Deregulation Bill

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Monday 23rd June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. It is a very good point, which I think it would be more appropriate to respond to in writing. Clearly, there may well be contractual issues. If local authorities have entered into contracts for, say, a five-year period, there may be implications, so rather than giving him an off-the-cuff response, I will write to him on that point.

Amendment 61 would remove from the Bill the three clauses that relate to taxis and private hire vehicles. That is not a course of action that the Government intend to adopt. On the contrary, we consider that the taxi and private hire vehicle clauses will have significant benefits, both in terms of cost savings for the trade and convenience for passengers, and we are determined to see those benefits realised.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

Will the Minister explain why he has not listened to what the travelling public want? There is huge concern about these clauses. He has not consulted the Local Government Association, nor has he listened to the public or the evidence, and as a result, he is going to put public safety at risk.

[Tom Brake]

I cannot agree with that at all. We are not putting public safety at risk, and I think the people who have concerns about safety do at least have London to consider, where, of course, all the measures apply, and I am not aware of significant issues being raised in relation to safety in London.

Clause 10 concerns the circumstances in which a private hire vehicle driver’s licence is required. Its purpose is to allow people who do not hold a private hire vehicle driver’s licence outside London and Plymouth to drive a licensed private hire vehicle when the vehicle is off duty. At a stroke, that will lift the burden that many families currently face of having to run a second car so that other family members can drive for domestic purposes. I have heard arguments to the effect that this will be unsafe and that the Government are being reckless in taking forward the policy, but I do not agree with that.

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[Grahame M. Morris]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. He makes a very sensible point. Apart from choice and preference, and whether a cab or a private hire vehicle is adapted for the disabled, there are also issues about levels of maintenance, and different standards in different local authority areas.

On the Opposition side of the House, and on my part, there is agreement about the need for reform of the industry. However, there is consensus across the trade that this piecemeal approach is not what is needed. What is different since the Westminster Hall debate a couple of months ago is that the Law Commission has now reported. In his opening statement, the Minister said that the Law Commission agrees with clauses 10 to 12; well, that is not quite the whole truth, is it? What the Law Commission has advocated—and for the life of me, I cannot understand why the Government are not following through on this—is a comprehensive review to get rid of the inconsistency in standards across the country that my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn and others identified, and to deal with the concerns about inadequate enforcement. The idea that we can cherry-pick three proposals for deregulation and that there will be no consequences flies in the face of what the Law Commission is about, and seems rather contrary.

As my hon. Friends have indicated, the Law Commission’s July 2013 interim statement said that if reforms were to be implemented, they must be underpinned by tougher powers for licensing officers. I do not see why the proposed reforms are so urgent that the Government should bypass meaningful consultation; in doing so, they are undermining the work of the Law Commission that they initiated.

We must have a holistic approach; changes to regulation should be considered in the context of the legislation as a whole, rather than in a piecemeal fashion. Failure to do so not only disregards the trade and other stakeholders, but may put passenger safety at risk. The reforms look set to endanger the travelling public and ignore stakeholders. I do not believe that they are fit for purpose, and they should be removed from the Bill.

[Caroline Lucas]

I rise to reinforce some of the arguments that hon. Members have made about amendment 61, to which I have added my name. Many people in my constituency have raised this issue with me, and there is real concern about public safety. Nothing that I have heard from the Government this afternoon has put my mind—or, I am sure, my constituents’ minds—at rest.

Taxi companies in my constituency have also raised concerns. I come back to a theme to which other hon. Members have returned time and again: nobody really knows what is driving these measures. People are not asking for them; on the contrary, organisations that are watching the proposals are sounding the alarm. They include the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, which we should surely listen to closely. Given that no counter-argument is coming from other organisations to balance the discussion, it strikes me as incredibly perverse for the Government to push ahead with these measures and fly in the face of so much advice suggesting that there are dangers involved.

I was particularly moved to hear the hon. Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) again tell the House the story of her 13-year-old constituent—she raised that topic in the Westminster Hall debate secured by the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) a few weeks ago. It was horrifying to hear that story then, just as it was today. The bottom line is that people with disabilities, young women, those worried about how they will get home at night, and those without access to a car will be watching for the implications of clauses 10 to 12, and they are worried about them.

