Nick Raynsford
Main Page: Nick Raynsford (Labour - Greenwich and Woolwich)(12 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Robert Neill
In theory, a Mayor could seek to disregard a local authority’s views, but in practice we reckon that the new clause makes that unachievable. There are two reasons for that. First, the Mayor will have to consult the local authorities, which will have registered their objection. As with any public law decision, he has to behave in a way that is rational and reasonable within the terms of the Associated Provincial Picture Houses v. Wednesbury Corporation case. Secondly, because of the electoral arrangements in London, the local authority would be well placed to ensure that a blocking majority was created in the assembly to prevent the policy from going through. There is a theoretical possibility that the Mayor would be able to create the sort of rogue corporation that one might be concerned about, but in reality it is pretty much inconceivable.
Mr Nick Raynsford (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
The Minister knows that it is not just a theoretical possibility. The Bill states very clearly that if the Mayor applies to the Secretary of State for a mayoral development corporation and has gone through the processes of consultation, if that proposal then comes before the Secretary of State, he must, under the terms of the Bill, create that mayoral development corporation. When I put these points to the Minister in earlier debates in this Chamber on Second Reading and in Committee, I said the real danger was that a Mayor who had considerable support in the assembly, as can happen following an election, would be in a strong position to railroad through his proposal against the opposition of the local borough. That remains the case, and I hope that the Minister will accept that.
Robert Neill
I am sorry, but the right hon. Gentleman has been consistently wrong on this point. If he will forgive my saying so, I know that he is offended when somebody comes up with an idea in London governance which is not his own. With respect to him, as he has considerable experience in this field, his solution to the risk, which I do accept, that a Mayor might seek to set up a rogue or an unacceptable development corporation was, in effect, to give the Secretary of State the veto—in other words, instead of saying, as the Bill does, that the Secretary of State “must” approve the proposal, that he “may” approve a policy, and that the veto would rest with a Minister. That was a highly centralising means of resolving the problem. Instead, the Government have trusted the elected representatives of London and said that the assembly, through qualified majority voting, may exercise the veto. That is much more consistent with the localist thrust of the Bill, and I would have thought it was closer to what the right hon. Gentleman, who after all introduced devolution in London, would himself wish to see.
Robert Neill
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for sharing her experience of that body, which is a matter of great concern to her and to others. We have endeavoured to learn from past experience and past failings in the way in which we construct our arrangement, and we have therefore put a democratic veto into our proposals.
Mr Raynsford
I want to correct the Minister’s assertion that I was wrong in my interpretation of the Bill. I repeat the point that was put to him by the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes): if the Mayor decides to proceed with a proposal for a mayoral development corporation, the Secretary of State has to give effect to it if it is not blocked by the assembly. We have had debates about the proper mechanisms for blocking such a proposal. However, as the Minister must concede because it is in the Bill, if those mechanisms do not work, the Secretary of State has no discretion and has to give effect to the Mayor’s requirement to bring into effect such a development corporation irrespective of whether the individual borough is opposed to it. Will he now please concede that I was not wrong on that point, because that is what the Bill says?
Robert Neill
I will give the right hon. Gentleman this: he is right on textual analysis but remains wrong on policy, because his solution is a centralist one that would give the Secretary of State a veto. The whole point of what we are doing, in improving the Bill from its original state, is that we do not allow the Secretary of State to veto a decision taken by elected representatives in London; rather, we allow the assembly, which is the established body for keeping the Mayor of London in check, to exercise the veto. In policy terms, that is preferable.
I am disappointed that the Opposition object to this. As I recall only too well, in 1999 they made great play of having devolved power to London by establishing the Greater London authority. I now accept that that was the right thing to do. We are following the logic of that by enabling Londoners to take the decision as to what is the best shape and size of an important regeneration tool for London. They do that with the Mayor making the proposal and the assembly having the ability, if necessary, to veto it, and the boroughs being able to be consulted and to exercise influence through their elected members of the assembly. I am sorry that the Opposition seem to want to start a bit of a war where none need exist, because there is consensus among all parties in the assembly that it is desirable to go down this route.
Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to the two amendments in my name, although it feels rather strange to be doing so when we have already had much of the debate. I will speak to amendment 351, which relates to the establishment of a London housing and regeneration board, and seeks to guarantee that at least 50% of the membership of such a board would be made up of representatives from the local authority. I will also speak to amendment 352, which we have already debated at some length, and which relates to the process that has to be gone through to establish a mayoral development corporation. Under the amendment, the agreement of any council that is affected would be required before an MDC could be established. I am conscious that there is much to debate this afternoon, so I will limit my remarks.
I will move on to why I tabled the amendments. I should say at the outset that the amendments have been promoted and supported by London Councils, which, as hon. Members know, is the cross-party organisation that represents London boroughs. We can debate the localist merits of the Bill as a whole, but the provisions on London are distinctly regionalist. Whereas in other parts of the country there is the abolition of regional spatial strategies, we still have the London plan. The Bill proposes the winding up of the London Development Agency and the London part of the Homes and Communities Agency, with their powers being transferred to the London Mayor. Due to the Government’s understandable desire to ensure that the regeneration legacy of the Olympics takes effect, there are proposals in the Bill to enable the Mayor to set up a mayoral development corporation. However, as drafted, the Bill suggests that there could be an MDC anywhere in London, and not just at the Olympics site. My amendments would act as a brake on the concentrating powers that the Bill puts into the hands of the Mayor of London. They would give councils and councillors a voice, and they would give people in London the same say as people elsewhere in the country.
Amendment 352 would make it a requirement that a local authority in a proposed MDC area must agree to its establishment. If more that one local authority is affected, all must agree. The Bill as drafted gives complete power to the Mayor and the Secretary of State. Under Government amendment 213, the support of two thirds of the assembly will be needed for a proposal to move forward. That is not a sufficient assurance. There could be a situation in London in which local people are completely against the setting up of an MDC, councillors and the local authority in the area are completely against the setting up of an MDC, and the GLA constituency member is completely against the setting up of an MDC, and yet if the Mayor wants it to happen, it will happen. I ask hon. Members, what is localist about that?
We had some fun in Committee. On Second Reading, my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford) talked about the prospect of a new Mayor of London—perhaps Ken Livingstone in a year’s time—choosing to establish a mayoral development corporation in Bromley. I will not repeat those comments.
Heidi Alexander
I will not repeat them because I am under strict instructions to keep the debate moving as quickly as I can.
Mr Raynsford
I was a little surprised when the right hon. Gentleman said that he supported the restoration of the GLA. My recollection is that he and the Liberal Democrats voted against the creation of a Mayor of London. He might have supported the concept of an assembly, but the Liberal Democrats did not support the GLA architecture as it exists.
Simon Hughes
The right hon. Gentleman is of course correct. He knows that as well as anybody, because it was his plan that the Government were delivering on. Liberal Democrats wanted devolution to London, but we were not sold on that model, which is why we still—
Andrew Stunell
Of course I do not accept that. A housing provider who decides that this is too complex can choose not to take it up. As has been said, we are offering social landlords an additional way to let tenancies, and they can choose whether or not to take it up. They can base that decision on any sensible factor, including their administrative convenience. We propose that five years should be the minimum term in normal circumstances. We would expect it to be appropriate to offer less than five years only in very exceptional cases, and we have stated in the Bill a two-year lower limit.
Mr Raynsford
The Minister has said he would like the five-year limit to be the normal minimum, with shorter terms only in very exceptional circumstances. Will he therefore tell us why the Bill does not state that, and why he is proposing to vote against the Opposition amendment proposing that five years should be the normal minimum term?
Andrew Stunell
Yes of course I will, although I will take just a few minutes to reach that point in my remarks.
I want to put clearly on the record again that our proposal does not affect any existing tenant, even if they swap or transfer their home, and even if the person they swap with has a flexible tenancy. Our current system for social housing is not working as well as it can and should. A one-size-fits-all approach to social tenancies does not take account of the different needs of both individual tenants and local communities. A more flexible approach is essential.
Gordon Henderson (Sittingbourne and Sheppey) (Con)
Like the hon. Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns), I shall speak not about housing, but about litter, and I shall say a little about new clause 33. The new clause would extend street litter control notices to office buildings by amending the Environmental Protection Act 1990. Although this is only a minor amendment, it would have a major impact on the ability of local authorities to clean up their streets.
