English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Debate between Lord Fuller and Lord Jamieson

Committee stage
Tuesday 27th January 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I support the principle of Amendment 191 in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, and the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill. I observe that, for the first time, we are bringing local, parish and community councils substantially into scope, for I believe that the definitions provided in Amendment 191 will do so. What has not been fully understood is that one of the second-order effects of the Bill is that it will create a significant number of larger community councils as a result.

As a result of local government reorganisation, large numbers of cities, such as Oxford, Exeter and Norwich, and former county boroughs, such as Ipswich, Great Yarmouth and King’s Lynn, which have been billing authorities hitherto, will now fall into the lower tier of local authorities. Those authorities have no constraint or cap on the amount of council tax that they can raise. In Salisbury, they have jacked up council tax by 44% in the past four years—they have let rip, and it is not good enough. There has been no scrutiny, there has been cost shunting, and the council tax payers have paid more.

I have laid amendments, which we will discuss later, that will make provision for those larger smaller authorities to fall under the constraints that all the other authorities will have. I do not seek to fetter the smallest parish council, but if you have a population that hitherto has been part of a billing authority, it is right that they should be constrained going forward, as they have in the past.

I am not sure that I entirely welcome all the provisions in Amendment 191 on local public accounts committees, but the amendment shines a light for the first time on where we will go with these smaller community parish councils. There is merit in the thrust of what has been proposed here. I wait to hear how the Minister reacts to what constraints will be placed on this new class of large parish or town council as a result of the changes proposed in the Bill.

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

My Lords, I will take a step back to reflect on what this debate is really about. It is not simply about committees, processes or institutional design—it is about trust that power, once devolved, will be exercised well; trust that decisions will be open to challenge; and trust that the public will be able to see how and why those decisions are taken.

Amendment 53, introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, speaks directly to that question. The requirement for mayors to establish scrutiny committees for commissioners recognises a simple but important truth: as we add layers of responsibility and delegation within combined county authorities, scrutiny cannot remain an afterthought. If commissioners are to exercise real influence, there must be clear, visible and credible mechanisms through which their actions can be examined, questioned and, where necessary, challenged. I would be grateful if the Minister could explain how the Government envisage scrutiny operating in practice where commissioners are appointed and whether they are confident that existing arrangements will suffice.

Amendment 191 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Bichard proposes local public accounts committees. The noble Lord has raised a very important point: there has been a tremendous amount of devolution, just not to local government but to unelected quangos and devolved bodies. Anyone who has led a council will tell you how much difficulty they have trying to get those bodies to do things that are best for the local area because they have to report to Whitehall. This is an interesting proposal to try to oblige those bodies to work together with local government. I do not seek to speak specifically to that design—more to question of principle, because it goes back to the heart of scrutiny as we have more devolution and deal with these other devolved bodies. How will the Government ensure that appropriate scrutiny happens across an area where not only the combined authority but those other bodies are essential to deliver some of those services? As I said, local public accounts committees are one possible solution, and I am very interested in seeing what the Government’s suggestion on that is.

I also press the Minister on a number of broader points. First, has the department assessed whether existing local scrutiny arrangements are adequate for the scale and complexity of devolved expenditure now envisaged? Secondly, what assessment of the fiscal governance risks that arise when large multiyear funding settlements are devolved without strengthened independent financial oversight at the local level? As was raised earlier, how do the Government intend to identify problems earlier rather than having the audit function of explaining what went wrong afterwards?

Thirdly, I would be grateful if the Minister could address the question of cost—not simply its narrow budgetary terms but the strategic ones. If the Government do not believe that local public accounts committees are the right answer, what is the solution? If we are serious about devolving power, responsible scrutiny must sit alongside it, not trail behind it.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Lord Fuller and Lord Jamieson

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and my noble friend Lord Lucas for bringing their amendments to the attention of the Committee. They have raised a number of important points, and I look forward to hearing the Minister addressing both noble Lords’ concerns.

I turn to the amendments in my name. The purpose of Amendment 135HZG is to reduce costs and delays in the planning system by putting beyond doubt in legislation the principles that currently rely on case law. Where planning permission has already been granted and remains extant, decisions on subsequent planning applications relating to detailed matters, whether determined by an officer or a committee, should not reopen issues that were settled in the original planning permission. This matters because uncertainty in the system not only increases costs for applicants but creates unnecessary duplication of effort for planning authorities and applicants. Greater clarity will enable both sides to proceed with confidence, efficiency and speed.

Amendment 135HZH, in my name and that of noble friend Lady Scott of Bybrook, is a probing amendment intended to test whether the planning system provides sufficient certainty once a permission has been granted and to explore how necessary changes prompted by new national legislation might be handled without reopening matters that have already been settled. The principle of finality is essential, particularly where significant work has already been undertaken and applications are well advanced. This amendment invites the Government to consider whether clearer statutory guidance on finality could help improve efficiency and reduce delay.