Brighton and Hove has 1,800 drivers who serve our city well. Many of them have said that they are worried about the Government’s attempts to rush through changes to the regulations, and that the measures will be bad for the travelling public and the city, and potentially dangerous. The Government proposals seem rushed and are another example of unthinking, anti-regulation, small-state ideology that has no basis in evidence or common sense and, as has been said, risks putting public safety at risk.

We have had nothing close to meaningful consultation, and the Government even failed to discuss these changes with councils before tabling the clauses. The Local Government Association put it politely, but states clearly:

“We are disappointed that the LGA was not made aware of these proposed clauses until they were brought before the Deregulation Bill Committee.”

Where is the speed coming from? Why do we have to pre-empt other processes to get these measures into statute so fast?

There is concern that the proposals could lead to women being put at risk of assault or attack by unlicensed and unregulated drivers when they travel late at night. The deregulation of the taxi industry could also lead to rogue taxi drivers, criminals posing as drivers, passengers being ripped off, and people being unsure whether the taxi they have flagged down is legitimate.

Ministers should surely follow the 2011 proposals of experts on the cross-party Select Committee on Transport, who advised the Government to listen to users—particularly those in vulnerable groups—those in the trade, and local authorities, and to keep the situation simple and local. Instead, clauses 10 to 12 show a systematic attempt to water down standards and rules that were designed to serve and protect the public.

I come back to the sense that this is being driven by—I do not know: is it being driven by ideology or something else? During the debate of the hon. Member for Easington in Westminster Hall, I just observed that the boss of the minicab giant Addison Lee had made an individual donation of £500,000 to the Conservatives last year—it was reported as the third largest donation in the three months to the end of September. Government Members immediately started jumping up to point out that Addison Lee does not currently operate outside London and so has no particular interest. However, Addison Lee is on record as saying that it would very much like to operate outside London. I will leave it there; I simply say that when we are searching for a reason to understand why the Government are pursuing this policy, one cannot help but notice that there has been a very large donation from Addison Lee.

[John McDonnell]

I convene the RMT group in Parliament. I raised these issues at the RMT conference this morning and we had a discussion about their implications.

On the taxi and minicab issue, the RMT represents only the black cabs in London, which has been prayed in aid as operating the system that will now be rolled out elsewhere. I want to dissuade the Minister from the view that the RMT is happy with the regime in London at the moment. In fact, in the RMT’s view, there should be further regulation, with annual testing. The figures have already been given for assaults and rapes, which are occurring even in the capital city’s regulated regime.

What worries me is exactly what others have said. From the point of view of the union and a number of other organisations that have been cited, everyone thought that we were on a journey over the last couple of years: the Law Commission would conduct its investigation and review; there would be adequate consultation; a comprehensive Bill would be produced; and then we would establish a regime that, although perhaps not everyone would be happy with it, would at least be nationally comprehensive, effective, properly enforced and readily understandable. There is therefore a lack of comprehension of why the measures have been introduced in such haste. In fact, I am led to believe that one of the informal consultations on some of the legislation lasted only 10 days and was conducted by e-mail.

There may well be some association between donations, speed and amendments, but to be frank, what concerns me most is getting the legislation right, and I just do not think that the measure will prove effective. I think it will cause more problems than it is worth. I also think it will prove deeply unpopular as it is rolled out. If there is a lack of safety, particularly for women, the Government will reap the whirlwind. They will face a backlash, because what they are doing flies in the face of all the expert evidence that has been presented. Everyone who practises on the ground, right across the country, is saying that this is not the way to go about it, so I caution the Government: they are making a mistake today and may well want to think again before the day is out.

On marine investigations, again, people are slightly bewildered about why the measure is included in this Bill. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool South (Mr Marsden), who sits on the Front Bench, for taking us through the history and in particular the Derbyshire incident. I, too, want to go back to that incident, because I find it extraordinary. I remember the campaign about the Derbyshire and I remember that key period when a number of the unions and others were raising the problems with that type of ship. From 1975 to 1997, nearly 400 of them went down and we lost something like 1,300 seafarers. The Derbyshire was one of those ships. There was an issue with design and safety.

