Local Authorities: Financial Difficulties

Lord Sahota Excerpts

Wednesday 14th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

The noble Baroness is right to say that the current household support fund runs out on 31 March. However, the Government continue to keep all existing programmes under review in the usual way.

[Lord Sahota (Lab)]

My Lords, council tax banding for our 25 million homes in England is based on their estimated market value in 1991. So, a two-bedroom flat in London, where property values have gone through the roof, falls in the same band as its equivalent in the north of England; a £1 million home is charged 0.2% of its value; and on average, one worth £250,000 is charged 0.6%. This year, 46% of households in England will receive a bigger council tax bill than Buckingham Palace. Does the Minister think that our council tax formula is regressive and needs reforming?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

As I said, in the next Government we will look at all these local government financing issues. We agree that that is long overdue, but the sector itself did not want that to happen in 2022.

Local Authority Finances

Lord Sahota Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, the levelling-up White Paper set out our ambition for every part of the country that wanted a devolution deal in place to have one. As I referred to earlier, we are seeing trail-blazers of greater devolution in mayoral combined authorities, where we can put power back into the hands of local communities.

[Lord Sahota (Lab)]

My Lords, I recently read an article in the Financial Times on the state of our local authorities. It states that, due to all the budget cuts over the last 14 years, to make ends meet they are resorting to

“Asset stripping the public realm”.


The symbols of our civic identities are being sold off, which is diminishing our towns and cities and undermining our civil cohesion. Does the Minister agree with that assessment?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

No, I do not agree with that assessment at all. We have put in additional funding to local government—not just this year, but in many recent years. In addition, we have put in significant funding, for example through the levelling up funds, to invest in local community assets that will build pride of place and develop local economies.

Levelling Up: Project Delivery

Lord Sahota Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, we deliver funding to local authorities in all sorts of ways. We are looking to deliver more funding to local authorities. That is why we are taking forward an approach of a single departmental settlement to those mayoral combined authorities in Birmingham and Manchester. We have a commitment to roll that out further to those areas that have directly elected representatives.

[Lord Sahota (Lab)]

My Lords, as the Minister knows, councils up and down the country spent millions of pounds preparing for their application to bid for the levelling-up funds. I am glad that the Government have changed the system now. Do the Government have any idea how many millions these cash-strapped councils have spent on preparing their applications—or maybe the Government did not ask that question because they did not want to know the answer?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, after announcing round 2 of the levelling-up funding, we recognised how many high-quality bids we had from councils that we were not able to meet during that round. That is why we took a different approach in round 3, looked at those existing bids and were able to make the allocations that were announced earlier this week. All in all, over 200 places have benefited from funding from the levelling-up funds. We recognise that there is a cost involved in bidding in these processes. That is why we provided those local authorities that were assessed as most in need in rounds 1 and 2 with additional funding to support the development of the bids in the first place.

Local Government Finance

Lord Sahota Excerpts

Tuesday 21st November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My noble friend is absolutely right that there are a number of different actions that we need to take to address homelessness. We have the action on homelessness prevention strategy and the rough sleeping strategy; that is backed by more than £2 billion over three years, in addition to the increase in councils’ core budgets that I mentioned at the beginning. But we also need to look at the underlying supply of affordable and social homes, which is why we have the affordable homes programme in place. We are committed that that will continue to deliver large increases in the number of affordable homes available in this country.

[Lord Sahota (Lab)]

My Lords, last year, local authorities spent £1.5 billion on temporary accommodation, which is up by 9% from the previous years. This is just one of the reasons that so many councils are on the brink of bankruptcy. When will this nightmare come to an end? It is cut after cut, since 2010. When will it end, and when will local government get some help?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

The noble Lord talks about cut after cut. Since 2019, local authorities have had a real-terms increase in their core spending power, taking into account higher levels of inflation than anticipated at the time. In addition to that, we have provided money for the homelessness prevention grant and the rough sleeping strategy, and in addition to that we have provided the £750 million that I referred to in answer to the right reverend Prelate to begin to address some of the longer-term solutions to how we address housing supply in our country.

