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On Monday, in the Second Reading debate on the Marine and Coastal Access Bill, my noble friend Lord Tyler, in saying that we would “rigorously scrutinise” the Bill, conflated those words to promise that we would “rigorise” it. We will rigorise this Bill as well. We will do so as far as we are able, but I have to say that the organisation of business in your Lordships’ House will not facilitate that. From these Benches, we alerted the Government as soon as we realised that this Bill and the Marine and Coastal Access Bill would be dealt with concurrently. However, we did not anticipate that that would have to mean exact concurrency. As we see it, there is a considerable overlap in the interests of noble Lords in both Bills. Certainly that is the case
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5.14 pm
Baroness Ford: My Lords, I welcome the Second Reading of this Bill and congratulate my noble friend on the thoughtful, sincere and intelligent presentation of its content. Those noble Lords who have worked over a long period with the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, know that she is immensely sincere and thoughtful in the way in which she goes about her business and her handling of this Bill will not be any different.
I also congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, on her debut speech and welcome her to this select band of survivors of the Housing and Regeneration and Planning Bills. I am sure that if her contribution today was anything to go by, we will have debates full of style and verve. Although I did not agree with much of what she said, it was delivered in a most entertaining and impressive way.
At Second Reading of the Planning Bill, I said that the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, was a glutton for punishment. However, it seems that there is simply no end to her stamina. After drawing breath for five minutes since piloting that important legislation, and the Housing and Regeneration Bill before it in the pervious Session, here she is back again with this new Bill.
What an interesting Bill it is, with an eclectic mix of provisions. It may be just that this is the festive season, but when I was sitting studying the Bill yesterday it struck me that it had many similarities to a rather exotic box of chocolates that had found its way on to my desk. Contained in it are some soft centres which we bite into and explore something rather marvellous, such as the establishment of the national tenants’ voice. Like other noble Lords, I am not quite sure why this was not contained in the Housing and Regeneration Bill, but it is welcome here none the less.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, said, we are aware that the Tenants Service Authority has been set up recently and is committed to being a tenants’ champion. However, a separate tenant voice is also needed. When I sat on Ofgem’s board, I was glad on many occasions that Energywatch existed. Often there is an understandable coincidence, and sometimes a conflict of interests, between economic regulation and consumer interest. That is simply a fact. In terms of energy, things can, and did, fall through the cracks; therefore the establishment of a national tenant voice is welcome. This proposal is sweet indeed.
In the mix, however, there are also some hardboiled fellows. The separation of the boundary issues from the Electoral Commission is very welcome. It addresses
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I am sorry about all of these puns, but there are also some nuts to crack here. Stick with me; this is the pantomime season. The business of co-ordinated and coherent economic development has fixated Governments in the UK for more than 50 years. Immediately after the war, when the key issue was foreign direct investment, UK regions performed well and were good at promoting and differentiating their offer. However, for the past 20 years, the task has been much tougher.
Foreign direct investment in the UK has dwindled to a fraction of its post-war significance. The challenge for English regions these days is to continue the transition of their economies to a new world where they can take advantage of emerging opportunities and the new industries created by a more global and knowledge-based economy. As the noble Baroness said, some have been better at this than others.
The key to facilitating the right kind of dynamic conditions for effective economic development is energy, innovation, drive and focus. When we come to debate Parts 4, 5 and 6 of the Bill, we need to keep applying a clear test to what we are proposing. Do the changes provide the focus so desperately needed to create effective conditions for economic development? If we do not believe that the changes should achieve that end, we should be vigilant and rigorous, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, has said, in debating those and putting it right. We need to crack this nut as it is so important for the future prosperity of our country.
I do not intend to cover today those sections which cover local government. There is much expertise in your Lordships’ House and much experience of local government. I take on board the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. She is a very thoughtful and intelligent critic in this House. If she is concerned, we take that concern very seriously and we listen to her very thoughtfully indeed.
Notwithstanding that, I welcome the Bill; many of its provisions are really important. If we focus on those and avoid the fudge—the festive season is getting to me—we will do very well indeed.
