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8.13 pm
Lord Newby: My Lords, I realise that I lack the detailed understanding, knowledge and experience of the government of London demonstrated by many of the speakers in tonight’s debate. However, I wish to speak for two reasons. First, in the mid-1990s, I helped draft a document called the London Pride Prospectus. It was produced by the London Pride Partnership, a body called into being by the Secretary of State for the Environment at the time to give major stakeholders in London—politicians, business, NGOs, the unions—something to do in the absence of even the vestige of government at a London level. It was a splendid document, though I say it myself, but it sank without trace. Interestingly, one of the few things that all those who were involved in its production could agree upon was that it should have had a strong chapter about the need for a London tier of government—the one thing on which the Government would not allow us to comment.
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Secondly, I have spent a lot of time over the past decade involved in discussions about regional government in the rest of England, outside London. Although I share the criticisms of my noble friend Lady Hamwee about the structure of government in London, I feel that Londoners and politicians in London are fortunate in having a degree of devolved power, however limited, and wish that they had rather more.
From reading the Bill and the debates on it in another place, it is clear that the governance of London is moving progressively further away from the remainder of England. London already has an elected mayor and elected politicians who can hold him to account. The Bill slightly strengthens this process and their powers.
This situation is very different from the position in the English regions. The failed referendum on a modest proposal for devolution in the north-west has led the Government to shut up shop on regional devolution. Instead, they are conducting a review on what they charmingly call sub-national economic development and regeneration in England. One of the principal options which I believe is being considered is the development of the city region, based on what would be the dominant local authority in that region. The problem with that approach is that city regions outside London, unlike London itself, are not actually regions. Large parts of the country would not, by any stretch of the imagination, fall within such a region, north Yorkshire being an obvious example.
The other problem which this approach—and, indeed, the Bill—fail to resolve is how to bring in to a democratic structure the functions of the government regional officers. They exercise considerable power yet are completely unaccountable to politicians in the regions they serve. I hope that before long—possibly under a new Prime Minister, although I am not holding my breath—we will be able to persuade the Government to revisit the question of regional government across England as a whole.
In the mean time, we have this Bill. On the face of it, it covers a number of the principal public policy challenges facing London, including housing, planning, health and climate change, where powers are being reallocated. But the powers in the Bill are often inadequate or they are being reallocated in the wrong direction. For the powers of the Government Office for London, very little changes. It is surely anomalous to have devolved government in London yet a raft of fairly random functions still the responsibility of the relevant Secretaries of State rather than the London-wide political institutions.
The role of the Government Office for London lacks all logic. The home page of its website explains that among its principal roles is,
Surely the only people who can make London’s case effectively in Whitehall are elected politicians, not civil servants, who can never have the same amount of clout. I can see no reason why GOL’s responsibilities, whether ensuring the delivery of Every Child Matters
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In some respects, the Bill makes the muddle worse. It contains a provision to create a public health adviser to the GLA who,
- “is in the employment of the Civil Service of the State in the post of Regional Director of Public Health for London”.
As I understand it, this person is responsible to the Secretary of State for Health for carrying out public health policy across London and to the mayor solely in terms of health inequalities strategy. How can this person serve two masters? In particular, what happens if there is a dispute between the mayor and the Secretary of State for Health on the health inequalities strategy? Under the Bill, the Secretary of State can give the mayor a direction to change his strategy and the mayor must obey. Where is the poor old health adviser in these circumstances? He or she has presumably to acquiesce to the Secretary of State’s will, even though he or she will advise the mayor to adopt the strategy to which the Secretary of State has taken exception. Such a circumstance is by no means impossible to imagine, particularly if the national Government are led by a different political party than the one to which the mayor belongs. If it does happen, the health adviser is in an impossible position. He or she has been put in that position because the Government are not prepared to relinquish control of policy—in this case, reducing health inequalities—to the GLA. In any event, even if the mayor and the Government are not at loggerheads, what can the mayor do to implement his health equality strategy? All the troops who budget for implementation rest with the adviser, wearing his other hat as regional director of public health in London. They and their responsibilities should be transferred across to the GLA.
Although that may seem a rather ludicrous example, it is a common pattern. The mayor is given a budget to draw up strategies because he is legally obliged to do so but no money to carry them out. I am not saying that developing and promoting a strategy is necessarily a waste of time; the role of the mayor in occupying the bully pulpit of politics can be very effective as far as it goes; but it does not go far enough. The inevitable response to huge strategy documents is to ask where the beef is. The answer all too often is that it remains with Whitehall. Noble Lords will be aware that more than 60 per cent of government expenditure in London is not controlled by the GLA and this Bill does nothing to change this position. In some respects it makes the disparity between the roles of the GLA and the resources available to the mayor even greater.