At the time, there were all sorts of insinuations about it being the crew’s fault. The RMT undertook its own investigation, along with Nautilus and the International Transport Workers Federation, as my hon. Friend said. They found the ship and discovered the real causes. However, the investigation would not have been reopened but for a piece of legislation introduced in 1995 by—who? By a Conservative Government. Until then, the system was not satisfactory. The Derbyshire relatives, the unions and others had to campaign because reopening an inquiry was left to the whim of a Minister. That was unsatisfactory. A Conservative Government thus changed the legislation to provide for an automatic reopening of an inquiry when new evidence was found.

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[The Solicitor-General]

Yes, the Government are aware of that, and we have tried to respond, first of all by making the point, as the Department has done, that the London boroughs must be fully involved in the process and also by allowing the regulations to be subject to the affirmative procedure, which means that the hon. Lady and other colleagues will have an opportunity to consider the detail of the changes and whether they are appropriate.

Turning to Government new clauses 22 and 23, the Electoral Commission and the Local Government Boundary Commission are independent bodies established by Parliament and overseen by the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission. Currently, both bodies have to provide a five-year corporate plan. The Committee has reviewed governance and suggested a five-year corporate plan should be produced in the first financial year of a Parliament, and the duty to update it and produce a new plan on an annual basis should be removed, although the Committee would retain the right to request updated plans outside this cycle. Value for money studies would take place at the beginning of the five-year period, not annually, and provision would be made to allow the Local Government Boundary Commission to appoint independent members to its audit committee and other committees. These changes are supported by the Electoral Commission and the Local Government Boundary Commission.

I shall now turn—briefly—to the subject of poisons and explosives precursors. New clause 24 introduces the new schedule inserted by new schedule 2, which abolishes the statutory requirement for a poisons board under the Poisons Act 1972 and introduces a common licensing system for poisons and explosive precursors to streamline the regimes and bring them into line with the latest EU regulations.

I am sure the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) will wish to comment on new clause 8 and the preserved right to buy and the idea that within one year of Royal Assent a plan should be laid to replace homes that have been sold under right to buy and review the effectiveness of it. Since the revitalisation of right to buy, 19,500 households have achieved their home ownership aspirations, but this is not just about buying; it is also about building. More than £419 million from the right-to-buy sales has been ring-fenced to fund new homes, and I assure the hon. Lady that the Government are committed to keeping the reinvigorated right-to-buy scheme under review.

The impact assessment sets out a wider perspective on right to buy and how the policy will work. The Department for Communities and Local Government publishes quarterly statistics on right-to-buy sales in England and annual statistics on preserved right-to-buy, and live data tables are on the Department’s website. The hon. Lady will be pleased to know that, on future stock transfers, the Department for Communities and Local Government has recently published a stock transfer manual. So the Government have set out their position very clearly and the intention is that for transfers completing after 30 September 2014, net proceeds from preserved right-to-buy sales are, within three years, to be used to fund new affordable housing at no greater subsidy cost than under the main affordable homes programme.

[Caroline Lucas]

Not enough of that money is properly ring-fenced, and it has been estimated that only about one in every seven homes sold through right to buy has been replaced by more affordable housing. Is the Minister as shocked as I am to discover that in one London borough a third of the council homes sold in the 1980s are now owned by private landlords, some of whom own dozens of properties that they now rent back at very high rents?

[The Solicitor-General]

Of course we can always ask for more, but the point I would make to the hon. Lady is that that one in seven figure is misleading, because the money we are talking about is from extra sales, over and above the profile, and as far as that is concerned, this very considerable sum has been set aside. We are confident that over the next three years we will get the sorts of results I described.

On new clauses 10 to 14 on Sunday trading, I am afraid this time I am going to disappoint my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley, although I will not go on at great length as I am hoping he might have a chance to speak about this. The interests of smaller retailers, the working hours of employees, the effect of extra lorry traffic and the need to have some family day consideration lead the Government to the view that the current balance does not need changing, although it was for the Olympics, and very successfully so.

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[Philip Davies]

I will not give way because others wish to speak. I am trying to ensure that other Members can get in.