Four years ago I launched a project in my constituency called Litter Angels to highlight the nuisance of litter. The idea of Litter Angels—which has now applied for charitable status, so I suppose I should declare an interest as one of the trustees—is to work with our local primary schools to educate children about the harm that litter does to our local environment. We take the view that catching them young might encourage more of them to practise good habits as they get older.
More recently, Litter Angels launched a “Big Clean Up” campaign in Sittingbourne and Sheppey, which is encouraging local groups and individuals to commit to undertaking at least one project to clean up our local area. The “Big Clean Up” will take place during August, and I am proud that my constituency was one of the first in the country to embrace the national “Love Where You Live” campaign being run by Keep Britain Tidy.
It was Keep Britain Tidy which highlighted to me a particular problem with smoking-related litter, with which new clause 33 deals. Sections 93 and 94 of the 1990 Act give local authorities the power to issue street litter control notices on premises that have a frontage on a street and outside of which litter or refuse is causing a defacement of the land. The problem is that the legislation was originally envisaged to tackle fast food litter and other such rubbish, and pre-dated the ban on smoking in public buildings and places of work. The House might be surprised to learn that the latest local environment quality survey of England revealed that smoking-related litter is present on 76% of the sites surveyed and is the most frequently found litter type.
Much of that smoking-related litter can be found outside office buildings. Unfortunately, street litter notices cannot normally be served on office buildings unless they sell food and drink, whether or not for consumption on the premises—for example, from a canteen or snack kiosk. Extending the street litter notice provisions to include office buildings would provide local authorities with the means to deal with localised litter problems and would close an unintended loophole in the legislation. The new clause would also allow local authorities to require occupiers or owners of offices and non-food retail outlets to play a greater role in dealing with the scourge of litter and encourage members of the public to take increased responsibility for their litter.
It is worth pointing out that in June 2007 the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs undertook a final regulatory impact assessment on the extension of street litter control notices. This was as a response to the potential impact of the smoking ban on littering and its extension to office buildings. That assessment confirmed that if local authorities were able to issue street litter control notices in respect of offices and other venues not currently covered by the provisions, it would give them the power to place a greater responsibility on the occupiers or owners of those premises to clean up, particularly the smoking-related litter in the area immediately around them, perhaps by installing appropriate disposal facilities where this form of littering is a significant problem.
The assessment noted that such a proposal was in line with changes introduced by the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005, which followed the “polluter pays” principle by improving the powers available to local authorities to take action. A cost-benefit analysis undertaken by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in June 2007 calculated that such a proposal would result in a net benefit to society overall because notices would be issued only in a minority of cases and that costs imposed on local authorities and businesses would be relatively small and outweighed by the benefits associated with improved amenity, reduced cleaning costs resulting from preventive measures, and a reduced fire risk.
To allow notices to be issued in respect of any type of office premises, rather than the current limited number of offices, the new clause proposes to widen the definition set out in section 94(l)(a) in part IV of the 1990 Act by omitting reference to “commercial or retail premises” and inserting “premises other than dwellings”—I draw the House’s attention to a typing error in today’s amendment paper, which shows “premium” rather than “premises”. My proposal has a legal precedent in London, where street litter control notice powers are currently extended to office buildings by part III of the London Local Authorities Act 2000, which, in reference to the 1990 Act, explicitly omits the words “commercial or retail premises” and substitutes the words “premises other than dwellings” for notices issued in the capital. All I seek to do is extend that principle to other areas of the country.
Additionally, section 93(2) of the 1990 Act states that the local authority may serve a street litter control notice
“on the occupier or, if the premises are unoccupied, on the owner of the premises”.
As office buildings may have multiple occupancy, I propose an amendment specifying that notices may be issued on the owner of any premises where there is multiple occupancy. New clause 33 is uncontroversial and designed simply to close a loophole in the current legislation. I hope that the Minister will agree to include it in this important Bill.
Mr Raynsford
I draw attention to the interest I declared at the beginning of the Bill’s passage through the House and again in Committee.
It is, in my view, a sad day for housing when we come to consider this Bill on Report, as it involves a series of retrograde steps that are damaging to the future housing prospects of millions of our fellow citizens, weaken tenant rights and safeguards for homeless people, and undermine the future of social housing in this country.