Finally, Amendment 185SE, tabled in my name, aims to provide clarity to the planning system, so that project delays are minimised where legislative changes necessitate modifications to an already approved permission—for instance, as we discussed earlier today, legislation that might require solar cells on all new homes.

In such circumstances, such modifications should be deemed to have planning permission in principle. It is vital, because projects can be significantly delayed and costs increased, and developers are required to seek fresh planning permissions simply to comply with new legislation that has come about after they receive their original planning permission. By ensuring that those modifications are covered in principle, we can safeguard progress while maintaining the integrity of the planning system.

If we are to achieve the Government’s objective of 1.5 million new homes, the planning system needs to deliver. These three amendments are guided by the same underlying principle. Clarity and certainty in planning law reduce unnecessary delay, avoid wasteful duplication and allow both applicants and authorities to focus their energies on what should be their priority, which is delivering high-quality developments of high-quality homes that support our residents and our communities.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

I had not realised what the noble Lord was going to say from the Dispatch Box, but I wish to support his Amendments 135HZG and 135HZH What he could have said—but did not—was that there is almost an interaction with the previous group, in that sometimes there is a perverse incentive to add delay to a process to run down the clock. However, in this case, the noble Lord could have said that, as a result of those delays, a whole series of new studies would need to be remade. For instance, ecology studies may last for only two or three years so may be triggered once more, and they in turn can only be created at certain times of the year—in the spring, for example. The combination effect, in respect not just of the previous group but of this group, means that the delays could be even longer, so I strongly support the noble Lord. Finality and certainty are important, and I support him not only for the reasons he gives but for the avoidance of interference with the previous set of amendments.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Lord Fuller and Lord Jamieson

Committee stage
Thursday 4th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I strongly support this set of amendments, particularly Amendment 135HZE, which I think my noble friend is just about to wrap up on.

Noble Lords will recall that I have been a councillor and sat on a local planning committee for 23 years; I was the leader for 17 years. It was one of my privileges to appoint the committee and choose the chairman. I always explained to my members that the purpose of planning was not an administrative function that existed as an end in itself—although this Bill sometimes treats it as if it were so—but to arbitrate between the private interests of the applicant and the public interest. I use the word “arbitrate” purposefully, because people who sit on a planning committee have a difficult job. They must weigh up so much conflicting information within an adversarial system and, ultimately, either the proposer or objector wins.

Much of this Bill is established under the false premise that local planning committees are blockers of development and that the ranks of officials will not rest until every square inch of our nation is concreted over. But this is nonsense. The premise is that officials bring none of their prejudices to bear, but that is simply not true. We have Natural England, which leaves no stone unturned in blocking development. We have the railways, which ballast every proposal with ridiculous costs, such as £5 million for a footbridge to cross between two platforms. We have the highways authorities, which tie themselves in knots under the misdirection that personal transport outside development boundaries is unsustainable. That is before all the other bad actors in many other quangos that increasingly advance their own narrow self-interests rather than the public interest.

I do not deny the importance of some of their representations, but the problem with these quangos is that they all claim a veto—it is their way or no way. It is from these vetoes that we have got the £100 million bat bridge, to which I expect my noble friend Lord Howard may refer. It is from these vetoes that we get this mitigating trade in natterjack newts or whatever they are, organisms that are rare in Europe but commonplace in every English village pond. And then of course there is the insanity of nutrient neutrality, as if building a bungalow in Bristol is going to somehow clean up the River Wensum.

Given the way planning works, in many cases it takes only one of these vetoes from just one of the statutory consultees to block the entire proposal. That is especially the case when officers advise members to refuse an otherwise acceptable proposal on the overly precautionary grounds that an adverse decision could be grounds for appeal or expensive judicial review. We need the planning committee to cut through the undergrowth, and to stop looking over their shoulder and being fearful of challenge.

I congratulate my noble friend Lord Banner, who is not in his place, on his report in which he made several recommendations. But those will count for nothing if there is nobody without the mandate, duty and courage to get those applications to committee. In my experience, it is the committees populated by the accountable councillors that do more to get Britain building than the faceless dead hand of the state quangos.

We need elected people who know a self-serving veto or spurious objection when they see one. We need people on the ground who know the importance of building homes, economies and places that enhance communities to arbitrate those competing interests. That is why this amendment is so welcome and necessary. It is absolutely right that the chair of the planning committee, working with the senior planner, should be able to revisit otherwise fatal objections to get that balance, to enable the local champions who populate those committees to take all the evidence into account, to listen carefully to objections, to balance the private and public interest and to get Britain building, and not pander to the self-serving quangos sometimes interested only in pursuing their own ideologies to the exclusion of all else.

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

My Lords, I will briefly speak to Amendment 135HZF and to my noble friend Lady Scott of Bybrook’s Amendments 103A and 103B before addressing the other amendments in this group.