Then we hear that this is all about protecting the workers. Again, that is an absurd argument. First, what about those people who want to work on a Sunday? I am talking about young people who are desperate to get a foot on the ladder and cannot get a job on a Sunday. The current regulations are depriving them of that. What a ridiculous situation. The Minister and shadow Minister say it is absolutely fine for people who work in a Tesco Express to work every hour that God sends on a Sunday. They can work from 6 am to 11 pm, yet if they worked in a big Tesco, they would have to be protected from working those long hours. It is a completely absurd argument. With the high street facing competition from the internet, we must give our shops the opportunity to compete. People can shop at all hours on the internet—[Interruption.] I will be two seconds, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am coming to a close. People can shop for any amount of time at Waitrose on the internet, or have their goods delivered at any hour on a Sunday, but they cannot go into a Waitrose to shop. Workers can take the orders online, but they cannot work in a shop. It is a completely absurd situation.

My final amendment is about garden centres, which cannot open on a Sunday. I want people to think about that, because most garden centres are very small businesses. They might be big in area, but they are often small one-man bands. I do not see why they should be lumped in with companies such as Asda, Tesco or Morrisons, when they are only small businesses. I will leave my remarks there.

[Caroline Lucas]

I have tabled a number of amendments in this group, but given that we are so pressed for time, I will speak to just one of them, new clause 8, which I hope to press to a vote.

I am deeply concerned about the lack of affordable housing, which is yet another indictment of this Government, who have turned their back on “generation rent”. Housing is undoubtedly at the heart of the concerns of my constituents in Brighton. That message comes across clearly from conversations on our city streets, in my surgeries and from the e-mails and letters I receive.

In addition to tackling things such as letting fees, housing standards and security of tenure in the private rented sector, it is absolutely crucial that we ensure an adequate supply of affordable housing. Yet this coalition’s slapdash, ill-thought-out approach to right to buy is undermining this. The Bill, as currently drafted, would reduce the eligibility period for the right to buy from five years to three years. Giving local authority tenants and some housing association tenants the opportunity to buy their home at a discounted price is not a bad thing in itself, but only on the strict condition that it does not jeopardise affordable housing supply, including the ability of housing associations to build new affordable housing.

The new clause would require the Government to produce a plan to replace affordable homes lost in England as a result of right to buy, review the effectiveness of current policy and ask for an assessment to be carried out of changes since 2012 before further policy changes are made. Around 1.8 million households are waiting for a social home, which is an increase of 81% since 1997. The reality of right to buy is about much more than families being able to own their home. Last year, it was revealed that rich landowners are cashing in, buying up multiple ex-council properties and renting them back to people on endless housing waiting lists. In one London borough, as I said earlier, a third of council homes sold in the 1980s are now owned by private landlords, some of whom own dozens of properties.

Far too often, the rich, not the poor, are the real beneficiaries of housing benefit. Currently, only one in every seven homes sold through right to buy has been replaced, and I find it astonishing that the Government are so complacent that they are not even monitoring the number of homes replaced following the preserved right to buy. Housing associations say that, in fact, the number is likely to be even less than one in seven. It is inexcusable that Ministers have not even consulted housing associations, which provide 2.5 million homes to more than 5 million people.

We are a rich country. If we are serious about tackling the housing crisis, we need a major programme of direct capital investment to build sustainable council housing, and the constraints on borrowing faced by local authorities should be lifted, so that councils can better meet demand for new homes. We must not inhibit the ability of housing associations to build more homes. This would ease pressure on the private market and, in turn, help rent levels and housing prices. Instead, we have the appalling situation where we are paying housing benefit to private landlords at extortionate market rates for good houses that once belonged to the taxpayer. It is a scandal.

Today, house prices speak for themselves. In my constituency, the average one-bedroom flat costs nearly six and three-quarter times the median household annual income, and three-bedroom houses cost more than 12 times. That is why I hope that people will support my new clause.

[Mark Field]

I think I speak on behalf of the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) when I express some concerns about what appears to be the anomalous situation in London with the short-term letting of residential properties. These proposals have caused enormous concern among communities in the heart of our capital.

The Greater London Council (General Powers) Act 1973 was originally introduced to ensure that London’s permanent housing stock would be protected from strong market pressure to convert homes into visitor accommodation, and was deemed wholly necessary to deal with the acute housing shortage that London was then experiencing. At that time, London had a population of some 7.5 million and declining. Its population now stands at 8.2 million and, as all London MPs know, increases at a breath-taking annual rate. It needs to be recognised that allowing greater flexibility to change use from permanent residential occupation to short-term letting will have significant implications for London’s stock of permanent housing. It may make it impossible for our local authorities to meet their targets for new homes.

