Inequalities of Region and Place

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Thursday 14th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. It is a pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham and I look forward very much to the maiden speech of the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, for enabling this debate; I share his sentiments. We still await the Government’s plans for levelling up and devolution, and I hope we get an update about that from the Minister when he replies.

This Motion is about levelling up. That levelling up cannot come at the expense of London. The Government have raised expectations. They have created a term—levelling up—which now has the status of a title in the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities. It is hard to understand what authority this new department has over other Whitehall departments. Do its powers extend to managing the spending policies of the Department for Transport, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, or any other government department, including the Treasury? I doubt it.

You cannot level up places without levelling up people, and you cannot level up people by increasing taxes on the low paid, such as the increase in national insurance for health and social care, and in council tax—around 5% per year is now forecast for several years. Add those regressive tax increases to the rising energy costs and rising cost of living generally, and it is hard to see how levelling up can work if the incomes of so many people will be lower.

Paragraph 235 of the coronavirus report published earlier this week, on the lessons learned, says of test and trace that,

“in short, implementation was too centralised when it ought to have been more decentralised”.

You could say that about many policy areas managed by Whitehall. We cannot run England out of London. England’s population is 56 million. We must decentralise and devolve, but the Government insist on running a hub-and-spoke model based on Whitehall holding financial power. Far too many funds are complex, requiring a bidding process which is expensive for local government to manage when resources are so tight. Financial control needs to be decentralised because levelling up is not just about some Whitehall jobs being relocated in England. The ambition should be that at least 50% of public spending is controlled at a regional or more local level.

There has been reference to the National Infrastructure Commission report produced a few weeks ago. It says that, to deliver greater regional equality, the Government should give more control over funding to local areas to help their levelling up. Rightly, it criticised the Government’s policy of ring-fencing pots of money and demanding bidding and competition. It said that we should move instead to five-year devolved budgets so that local areas can develop their own infrastructures strategies.

The National Infrastructure Commission is right, but missing from the debate on levelling up is, first, the need for local government to have greater powers over sources of taxation; it cannot all be about government block grant. Secondly, the private sector has to be prepared to invest more in those areas needing greater investment, because it cannot all be done with public money. Private sector companies have social responsibilities to places and should not think simply in terms of shareholder returns. It might help too if the Government looked at some of the rules around the investment of pension funds, which could be an additional source of investment funding if more pension fund money could be accessed.

Finally, one trend could prove helpful to levelling up, and it is the consequence of the current dislocation of our supply lines. We should actively promote reshoring more production so that we make more, produce more and consume more sustainably, thereby in turn creating more jobs in areas that need greater support.

Levelling up requires a place-by-place plan, helping education, skills and new industries, but that will happen only if local places are empowered to lead it.

Council Tax

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

Yes, it does. On that basis, grant enables areas with lower council tax bases to receive 16% more in core spending power.

I recognise the point made by the noble Lord about the disparity in valuations between the north and the south, but it is a system that works well to develop the funding that councils need at the moment.

[Lord Shipley (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I refer the House to my registered interests. What consideration will the Government give to the potential benefit of a proportional property tax, as recommended by the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee to replace council tax and business rates in its report published earlier this week?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, we have looked at putting on hold the reform of the local government finance system because of the pandemic, and further reforms will be potentially be brought forward as a result of the spending review. I note the idea that the noble Lord raises.

Business and Planning Act 2020 (Pavement Licences) (Coronavirus) (Amendment) Regulations 2021

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Thursday 8th July 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Shipley (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I remind the Committee that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I want to thank the Minister for his introduction to this statutory instrument. It is right to extend the pavement licensing system for a further year. We have learned a lot from it in the past year, which can help to inform future policy. The public have become used to the system and in the main appreciate it.

In our debate on this topic a year ago, of which mention has been made, I recall speaking about access issues and related matters, some of which seem to have been resolved and others not so effectively.

I recall also saying that sometimes I preferred conditions to be imposed by Governments rather than guidance when change is needed. One such matter may prove to be that raised by the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester, and a number of other speakers, whose concerns I want to support. Smoke-free pavements are in the public interest, and I believe that the vast majority of the public do not want to sit on a seat in an extended restaurant or pub while suffering the disbenefits of second-hand smoke. I found the arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, compelling and I hope we will hear more about them next week.