Housing: Overcrowding

Lord Sahota Excerpts

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My noble friend is absolutely right. If you have anything to do with local housing, you will realise that there seem to be many more one-bedroom and two-bedroom properties than there are family homes. We recognise the challenge faced by the sector, and that is why we encourage local authorities to continue to consider innovative ways in which they can best use their stock. For example, supporting underoccupiers to transfer to other, smaller properties is one way that they can then relet family homes. Landlords are focused on providing high-quality services to all their tenants. Introducing a new requirement for local authorities to lease larger homes in the open market may also be considered a new burden, for which funding would be unlikely to be provided.

[Lord Sahota (Lab)]

My Lords, as has already been mentioned, the report firmly states that ethnic-minority households are three times more likely to be overcrowded than white households. Have the Government taken note of that? What do they intend to do to specifically rectify the problem for ethnic minorities?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, interestingly, in December 2022, we published our report Overcrowding in South Asian Households, to provide a deeper understanding of the issues faced by those from South Asian backgrounds. The study puts Bangladeshi and Pakistani households at the centre of a piece of research, including their perceptions of their living situations and cultural drivers. This is the first time that overcrowding has been studied in that way, and our findings are used to develop culturally sensitive policies on overcrowding and housing more generally. This came from an English Housing Survey that indicated that British Bangladeshis and Pakistanis were particularly affected by overcrowding.

UK Citizens Resident Overseas: Verification

Lord Sahota Excerpts

Wednesday 29th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My noble friend is absolutely right. I will go back and check even further, when I have time to do so, but I am not sure whether this is Liberal policy at all.

[Lord Sahota (Lab)]

My Lords, what about the non-doms—people who live in the UK but do not pay any taxes here? Do the Government carry out any verification of them, so that they do not interfere in our electoral system?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, if they are registered as citizens of this country, they can then vote, but if they are not, they cannot.

International Women’s Day

Lord Sahota Excerpts

Friday 10th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sahota (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, for bringing this Motion to the House. International Women’s Day is an important date in our annual international calendar. It has come a long way from that first gathering by the Socialist Party of America in New York on 28 February 1909. The following year, the International Socialist Women’s Conference was organised in Copenhagen in Denmark, and the following year the day was observed in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and so on—and the rest, as they say, is history. It is a well-known fact that the genesis of this movement is rooted in a true socialist ideology: equality for all—for men and women of all races and creeds. I am pleased to be speaking on this issue in your Lordships’ House.

Over the centuries, women and girls in every country, community and culture have suffered at the hands of male-dominated societies. This suffering has been horrendous, not only in western societies but even more so in eastern societies. In some eastern societies, girls were seen as burden—not worth having—because when they were married off, the family had to give them dowries, which put a dent in their family’s wealth.

My mother, Joginder Kaur Sahota, grew up in the 1930s in Punjab in India, when school for girls was unheard of. She married my father, Gurdial Singh Sahota, in the late 1940s and had several children. In 1967, she moved to the UK. She became a widow at 49 and threw herself into looking after the welfare of the family. Eventually when grandchildren arrived, she took them all under her wing, including my two sons, while their parents went to work. As the years passed on, I once asked her, “Mum, is there anything in your life you did not have and you wished you had?” She replied, “Yes, I wish I could read. It does not matter what language, I just want to read books.” Alas, she never learned to read. She had 12 grandchildren, and she encouraged every one of them to study hard if they wanted to get on well in their lives. Every one of them now has a university degree and is doing well, yet she had a thirst for education all her life. She passed away in 2020 at the age of 91, without knowing that two years later her eldest son would become a proud member of your Lordships’ House.

All the mothers of the world are wonderful. On this International Women’s Day, I say something that should not be confined to just one day of the year but should be said every day: we should value men and women equally and as equal partners. Societies, cultures and Governments that deny education to their girls in this day and age should listen to their mothers. The world has moved on leaps and bounds from my mother’s younger days. Every country is doing its best to close the gender gap in every field—in educational attainment, economic participation and opportunity, health, survival, political empowerment and so on.

