficult to judge it other than in terms of the emotions that it generated. He was a person who, when there was a serious issue that needed something done about it, decided that he would actually do it. He did not walk away, having said it was awful; he said he would do it, and he saved a lot of lives. Of course, many other lives were saved when Kindertransport children came from Germany and Austria, and some from Poland. Some 10,000 of them were accepted by this country. Your Lordships will know that there is a plaque off Central Lobby commemorating the event and thanking the people of Britain for having given us safety. It is worth having a look at that plaque if you have not already seen it.
I spent the first three days of this week in Berlin because of events to do with Kindertransport and Holocaust Memorial Day. I will say a little about this, because it is probably not so well known in this country. The events were supported by both our ambassador to Berlin and Germany’s ambassador to London. There were two features. One was an exhibition in the Bundestag called “Auf Wiedersehen”, which commemorated certain Kindertransport children. It was well documented and very poignant, with some letters written by them to their parents before the war started, and letters written by their parents to them. It was a powerful exhibition, and I commend it to the House authorities. We should move that exhibition to London and show it here. It is a real eye-opener, showing what happened and bringing back memories. It is not just a matter of 6 million people dying in the Holocaust; everyone was an individual. This exhibition shows exactly what these individuals went through.
There was also a memorial event at the Reichstag, to which I was invited along with Hella Pick, another Kindertransport person. We saw a very solemn event indeed. The president of the Reichstag, who had made several speeches in the time I was there, made a powerful speech drawing attention to what had happened, the tragedies of the Holocaust and the number of people who were exterminated in the camps.
Germany has come to terms with its past in a most commendable way. For the Reichstag to have such an event and to have speeches—two concentration camp survivors spoke and gave powerful testimony of what had happened to them—was a powerful symbol to me of a country that was determined to understand its past, atone for its past and reflect on its past and the lessons of it for the present time. We should be aware that Germany has done that. Most of us in this country do not think of German efforts as regards Holocaust Memorial Day, and I do not mind repeating that I think we should pay tribute to the Germans for the way in which they have come to terms with it.
I join in tributes paid to the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust for the work it does every year to commemorate—I had a candle in my window last week on the appropriate day, as advised by it. The Holocaust Educational Trust and the Anne Frank Trust also helped us to remember a very solemn day and make sure that we learn the lessons of the past as best we can. Unfortunately, as we look at the world today, we see that we are not learning lessons very quickly; we could learn them much better.
There has been a deplorable, regrettable, appalling outburst of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in this country—indeed, the Germans say that it is the same in their country. We need to work out better ways of commemorating the event and making sure that Islamophobia and anti-Semitism are swept away as best we can. I think that all of us in public life have had a certain number of abusive messages and such things—not just this week but over time. I shall not repeat some of them, because it just encourages people to do more of that sort of thing, but some of them were not very nice.
I want to end on a brighter note. Just before the pandemic, I was invited to talk about the Holocaust and the Kindertransport at a school in Tower Hamlets. It was a maintained school but one which I think was made up pretty much of all Muslim boys. Their project was the Holocaust and the Kindertransport. There were 300 or 400 boys. The first question asked by one of them was, “What do I say to people who deny the Holocaust ever happened? How do I deal with it?” I thought that was a terrific question to come from a Muslim boy in Tower Hamlets. It was terrific to find that the school was doing a good job. If that sort of educational can spread from our schools, it is a sign that we will go quite a long way towards tackling both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.
Building Regulations: Sanitary Provision
Lord Dubs Excerpts(2 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, as part of my ministerial duties, I am the Building Regulations Minister, and we are reviewing, in response to the Hackitt review, all our building regulations, including Part M. We commissioned an interesting bit of research that has not yet been fully published, which provides further insight. This is something that needs to happen cross-government, and the noble Lord makes a very useful suggestion.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, it is many years, alas, since I have had a holiday in France, but I seem to remember that if one is, as it were, caught short there —it may not be the position now but it certainly was then—one can go to any café, pay a small sum of money and it is fully acceptable for one to use the loo. Could we not introduce a similar practice here?
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
I personally try to avoid paying, but I think it is a very good policy. Most people want custom, as long as you do not abuse it; I know that McDonald’s in Cannes makes you buy a burger before you can go to the loo, but most places want to be open and helpful. As long as you do not abuse those facilities, I think most will be prepared to do that. It is a great suggestion which should be looked at, but obviously it is for local business owners to decide.
Gypsies and Travellers
Lord Dubs Excerpts(2 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, that is a really helpful suggestion that I will take back to officials in my department. The statistics on this are positive, in that we have seen an increase in the number of sites in the last 10 years but, obviously, knowing where those vacancies are would be very helpful indeed.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, am I to understand that the Government’s policy is simply to say, “Nothing to do with us, leave it all to local authorities”? Is not the difficulty that if one local authority moves ahead of the others, the demand in that area will increase, and adjacent local authorities will not share the responsibility? Surely we need a proper national approach of co-operation between the Government and local authorities to move forward.
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, I think that is what we have. We are working with local authorities and encouraging them to assess their local need. We have seen, through this policy, an increase in site provision and we feel that responsibility rests in local government. As someone who spent 20 years in local government, I do not think everything should be directed from Whitehall.
Tower Blocks: Cladding
Lord Dubs Excerpts(2 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, I have to say that on taking over this ministerial brief I was shocked by the weakness of the redress available to people who put all their life savings into a building. That is something that we want to improve through the building safety Bill; we need to improve the ability to get redress for people who buy these properties then discover these defects.
Lord Dubs (Lab) [V]
I am not sure that the Minister takes the urgency of the problem to heart. I have talked to people who are absolutely desperate, who have told me that in their blocks there are people who are virtually suicidal because they cannot afford to pay the cost of remediation and cannot afford to sell, because their property is unsaleable. We have a major crisis on our hands. Surely we need much more urgent action than the Minister is saying that the Government are taking.
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, I meet the cladding groups regularly, and I understand the need for urgency, which is why we are moving very quickly to ensure that we dispense the first £1 billion of the building safety fund and why we have pledged a further £3.5 billion. We understand the need to get moving.
Rough Sleeping
Lord Dubs Excerpts(3 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, I point out that in my noble friend’s constituency, the level of rough sleeping has dropped by 90%, which is one of the largest decreases in the country. On the rural figures, of course we work very carefully to ensure that the snapshot includes both rural and urban numbers. The regional figures would seem to indicate an across-the-board reduction in rough sleeping and, in particular, very steep reductions in some of our major cities.
Lord Dubs (Lab) [V]
My Lords, the Government’s ambition to end rough sleeping is of course to be welcomed, provided that there is progress towards achieving it. I want to ask the Minister about two specific groups. One has been referred to by my noble friend Lady Blackstone. She asked what is being done about ex-offenders who find themselves sleeping rough. Can the Minister say a little more about that group? Can he also say something more about members of the Armed Forces? If they have served our country as well as they have, we have a responsibility to ensure that in the end they do not sleep rough when they are discharged. We owe them a better future than that.
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, part of the ministerial working group is looking at the issue of rough sleepers in London who are former members of the Armed Forces. I pay tribute to the work of my honourable friend in the other place, Johnny Mercer. The key is to work with local authorities to identify those people so that we can get support services to them. The support services for our Armed Forces as well as for ex-offenders are in place; it is a question of ensuring that we identify those people so that we can wrap the service support around them.