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In Committee in another place, the Government issued a new draft Mayor of London order, intended, if approved in due course, to replace the existing order. The draft order reflects the proposed enhanced powers of Part 7 of the Bill, particularly the mayor’s power to direct that he is to be the planning authority for certain planning applications. The main point I wish to draw to the attention of the House is that, even now, seven years on, the order uses exactly the same criteria for these more extensive mayoral powers: the mayor can direct that he is the planning authority for any building over 75 metres high, or with a floor space over 30,000 square metres.
The City authorities contend that those limits are far too low. I very much welcome the words of the Minister this evening, reflecting what was said in another place, that the Government are prepared to listen to that complaint and recognise that those limits should perhaps be changed. The City would like to see not 75 metres, but 150 metres high and the floor space increased to at least 100,000 square metres—preferably 100,000 square metres of additional space. These figures are not reached arbitrarily, but are based on an analysis of the applications that have been referred to the mayor since 2000. More importantly, they reflect the Government’s expressed intention, emphasised by the Minister this evening, that the mayor should intervene in only a small number of the most strategically important planning applications.
To give the House an indication of what I am talking about, 75 metres high includes the Lloyd’s building at 95 metres, the Stock Exchange at 100 metres and the Barbican towers, which reach 123 metres. Nobody could ever now contend that a planning application to put up a building like that could possibly be of strategic importance for the whole of London. That is why the City authorities argue that the limit must now be raised. Buildings over 150 metres include the “Gherkin”, which everybody would recognise at 195 metres, the former NatWest Tower, which has been there a long time and is now
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I shall put my question to the Minister and then sit down. She said that she will listen to views. This order will require amendment in any case; the Government have indicated that other matters are not satisfactory and will therefore be amended. May we have a revised draft order before the Bill goes into Committee? Is the Minister prepared to consider—I would not expect a decision this evening—those higher figures which the City proposes? To quote Mr Snyder:
“We are in favour of a system that is genuinely strategic and delivers benefits to Londoners but the proposed powers are insufficiently targeted. The draft needs to include bigger thresholds for height and size and”—
I would like to express that in somewhat blunter language of my own. The last thing the City wants is a flabby planning system which deters innovating developments or subjects the planning process to mayoral idiosyncrasies. I hope that the Minister can give me some satisfaction later this evening.
9.15 pm
Lord Berkeley: My Lords, all those skyscrapers mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, must confirm the forecast of extra transport demand mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine. They also confirm her view, which I share, that Transport for London, with the mayor as a kind of democratically accountable chief executive, is one of the real successes of the past few years. It is internationally recognised as such, particularly for the congestion charge, which I think should be made much wider—within the M25 would be really great. I do not think that the Government in Westminster are going to go for that in a hurry, but it would have a massive beneficial effect on people’s quality of life, provided that good public transport was available. The leadership that the mayor has shown is commendable.
I shall briefly mention two issues. The first is waste. I have spent a lot of time in the past few months visiting waste disposal places: one in Wandsworth and one in Oxford. I was struck by the differences between them. When you go in to the one in Wandsworth, which my noble friend Lord Dubs will know well from his time as a Member of Parliament there, you go in with a load of stuff you want to get rid of and there are six people with yellow jackets standing in a huddle, talking to each other and smoking. If it is raining, they are in the hut, and if it is not raining, they are out in the open. It is very nice for them. Everybody just dumps everything in the thing marked landfill. Well, it is not marked landfill, it is just where you go. You back up, and you tip all kinds of things there. You can see metal, televisions, printers, even quite nice furniture put in there.
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Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, where is this?
Lord Berkeley: Wandsworth, my Lords, just by Wandsworth Bridge. My noble friend does not know the West End of London—I am sorry about that. It probably happens in Edmonton as well, though. If you want to recycle anything, you have to wiggle through an unsigned place that is marked “no entry” and eventually you can find where to put whatever you want to recycle. Is it surprising, therefore, that the figure in the chart of percentages recycled is about 21 per cent?
Last time I went to Oxford, the figure was 51 per cent because the people actually help you. They say, “Put this there, put that there”. They will help you if it is heavy, and they clearly have an interest in what they are doing. I put this to the representatives from some of the London boroughs, who told me I was being thoroughly unfair. They said that waste from a country town or village like Oxford is different from waste from a town. I think that is total rubbish. It is nonsense as well. It is just not true. There are problems with people living in high-rise blocks of flats or even in small blocks of flats, but they can be dealt with. The argument against a strategic waste authority on the basis that the boroughs deal with it very well at the moment is not made at all.
One also has to look at the other end of the waste. Where does it go when it has ended up in the tips? We see it go past us down the river to the landfill site at Mucking, which is nearly full, I believe. Some of it goes by rail, which, as chairman of the Rail Freight Group, I am pleased to see. The rest goes by road. There is no consistency or co-ordination. It would be a great deal cheaper if the whole thing from beginning to end was done on a strategic basis, with a target to reduce the volume that is not recycled. If we say that London cannot do it, well Hamburg recycles 57 per cent and Copenhagen 54 per cent. Even Milan—some people’s view of Italy is that it is a bit rubbishy, although it is not—gets 39 per cent. In America, San Francisco recycles 50 per cent and Seattle 58 per cent. It can be done. I suspect that other towns and cities do a lot more than that. I would fully support an amendment that requires the mayor to develop and operate a waste disposal strategy. The time has come to do that.