To take one example from the Bill, the mayor is required to draw up an adaptation to climate change strategy for London. The strategy is to contain an assessment of the consequences of climate change for greater London and proposals and policies for adaptation so far as they relate to greater London. It is generally accepted that the most serious consequence for London of climate change is the possibility—or rather the near certainty—of significant rises in sea levels. The consequences without very dramatic and expensive preventive
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A major effect of the Bill has been to set London boroughs and the mayor at loggerheads about actual or possible transfers of powers—and I, like other noble Lords, have had a number of representations from the two sides on this point—between the two levels of government in London, mainly with powers being transferred away from the boroughs to the mayor. I believe that that is the wrong and largely irrelevant battleground. This Bill should have made it easier for the institutions of London government to exercise real authority on those areas of public policy that are crucial to the long-term prosperity of the capital. It has, in my view, signally failed to rise to the challenge.
8.23 pm
Lord Dubs: My Lords, I give a broad welcome to this Bill, although I have some criticisms, which will come out later on. I say at the outset that London is a great and exciting city. There are problems and I hope that the Bill goes some way to dealing with those problems.
I shall deal first with two comments made in earlier speeches this evening. The congestion charge, including the western extension, is a great success and a model that other cities in the world will follow. When the technology is there, it will be a model for dealing with traffic congestion on the busy roads up and down the country, not just in our cities. Of course, some people are critical, but if the alternative is to sit in a traffic jam for hours, frankly I would rather pay a little bit extra for the price of the road space that I am using.
As for scrutiny, it is important that the people making decisions—in this case, the mayor—should be held to account. I leave it to other noble Lords who know more about the inner workings of the GLA to comment in detail on that.
I shall deal with three issues: housing, planning and above all waste. With housing, there is a stark contrast between the affluence on the surface in London, with house prices shooting up, and the serious housing difficulties facing too many poor Londoners. That contrast becomes starker every day as one sees the rush for houses with house prices shooting up and other people desperately badly housed. According to some figures that I have had from Shelter, there are at present some 65,000 families in temporary accommodation in London and 150,000 families living in overcrowded accommodation. That
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Lord Graham of Edmonton: How much?
Lord Dubs: My Lords, 1,000 people in a firm in the City got a bonus of £1 million last Christmas. That sits pretty badly with the people who are badly housed or living in temporary accommodation.
Therefore, it is welcome that the mayor together with the GLA want to increase housing provision for poor families in the capital. As I understand it, the mayor’s target is 30,000 new homes per annum, which on the face of it seems quite modest. Of those, one-half should be affordable homes and 10,000 should be in the socially rented sector, the rest of affordable homes being for shared ownership. That, although those are modest figures, would I understand make an appreciable difference to helping poor people in London who are at the moment badly housed.
Some of the boroughs are less interested in social housing than others, while some of them have an excellent record. For the sake of all Londoners—and even the most affluent boroughs have poor people living in them who are badly housed—it is right that there should be an overall strategy and ability to deliver housing for London. I believe that this Bill will enable the mayor with the new powers to do far more for the badly housed people of London.
On planning, I welcome giving the mayor enhanced powers for what will be a small number of strategic planning decisions. Everything points to the fact that these will simply be decisions that are very significant and whose importance transcends the individual boroughs in which the sites are located. Provided that there is no bureaucracy of having to jump over two hurdles for planning permission and that there is proper transparency in the process of deciding on planning applications, that is probably a good thing. If it means that the mayor will have more influence on bringing forward land for affordable housing, that is so much the better.
Of course, we all have our individual concerns, and I shall indulge myself in talking about one of them. There may be particular sites about which one might be anxious. In my former parliamentary constituency of Battersea, there is the whole future of Battersea power station to think about. This is not an occasion to debate this in detail, but it is an important site, and I sincerely hope that a proper use will be found for this iconic building under its new owners, possibly including the Government’s proposed energy technologies institute. I understand that that has the full support of the mayor. I hope that the Minister will think about that one and see whether there is anything that can be done. Of course, the power station is much too large simply to house the energy technologies institute, but it could be a useful site for it and other uses would follow.
I turn to what is probably the key question that bothers me—that of waste. It is a key environmental issue that presents enormous challenges to the
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Bluntly, London is simply not doing well enough in dealing with waste. Some of the individual boroughs are; some are not. Let me give some figures. In 2005—the latest year for which I could get figures—London recycled 21 per cent of its household waste. This compares with 57 per cent in Hamburg, 43 per cent in Munich, 39 per cent in Milan and 39 per cent in Vienna. In north America, San Francisco recycled half its household waste and Seattle 58 per cent. These figures make London look as if it is not doing well enough. Other cities in the world may be doing worse than London but we ought to be doing better. We are conscious of the need to do something and understand what should be done but we are simply not doing it.
The national target for the UK is 25 per cent so we have some way to go. But the situation is even worse: 22 out of London’s 37 waste authorities, which may comprise individual boroughs or several boroughs acting together, failed to achieve their statutory household recycling targets for 2005-06. London boroughs and London waste authorities are among the lowest ranking of all English local authorities, and the majority have not met their statutory recycling targets. London is currently the worst performing English region for recycling: 22 out of the 37 waste authorities are in the bottom half in terms of performance and 18 are in the bottom quartile. Only one, Bexley, is in the upper quartile. That is a pretty poor record. Of the 15 London waste authorities that responded to a Government survey, only one was planning to meet its 2020 recycling target.