5.20 pm
Lord Roberts of Conwy: My Lords, the noble Baroness is quite right: this is very much a mixed bag, but I shall not pursue the metaphor. Parts of the Bill apply to England and Wales; parts to England only; parts to Wales only and parts to Scotland and Northern Ireland only. All those differences in application are helpfully clarified and set out in the Explanatory Notes.
Those of us with a particular interest in Wales have also been provided with a detailed commentary on Welsh aspects of the Bill by the Wales Office. I express my gratitude to the Minister in charge in the other place, Wayne David MP. He also arranged for the Welsh Assembly Government Minister, Dr Brian Gibbons, to attend a briefing for Peers. Alas, I was the only one able to attend at lunch time last Thursday. I apologised for the absence of colleagues from all sides
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First, I shall deal with the exclusively Welsh Clause 29, on the powers of the National Assembly for Wales. Briefly, that clause proposes to give the Assembly legislative competence; that is, to give it power to legislate by Assembly measures in two very specific areas. The first relates to decision-making structures of county and county borough councils and the second relates to joint overview and scrutiny committees set up by such principal councils.
The explanatory memorandum provided by the Wales Office explains in some detail why the Assembly Government require these powers, what they intend to do with them and the limitations on such action. This is very helpful and to be encouraged for the future because it is not easy for this Parliament to give away legislative powers to other institutions when we have no idea what will be done with them. Conversely, it is much easier when we know the why and wherefore of the transfer. The intention of Assembly legislation would be to redesign options for political structures so that all 22 Welsh councils could sign up to some form of executive structure. Clearly, there is a great deal of diversity in structures, possibly an excess at present. I hope the Minister can throw a little more light on this point. Of course, the matter can be probed further in Committee. We do not want an excess of uniformity in structures either.
It is also proposed to establish joint scrutiny committees between neighbouring authorities so that services being delivered jointly across county boundaries may be subject to effective review. I understand that local authorities currently have the power, but not the duty, to form such joint committees.
Joint scrutiny committees, together with the proposals for strengthening them and improving their performance that the Assembly Government have in mind, are an essential arm of good local government and, I hope, will promote collaboration between authorities, something I devoutly wished for when my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral and I reorganised local government in Wales in the early 1990s.
It will be asked why any reforms intended by the Assembly Government cannot be included directly as clauses in the Bill and implemented after Royal Assent rather than being subject to a framework clause that enables the Assembly to legislate at a later date. I know that among the reasons are that a great deal of discussion of the issues has been going on in Wales of which we are only faintly aware here and that those who have participated in those discussions should have their say in producing the legislative outcome.
In this context, it would be helpful if we had sight of some of the documents commissioned by the Assembly, including Sir Jeremy Beecham's report Beyond Boundaries: Citizen-Centred Local Services for Wales. That is only one of a number of documents referred to in the Wales Officebrief. This material would amplify the
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I welcome Part 1, on the promotion of democracy and involvement in local government. I only hope that it does not result in even more glossy publications that are only scantily informative and destined for the reader's wastepaper basket. One of the things we really need to promote local democracy is a high reputation for honesty, integrity and public service on the part of elected members. There are far too many tales of scandalously high or misapplied expense claims, not only by local councillors, but at Assembly and parliamentary level too.
I favour the petition chapter, prima facie. We have too many single-issue ad hoc bodies that, because they have no status, tend to arrogate power to themselves and end up inconveniencing the public and abusing the public’s tolerance. Such groups should be directed towards their representatives on elected authorities, preferably those with a power to do something about the cause of complaint, especially in view of what my noble friend Lady Warsi said.
When I see that Wales is excluded from Parts 4, 5, 6 and 7, which provide for economic assessments, regional strategies, economic prosperity boards and combined authorities, I have a twinge of regret. There is no doubt in my mind that local authorities potentially have a very important role to play in countering the effects of the current recession, which is likely to prove more dire as we move into next year. I hope that the Wales Office and the Assembly Government will study these parts that apply to England only and ensure that any potential beneficial effects contained in them are available in Wales, where we also have internal regions and possibilities for combined action between authorities and multi-area agreements. We no longer have the Welsh Development Agency, as it was abandoned by the Assembly. I hope the Minister will draw the attention of Welsh colleagues to what I have said on this score.