We have had a year’s experience of the regulation. We know that businesses have been helped and that people have had the benefit of more outdoor seating. It has added to a sense of community and neighbourliness in our towns and cities. There has been one other benefit that I have become aware of: it has reduced pollution, because extending pavement seating has encouraged some councils to move traffic further away through traffic calming measures. I welcome that.

A year ago, I recall the Minister, the noble Earl, Lord Howe, reminding us of the existing powers of councils on access, smoking and a range of other issues. Indeed, it is always better for councils to take responsibility locally rather than to expect the Government to decide everything for them. Sometimes, however, the Government have to take action and responsibility, and preventing second-hand smoke seems to be one of those occasions.

I want to make a suggestion to the Minister. His department has a year’s experience now. I hope that it is not planning to roll over these regulations for a third time in September 2022. Rather, we should build on current knowledge with a reformed but permanent pavement licensing system that builds on the achievements of the past year and addresses the problems that have arisen. There are permanent solutions that can be found but to achieve them means bringing together all the relevant parties to devise an agreed way forward on the pavement licensing system. That includes a solution to all the problems that have been identified by speakers today.

Social Housing

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Monday 24th May 2021 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Shipley]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to increase the number of social housing homes for rent.

[Lord Shipley (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I remind the House of my register of interests and beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.

[The Minister of State, Home Office and Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Lord Greenhalgh) (Con)]

We have confirmed £12 billion over the next five years, which will be the largest investment in affordable housing in a decade. This includes our new £11.5 billion affordable homes programme; around half of its delivery will be for social and affordable rent. We expect our new programme to deliver around 32,000 social rent homes, double the number of the current programme.

[Lord Shipley (LD) [V]]

I thank the Minister for his reply. House prices have been rising steadily because of demand-side subsidies by the Government for owner-occupation, yet the National Housing Federation estimates that almost 4 million people need the security of a home for social rent because they cannot afford to buy. I ask the Minister whether he thinks that the Government have got their priorities right.

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, of course I think that we have got our priorities right. We are focusing on building homes of all types and tenures. That includes affordable and social rent and, importantly, giving people the opportunity to buy and own their own home.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Monday 17th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shipley (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I remind the House that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I too congratulate the noble Lords, Lord Coaker and Lord Morse, on their excellent maiden speeches.

This has been a challenging debate for the Government, partly because of what is not in the gracious Speech, such as local government funding reform, including business rates reform, the Government’s plans for reforming social care, or the plans they may have for greater devolution in England. It is partly also because of what is in the gracious Speech, such as the proposed planning Bill—which has not been properly thought through—and the elections integrity Bill, about which my noble friend Lord Teverson spoke so convincingly.

First, let me acknowledge the important principles behind the building safety Bill and the Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill; these are both welcome. I look forward as well to the details of the subsidy control Bill, which should permit local authorities to support key industries, together with the procurement Bill, which could encourage public-private sector working in which social value can be a factor. I welcome, too, plans to widen opportunities for the development of adult skills.

However, I was concerned to hear the Minister say earlier in relation to the private rented sector that a White Paper is planned for the autumn. I had been expecting a renter’s reform Bill, so can the Minister confirm whether this means that the timetable for promised reforms is about to slip significantly?

Moving on to the planning Bill, in his introduction to today’s debate, the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, said that it is about modernising the system to make it quicker, simpler and streamlined. Simplification is always welcome as long as standards are not reduced. However, in simplifying planning procedures, the Government must not reduce local democratic accountability, which is part of the essential process for ensuring high standards. Poor accountability leads to lower standards. The Government know that we have suffered in recent years from a culture that has encouraged poor-quality building. The danger in this Bill is that local planning authorities will not be able to turn down poor-quality developments, which they currently can do. This is not in the public interest. The Government should not be reducing the powers of local planning authorities in the way they are attempting.

The Government are right to want to increase housebuilding but the truth is that this cannot be achieved without a substantial element of new building led by local authorities. New homes, whether for purchase or for rent, must be at prices and rent levels that people on average incomes can afford. We need more social homes to be built—around 100,000 a year for several years—which requires more financial freedoms for local authorities to achieve that. This should be the Government’s priority.

Instead, we are witnessing a boom in house prices caused largely by demand-side subsidies from the Government. The average cost of a new home has now reached £200,000. I submit that this is not the kind of growth the economy needs. Also, despite the need to build more homes, 1.1 million homes granted planning permission in England in the past decade are yet to be built. It is hard to see exactly what problem the Government are trying to solve with their proposed planning Bill. It does not seem to be the planning system that is responsible for not enough homes being built.

There are two other issues on housing. First, more than half of local planning authorities set no requirements for any accessible housing standards, so will the Government create a mandatory baseline for new homes broadly equivalent to the lifetime homes standard or category 2 in the building regulations? This is already the case in London, so why can this policy not be implemented across England?

Secondly, have the Government got their demand forecasts right? I ask because the Office for Statistics Regulation has recently been critical of the Office for National Statistics for its population forecasts, which in some places seem much too high. What is the Government’s response to this conflict of evidence?

Finally, I welcome the proposed levelling-up White Paper, which will set up new policy interventions for poorer areas. I suggest that this should include the role of the private sector in supporting levelling up through the use of the tax system to encourage its investment policies to be directed towards supporting all parts of the country.

Covid-19: Poverty and Mass Evictions

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Thursday 22nd April 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Shipley (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I should remind the House that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association. This is the second time this week that we are debating this matter. On this occasion, it is an opportunity to discuss government policy approaches, or rather the absence of them, because just extending the temporary ban on evictions once again, as was agreed on Monday, is not sufficient, and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bird, for enabling us to keep pointing out the need for workable solutions from the Government.

The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, has drawn attention to the report of the House of Commons Housing, Communities and Local Government Select Committee, and I want to quote a little more from it. On 31 March, the Select Committee said that:

“The Government will eventually have to come up with a policy response, because it cannot keep extending the evictions ban forever more.”


It went on to say:

“We call on the Government to deliver a specific financial package —we prefer discretionary housing payments—to support tenants to repay rent arrears caused by covid-19, in consultation with the Local Government Association and appropriate bodies representing renters and landlords. We received an estimate that this package will likely cost between £200 and £300 million. Given the number of potential evictions this would prevent, it would likely save the Exchequer a substantial amount in homelessness assistance.”


What is the Government’s response?

The Resolution Foundation has estimated that the rates of rent arrears across all tenures were

“at least twice the level of arrears observed going into the crisis.”

It further estimated in January that more than 750,000 families were behind with their rent.

The Secretary of State committed a year ago that no one would be forced out of their home because they had lost income as a result of coronavirus. He also said that no landlord would face unmanageable debts. Landlords’ organisations and renters’ organisations have come up with a plan for a government-led rent relief scheme. The Select Committee has come up with a plan too. Many thousands of tenants and landlords are now extremely worried, so when will the Government decide what action to take?

Housing Strategy

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Wednesday 24th March 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Shipley (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury for enabling us to have this debate today. I remind the Committee that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

I am particularly pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, who said very many things with which I agree, not least on the importance of social value. He referred to the “clarion call” of the Church of England; that indeed is what this report is.

The report, Coming Home, from the Archbishops’ Commission on Housing, Church and Community, is a major contribution to current thinking on housing and on the need for a 20-year strategy. I want to talk first about values. Strategies and policies are built on values, and social values were very close to the thinking of my noble friend Lord Greaves, who spoke in the House only last week on housing and the private rented sector. The news of his death yesterday is deeply sad. He would have welcomed the commission report so very strongly.

There are several core values in the report. Homes and communities should be sustainable, safe, stable, sociable and satisfying. All of these are important words with which I concur. I will say something about safety first. The most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York has talked recently about resetting our compass. I agree. We should not accept homelessness, with all the risks to personal safety that it leads to. I wonder if the Minister might commit to speeding up the scrapping of the Vagrancy Act 1824, which makes it a crime to sleep rough. It belongs to another era, yet it is still being used to prosecute people who suffer from a variety of personal problems.

Then there is the safety of homes and the need to ensure the highest standards; for example, of electrical safety. The Grenfell inquiry has served as a wake-up call to address the shocking standards of building regulation in which hazardous products were allowed on to the market. There has been a culture of poor-quality building, in which cost-saving has been allowed to become the dominant consideration.

Some builders urgently need to improve quality and restore public trust. For example, a few days ago, the Competition and Markets Authority ordered two companies to remove contract terms that have meant that thousands of leaseholders had been paying excessive ground rents. Further, some owners of new homes have been asked to sign non-disclosure agreements when their builder undertakes repairs on their new-build homes. Why is this permitted?

