Lord Stunell: I will speak very briefly; I will certainly not debate with the Minister all 35 amendments. I am taking on a brief inspection that these are indeed just minor and consequential. I want to use this as the opportunity to say that the Minister has written to us today, advising us of a whole range of further amendments that the Government will table. While most of them flow from the debates we...
Lord Stunell: The Minister has mentioned that we should wait for the regulations. It might be helpful in this instance and several others if it were possible to bring forward some draft regulations to help us understand the direction of thought that the Government are taking. We are all well aware that, by the time regulations are laid before the two Houses, the opportunity for parliamentarians to make...
Lord Stunell: I approached it from the opposite direction: if indeed it should be a matter for local people to decide because they are best equipped to understand what terminology might be appropriate, why does the Minister feel that it is sensible or suitable to have a defined list from which they must choose, rather than doing exactly as she said by exercising their discretion in relation to their own...
Lord Stunell: My Lords, this has been rather a depressing afternoon. We have had a long debate about where money was coming from, and the answer is, “There isn’t any”. Now we are on to a debate about another vital aspect of levelling up: you need the money, but you also need a transport policy that works. Reference has been made to the mission statement. I am becoming increasingly concerned that in...
Lord Stunell: Has the noble Baroness given any consideration to one of the provisions here about the statement that the mayor must make on consent by the constituent councils? I think she said that it would be only if they gave their unanimous consent but, on page 51 of the Bill, subsection (4)(b) says that, “if the mayor is unable to make that statement, the reasons why the mayor considers the order...
Lord Stunell: My Lords, I apologise for not being present on the first group that the Committee discussed today, courtesy of Avanti trains. We now have three very important amendments, which go to the heart of whether levelling up can be achieved. It cannot be achieved unless there is a massive input of finances to local authorities and to CCAs in order to achieve it. We all know how the system works at...
Lord Stunell: I appreciate the Minster’s reply, but if I could press him a little more, does he see any way at all in which we could differentiate what he is suggesting from the traditional role of the aldermen?
Lord Stunell: My Lords, it is late. I will try to be quick. I want to pick up what the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, referred to as “operation blank cheque”. The bit of the Bill that we are looking at here and that my amendment refers to is described in a sub-heading as “Functions of CCAs”. It consists of 15 clauses, 11 of which start with: “The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision”....
Lord Stunell: My Lords, I rise primarily to speak to Amendment 57, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, which was very eloquently supported in detail by what she just had to say. I also want to speak in support of the other amendments in this group. They are all on essentially the same matter, which is: how have the Government transferred, and how do they plan to transfer, resources from the...
Lord Stunell: My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 20 in this group, calling for the provision of safe and affordable homes for all. It references a definition of affordable homes that appears in Amendment 242, to which we will come in due course. Mission 10 in the White Paper—although they are not actually numbered as such, but it is the 10th mission —sets a target that is only seven years away,...
Lord Stunell: My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas. They have laid some very important foundations for my Amendment 29 which, I think, will take noble Lords into territory they have not explored before. I want to make it clear that we strongly support the principle of levelling up. We welcome the analysis in last year’s White...
Lord Stunell: I appreciate what the Minister is saying, and it is not part of my case that investing in green jobs has been a failure. My point was that investing in green jobs has been very successful, but it has been more successful in the more prosperous regions. Consequently, the disparity between the rich region and the poor region is widening. Clearly a major redirection of thinking is needed to...
Lord Stunell: I apologise to the Minister for intervening again, but can I press her? Of course, that is all worth while, but will that analysis be on a regional basis or simply on a whole-country basis? We need to know, or the Minister needs to know, whether year by year that gap is widening or narrowing because of that extra green investment.
Lord Stunell: My Lords, I will speak to the amendments in my name, but I could not begin without commenting on the three very powerful speeches which have just been made. I hope very much that the Minister is listening and will be able to give something better than a formulaic response to the pleas that have been made. In the amendments standing in my name and the name of my noble friend Lady Parminter,...
Lord Stunell: My Lords, I agree with a great deal of what the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, has said about the need for monitoring and evaluating any government process, but particularly one as deep-seated and far-ranging as this is obviously intended to be. I will speak to Amendments 24, 26, 32 and 49, all of which appear in this group. They are tabled to explore how the outputs from the...
Lord Stunell: My Lords, on 21 December last year, the Minister told me in a Written Answer that the bid on behalf of Marple community hub was being “assessed”. Well, it failed to make the grade. Will she undertake to publish the assessments of both the failed and the successful schemes so that, as she said, a fair and transparent process can be seen by all?
Lord Stunell: My Lords, first, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent, on her excellent and feisty maiden speech. We look forward to hearing more from her, and more about Stoke-on-Trent, in the future. The Bill comes clanking into sight three months late and after a couple of rather drastic rebuilds from where it started. It follows last year’s White Paper, which itself hugely...
Lord Stunell: To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to speed up the notification of the results of bids to the Levelling Up Fund; and what assessment they have made of the delay of the establishment of Marple Leisure and Community Hub in Stockport Borough.
Lord Stunell: To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the announcement by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his Autumn Statement on 17 November that the NHS will be given £3.3 billion additional funding, what proportion of that funding will be spent on rebuilding community NHS dentistry services in areas with (1) no, or (2) low, take-up of new adult NHS patients, such as Stockport.
Lord Stunell: My Lords, I start by declaring my interests as an honorary president of the National Home Improvement Council and an honorary fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers. For the purposes of this debate, I also declare that I am a mortgage-free owner-occupier, and that my wife and I have a leasehold flat in London. I am part of the housing-privileged, as are nearly all the opinion-formers in...