Cornish Peer, Paul Tyler, welcomes the principle of setting out a legislative programme in advance of the Queen’s Speech but says the Government’s programme lacks the ambition needed to resolve Cornwall’s housing crisis.

Liberal Democrat Shadow Minister for Constitutional Affairs, Lord (Paul) Tyler this week welcomed the Government’s approach to a draft legislative programme. 

Speaking in the first House of Lords debate on such a programme, he said: “My colleagues and I warmly welcome this debate today, which I think will become an annual event.”  But the Cornish Peer sounded a note of caution, “If this is going to improve parliamentary scrutiny, we will need a number of assurances from the Minister.  First, the process has to involve all parties and the Cross Benches. Secondly, it really must mean that we have less ill thought-out, excessively cumbersome legislation which gives us so overloaded a programme that we get legislative indigestion.  Next, the Government Whips, particularly in the Commons, should not seek unnecessary control over the detailed consideration of legislation.”

“Finally and most importantly…[the Minister should] reassure us that the unanimously agreed resistance to government attempts to clip the wings of the House of Lords—resistance which was absolutely conclusive in the Cunningham report, Conventions of the UK Parliament—will be underlined and not undermined by what happens next.”

Lord Tyler also took the opportunity to remind the Government of the acute housing shortage in Cornwall, caused in part by second home ownership.  “Some vulnerable communities,” he said, “not least in my own area of Cornwall, are now devastated by excessive second homes.  It not only removes any chance of working people finding an affordable home but causes ghost villages in winter, closing schools and other facilities and causing huge diseconomies for everyone else. We must have legislation to make the loss of premises into the second home category a matter for planning consent to change of use.”

In response the Minister, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, made no comment on Cornwall’s housing crisis but said the Government’s plans for constitutional reform represented “a major programme of immense importance in the revitalisation of Parliament and our democratic institutions.  We want very much to encourage widespread debate about it both within Parliament and outside.”

Commenting after the exchange, Lord Tyler said: 

“We certainly do not endorse the letter of the laws proposed but the opportunity to debate and influence them in advance has to be welcome.

“We will be using this period to embolden Ministers toward a more radical programme.  Their proposals on planning, for example, are far too timid.  Developers are still able to make huge profit out of land by gaining planning consent for new building, yet the community receives none of that benefit.  We need a Government who have the guts to tax the increase in the value afforded by all development, not just housing development, so the community directly benefits from the additional value it has given to the developer by giving planning consent.”

“On constitutional reform, I will, as ever, be arguing for an empowered Parliament and an empowered people.  There is much to do – the Blair government has spent a decade dithering and tacking round the edges of our various constitutional anachronisms.  Now is the time to get on with the job of meaningful electoral reform, of gaining elections for our second chamber and of devolving power to our communities and their Councils.

“Watch this space.”