Capital Projects: Spending Decisions

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

No, I do not agree. I think that a £9.9 billion investment into levelling up shows a Government who are putting their money where their mouth is. They are delivering levelling up across the country and will do so in future. They have already done so with the future high streets fund, the towns fund, the UK shared prosperity fund—which is about to come out—and even small funds such as the community renewal fund. These are all delivering things for people in this country.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, on the issue of capital spending, three local authorities have made disastrous capital investments and are now having to raise their council tax by more than the cap in order to rebuild their balances. Should not they have been obliged to hold a local referendum to explain their imprudence to the local electorate, rather than blaming the Government for the increase?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I think my noble friend is speaking about the significant failures in Thurrock, Croydon and Slough. These authorities have asked the Government for flexibility to increase their council tax by an additional amount. Given the exceptional financial difficulties which, I have to say, were driven by poor decision-making in the past, the Government felt that we should not oppose their request. It is important that the councils remain working to deliver services, but I assure the House that we are working with them, challenging them, and have people in there to make sure that they improve and recover.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 20th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Willis of Summertown (CB)]

My Lords I will speak to Amendment 28 in my name and thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Parminter and Lady Jones of Whitchurch, for adding their names to it. This amendment has one simple purpose: to include in the Bill a mission on access to a healthy environment.

I will provide a few statistics to illustrate perfectly why this is necessary. A report by Public Health England in 2020 found that

“the most affluent 20% of wards in England have five times the amount of parks or general green space compared with the most deprived 10% of wards”.

Similarly, a report published by the community charity Groundwork in 2021 found that fewer than half of those with a household income of less than £15,000 reported green space within five minutes’ walk of their home, compared to two-thirds of those whose income was more than £35,000.

A 2020 Ramblers survey found that just 39% of people from ethnic minority backgrounds reported living within five minutes of a local park, field or canal path, compared to the national average of 57%—a really big gap. These and many other studies and similar reports suggest that in England we have massive inequality of access to healthy green and blue environments near to cities.

Why does this inequality in access to healthy environments in cities matter? It matters because there is an ever-increasing body of research from medical practitioners, psychiatrists and other public health authorities across the world that, even when taking into account socioeconomic factors, areas with more blue and green spaces are associated with higher health and mental well-being outcomes. These include things that cost thousands, if not millions, of pounds each year to deal with through the National Health Service, such as reduced levels of obesity, anxiety and stress-related illnesses, and lower incidences of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases.

There is more: green and blue spaces have been shown to play an important role in social cohesion, bringing communities together and reducing loneliness. They have also been shown to improve cognitive performance, especially in schoolchildren. To go back to many of the debates on the Environment Act, green spaces in cities are known to significantly reduce pollution and the effects of overheating and flooding.

If we have inequality in access to healthy environments, we have inequality in all of the benefits that these green and blue spaces provide in cities, and associated with this are really serious economic implications. For example, in a study last year, Natural England estimated that the National Health Service could save well over £2 billion a year through reduced demand if everyone in England had good access to green space. Indeed, the importance of access to green and blue space has been recognised globally. We signed up to that commitment in the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity in December 2022. The target we signed up to is to:

“Significantly increase … access to … green and blue spaces in … densely populated areas”.


Why should this mission be included in the Bill? Why can it not be delivered, as is being suggested, via other legislation such as the Environment Act and associated policies such as net biodiversity gain and the Government’s new target in their environmental improvement plan? Indeed, this target is

“to ensure that anyone can reach green or blue space within 15 minutes from their front door.”

As I hope I have made clear, access to blue and green space is far broader than just a matter for Defra and ensuring that we protect nature in cities. It is about ensuring that, via spatial planning processes, these healthy environments are in the right places for the right people, so that they can then gain the multiple benefits that many of us already have from access to these blue and green spaces. Some of these spaces, of course, may be delivered by net biodiversity gain and the environmental improvement plan, but neither of these have specific mechanisms closely aligned to the planning process which would enable targeted delivery in the areas most in need—in particular, starting with areas with the lowest incomes and the highest percentages of ethnic minorities.

If the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill is really to deliver and reduce inequalities in England, and to achieve its missions and targets in health, well-being and even education, this is exactly the right place to include an additional mission for equality of access to high-quality blue and green space. By including this in the Bill, planners, local councils and others involved in infrastructure and planning decisions will have to properly take into consideration access to blue and green space and all the benefits that we get with that.

In summary, my amendment has the core objective of reducing inequality in access to a healthy environment by maximising the number of people who live within 15 minutes’ walk of a high-quality natural green or blue space.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I add a brief contribution from these Benches to the excellent speeches that have been made on Amendments 4 and 8. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, that there will be an opportunity later in the Bill to develop her arguments when we come to the amendments in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, and others about a healthy environment.