However, there still remains in this day and age the problem of gender stereotyping. In some countries, poor families often still favour the boys when it comes to investing in education because the boys are seen as the breadwinners. There still remain many barriers and problems for women and girls in a male-dominated society. According to the World Economic Forum, at the present rate of progress it will take 150 years to close the political empowerment gender gap, 150 years to close the economic participation and opportunity gender gap, and 22 years to close the educational attainment gap.

Currently, women represent only 35% of those in STEM education. Around 129 million girls in the world are out of school, including 32 million of primary school age and 97 million of secondary school age. These figures are unacceptable. The large companies of the world, such as Microsoft and Unilever, have launched a global programme called Girls’ Education Skills Partnership. I applaud them for their effort and call on other large companies of the world to search their consciences and do likewise.

I have a six year-old granddaughter, Puneet Sahota. When I compare her opportunities with my mother’s, they could not be more different. But, sadly, many of the barriers that my mother faced remain for my granddaughter. On that, none of us should rest until those barriers are permanently removed. To all the incredible women who make the world a better place, I wish happy International Women’s Day.

Local Councils: 2023-24 Budgets

Lord Sahota Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I am very sorry that I cannot give my noble friend that answer from the Dispatch Box. I will look into it and come back to her.

[Lord Sahota (Lab)]

My Lords, councils up and down the country had to reduce just about every service to make ends meet. Because of the Government’s cuts for the last 13 years, many councils are on the edge of a financial cliff and have even considered a Section 114 notice. Can the Minister tell me when this nightmare will end for our local communities?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, there are also some councils doing extremely well in keeping services running. We continue to monitor the sector’s finances and stand ready to speak to any council and support it if it has concerns about its ability to manage its finances or faces pressures that it has not planned for. We are working with local authorities to do that so that they do not get to the point of an S114.

Levelling Up Fund

Lord Sahota Excerpts

Tuesday 24th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, it is not a begging bowl culture; it is that we have a finite amount of money to spend on capital projects across this country. The only fair and transparent way of finding the best bids to deliver the most for the United Kingdom has to be through a bidding process.

[Lord Sahota (Lab)]

My Lords, some councils have spent millions on consultancy fees to make a bid for levelling-up funding. Some of those councils were unsuccessful and the consultancy firms were the winners. Does the Minister believe it is wise to get our communities to fight each other, where someone must lose?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, no, I do not, and I do not think it is necessary to employ expensive consultants to do the bidding. Local authorities know what is important in their areas and they have officers who can put forward bids. The Government will support them. It is a very clear and transparent process.

Windrush: 75th Anniversary

Lord Sahota Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sahota (Lab)]

My Lords, the celebration of the Windrush generation is long overdue. Just think of all those men and women who were born thousands of miles away in a land they loved and left their friends and loved ones behind, making their way to the shores of this sceptred isle, seeking a better life. It was not an easy move, but they did it. It takes courage and fortitude to leave everything behind and start a new life in another country. You have to be in that situation to understand the feelings of loss you suffer in those early days and months, not to mention the slings and arrows of racial discrimination. This happened to me. I was only 14 when I came to join my father here. I remember to this day how I cried in the early weeks and months before I settled into my new life in this country.

I have great admiration for the Windrush generation, who made their way here to work in British industry and help to build this country. This celebration of them is long overdue. In acknowledging and appreciating the contribution of the Caribbean people, we should recognise that Britain owes so much of what we take for granted today to the contribution of people from across the world, particularly the Commonwealth countries, including the south Asian communities who came here after the war, seeking a better life. These were men like my father, who came to Britain in 1957 and worked in the foundries of the West Midlands, along with other immigrants who worked in not just the foundries but other heavy engineering industries as well. You have to work in those places to know what heavy and dirty work it was. It was soul-destroying. We must remember their contribution. We must also celebrate the unity among all the diverse immigrant communities at the time of the Windrush generation, who toiled alongside each other to make Britain great. Unity is a lesson we must never forget.

Once more, I congratulate the noble Baroness on organising this debate on the 75th anniversary celebration of the Windrush generation. I sincerely hope that the Government will implement all 30 recommendations of the Wendy Williams review.