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Address in Reply to Her Majesty's Most Gracious Speech

My Lords, just before the noble Lord, Lord Rana, leaves, I should like to congratulate him on his maiden speech. I am not sure whether we have swapped him for the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, or whether his transfer from one side of the Irish Sea to the other is entirely without precedent or reason. Anyway, we are fortunate to have the noble Lord, Lord Rana, with us. I also congratulate him on having lived in Northern Ireland for so long without picking up the accent. Before I start speaking, I remind the House that I am a member of a local authority. I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, back to the Front Bench as a Minister in her own right. I have sparred happily with the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. I hope not to spar quite so much with the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, but I hope that we will have a fruitful and helpful working relationship. That will not be terribly easy in this Session, because, as has already been said, there is a sort of desert of legislation from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. It is not absolutely clear whether that is because the Deputy Prime Minister is exhausted by his previous efforts to change the face of local government or whether he has been sidelined completely by the Prime Minister and so no legislation from the local government and communities department has been brought forward. That is not a particular matter for complaint; there has been plenty to do but it seems strange that the ministry has sunk so far below the horizon for approximately the next year and a half. What has happened in the past cannot go unrecognised. I therefore want to remind the House of one or two small problems that are still around as a result of previous activity by that department. As my noble friend Lady Byford made clear, there was, at least, a small issue about regional government. That question of regional government was tested in front of the electorate and was pretty resoundingly defeated. One might think that regional government was a dead duck; not a bit of it. Even through there are no formally elected regional assemblies, regional bodies and strategies are proliferating on the most alarming scale. Apparently regional housing boards are responsible for recommending to Ministers how resources for housing capital investment is best targeted to—as it is put—address regional and national priorities and the needs of all groups, including travellers. I would add to that defining the priorities as seen by the Government for identifying land for development for the million plus houses that are to cut a swathe across the country. There are regional planning bodies for creating spacial strategies—binding plans for imposing building targets on local councils—and building over the green belt. These bodies are also now expected to prepare regional waste and incineration strategies, to comprise waste policies, distribution of waste tonnage and a pattern of waste facilities of national, regional or sub-regional significance. The Mayor for London is already consulting on such a policy which will override the already well running arrangements carried out by consortiums of local authorities in London. Regional tobacco structures are designed to "oversee implementation of a tobacco strategy". The north-east has already established a regional smoke-free north-east office, accountable to a multi-agency advisory board and management board. No doubt others will follow with increasingly strident requirements. On regional transport boards we are advised that, "the potential benefits offer a more outcome oriented approach linked to regional priorities, the prospect of a more integrated transport policy"— one in which the noble Lord, Lord Snape, may be interested— "and a stronger voice for the regions in the transport debate". Regional fire control offices are also being created, removing localised involvement in the management of fire control and abolishing existing control rooms. By any stretch of the imagination, this building up of regional programmes is a massive boost to regional control, and the complete antithesis of the Government's lip service to localism. We have heard a great deal, and a little bit more today from the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, about the Government's commitment to local government. But when you look at what is going to unelected regional bodies and to the power they have to commit local authorities to policies that they may not necessarily wish to have, you see there is a very serious problem. I need to say to the Minister that we are watching these activities and what results from them. I turn to the revaluation of property. The experience of Wales is already salutary. The Government's assertion that "revaluations will be neutral" has proved to be absolute rubbish. In Wales one in three homes has moved up a band and taxes have risen as a result. In the first year alone taxes went up by 9.1 per cent. That was with transitional relief, which will be phased out in three years. My noble friend Lord Roberts of Conwy will speak later about the experience of Wales, but what happens there will be replicated in spades in England when revaluation starts in April 2007. Moving from band D to band E, under the example in Wales, would entail an automatic hike in bills of 22 per cent. Based on the current English band D rate of £1,214, that would entail an automatic rise of £270 each year, every year, amounting to the equivalent of an extra £1,350 over a Parliament—and that is before council tax inflation is taken into account. In addition, there is the threat of increasing the number of bands, which we tried to fight off during the progress of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill last year. That will ensure steeper rises for those properties involved. As I said, revaluation is meant to be revenue neutral but it is clear that it will not be and that considerable "zillions" in extra resources will be raised. The question then is what will happen to those resources. Will they be left with local government, in which case there may be some reason for doing that, or will it simply be a way of the Chancellor of the Exchequer lowering the amount of grant given to local authorities and making the extra resources neutral in a way beneficial to him? Business revaluation has already brought in an extra £1.5 billion a year, which is equivalent to a 10 per cent increase. Then there are sustainable communities, already running into considerable problems in the Pathfinder areas, pitting the Government's plans for massive demolition and redevelopment against those who believe in improvement and regeneration. The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, waxed lyrical about Pathfinders and the work that has been done, but there is not unalloyed pleasure and there are serious problems arising from the conflict between redevelopment and regeneration, renewal and demolition. There is no time for me further to develop the disasters that we already see unfolding under the Government's plans. I acknowledge that the Government have already taken on board the shared ownership scheme to help with property and house ownership, but it will be a very small part of a very big problem. The big problem is the Government's decision to follow up Kate Barker's recommendations to provide so much new housing in such a comparatively cramped area as the south of England, together with all the other proposals for airports and other infrastructure. We cannot develop the argument further today, but I promise the noble Baroness that whether or not there is any legislation, we shall be debating these matters frequently in this Chamber during the course of this Session.