Baroness Hamwee: My Lords, the meeting to which the noble Lord referred was one of which we were not aware. No discourtesy was intended, and we feel deprived of briefing. I hope he will pass on that it is clear that lines got crossed.
5.30 pm
Lord Best: My Lords, I declare my interest as president of the Local Government Association and I extend my thanks to the LGA not only for helpful briefings but for co-ordinating and expressing the local government perspective in its influential discussions on this Bill with central government. I know that the LGA welcomes this Bill, which it sees as a step along the path of devolution from central to local government. At first sight, the Bill’s measures for promoting local democracy appear paradoxically to be a lengthy list of additional duties and requirements imposed on local councils by central government. But the dilemma of how greater local devolution can be achieved by central government directive is resolved if one recognises that
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As we have heard from several Members of this House today, some fears remain that central government will be unable to resist trying to control local initiatives and will impose rigid centralised and bureaucratic constraints on how each council interprets its new duties. It would help if the Minister could be reassuring that, having devised a sensible statutory framework, the Government see their task as standing back and encouraging varied and imaginative local action to increase democratic and participative engagement at the local level.
I should like to pick up on a new duty under Clause 1(1) and (2), which relates to a requirement on local authorities,
role of councillors—that is, how to become one—and the support available to them to carry out their role. As always, there are already some great examples of councils taking seriously the need for renewal among their council membership, recruiting people of all kinds to become elected members, as so ably advocated by Dame Jane Roberts in her recent commission on this theme.
I was pleased to sit on an inquiry by the All-Party Parliamentary Local Government Group, organised by the Local Government Information Unit, which has produced first-class guidance for councils on this theme. One of our witnesses was a really good woman councillor from south London who, despite disability and family responsibilities, was clearly an excellent representative for her community. It is not always necessary for councillors to regard their task as a full-time job, as a very long-term commitment or as a stepping stone to some other position, although all those are sometimes the case: rather, acting as a good neighbour for a whole community, giving authentic voice to local needs through the local democratic process, can be the very best form of citizen involvement and engagement. I commend this ingredient in the Bill and I hope that it will reinforce and extend the efforts of all local authorities to draw in more of the latent talent in their areas.
As you might expect from someone on these Benches, I add that people with no political affiliations—after all, more than 98 per cent of the population do not belong to a political party—also need encouragement to seek election as council members. I speak as one whose father served as an independent councillor for 40 very fulfilling years, although I suspect that Lord Nolan’s commission would have suggested that a rather shorter term should be the norm.
I turn to those parts of the Bill concerned with regional strategy. Here, the LGA can claim to have achieved an important change from the current arrangements, with the Bill now proposing a key role for local government through the local authority leaders’ boards working jointly with the regional development agencies. This measure, as the LGA says, plugs a
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I want to add a word on multi-area agreements, the voluntary agreements between neighbouring local authorities which enter into a contract with central government. These products of the Government’s sub-national review, now being piloted in seven places, look set to be popular and effective in tackling the issues that cross council boundaries. They get the seal of approval in principle from such bodies as RICS and the CBI, and I note the headline in the Local Government Chronicle of 4 December: “Zest for Sub-Regional Powers—LGC survey reveals unanimous support for statutory city regions”. With new measures for economic development becoming vital as recession hangs over us, these partnerships could make a big difference. This is already the outcome emerging from sub-regions as diverse as Greater Manchester, about which we may hear more later, and South Hampshire.