Local democratic accountability must be protected. Local people should have a say in the decisions that affect their daily lives. These amendments seek to ensure planning decisions remain the remit of elected councils which are accountable to their communities. It is important that large or controversial applications should be considered through local debate so that all views are sufficiently represented.

Delegation of decision-making to unelected planning officers not only deprives local people of their democratic voice but compromises the entire planning framework. Public planning committees allow for transparent and easily accessible forums for residents, ensuring that their voice is heard in the planning process. Enforced delegation of important planning decisions or controversial ones would make the whole process more opaque, weaken community engagement and disfranchise those most affected by the decisions. With a loss of local trust in the whole planning system, how do the Government plan to maintain community engagement and trust in the planning system if they are not involved?

By ensuring the Secretary of State does not have sweeping powers of delegation, local autonomy would be preserved, empowering those best equipped to make decisions about their local community. Amendments 103A and 103B question the Government’s decision to make guidance on the scope, size and composition of the national scheme, subject to delegation rather than primary legislation.

Amendment 135HZE enshrines the right for an application to be determined by a planning committee where there are objections to the application and both the head of planning—or, potentially, the chief planner—and the chair of the planning committee have agreed that these are on valid planning grounds, which is best practice, currently. While some have raised the risk of spurious arguments causing delays, the above protections and subsequent amendments in my name on finality should address these concerns, enabling us to get on with housing delivery while retaining the democratic voice. This is the right balance.

Renters’ Rights Bill

Debate between Lord Fuller and Lord Jamieson

Tuesday 1st July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to try to understand what the definition of rent is if we are going to control rents or somehow curtail them or attenuate the increases.

One can see the base rate just by googling property websites. It is a good idea to get a feel for the cost of a basic, low-cost, unfurnished property in the worst part of town, but that is not necessarily the market price, which is determined by a number of factors: the property may be furnished; it may be serviced accommodation; there may be porterage; there may be other benefits— I am not going to go as far as swimming pools and gyms, but I know they are available in some circumstances. Parking would be another one. All these different elements have different cost pressures and inflationary increases, which may be determined by factors outside the landlord’s control. A property that has inclusive parking may become significantly more valuable, one could anticipate, if the local council applies permits on the streets around it.

I am tempted to support Amendment 25, but I am reluctant to do so because at the moment all these extras are rolled into the single price. The logical conclusion of where this debate is going is that we will get menu pricing, rather as we see on low-cost airlines. There may be an attractive flight—£5.99 to fly to Spain or whatever—but by the time you add in the baggage, the booking fee and everything else, it rolls up to a significantly higher value. My noble friend Lord Young of Cookham made the point that the risk of the price going up over the four-year period may be somewhat attenuated, but those extras amounting to what I would call the landed price, or total cost of ownership, could vary accordingly.

Another significant point that we need to take into account is that there may be Section 20 repairs or improvements, particularly in the case of furnished accommodation where the landlord is prepared to improve and upgrade the fixed furnishings, such as tables and chairs and possibly soft furnishings as well. All of this complicates what is a rolled-up figure at the moment. The logical conclusion is that all those extras are going to be disaggregated and obfuscated, so it is going be harder to compare for the potential tenant. But it is going to be essential for the landlord to obfuscate in this way in the circumstance of a First-tier Tribunal appeal, which is really concerned with the underlying rent—that £5.99 figure. It is very difficult.

I have a huge amount of sympathy with the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Best, but I cannot support it because I think the logical conclusion of it will be that we will get a fragmentation of the landed rent so that the tail wags the dog. The landlord will be so focused on restricting the base rate that those other things will get lost.

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

My Lords, we have concerns about a number of amendments in this group on the basis that they are unduly prescriptive and risk the introduction of what could be regarded as, in effect, a form of rent control.

The amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Best, seek to protect the tribunal from being overloaded due to the Bill. While we agree that there is significant risk of overload, we have concerns about how the arrangements would function. In particular, we do not feel able to support a system that ties rental increases to CPI. CPI is a generalised index that reflects the prices of bread, fuel, clothing and so forth, but not rental market dynamics. What happens in areas where market rents are falling but inflation is high, or where incomes are stagnant while CPI rises? This approach uses a national economic measure to benchmark against a highly localised rental market, and the result would almost certainly be a distorted rental market. That said, we share the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Best, about the impact of the Bill on tribunals’ backlogs, which we discussed at length in Committee.

Amendment 114 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, raises some important points. There is no doubt that rent affordability is a serious issue, and the amendment rightly draws attention to a range of important factors: the regional disparities in rental costs, the strain of high rents placed on household finances and the need to understand how effectively the First-tier Tribunal is working in practice. However, I must also sound a note of realism. We do not need another report for its own sake. We need actual change that improves the lives of renters and restores fairness to a housing system that too often feels stacked against ordinary people. If this review is to go ahead, it must not become just another document left to gather dust on the shelves of the department—it must lead to action. I urge the Minister to use this opportunity to outline how the Government will respond to the concerns raised by the noble Baroness in her amendment, which we agree are all points which matter in this debate.