My last issue is the vexed question of things called pedicabs, those lovely bicycles you see peddling around London with passengers in the back and sometimes a roof, sometimes with rear lights at nights and sometimes with flat batteries and rear lights. I have a personal liking for these things. Apart from cycling, they are very environmentally friendly. I got married in London about eight years ago up in Marylebone Road and came back to Westminster in a pedicab for the reception. It was safe; it was great fun; and I wondered why we do not see more of these. So I have been following their success or failure, not just in London but elsewhere, with a lot of interest.
The real problem is that they go a bit slowly, taxis do not like them, and there is a debate as to whether they are a taxi or a bicycle for hire. There must be a question of insurance because clearly if they are
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I would like to see framework legislation that could be applied much wider than London. Pedicabs started in Oxford where I live, and the local taxis got rid of them pretty quickly. That was a bit unfair because again they had been popular. There is a future in having properly registered pedicabs—people want that and the operators welcome such ideas—which are fully insured, fully registered, with probably criminal record checks on the drivers and so on, and making sure that they have basic safety things like brakes and lights, which I am sure they all do, but it would be a good thing if they did have them. Then I think they would be a good part of the London scene, particularly when the weather is a bit warmer.
9.22 pm
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, as has been said before, “everything that can be said has been said but not by everybody”, and I intend to make my ha’pennyworth. I begin by congratulating the Minister and her advisers. As has been said more than once, there has been a long period of consultation and an attempt seriously to take it on board. Seven years after the major step to bring back London-wide government, she and her colleagues have brought before us their best effort at what they believe will help to solve the problems. Of course they will not succeed in persuading everybody, but they deserve our congratulations on it, and I give them now.
Those of us who have attended local government and housing debates are the repertory company. We perform from time to time to the best of our ability. But, as an old hand, it is very good to welcome newcomers to our assembly. I was delighted to listen first of all to the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, and then to my noble friend Lady Jones, who each, from their distinctive personal experience—and that is what we need in this place—were able to excite me about the possibilities in this particular sphere.
The noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, is a friend—Lord Jenkin of Roding. I repeat that because I made a mistake in pronunciation once before. I saw the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, grit his teeth when I said “Jenkins”, and I apologise once again. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, and I continue to have a great interest in what is now called London Councils. I am no longer as actively involved in local government as many of the speakers here tonight, but I was a councillor in the London borough of Enfield 45 or 46 years ago. The
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Lord Graham of Edmonton: More, more, my Lords. It is a great honour for someone who works in a voluntary capacity to be recognised in a community. The problem for any speaker in this debate is to try to reconcile the views of bodies with which one has been associated or to which one is sympathetic. I mentioned London Councils and the London borough of Enfield. I was also the Member of Parliament for Edmonton for a number a years, and have been here for a long time. I certainly supported the recreation of the Greater London Authority. One can guess from the time that I mentioned that I was here before the GLC was formed; in other words, before the London County Council ceased to have its overall strategic responsibilities. I was here when the GLC was murdered in 1986 and mourned. I was here when London did not have the kind of body which the GLA grew into later.
There is no doubt that the changes in London have been quite dramatic. I remember welcoming the Minister for London—a chap called Bob Mellish—when I was leader of the council in Enfield in 1965. He brought along Baroness Evelyn Dennington, the chairman of the housing committee on the GLC. They urged us to subscribe to the view that a strategy was needed for building housing in London to tackle the enormous problem of housing need. Bob Mellish gave us a challenge when he said, “We’ve estimated that this borough could build 1,000 units a year”. At the time, we were building 500 or 600 units. I am pleased to say that, although we lost power in 1968, by 1970 we had produced 1,000 new units as a result of our planning. I make that point to show that, in housing, one needs power, drive and inspiration. Bob Mellish and Evelyn Dennington energised us and others.
As a Member of Parliament—several of us on both sides of the Chamber have had the same experience—there is nothing more depressing than listening to people who are depressed and in serious difficulty, and when the solution is not to have better housing but simply to have housing to start with. More than once, I left my surgery and sat in my car and cried at the fact that I could not respond to what I knew was a human need. Marriages, jobs and children’s education all depended on having a good place in which to live. I was therefore delighted to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, talk about the possibilities that are emerging. I am invited here to give a general view. You do not win them all; you win some, and you are grateful. I have seen Arthur Miller’s “A View from the Bridge” more than once. Between the acts, an interlocutor explains that he is on the New York dockside. He tells people that if they are illegal immigrants, life does not treat them right, and that those who live on the dockside learn to settle for half. No one gets all that they want.