Perhaps I may make two further brief points. First, I refer to the creation of the so-called national tenants’ voice to enhance the support for and representation of tenants in social housing. Now that the new Tenant Services Authority has got off to a good start, this is an important additional measure for all those in council and housing association accommodation. However, it is not a national tenants’ voice because it excludes the large, expanding private rented sector and further widens the gap between tenants in social housing and the tenants of private landlords. The latter pay higher rents, perhaps three or four times as much in places like London, but compared with tenants in social housing enjoy very limited security of tenure. The new Rugg review calls for measures to regulate landlords and, echoing key recommendations from Sir Bryan Carsberg in his report for RICS, for redress and an ombudsman scheme to protect private tenants. I declare an interest as deputy chairman of the Ombudsman Scheme for Estate Agents, which covers some lettings agents in the private rented sector, but relatively few since the scheme, unlike that for those buying and selling properties, is not mandatory. I ask the Minister whether this Bill, one that already embraces a mixed bag of different concerns, might not incorporate some first steps on the road to giving a voice and some protection to private as well as social housing tenants.
Secondly, in terms of possible additions to the Bill—here I declare my interest as a member of the NCVO Advisory Council—this Bill could be the moment to put on a statutory basis the role of the Compact Commissioner, who handles relationships between statutory bodies, including very prominently local authorities, and the voluntary sector. I understand that the Government are considering a new clause to give the commissioner powers to enhance this important role. Any further news on developments from the Minister, whose stamina, courtesy and skill I cannot praise enough, would be gratefully received.
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5.39 pm
Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan: My Lords, I also pay tribute to the Minister’s excellent tour d’horizon in introducing this legislation, although I have to say that when I listened to the speeches from the Front Benches opposite, my mind went back to the days when I worked in the Augean stables of Scottish local government legislation in the other place. The late Donald Dewar and I probably had recurrent nightmares of the annual treadmill that was the yearly local government (miscellaneous provisions) Bill. It was perhaps not quite as elegantly named as this Bill but it is quite clear that the arguments being deployed by the opposition Front Bench are almost identical to the ones that we brought forward regardless of the content of the local government reforms. I have said enough about local government and I do not wish to say anything more about that today.
I declare an interest as president of the Specialist Engineering Contractors Group and I wish to concentrate on Part 8. Obviously we will get down to the fine print in Committee but it is worth flagging up some of the concerns. The noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, made an impressive speech in which she referred to Part 8. She said that, basically, she was not unhappy about it because it says what is in the tin and that is what you are going to get. Part 8 deals with construction contracts and the feeling I have about it, at least in part, is that it is rather like going to a supermarket and bringing back what you think is a tin of thick vegetable soup but instead you get a wishy-washy gruel.
This is a vexed area. The Specialist Engineering Contractors Group is an umbrella body for six trade associations of varying sizes, including heating and ventilating contractors, electrical contractors, and people engaged in steelwork, lifts and plumbing, as well as the electrical contractors in Scotland, who have their own organisation, SELECT. These are the people in the construction industry who do the business, deal with the highly skilled aspects of the work, and are very often engaged in complicated contracts and work which requires addressing high engineering specifications. They are therefore at the mercy—I use the word advisedly—of major contractors who dither and find excuses for not paying.
A few weeks ago, the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, was proud to make the point that the Government, as a major customer of the construction industry, are determined to pay their bills within 10 days, but, of course, the people who will be paid are not the men and women I am talking about. The major contractors will get their payments but there is no obligation on them to trickle it down through the system, yet this legislation has the important objective of facilitating what Keynes would have called the countercyclical economic activity which we hope will diminish the worst effects of the oncoming recession.
In the 21 October edition of the Independent, information was provided that the construction industry accounted for 21 per cent of all insolvencies, compared with 8 per cent in financial services and 5 per cent in the retail sector. We are all worried about the situation at Woolworths and a number of other such stores, and we are concerned about the unemployment that is
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The trade association of which I speak has some 60,000 members that employ 300,000 people. You do not have to be a mathematical genius to divide 300 by 60 to see how many people work for these very small businesses, some of which are one-person businesses. They do not have the resources to enter into expensive adjudication processes if people quibble or deny them the right to payment timeously. Equally, if they become awkward and do that, the chances of them getting follow-up contracts are limited.
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