Baroness Hayman of Ullock: My Lords, my Amendment 36 is designed to provide clarity over the future relationships, roles and responsibilities of elected mayors and police and crime commissioners. The number of elected regional mayors has grown in recent years, and the Government clearly want to create more. At the same time, it also appears that the Bill’s proposals will allow these mayors to take over, rather than...
Baroness Hayman of Ullock: My Lords, I shall be very brief. I want to express our support for the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and to reiterate our concerns around audit and Oflog and how that will operate within its responsibilities. We need to ensure that there is a sufficient set-up to deal with the huge problems facing local authorities regarding audit. We know that some authorities have not had an...
Baroness Hayman of Ullock: My Lords, while much online animal torture content originates from abroad, some appalling photos and videos shared on social media platforms involve the abuse of domestic animals in the UK. In opposing my noble friend Lady Merron’s amendment to the Online Safety Bill yesterday, the Government insisted not only that online instances of animal mistreatment are covered by the 2006 Act, and are...
Baroness Hayman of Ullock: My Lords, securing planning permission is the major barrier to growth, according to 93% of SME builders. The Minister has mentioned the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill a couple of times. In order to make a real difference quickly and promote the use of SMEs in local authority tenders, will she accept our Amendment 244, which asks local authorities to consider SMEs when granting planning...
Baroness Hayman of Ullock: My Lords, I thank the Minister for her response to quite a charged debate. I thought I was quite good on the geography of the West Midlands, but I learned a bit tonight. We are not entirely satisfied with where the Bill is on this issue at the moment. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment, but, as my noble friend Lord Hunt said, I feel sure that we will return to this. Amendment 25 withdrawn....
Baroness Hayman of Ullock: I want to ask for clarification. The test is to carry out a consultation. When the Secretary of State takes that consultation with the local community into account, can he make a decision against what the majority of that community voted for?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock: We are finishing at the end of this group.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock: My Lords, I have a number of amendments in this group, as do other noble Lords. I shall talk your Lordships’ House through why I felt we needed to put these amendments down. First, let us look at my Amendments 25, 27 and 53. Our concerns are around the fact that the Government seem to view devolution settlements as evolutionary. Although we do not necessarily object to them refining these...
Baroness Hayman of Ullock: My Lords, this is a short group with just my Amendment 18 in it. I have laid this amendment to probe the reports that the department, DLUHC, now requires Treasury consent for its capital spending. In February this year, the Financial Times published an article stating that DLUHC had been “banned” by the Treasury “from making spending decisions on new capital projects … after concerns...
Baroness Hayman of Ullock: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, for her comments in this debate and the Minister for her response. Although I am not absolutely and entirely convinced by everything she said, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment. Amendment 18 withdrawn.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock: My Lords, I just want to say that we also welcome these amendments and that I support everything that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, said.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock: Before the Minister sits down, if the policies have been rural-proofed, what happened to the metrics? Clearly, they have not been rural-proofed. I raised public transport, which I think needs looking at.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock: My Lords, I have one amendment in this group, Amendment 12. It asks for an evaluation of progress towards each mission from an independent advisory council, to include the variances of delivery between different nations and regions—the geographical disparities that we have heard about from other noble Lords in this debate. As I said in Committee, where we had a similar amendment, we believe...
Baroness Hayman of Ullock: My Lords, I thank noble Lords who have spoken in this brief debate, and the Minister for her, as always, very thorough response. However, I do not think that she has been able to demonstrate categorically that any future funding rounds are going to be properly tied to the delivery of the missions. The Government seem to have taken a bit of a scattergun approach to this, if I can put it like...
Baroness Hayman of Ullock: My Lords, I have a number of amendments in this group, all regarding the funding for the levelling-up proposals that the Government have been working on for some time. One of the reasons I have brought this back at this stage is that I was not satisfied with the responses we received in Committee. Since we debated this matter in Committee —I think we started Committee back in February/...
Baroness Hayman of Ullock: My Lords, before we begin Report, I want to make some points to draw the House’s attention to our concerns about the Government’s approach to the proper and timely legislative scrutiny of this Bill. First, when we received the Bill into this House and prepared for Second Reading back in January, I and others were surprised to see that it contained three chapters that had not been...
Baroness Hayman of Ullock: My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Willis of Summertown, for her expert introduction to her concerns about the statutory instrument before us today. We know the local nature recovery strategies have a really important role to play in delivering on the Environment Act targets and of course the commitment to protect 30% of land, as noble Lords have said. If you have these...
Baroness Hayman of Ullock: My Lords, the Minister said he hopes this is going to be a government Bill, so why does he not just bring back the kept animals Bill?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, talked about the initial report from the Electoral Commission. Our concern is that it showed that many thousands of people were turned away, many of whom did not return. We do not know the impact on those who were put off going in the first place, so the Government should not be complacent about that. It concerns me that we have by-elections and...
Baroness Hayman of Ullock: My Lords, back in December last year, Ofwat outlined concerns about the financial resilience of several water companies, and now we see that the ratings agency S&P has negative outlooks for two-thirds of the UK water companies that it rates because they are overleveraged and beholden to too much debt that was taken on in an era of low interest. How does the Government’s assessment of the...