Localism Bill

My Lords, in this debate, if I may, I shall speak with something of a London perspective. It is London that I know; I hope that what I have to say about London will often have some broader application, but I do not pretend to that broader knowledge myself. As the 31st speaker in the debate, I shall inevitably repeat comments made by others, though I shall attempt to limit the extent to which I do so. I shall handle that perhaps by saying that I wish strongly to associate myself with many of the comments that have been made on housing. I have a great fear of there being created within social housing a sort of transitory, transient community, which does no good to families, especially to children, and very little good to the communities in which those people are resident. The issue of EU fines is pertinent particularly to London, which faces potentially £300 million or so in fines for its failure to deal with air quality and the consequences of PM10, which takes between 4,000 to 8,000 premature lives a year. It is crucial that there is an independent body to allocate that fine and responsibility to central government, which has certainly played a role, to the GLA and to local government. Along with that point, there are many other comments that have been made with which I wish to associate myself. I shall refer to two issues which perhaps have been less covered, following in a sense the strategy of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Boyd, of addressing issues which should have been in the Bill but are not. The first—again, I speak from a London perspective though not limited to it—is infrastructure financing. Many people will be aware that it cost some £3.5 billion to build the Jubilee line in London. But those who owned land fairly close to the stations saw a great increase in the value of property, the estimate being something of the order of £13 billion. In other countries across the globe, that kind of increase in land value is captured to finance the project in the first place. It does not happen here. There were great hopes that it could be achieved for the Crossrail project, particularly given that those associated at that point with TfL were Americans who were used to this form of financing elsewhere. It fell apart, as I understand, because the Treasury did not want control of finances to slip away from central government towards a more local government, in this case London government. It saw the potential for financing off land value gain as a mechanism that would take control away from it. We ended up instead with London businesses paying a flat tax to fund London’s share of Crossrail, which was a retrograde step. The Bill presents us with a real opportunity to see that release of power from the Treasury towards local communities. It is certainly true in London’s case; I suspect that it is true in the case of others. New infrastructure is fundamental to our being able to function and to grow. It is an issue that is not addressed in the Bill and, as near as I can tell, it never seems to be addressed in legislation that comes wandering between these two Houses. Here would be a great opportunity to try to capture it. The second issue is government’s trying still to keep inappropriate control of all kinds of bits of strategy—again, I am talking about transport. As your Lordships will be aware, Transport for London is the strategic planning authority for the Tube, the buses, the trams and the couple of overland rail lines that are contained entirely within the London area, but most of London’s commuter services in south London are provided by overground rail, which comes under the national strategic planning authority—in other words, the department. One can see the argument: all these rail lines are part of a national network that ends in London. But the greatest usage and demand is for the commuter services that they provide in the last stretches once they hit the environs of London and the south-east and come on in. Surely this Bill is an opportunity to say we are switching the balance between central and local power, and let us add strategic planning power to Transport for London to cover these rail lines that end within this city. Of course it will have to take very serious and fundamental note of national rail aims but let us recognise that the Bill is meant to be shifting that balance and recognising local importance and responsibility. That would seem to be a great example. If people think that you can do this kind of planning nationally, just remember it has taken nearly 10 years to get the Oyster card on national rail services—a very good illustration of how little notice national strategic rail planning has taken of the London issue. Comments have been made about the Mayoral Development Corporation. I am not opposed to mayoral development corporations, as others might be, but I am very aware that when the GLA was first set up, there was a real focus on ensuring the transfer of power from central government to London and an absence of conflict between the boroughs and London government. On the whole, that has been the case, despite there being many different political colours and issues—there has, on the whole, been co-operation. It is really important that we do not suddenly start to build in conflict to this sort of mayoral development corporation. As you will know, London Councils has said—and I think the mayor is in agreement—that it would be comfortable making sure that something like 50 per cent of the board places for these corporations were allocated to local boroughs. Using those kinds of mechanisms, let us make sure that conflict is not built in. I have an underlying frustration when I read this kind of legislation, which assumes that economic development is regeneration and regeneration is economic development. There is so much more involved in economic development. Culturally at least, I am not sure yet if there is a way to provide some sort of carrot within the legislation; but we need to look at these re-energised local communities as mechanisms to bring in and develop new businesses within their communities. An American mayor, if you want the honest truth, would be looking at unemployment within his city and touting to every major corporation that could put together a business facility to match that employment need, trying to drag it, tooth and nail, to his or her community. We do not use that kind of potential here. I am not quite sure how to build that into this legislation, but surely it is part of the dynamism that should be inherent in localism.