My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 86, 87 and 88, while my noble friend Lady Royall will address Amendment 89 in particular.
We are supportive of the thrust of the arrangements to ease complexity, bureaucracy and cost in marshalling surplus public sector assets, but we accept what the Government have asserted about land held by existing arm’s-length bodies not being capable of being transferred directly to the HCA and the fact that this could be addressed by one or more schemes to transfer property to the HCA from a specified public body. The need for this is obviously bolstered by the Government’s plans—as we have just discussed—for the HCA to be the centralised disposal agency for surplus public sector land.
In their Accelerating the Release of Public Sector Land report of October 2011, the Government estimated that 40% of land suitable for development sits with public sector—both central and local government—land banks. Our amendments are a way of seeking reassurance. Other than transfers being capable of being made directly to the HCA, it is understood that there will be no change to the type of assets otherwise to be involved and no change to the decision-making or approval process. In this regard, perhaps the Minister will just remind us what the process actually is—in particular, the process by which land is regarded as surplus.
Amendment 85B was proposed to us by the Open Spaces Society. The society is concerned that, whatever the warm words of the Government about the specific and limited application of Clauses 21 and 22, they are written in very broad terms. Under Clause 21, a “public body” means,
“a person … with functions of a public nature”.
It is true that they have to be specified in regulations but they are regulations that are currently just subject to the negative procedure. The assurance from the Minister thus far is that only surplus land can be subject to a scheme, but the term “surplus” does not appear in the clause.
Amendments 86, 87 and 88 do no more than put in the Bill what the Government have already said to be the case, and it is difficult to see why these amendments would not be accepted.
There are other matters requiring clarification. So far as the easements affecting land are concerned, perhaps the Minister will confirm that the power to override third-party rights exists with the HCA, local authorities, the GLA and the Mayoral Development Corporation. Is it correct that this power of override can be exercised after land has been sold but only by those bodies—that is, that a third-party private sector purchaser of land would not be able to initiate such overrides? