Part of Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill - Committee (13th Day) – in the House of Lords am 3:15 pm ar 18 Mai 2023.
My Lords, this has been a very interesting discussion. This is probably one of the cases where there is less clarity at the end of the debate than there was at the beginning. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Young, for once again giving a very forensic and detailed analysis of the subject and for raising all the key issues that sit within it. As the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, said, it was a very clear description of community land auctions.
On the issue of consultation, I remind the Committee that the noble Lord, Lord Benyon, in answer to an Oral Question earlier today, said that we are in danger of doing too much consultation. In this case, it would have been helpful if councils had been consulted before this proposal was put forward in primary legislation, because some of the issues raised in the debate would have come up immediately—they are quite obvious to those of us engaged in local government.
I have great sympathy with what the noble Lord, Lord Young, said. There is a queue of things that many of us feel should be in this Bill, including renters reform, leasehold reform, repealing the Vagrancy Act and so on. They did not get across the line and put into this primary legislation; yet here we have a fairly unformed idea, which has not been tested, which is in the legislation. That process is a bit mysterious to some of us.
The potential for contaminating the planning process is a key issue that needs to be thought through carefully. How would it look to the public when they go to a local plan inquiry, for example, if they find out that the council has already done a deal with the landowner over a particular site and they have no say in whether that will go into the local plan, because there is already a financial deal between the council and the landowner? That is a tricky one to get over. We have to think carefully about where, in the end, we are going with this.
The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, raised a very important question about where the money is coming from. Local councils are not exactly swimming in cash at the moment, so how will they find the cash to buy up this land to do the developments on?
The question of how this helps levelling up is also key. There will be significant differences in land value in different areas of this country; that has been the case for centuries and remains so. It will be the reverse of levelling up if it works in the way explained to us, and it could exacerbate inequalities, not improve them.
The noble Lord, Lord Young, spoke about local authority funding and how it used to work in, I think, 1968. Of course, things have changed a huge amount since then. There is now no government grant for many local authorities; some still get a bit, but there is not much for many of them.
We now have a tariff and top-up system for non-domestic rates. Is the intention that, if you have different land values in different parts of the country, community land auctions will be subject to a tariff and top-up system? Who pays for that?
We therefore have a lot more questions on this issue. I am sure that we will come back to it but, in the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment 364B withdrawn.
Clause 127 agreed.
Clauses 128 to 133 agreed.
Clause 134: Parliamentary scrutiny of pilot
Amendment 365 not moved.
Clause 134 agreed.
Clause 135 agreed.
Clause 136: Expiry of Part 5
Amendment 366 not moved.
Clause 136 agreed.
Clause 137 agreed.
Clause 138: Power to specify environmental outcomes