Government: Draft Legislative Programme

My Lords, as one who complained in the past at having been left in the dark about the content of the Queen’s Speech, I greatly welcome the Government’s decision to publish their draft legislative programme. It is good government and is good open government, and I hope that we may see more of this in the future. I want to raise two issues. The first refers to the announcements and the Green Paper on housing. I support the ambitious programme and targets that the Government have set out, putting affordable housing within the reach of not just the few, but the many. That is vital for us, and I am particularly pleased to learn that greater efforts will be made through a new homes agency to bring surplus public land into housing use to deliver more social and affordable housing and support regeneration. I gather that more than 550 sites owned by central government are being examined for housing development and that English Partnerships is negotiating a new deal with the Ministry of Defence to acquire at least six major redundant sites to provide more than 7,000 houses. I understand that similar discussions are being undertaken with the Department for Transport, the Highways Agency, the British Railways Board residual body and health authorities. There are great opportunities here for underutilised resources to be used for the public good. Some of us have been arguing for some time that much public land was available for development, but inertia in many quarters was limiting changes. My noble friend will not know this, but I have complained previously to the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, the Minister responsible, about the failure of great departments of state such as Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs occupying land in areas of acute housing shortage, when such departments’ work need not be located there. While I recognise that the noble Lord may not be in a position to reply today, I would welcome a written reply to my question: are sites owned by big departments such as HMRC and the Department for Work and Pensions among the 550 sites being examined? I ask that because they are two of several departments which have outsourced the management of their estates to the private sector, including companies such as Carillion, which I believe manages the Inland Revenue estate. Have those departments been excluded from the current review because they have been outsourced? If they have been excluded, surely they should be brought back into the fold and ways and means found whereby, in partnership with those companies, underutilised resources and land could be fully used in the way that efforts are being made elsewhere. My second topic is the Constitutional Reform Bill and the related Green Paper, The Governance of Britain, which I welcome. This is an ambitious package which, as the Prime Minister stated, sets out a route map. This is of some significance to the questions raised in the previous contribution by the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth. The programme sets out to address two fundamental questions: first, to hold power more accountable and, secondly, to uphold and enhance the rights and responsibility of the citizen. They are noble aspirations and I submit that they should be the benchmark against which all changes and legislation that the Government propose in this field should be tested. I have in mind the further reform of the House of Lords. I listened to much of last week’s debate on the House of Lords Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, and read the rest of the debate in Hansard. To my regret, very few contributions, except that of my noble friend Lord Howarth, addressed accountability and none, to my recollection, addressed enhancing the rights and responsibility of the citizen, which was a major oversight—particularly the latter point. It is inconceivable that any Government could advance all the reforms they propose in the Green Paper, yet ignore the free votes of the House of Commons on 7 March for a wholly or substantially elected second Chamber and leave the House of Lords as a wholly appointed body. It is a great pity that so much of the experience, intellect and energy that we have in this Chamber is currently being used to pursue an objective which, in my opinion, will not be realised when, instead, it could be directed to finding solutions to the problems that undoubtedly exist with a move towards elections. I hope that, over time, people will reflect on this and that we will avoid digging in in the way that, notwithstanding the wisdom of this Chamber, we do from time to time. Here, I recall the missed opportunities relating to the Hunting Bill. The Government’s ideas fall short on accountability. My preference is for an initial elected eight-year term, with the opportunity for re-election for a second and final term of eight years. That would lead to true accountability. Again, I do not expect a response from the Minister on that today, but I should like to hear from him whether the working group will address the valid criticism that existing procedures for selecting candidates for election to the Lords will only produce much the same as already exists in the Commons and that, in short, the special attributes of the Lords—its experience, specialisms and wisdom—will be lost. Will the working group look at that legitimate complaint and, if not, why not? If it does not, will the Government do it or will my party, at least, spend some time on this issue? I have previously suggested to the new Lord Chancellor that we should consider organising primary elections and encouraging the participation and involvement of candidates from a much wider field than has been the case in the past. I understand that the Conservative Party has been experimenting with a form of primary elections and that it has had some reasonable successes. I suggest that this is an area in which there is some scope for consensus. I think that that is what would be expected of us in delivering what the public want: a Chamber that is elected but comprised of people who are as similar as possible to the present Members. It is our duty to try to deliver what the electorate want.