There is a danger that the office and the personality of the mayor sometimes run into each
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The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, said that Nick Raynsford does not want the changes in planning because he does not wish to see the mayor trampling over the London boroughs. As a defender of the London boroughs, neither would I. I believe that neither the whole House nor the London Assembly would stand for that. One must have a sense of proportion and sensitivity in these matters. Given the seven years bedding down of the GLA, we have reached a stage where we have a responsibility to give it a new breath of life in order for it to carry on what it is doing.
The briefing from London First states:
I settle for that. It is not one of the statutory bodies, but it has an important part to play. As we have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, it has an understanding of what business expects from a London-wide authority.
On waste disposal or a waste authority, the mayor has to recognise that there is a time when these things are seen by everyone to be the solution. Now is not that time because there is too much opposition. I believe that the Government have gone as far as they can to create a helpful framework. I will certainly look forward to taking part in the debates as far as I can. London government and the people of London deserve the very best, and nothing less.
9.32 pm
Lord Whitty: My Lords, with one major reservation, to which my noble friend Lady Thornton has already referred, I very much welcome this Bill. Many veterans of this debate will recall that I was the Minister who brought through the hefty GLA Bill in 1999. It was at the time the second-longest non-financial Bill that we had ever had: the longest Bill—the Government of India Bill—was never implemented. The Bill was also remarkable for the huge number of amendments which were brought to this House at relatively late stages. I would hope that we do not go through that same process on this Bill. I am glad to see that the Government concur with that.
During those debates we had a lot of discussion about constitutional issues, which was quite bizarre because the Liberal Democrats wanted an assembly without a mayor and the Conservatives wanted a mayor without a directly-elected assembly. What scraped through therefore was an uneasy position, which has largely but not entirely worked. The tweaking in this Bill of the constitutional relationship between the mayor and the Assembly is needed and we will no doubt debate that later.
In addition during those debates, there were suggestions from all sides of the House that more strategic powers should be put to the authority—whether it be the mayor or the Assembly—
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The good reason for approaching it with caution at that stage was that we were creating a new entity, something that had not been tried before. We were not recreating the old GLC and therefore we were right to be cautious. The bad reason was that it was already clear by that time who the leading candidates for mayor were going to be. There was some anxiety on the Labour Benches, although not for me, that the current mayor was going to run away with the Labour nomination—the reality proved to be slightly more complicated. The frontrunner on the Conservative Benches at the time was the noble Lord, Lord Archer of Weston-Super-Mare, who was also an active participant in these debates. All those anxieties probably prevented us going as far as we should in relation to some of the strategic responsibilities of the mayor. Nevertheless, as other noble Lords have said, we have seen that by and large the GLA has been a success, particularly in those areas which clearly require a strategic approach, such as transport. I therefore think it is time to revisit the strategic powers and that this Bill has probably got it right.
I particularly welcome the commitment in relation to the climate change strategy. It is true that we may need to look at the wording, a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, but it is an opportunity for London to take the lead in the climate change strategy through the action plan the mayor produced the other week to give us the lead. I hope that London can lead the way, particularly in areas such as distributed energy which are so vital to solving our energy problems. Here I declare an interest as a member of the London Climate Change Agency and, of course, as part of the Environment Agency.
I also welcome the planning powers, and I do not really accept the criticism of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, on these. The original two-tier structure for planning powers was a bit too narrow and bureaucratic in the original Act. That does not mean I necessarily agree with the reported predilection of the mayor for extremely high buildings, but if we are to look at the thresholds again, the figures proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, on behalf of the City are too high and that in many parts of London no very important strategic buildings would ever reach those thresholds. We therefore need to ensure that the mayor does have wider powers in relation to strategic planning issues.
On housing, in 1999 I was not convinced by arguments that the GLA should have housing powers, but I am now. We do not want to make the GLA a housing authority, but the fact is that noble Lords will have heard me bewail before the problems of housing policy in London. All parts of the housing market in London—owner occupation, private rented and social housing—are dysfunctional. There is a severe shortage of housing at the affordable end in all of those markets and the city is crying out for a strategic approach. The failure of social housing, which
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I largely agree with what my noble friend Lady Jones said about the problems of housing in London, although I have said previously that I am not sure that the drive for local authorities to unload their housing stock through stock transfer and the creation of elbow- length management organisations has necessarily improved the situation. Indeed, I am aware of a number of situations where that has made the position worse. The key issue is not who provides the social housing, but how much of it we have and what is its quality and affordability. One of the problems of housing in London at the moment is that the only people who can come in as new residents of central London are either extremely poor and therefore entitled to have their rent met by housing benefit in either private or social accommodation or they are extremely rich and therefore can afford the high prices for owner-occupied housing.
One of the glories of London is that although it has rich and poor neighbourhoods, in rich neighbourhoods there has always been housing for the poor provided by social landlords and local authorities, while in poor areas there are always properties which benefit the rich. If we polarise our mixed societies within London both in terms of tenure and income, we will have a real social problem in the city. It is right, therefore, that, to tackle these developments and this shortage of housing, the mayor takes on some of the powers that currently rest in London and, in part, in the regional government office and exerts on the boroughs the kind of drive that my noble friend Lord Graham of Edmonton said was exhibited by Bob Mellish all those years ago, so that they deliver their housing targets.
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