The commission has made important points about sustainability. In that respect, I want to comment on the Green Homes Grant policy. It was welcome in theory, but it suffered from an excess of media spin and insufficient attention to detail. It proved very difficult to get a grant. Delays, plus a lack of advisers and builders with the right skills, have meant that just 8% of the scheme’s target of 600,000 will have been reached by the end of the month. I understand that 128,000 householders applied for a voucher but only 5,000 have actually had the work carried out because of the lack of capacity in the industry. I wonder whether the Minister can explain a little more about how this situation was allowed to arise.

The commission has also talked about the importance of stability. Stability of residence leads to stability of communities, and stable communities mean more sociable and satisfying places to live.

On affordability, the truth is that affordable homes are so very often unaffordable. The word “affordable” should never be used to suggest genuine affordability, which surely relates to income. Everyone needs a secure job, a good education and a decent home—those are values to which we should all subscribe—yet household poverty has risen sharply during the pandemic. Some 220,000 more households live in destitution today—the number has doubled in a year. Furthermore, the pandemic has put 700,000 more people into poverty; the figure would have been twice that had the additional £20 a week in universal credit ceased.

As the commission says, 8 million people in England live in overcrowded, unaffordable or unsuitable homes, with many caught in a poverty trap made worse by the pandemic. Although the Chancellor’s recent decision to deliver 95% mortgages is welcome for those able to take advantage of it, the benefit freeze will hit low-income families. As Shelter has pointed out, some tenants can get £100 less a month than their rent. I have concluded that the social security system is failing to provide adequate housing support for many low-income families.

I challenge the notion that the current affordable homes programme is adequate. There are grants available for socially rented homes, which is welcome, but there is nothing like enough to build the number of social rented homes that we need. Only 7,000 social rented homes were built in 2019. Can the Minister tell the House how many are currently being built?

It seems that the Government’s priority is to subsidise owner-occupation over social housing. First Homes, which sells to first-time buyers at a 30% discount, is to be financed from planning obligations paid by developers. It therefore seems that there will be less money for social and affordable homes from that source, and yet council housing waiting lists are likely to rise significantly as a result of the pandemic.

I am very glad that the Church of England is to use its land assets to promote truly affordable homes. The Government should follow suit by ensuring that part of rising land values is always captured for social and community benefit.

I have one final point: overhauling the planning system will not support the Government’s ambitions to build 300,000 homes a year or the social homes we need. Nine in 10 planning applications are approved by councils and more than a million homes given planning permission have not yet been built. We should also note that 1 million homes are awaiting development—that is, homes on land earmarked for development that have yet to be brought forward for planning permission. I venture to suggest that it is the housing delivery system that is broken, not the planning system.

The most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury said earlier that we need good housing that is affordable for all. Surely that is an objective that we all share.

Building Safety

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Monday 22nd February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, I point out that the priority of this Government is to protect leaseholders from facing the costs of the removal of unsafe cladding, whether they are in social sector buildings or in private buildings. Where registered social landlords feel that they need to impose costs on leaseholders, access to grant funding is available as well as the new financing scheme. That protects the leaseholders in those properties, which is the priority of this Government.

[Lord Shipley (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I remind the House that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association. Those in a flat 19 metres high will have unsafe cladding replaced at no cost, and that is welcome. Those in a flat 17 metres high will have to pay up to £50 a month for an unknown period. Why do the Government think that is fair?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, I pointed out that height is a marker for risk. Those buildings greater than 18 metres are four times more likely to result in a fire-related fatality or someone needing to go to hospital for treatment. Above 30 metres, that rises to 35 times more likely. So the focus needs to be on removing the material that accelerates the spread of fire in buildings that in and of themselves, through height and being of residential use, are at greater risk of causing fatalities.

Non-Domestic Rating (Lists) (No. 2) Bill

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 4th February 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Shipley (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I first remind the Committee that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

The noble Lord, Lord Thurlow, has made some very salient points, notably that it is vital that urgent action is taken to help high street businesses by reducing their operating costs. I recall the noble Lord, Lord Thurlow, saying at Second Reading—and again today—that it would prove very hard to estimate rentable and hence rateable values for the traditional retail sector even with this deferral, because new lettings will for the time being be rare events.

When I spoke at Second Reading, I pointed out that retailers pay over a quarter of business rates in England and Wales. That is a very large amount of money, but it will now decline significantly as less is generated from high streets. There is, though, an immediate opportunity to even up business rate receipts by switching a greater burden from the high street to online businesses through the revaluation process itself, because we do not have a fair balance at the moment.