About two-thirds of London’s waste is buried in landfill and mostly exported to sites outside London; the latter is a fairly random process. London incinerates 18 per cent of its waste and this is set to double. London will then account for half of England’s share of incineration while managing only 15 per cent of the country’s municipal waste. That is not good enough.
London is the only major metropolitan region where waste disposal is not managed and co-ordinated at city level. So far as I have discovered, pretty well every major metropolitan region in the world has a co-ordinated overall strategy for waste disposal. Of course, the boroughs will still have to collect the waste but essentially we need a waste disposal strategy for the whole of London. Individual boroughs have lobbied against that. They want to keep things as they are and say that they can do better. However, I am not sure that they have demonstrated that up to now. The Bill is weak in this respect. It is going in the right direction but it
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What is the answer? It is a single waste disposal authority, which would achieve the right balance between local collection and strategic processing and disposal. A strategic waste disposal authority should be a body of the GLA clearly accountable to the mayor. At present accountability for waste disposal is unclear and some of the joint waste disposal authorities are hardly accountable; they operate much more like quangos. By moving this function under the mayor we would improve accountability, not lessen it. We would also achieve better co-ordination and promote proper investment in the recycling facilities that are necessary to improve London’s record in that regard.
Such an authority would also improve the transport of waste around London. Transport for London estimates that within London alone waste travels 44 million kilometres a year, accounts for 10 per cent of all freight movements in London and represents 290,000 tonnes of CO2—this at a time when we are supposed to be more environmentally conscious. If we had a strategic waste disposal authority for London, the transport of waste in London could be lessened. It cannot be abolished altogether and reduced to nothing, but it could certainly be lessened from the present figure, where individual waste authorities make their own decisions, search for sites where they can dispose of waste or occasionally recycle it. We can do better. Having thought hard about the counter suggestions from the London boroughs, I believe sincerely that a properly accountable strategic waste disposal authority for London under the mayor is the right way forward. I hope that the Government will give it serious consideration as we proceed with the next stages of the Bill.
8.35 pm
Baroness Turner of Camden: My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this Second Reading debate. Unlike some of my noble friends, I have no experience of local government and my interest arises solely from the fact that I was born in London and have lived here all my life. My interest, therefore, is as someone who has always enjoyed living in London. I have watched it change over the years. I remember the years after the war when there was an extreme housing shortage caused by the bombing. We had rent controls at that time. They were later dispensed with but, had they not existed, poorer people simply could not have afforded anywhere to live.
London has changed enormously since those days. It is now very diverse, and in many ways—I am very glad to say—is an extremely tolerant city. As a number of speakers said, there has been a large increase in population. People are attracted to London and want to live here. The population is expected to grow still further—by more than 800,000 in the next decade.
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The Bill seeks to devolve more powers from Whitehall to the mayor and to London. This should be generally welcomed. The increased population has resulted in certain pressures on the infrastructure that need a London-wide solution. One of these problems is housing. Some speakers, including my noble friend Lord Dubs, dealt with that in detail. London has a very urgent need for more housing, with more than 62,000 people living in temporary accommodation and more than 150,000 overcrowded households.
As we know, home ownership is unaffordable for many Londoners and getting on to the so-called housing ladder is an absolute nightmare for many younger people. The provision of social housing has been neglected under successive Governments. As we heard, the Bill requires the mayor to set out his assessment of housing need in the capital as the basis for a London-wide strategy. However, as I understand it, none of the statutory housing powers and duties that currently rests with local authorities is being transferred to the mayor. The provision of affordable housing cannot simply be left to the market. A London housing strategy would give housing in the capital a new focus and priority. This is urgent and essential. The workforce that London needs has a right to be housed at a decent level and at affordable rents.
I was born and raised on a very good LCC housing estate in south-east London. I very much regret that local councils no longer provide social housing as they used to do. Housing associations are not taking up the role that local councils once fulfilled, although, as we heard from one of my noble friends, they do a reasonable job. We have to expect that from the mayor, who will have these powers, which I know he welcomes. I had the opportunity to talk to him at a function last night and found that he was enthusiastic about the possibility of utilising powers allowed to him under the Bill, particularly on housing.
The Bill also devolves responsibilities from Whitehall to London, giving the mayor a stronger statutory role on health inequalities in the capital. There seem to be inequalities in health provision between different geographical areas and particularly in population groups. Minority-ethnic groups are apparently at the greatest risk of heart disease and stroke in areas of south-east and north-east London. This is another issue where a London-wide strategy might be useful. I know that the mayor is anxious to do something about that. He already has a role in public health.
The Bill also supports and expands the London Assembly’s scrutiny powers, which I am sure will be welcome. There are powers in relation to planning applications. I do not know very much about that, but I understand that there has been a draft Mayor of London order defining the scope of the powers. I understand that the Assembly is very anxious to ensure that these powers are exercised openly and transparently. I am sure that some of this will emerge in Committee.
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