Localism Bill

My Lords, when I woke up this morning, I thought to myself, ““I am going to have seven hours or so of this Bill today. How on earth are we going to get through it?””. I have to say that I got through it with enormous enjoyment. There have been immensely good contributions. On just listening to what has been said and the way in which it has been said, people should take heart that legislation gets properly scrutinised and is taken really seriously in this House. Across the piece, I should like to thank everyone. I am going to recommend to the Chief Whip that we stick to seven minutes for every Second Reading speech. The amount that noble Lords have packed in to their seven minutes is probably just as good as when someone goes on for 15 minutes. I thank all noble Lords for the effort that they have put into their speeches and for the strength and depth of knowledge that have come through. I genuinely say again that we are willing to talk and to listen. We were asked for meetings on a number of subjects, which we will have if people want them. I ask noble Lords to get in touch and we will see where minds meet. Where they do not meet, I am afraid that they do not. We will be looking forward to that in Committee. We have about 15 minutes—the noble Lord opposite had 15 minutes—which is not a lot of time to deal with the major issues that have been raised. Nor is it long enough to mention every Peer who has spoken. Therefore, I am going to use a sort of self-denial and not mention anyone other than the two Front Benchers opposite, whom I thank for their kind opening remarks and for their closing remarks, my noble friend Lord Tope who opened for the Liberals and the noble Lord, Lord Ouseley, if he is in his place, who opened for the Cross-Benchers. That is it, and now I am not going to make any more comments about people. I am going to go, I hope, straight to what we have been talking about. I sense that, while there is not complete agreement on the measures in the Bill, there is enough recognition of the need for localism and for a lot of the measures that we will be able to discuss sensibly at subsequent stages. I realise that there are issues to which people will want to come back. I know that many amendments will be moved in Committee but we now have a sense of where the thoughts of noble Lords are going on this. Perhaps I may try to deal with some of the major areas which have been raised. The general power of competence is meant to be just that. It goes wider than the well-being power that was there previously. It is there to try to ensure that local authorities can, without feeling too fettered and without having a statutory framework around them, do some of the things that they want to do in terms of services and how they provide them, as well as do what they need to do in other areas. In my opening remarks, I tried to deal with the powers of the Secretary of State. By and large, under the safeguards being built in, the Secretary of State is really going to deal just with taking away barriers to the power of competence. If things are standing in the way, he will be able to remove those legislatively without us having to come back to Parliament all the time. I hope that we will be able to move on on that. On the governance issues, I understand that there are still concerns over the shadow mayors and those concerns were widely expressed. I know that we will come back to that, as we will to the combination of mayor and chief executive. I will wait with bated breath for that. While we want to look at the detail, it is important that we put mayors into the context of the overall package that we feel will be good both for cities and local democracy, and how decisions will ultimately be put into the hands of local people, which of course is the basis of the Bill. The purpose of the Bill is to pass power down. This is not a Bill that is going to constrain or be constrained by and large by the centre. It aims to pass as much as possible down to local authorities to deal with. I hear the concerns about EU fines, but I think they may be a little bit over the top. The intention is only to deal with areas where this country is in danger of being infracted—I think that is the word—but I am bound to say that that does not happen very often. In fact, I do not think it has ever happened. However, there is a possibility, albeit remote, that a local authority just might be the cause of an infraction or of infraction proceedings being taken. It is for that reason that this provision has been inserted into the Bill. Clearly there would be discussions and decisions to be made about where the responsibility lay and how much could be taken by the centre. It is a power to get local authorities to watch EU legislation carefully so that they do not trip over it and end up with us all facing huge fines. I know that we shall come back to that one because I can see it in the faces of noble Lords opposite. Let us look at the right to buy assets of community value, which has clearly caused a lot of concern—indeed, I have had discussions about it today. The list of assets will be constructed by the local authority, and people can ask for something which they consider to be an asset to be put on the list. The only time that that asset will come into public view is if the owner wants to sell it. If they wish to sell it, time will have to be given to a community group to put in an initial bid. It will have to be something that the community needs. We have talked about pubs and shops, and we heard about shops that have been taken over and run by communities. This gives a statutory back-up to what people have been doing in a voluntary way. It will provide a break between the sale being put forward and it taking place because a community group will be given the right to take some time for a bid. The time periods are under consultation at the moment to work out how long groups will be able to have to see whether they can put in a bid. Having done that, if a group achieves the right price, which they might not necessarily do, they will then have the right to buy. I do not think this is quite as heavy a burden as some have made it out to be. However, some of these aspects are still out for consultation, and we shall come back with more detail for the House by Committee stage or perhaps just after. On rural communities, I understand and accept that there may be difficulties, particularly over vexatious village green applications. We shall want to look at that more closely to see whether there is a real impact. There are also other aspects to do with rural assets, and we shall be having further discussions about those. We are now introducing neighbourhood plans. They are going to have to fit in with local development plans and national policy frameworks and to conform to those. There are anxieties that things will go awry because local councils will have no control over them, but they will have that control because the local development plan will already have laid out the parameters into which neighbourhood plans can fit. Again, this brings in the community, perhaps more strongly, into saying what it would like within its local area. Someone asked about housing, but it will not be able to frustrate housing development if the local authority has already put in a plan that it wants something in that neighbourhood. With regard to sustainable development, the five principles are still accepted. A definition of sustainable development is being produced as we speak. I hope that we will have that for the next stage. Someone asked what a neighbourhood would be made up of. By and large, we expect them to be parish councils and/or wards in boroughs. The NPPF is being drafted and again I expect and hope that we will have that before we finish deliberations in Committee. There was a lot of discussion on housing tenure and reform. The proposals for flexible housing tenure are just that. Concern was expressed that the flexibility will start at a minimum of two years, but that is a minimum. As I said in my opening remarks, the expectation is that, by and large, it will be much longer than that. Social landlords need to understand that if someone does not need social housing for longer than a certain length of time—or for a short time—they do not have to give them a long tenancy. If they think and it is accepted that they need a lifetime tenancy, that is available. If a social landlord decides to put all his properties on to lifetime tenancies, that is acceptable. They have the option of flexibility on what they can do. On the issue of homelessness and whether it can be discharged by having an offer of private accommodation, homeless people are not always homeless for life. Some of them have short-term crises and some of them do not desire or need accommodation for a lifetime. They need short-term help along the way. One way in which they can have short-term help is to give them accommodation in the private sector. They may have to go into the private sector if no other accommodation is available, which is often the situation. It is a way of ensuring that they are housed somewhere. Whether the standard of the accommodation is decent and whether they can afford it will all be taken into account at the time. The provisions are not dismantling the homelessness safety net. We want to be really clear on that. Local authorities will still have a duty to secure suitable accommodation for those who are eligible and in priority need. As I said, critically the accommodation must be suitable, which covers a wide gamut of issues, including affordability, size, condition, accessibility and location. I have covered almost all aspects raised—I hope noble Lords will forgive me if I have not—but the only other one that I want to touch on quickly is the concerns that were expressed about the standards regime. As was pointed out, many of the complaints made to standards boards are extremely frivolous. They put councillors under the most enormous pressure. I know that because I have sat on a standards committee, and you know and see what comes before you. It will not be a disaster for this power to be taken away. Most local authorities will and can have their own system and code of conduct. We would expect them to have such a code of conduct; indeed, we have said that if they make any changes, they will have to publish them widely so that local people understand what they are doing. The great panoply of bureaucracy associated with standards can now be wound up. I think that it is 10.41. I can probably wind up very shortly—I apologise if I have stretched a little bit beyond what I should have done. I thank all noble Lords for taking part. My noble friends Lord Attlee, Lord Taylor and I will look forward to the next stages of the Bill and to taking it forward. Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.