It is particularly sad that we have had most of the debate during the extraordinary absence of the Minister for Housing and Local Government, who is responsible for this and yet graced us with his attendance for only a few minutes in a previous sitting and has made no contribution whatsoever to the passage of the Bill through the House. That is an extraordinary comment on his values. His approach, which the Government have adopted since coming to power last year, has been to cut drastically the funding for social housing, including a massive 65% reduction to the Homes and Communities Agency budget.
We are seeing individual rights cut back, such as tenant rights for homeless people. There is a curious element in this that the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) hinted at in his impressive contribution. He rightly highlighted the fact that the Government are giving greater priority to the interests of the providers of housing than to the public, the customer and the user of services. That is not compatible with normal Conservative rhetoric, and we have heard, again and again, their attack on provider interests and their wish to support the position of the customer and the user of services, but not here. Tenants’ rights and the rights of homeless people are being cut back, and when we argue that point we get the answer, “Don’t worry, because the providers will do the right thing. They will look after the interests of tenants. They will give lots of security, they won’t undermine tenants’ security and they will look after the interests of homeless people. Trust the providers.”
That is an interesting stance for the Government to take in this policy area, because in almost every other we hear a completely different rhetoric—the rhetoric of increasing the power and the influence of the customer, of the user of the service. Indeed, this Bill contains a great many passages where exactly that has motivated the Government, so there is a curious disconnect between the Government’s rhetoric and what they are doing on housing. The only way I can explain it is by saying that they clearly have no interest at all in the future of social housing or in the interests of the people who live in social housing or depend on it for their future prospects.
Andrew Stunell
We do have a concern: it is for the 5 million people who are waiting for social housing, and about trying to make a better fit between the houses and homes that we have and the people who desperately need them.
Mr Raynsford
Were that true the Government would not have cut the Homes and Communities Agency investment budget by 65%. This Bill is the fig leaf presented by the Government to cover their embarrassment at their failure to provide adequately for the needs of social housing in the years ahead, and it is shameful that the Minister should try to cover that policy by pretending that they are acting in the interests of the homeless and the badly housed.
Andrew Stunell
I understand what the right hon. Gentleman says, but will he not acknowledge that at the end of 13 years of Labour government there were fewer social homes in this country than there were at the start? At the end of this period of government there will be more than there were when we started.
Mr Raynsford
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely wrong. There is no way in which there will be more social homes, because he knows perfectly well that the only social homes provided will be provided because the previous Government funded them, and that most of the homes for which this Government will be responsible will be the so-called affordable homes—although that is a travesty of English, given that they are based on the principle of 80% of market rents, which will in many cases be a real test of affordability—and homes that are created as flexible tenancies under the Bill.
The hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well, because we have debated it and I am sorry he cannot acknowledge it, that the previous Government inherited from their predecessor the most disgraceful backlog of poor condition housing in the social sector and rightly concentrated investment in the early years on putting that backlog right. A huge number of tenants now live in decent homes because of the Labour Government’s work, but that Government also allowed those tenants who wanted to buy their homes to do so, and that inevitably accounted for some reduction in the volume of social housing.
Alison Seabeck
Will my right hon. Friend acknowledge that in the five years between 2005 and 2010 the Labour Government built more than 250,000 affordable homes? In the five years between 2010 and 2015, we expect at most 150,000. Is that not pretty pathetic?
Mr Raynsford
My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point that I entirely endorse. It shows that the Minister’s claim was entirely incorrect, and he should be ashamed of making it.
The first amendment in my name, amendment 361, is about security of tenure. It is not the wrecking amendment that the Minister tried to pretend it is. It simply states:
“In preparing its tenancy strategy a local authority must ensure that to the greatest extent possible, tenancies granted in its area provide security of tenure so as to support and develop stable and confident communities.”
That is absolutely in keeping with the intelligent comments of the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) on how there is a place for flexible tenancies, but they should not take over, and to the greatest extent possible we should try to support security and help to build stable communities.
That is the purpose of the amendment, and I cannot understand why the Government are reluctant to accept it. I give the Minister one last chance. If he wants to be held to have any real credibility on the issue, he should accept it, because it would indicate that he is not simply performing a sleight of hand that will deny tenants security, but is genuinely interested in maximising the number of tenants who enjoy security of tenure. That would at least be a step in the right direction, and I hope that the Government will change their mind. I note, however, that he did not bother to respond to my question about why they have not accepted the amendment on a minimum of five years, so perhaps I might do a little better on this second try.