Non-Domestic Rating (Public Lavatories) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2019-07-10
Topic: Public Lands
William John Lawrence Wallace (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, perhaps it would help to explain why I find myself far away from my professional expertise in foreign policy in talking about public toilets. The history of Saltaire is very much built on public sanitation and improvement. Titus Salt was mayor of Bradford and one of a group of Liberals and Congregationalists very much concerned about public improvement in a town which, like others in West Yorkshire, had endemic typhoid and typhus in the 1830s and 1840s, and several cholera epidemics. He moved his entire works out to Airedale and built a model village with outside toilets and back alleys wide enough to be regularly emptied, which, in those days, was state of the art in public sanitation. So, Saltaire and sanitation are very closely linked together We are now, as the noble Lord will know, a world heritage site and a regular destination for busloads of tourists—either schoolchildren or the moderately elderly—and, as they get off the bus, the first thing they ask is: where are the toilets? The answer is: they are closed. They were closed last year by the city of Bradford and I do not entirely blame it, given the intense pressure on resources it has faced, but I recall the chief executive of Bradford Council saying to my wife a year ago, "The tourists will have to use the local shops". Of course, we are heritage-listed, and these 19th-century shops did not originally have indoor toilets and have steps up to the front entrance. Those that have now installed indoor toilets have them either in the basement, down a steep staircase—in our house, the staircase down to the basement is very steep—or on the first floor, so they do not help visitors who may be disabled The Bill’s provisions would have helped by reducing the estimated costs of maintenance and keeping open our local toilets from around £12,000 to around £6,000 or £7,000, but we do not have a local town or parish council at the moment, so we do not have the resources to do it, unlike Bradford’s other two tourist destinations —Haworth and Ilkley—where the cost and burden has been transferred from the metropolitan council down to the local town or parish. Given how stuck the metropolitan council is for resources, it would say that there is a certain justice—the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, will no doubt agree—in that these are moderately more prosperous areas, so they can damn well do it themselves However, we are left with real difficulties. The Minister said in introducing the Bill that this promise was made four years ago and we have been waiting for it ever since. It was put off by the 2017 election, but at least now it is coming through. But behind this are much wider issues of public policy: the provision of public services and what public services ought to be provided; whether they ought to be provided by local or central government; the future of local government and the provision of public space and public services; and how local government resources will be sustained I am very conscious, from other work I have been doing on attacks on the Civil Service and the whole question of the public interest, that there are those on the right of the Conservative Party who are libertarians, free marketeers and followers of Ayn Rand. I was slightly unnerved the other month when I read that Sajid Javid regards Ayn Rand as the most important philosopher he has read. These are people who believe that government as such is something to be shrunk as far as possible; that private is better than public; and that the individual should be able to do what they want, while those who cannot cope should be left behind. I recognise that both Ministers on the Front Bench at present are not of that persuasion. Indeed, as good one-nation Conservatives they in turn will recognise, at least to themselves, that that is not at the moment the dominant strain within their own party There are questions behind this measure about the whole system of local taxation, and the balance between charity law and non-charitable activities provided as public services. I note that in both cases, the rating system and charity law go back to the late 16th and early 17th centuries, and still reflect in some ways the assumptions of that period. For example, I note that private hospitals are charities and thus have an 80% rate reduction, whereas the NHS pays a substantial amount in non-domestic rates. There is currently a case in the High Court in which NHS trusts could be relieved of some £2.35 billion, if they win the case I am also conscious that public libraries pay substantial rates; for example, my noble friend Lady Pinnock tells me that Cleckheaton library pays £50,000 a year in non-domestic rates. I note that independent schools receive 80% tax relief on this but that state schools pay full non-domestic rates, and that the Scottish Government have committed to removing relief for most independent schools from next year. A set of large issues lie behind this mouse of a Bill I note that it has become more complicated in recent years with the introduction of relief for public houses, which are entitled to a £1,000 discount on their business rates from 2017 to 2019, while local newspapers have been getting a £1,500 discount on their office space for three years since 2017. The Telecommunications Infrastructure (Relief from Non-Domestic Rates) Act 2018 provides 100% business rates relief for five years on new fibre infrastructure. This is a mess and needs fundamental reform. If we had a Government who were not as exhausted and internally divided as this Government are, perhaps they would also be addressing that large question in the context of how we provide the resources for decent, democratic local government This is a mouse of a Bill and, as such, I give it a very small welcome. It tackles one small corner of a very important area of public policy, which includes: the provision and financing of public services; the sustaining of public space and decent government; the public provision of basic facilities for citizens of this country; and the future of local government. When it comes to Committee, we will certainly want to test the provision of public toilets in other public buildings and whether they should also be within the scope of the Bill. I mean those within libraries, market halls and the sort of places my noble friend spoke about. However, we note that this is a tightly drawn Bill and that it will not be entirely easy to amend. We recognise that some of these wider issues cannot be addressed in this context and that we will have to raise them in wider circles than this.