I listened to what the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, said on the first group and again on the group we are now debating, and there is a powerful case for addressing child poverty—indeed, all forms of poverty—if one is to genuinely level up. Can I say something which I hope will be helpful to the Government? I think there is a way through. If one looks at the levelling-up missions on page xvii of the executive summary of the White Paper, one will see the mission to:

“Boost productivity, pay, jobs and living standards by growing the private sector”.


It seems that if one developed that section of the mission on improving living standards and focused it directly in the way that has been suggested in Amendments 4 and 8 on children living in poverty—or, indeed, all those living in poverty—one could address the arguments that have been made.

Building Safety

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 2nd February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I join others in warmly welcoming the Statement made earlier this week. As has been said, it marks an important milestone on the road to justice for the thousands of leaseholders whose lives have been on hold, as the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, said. I welcome what my noble friend has just said in updating us on the progress being made in making these blocks safer.

But, may I press my noble friend on two sentences in the Statement? The first is:

“Leaseholders should know that the law is on their side.”


The second is:

“When we were told that leaseholders must pay, we … protected”


them. However, there are two groups of leaseholders for whom, sadly, that is not the case, and who are not given protection under the Bill. The first is leaseholders who have enfranchised, following government encouragement, and become freeholders. When I raised this nearly a year ago in Committee, the words of my noble friend’s predecessor, my noble friend Lord Greenhalgh, gave me some assurance:

“They are effectively leaseholders that have enfranchised as opposed to freeholders.”—[Official Report, 28/2/22; col. GC 262.]


Sadly, after my amendment was rejected, they are effectively freeholders, and they do not have the protection extended to other leaseholders in the Bill.

The second category was touched on by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton: leaseholders in buildings under 11 metres, who are not covered by the Bill either, but they are confronted by the same problems as leaseholders in tall buildings. They are getting high service charges, they are living in buildings with defective cladding or other fire safety defects, and they are exposed to these costs. In both cases, I was promised consultation to remedy what I regard as a manifest injustice. Can my noble friend update me on the outcome of those consultations?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for reminding me that I have not spoken about buildings under 11 metres. I know the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, would never forgive me if I did not answer that question. I will start, though, with enfranchised leaseholders, which I do remember in the context of the Bill. The Government have published a call for evidence on leaseholders in buildings over 11 metres or five storeys, which closed on 14 November last year. We are analysing those responses and considering the feedback prior to finalising the policy. However, enfranchised leaseholders living in buildings covered by the developer remediation contract will be protected from the cost of remedying life-critical fire safety defects arising from buildings’ design and/or construction. Furthermore, leaseholders in buildings over 11 metres are protected from the costs of remediating unsafe cladding, even where the developer has not signed the contract, which is important. Costs may be met through the building safety fund or the new medium-rise fund. I think we are doing what my noble friend wants, although it might be a bit slower than he would have preferred.

On buildings under 11 metres, which I know have been a concern for many noble Lords in these debates, the Government are committed to understanding the full scale and nature of historical building safety issues facing leaseholders in these buildings. As such, we welcome further information. The department set up a dedicated inbox for leaseholders and managing agents of these buildings to contact the department about their specific buildings. We will work with them on that. We stress that the responsibility for the costs of fixing historical building safety defects should still rest with the building owners. They should not pass these costs on to the leaseholders but seek to recover costs from those responsible for building the unsafe buildings in the first place.

I would like to emphasise that the risk to life from historical fire safety defects is much lower in buildings under 11 metres. That is no excuse, but it is rare for these buildings to require building safety-related remediation works. The Government’s assessment therefore remains that extending the protection to buildings under 11 metres is probably neither needed nor proportionate, but we will work with leaseholders and agents of these buildings if they have specific issues.

Local Councils: 2023-24 Budgets

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, local authorities across this country are doing some very creative things to make their money go further. They are working closely with others in their local areas to deliver the services that their residents deserve. I think that this will go on. Through the levelling-up Bill that has come here, we will see different ways in which local government can join together to make itself far more financially viable.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, allowing local authority expenditure to increase by 9.2% in cash terms seems reasonable to me against the background of the current economic challenges. However, if, pursuant to my noble friend the Minister’s reply, a local authority thinks that that is wrong for its area, it is free to spend more if it can persuade the local electorate to vote for that in a referendum. Is that not a more democratic way of approaching local government finance than the crude rate-capping that we had before?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I absolutely agree with my noble friend, not only on that point but that councils can look to a referendum. It is important that, if they look for a referendum, they say what they are going to spend the money on so that local people have a choice.