My constituents have very good reason to believe that a loosening of the rules governing short lets, as set out in this somewhat ill-thought-through new clause 21, will make it much harder to keep their buildings safe, secure and well maintained. It risks undermining a sense of community that can be all too difficult to build in an essentially transient urban population. In fact, London’s hyper-mobility and hyper-diversity get greater year by year. It will make it far more difficult for local authorities to deal with noise and antisocial behaviour. Above all, it threatens to make central London homes, already traded by many people as some sort of global currency, into little more than assets to be exploited for maximum profit.

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[The Minister for Government Policy (Mr Oliver Letwin)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

I start by thanking all those responsible for bringing the Bill in good order through Committee, in particular my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General, my right hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons, and all those who participated. I specifically acknowledge the role played by my hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen), who helped to draft the amendment on BBC licensing, and by my hon. Friends the Members for Stone (Sir William Cash) and for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), who helped enormously with the section on the Defamation Act 2013.

Before saying a few words about the Bill, I will say something that I know the Solicitor-General would have liked to say at the end of Report, before he was timed out. I see the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) is in his place, and he will know that the Queen’s Speech outlined the steps we will take to deal with zero-carbon homes and establish allowable solutions. We are aware that within that framework, the decision on the commencement date for amendments to the Planning and Energy Act 2008, which restrict the ability of local authorities to impose their own special requirements, must be made in such a way that the ending of those abilities to set special requirements knits properly with the start of the operation of standards for zero-carbon homes and allowable solutions. I hope that will make the hon. Gentleman—and, indeed, my hon. Friends who are concerned about the same question of timing—rest easy.

The Bill goes to the House of Lords in a condition which, despite the splendid rhetoric from those on the Opposition Front Bench, is similar to that in which it entered this House. There have been significant discussions in Committee and on Report—some things have been added, some things changed, and some dropped—but broadly the Bill goes as it came, and does what it set out to do, which, as I explained on Second Reading, is not in any way to substitute for the enormous amount of work that has been going on across Government for the past three or four years to lessen the burden of regulation by removing regulations from the statute book, improving regulations, changing guidance, and reducing the complexity of bureaucracy that surrounds guidance, orders, codes of practice and so on. Nevertheless, this Bill makes a contribution to that process and helps in a significant way to reduce costs. I remind the House of some few items in the Bill that are of great significance.

[Caroline Lucas]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way, but does he not accept that a Bill that is so ideologically based—it is essentially evidence-free, simply saying that all regulation is bad and that the free market is always good—does not do justice to protecting people or the environment?

[Mr Letwin]

The hon. Lady makes an odd point, in the sense that if the purpose of the Bill were to suggest that all regulation were bad, it would have a much wider scope than it does. There will remain after this Bill many thousands of pages of regulation, much of which is well intentioned and well aimed. Our contention remains that there is, alas, a certain amount of regulation that is burdensome, bureaucratic and sometimes counter-productive and that often has adverse effects on growth and—this matters very much to the hon. Lady—the ability of our country to satisfy social and environmental concerns.

I draw the House’s attention briefly to measures such as clause 1, which gives self-employed people the ability not to be governed by health and safety at work laws under most circumstances; the sensible measures on taxi and private hire vehicles, which were widely welcomed by those around the country who are being unnecessarily constrained; the significant changes being made to alcohol and entertainment licensing; and the considerable advances on poisons that have just been made on Report.

I want to end with a word on poisons. A part of my personal journey in the red tape challenge began when I discovered that in this country we operated a system—this is germane to the hon. Lady’s point—whereby someone would pay a small fee and send a piece of paper to an office; there the paper was stamped, which cost the taxpayer a certain amount; it was then sent back and the person was allowed to sell all sorts of very poisonous substances. However, people had to send the same piece of paper and the same fee if they wanted to sell things such as household bleach. It was an entirely purposeless exercise, which had gone on for years and years. It neither served the purpose that we wish it to serve—that of regulating properly the sale of extremely dangerous substances—