At Second Reading, the Minister said the Government would report in the spring on its fundamental review of business rates. He said he was

“sure that the fundamental review will look at alternative taxes to capture the shift in our shopping habits.”—[Official Report, 18/1/21; col. 1069.]

I welcome that and hope it happens, and I draw his attention to the potential for an e-commerce levy on online businesses.

As we have heard, the move online of Arcadia brands and Debenhams in recent days represents what seems to be an irreversible trend—but that cannot be allowed to mean lower rents and rates for online businesses at the cost of the high street. This proposed new clause would require an assessment of the impact of any business rates revaluation on local high streets to be undertaken within six months, looking in particular at the ability of high street retail outlets to compete with the huge retail businesses that operate online.

The timing could fit well—if the Government wanted it to—with the fundamental review of business rates, and I hope that they will take the opportunity provided by the amendment. It would be strongly and warmly welcomed by high street retail businesses because, as the noble Lord, Lord Thurlow, said a moment ago, the matter has become very urgent.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, Amendment 4, moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, seeks to insert a new clause into the Bill which, as we have heard, would require an impact assessment of the timing of rates revaluations on local high streets and, importantly, would look at the impact on their ability to compete with businesses that operate online.

We have a serious problem with our high streets. The problem was in many cases a crisis before the pandemic, as we have discussed today on previous amendments. We can all point to the closed and boarded-up shops in areas that we know. The pandemic has created an even more serious problem for high streets and has put many businesses at risk. We need action from the Government to deal with all the issues that are destroying our high streets and our shopping parades.

We will all have seen the news that Boohoo is purchasing Debenhams and that ASOS is purchasing Topshop, but they are purchasing the names and not continuing with their high street presence. Why they are doing that is the question we need to look at. Clearly, they have taken the view that they do not need, or that it is too expensive to operate, a high street presence. This is why urgent action is needed. The issue with online retailers needs to be addressed. It has been discussed in the other place. My honourable friend the Member for Manchester Central, Lucy Powell MP, has said:

“The pandemic has accelerated changes to the way we shop, yet the government continues to disadvantage bricks and mortar businesses against online companies … The support on offer for struggling business has been a series of sticking plasters. Unless the Government puts in place a long-term plan to help high street businesses survive this crisis and recover on the other side, we will see more well-loved high street names vanishing, and many more jobs lost.”


I could not agree more. I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Thurlow, that we need vibrant, healthy town centres. As he said, the power to help the high street is in the hands of the Government. I hope the Minister will address that point.

West Yorkshire Combined Authority (Election of Mayor and Functions) Order 2021

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Tuesday 26th January 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Shipley (LD) [V]]

My Lords, this order represents another small step in decentralising England. The additional powers, over skills and training and strategic housing and regeneration, in particular, are important, if limited. But, of course, there is little extra money.

I shall leave it to colleagues who live in Yorkshire to comment further on the detail of the order, but I want to make the point that what is being introduced is in practice a centralised structure. It is not just that the duties of an elected Police and Crime Commissioner are to be taken over by the mayor, it is also that there will be no assembly, as in London. There, the Assembly exists to hold the mayor to account and make sure that the mayor’s policies, actions and strategies are in the public interest.

Scrutiny matters. We need to look carefully at how scrutiny has worked in all mayoral authorities—not just combined authorities—to assess how each is performing and what we can learn from their achievements or failures. When combined authorities were first introduced, their bespoke nature was understandable, because it meant that different approaches to spreading power in England could be tested. That approach has been useful, but now we need to review how well each of the combined authorities has worked and how more power and responsibility might be devolved from Whitehall and Westminster—and not just to those existing combined authorities. That could take place in the context of the promise by the Government of a White Paper on English devolution, which was due last year, as we have heard from other noble Lords and Baronesses this evening.

At the last election, the Conservative manifesto contained a commitment to a constitution, democracy and rights commission. That is welcome, but, in my view, we need a proper constitutional convention that looks towards creating a federal structure for the United Kingdom. This is because the question of whether to hold another referendum on independence for Scotland should be seen in the context of the UK as a whole. That must surely include the constituent parts of England. It could prove key to helping the levelling up agenda, because I think levelling up, if it is to be successful, will require constitutional reform.

The Covid pandemic is teaching us many things. One is that England is too centralised. There will be a public inquiry, but we need more. We need a constitutional convention to spread power and responsibility much more widely.