Levelling Up: Funding Allocation

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, we absolutely still agree with the whole project of levelling up. I just need to say that, of all the bids, the north-west—this will please the noble Lord opposite—had the highest number of successful projects and was second in funding per capita; Wales was top and the north-east was third. I suggest that that is putting the money where it is required.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I quite understand why the Government wanted to kick-start the levelling-up policy with these centrally allocated grants, but looking ahead, and given the commitment in the levelling-up White Paper to usher in a revolution in local democracy, should not these funds in future be added to the block grant given to the increasingly large local authorities set up under the Bill and then local people could decide what their priorities are, with local councillors accountable to their local electorate?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, competitive funding can be a very effective tool for protecting value for taxpayers’ money. Competitions such as the levelling-up fund can also support fair and transparent awards of funds and drive innovation, but I understand my noble friend’s concerns and the Government have committed, within the levelling-up White Paper, to reducing the complexities of local government funding.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 17th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, some five hours ago the first Government Back-Bench speaker was my noble friend Lord Bourne, which begins with “B”. I am the last Government Back-Bench speaker, and my name begins with “Y”. Can I make a plea for some alphabetical levelling up next time?

In the time available I will make two points, one specific and one general. The specific one, which I raised yesterday, relates to the Government’s proposal to make local housing targets discretionary and not mandatory. For nine years on and off I had ministerial responsibility for housing and planning, most of them under the benign but watchful eye of my noble friend Lord Heseltine, whose contribution was the outstanding feature of today’s high-quality debate. Based on that experience, you will never get the homes the country needs if you rely on the good will of local government. It was not local government that made the commitment to 300,000 houses; it was us—the Government. Local government, with its local electorate, will never deliver that target. Look at all the foot-dragging with local plans. It will opt out of the tough decisions unless there is a target.

However, now the Government are proposing to abandon the one lever that they have to deliver that commitment. Assuring people that new homes will be well designed will not take the trick. The objections will come when land is zoned for development, long before any designs are in the public domain. Therefore, I hope that noble Lords will change the Bill back to what the Government originally proposed before they backed down in the other place. If not, they run real risks at the next election, not just for not hitting the 300,000 target—we understand about Covid—but for not taking seriously an issue rising steadily up the political agenda, not least the need for more affordable housing, as mentioned by so many noble Lords in this debate.

On a happier note, my general point is that I welcome the motivation behind the Bill. A country with stark inequalities between communities will be an unstable one, and there are strong political, economic and social arguments for levelling up and giving equal opportunities to everyone regardless of where they live.

The first sentence of last year’s White Paper stated that:

“From day one, the defining mission of this government has been to level up this country”.


However, turning that mission into tangible policies is difficult. I and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, discovered this on your Lordships’ committee when we heard that levelling up meant different things to different people, if indeed it meant anything at all. I have knocked on more doors than anyone else in this Chamber.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

All right—I have knocked on nearly as many doors as all the noble Lords in this Chamber. I have never met anyone who said, “George, what I really want is to be levelled up.” They want better schools, shorter waiting lists, crucially with priorities differing from place to place. My noble friend Lord Lucas wants a sixth-form college in Eastbourne, while the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, wants better rail services in the West Midlands. I believe the Government can achieve their objective through a different route: by giving local authorities much more autonomy to reflect those varying priorities than what is proposed, and by making this a much more decentralised country.

This Bill was never meant to be called the levelling up Bill. At the beginning of this Parliament we were promised a White Paper on devolution. That commitment was abandoned in May 2021, when we were told that a new levelling up White Paper would be published later, which would supersede it. The White Paper said:

“We’ll usher in a revolution in local democracy.”


It later made the point that local leaders in other countries have

“much greater revenue-raising powers.”

But there is absolutely nothing about that in the Bill. Devolving greater ability to spend central government money with strings attached is not a revolution in local democracy; it is a step change in local administration.

Let me make a radical suggestion to decentralise and to turbocharge levelling up by empowering local democracy. Over the next 10 years, revenue from fuel duty, some £25 billion, will disappear as we buy electric vehicles. The revenue foregone will be met by road pricing, now made possible by in-car technology—a transition that the Government will no longer be able to duck. However, that revenue should not go to central government but should complement the existing revenue from parking and congestion charges and go to the larger units of local government encouraged by the Bill. This would give local government greater autonomy and a sounder basis of local taxation than the increasingly discredited and out of date council tax, which raises the same amount from a mansion in Belgrave Square as a terraced house in Oakham, in Leicestershire. I would expect this proposal to be welcomed by my noble friend the Minister, as I came across a statement released by the County Councils Network calling for

“Full fiscal devolution to counties to create an extra £26bn in GVA”,


signed by the leader of Wiltshire Council, my noble friend Lady Scott.

In conclusion, rather than rigidly following the targets in 12 centrally derived missions, I honestly believe that more people will believe that they have been levelled up if we go down this route of local democratic empowerment.

Housebuilding: Government Targets

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Monday 16th January 2023 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Young of Cookham]

To ask His Majesty’s Government whether it remains their policy to build 300,000 homes a year.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Scott of Bybrook) (Con)]

The Government remain committed to continuing to work towards our ambition of delivering 300,000 homes a year, as set out in the 2019 Conservative manifesto. We are making good progress. Annual housing supply is up 10% compared with the previous year, with more than 232,000 net additional homes delivered in 2021-22. This is the third-highest yearly rate for the last 30 years.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for that renewed commitment, but does she recall the 2019 White Paper Fixing Our Broken Housing Market, which listed a number of reasons why we might not hit that target? The first one said that

“some local authorities can duck potentially difficult decisions, because they are free to come up with their own methodology for calculating ‘objectively assessed need’.”

Does my noble friend understand that asking local authorities to make the housing target discretionary rather than mandatory makes it less likely that we will hit the 300,000 target, because you cannot rely on the good will of local authorities to meet a national mandate?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, we remain committed to a plan-led system. National planning policy expects local planning authorities, through their plans, to make sufficient provision for housing and to identify the sites to deliver much-needed homes to meet local needs. To get enough homes built in places where people and communities need them, a crucial first step is to plan for the right number of homes. That is why we remain committed to the 300,000 homes target and to retaining a clear starting point for calculating local housing needs. We are currently consulting on changes to the planning policy that will support how we plan to deliver the homes our communities need.

Housing: Private Rented Sector

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I do not agree that it is a blunt tool. We propose to apply to new tenancies a requirement for an EPC rating of C and raise the maximum spend that landlords are required to invest to £10,000 from April 2025, and to all tenancies by April 2028—the noble Lord is right. If we are going to meet our net-zero strategy, we have to commit even further to consulting on phasing in even higher minimum performance standards. That will take place through the social housing sector but also through the private rented sector.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, further to the noble Lord’s original Question, is there not an inevitable tension between the interests of the private landlord on the one hand, who wants access to his capital or property and is therefore interested in a short lease, and the interests of families and tenants on the other hand, for whom renting may now be the only tenure and who want a much longer lease? Should we not be moving far more quickly to the position that exists in most other countries, where good-quality rented accommodation is provided by financial institutions as a long-term investment, as they are more prepared to issue the long leases that tenants increasingly want?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My noble friend brings up an extremely important point. The Government have always welcomed new institutional investments in the private rented sector and will continue to do so. We have also made a number of interventions to support the build-to-rent sector, such as the build to rent fund and the private rented sector guarantee scheme. Build to rent boosts housing supply and diversifies the private rented sector, but it also increases quality and choice for renters in cities and towns across the country. I will take the noble Lord’s views back to the department, and we will look into this further.

Residential Leaseholders

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

As I have made clear a number of times at this Dispatch Box, these measures were in the manifesto in 2019. We have always said that we will bring forward a reform Bill in this Parliament and that is what we intend to do. We just have to wait and see; I am very sorry. I totally understand that this is causing some issues in the sector. That is why we will get the Bill through as soon as we possibly can, but it has been quite complex and we need to get it right.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the commitment that my noble friend has just given to make it easier for leaseholders collectively to enfranchise, to make it easier for an individual leaseholder to extend the lease, and to move more towards a system of commonhold rather than leasehold. I understand that she cannot give a commitment about the timetable but, given that work on the Bill is clearly well advanced, can she consider publishing it in draft so that when it comes forward it can have a speedier passage?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I would love to put the Bill out in draft, because I would love to stop these Questions coming every three months from the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy. We have committed as a Government to making enfranchisement easier and cheaper for leaseholders, and that is important. We have also committed to abolish marriage value cap ground rents in enfranchisement calculations and prescribe rates to be used. We have already made clear that this is what we will do. We just have to be patient until the Bill comes forward.

Housing: Cost of Living

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 15th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I thank the right reverend Prelate for that question, and I think it is an extremely interesting opportunity. I would like to talk to her in further detail about that because I have read the report Coming Home and I think the idea of the five S’s—sustainable, safe, stable, social and satisfying housing—is a wonderful thing to aspire to. I cannot offer her a long-term cross-party review at this time, but I would like to talk to her further and talk to my officials about that.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, 20% of families in England now rent privately and one-third of them rely on housing benefit. That is capped by the local housing allowance, which was fixed on rents in 2019 and has been frozen for five years, although rents are rising rapidly—by 12% in the last year. This means that a family with a two-bedroom house faces a shortfall of some £1,500 a year that they have to meet out of the rest of their benefit. Does my noble friend recognise the difficulties that this can cause? Is there a case for the Chancellor, in his forthcoming Budget, reviewing the decision to freeze the local housing allowance?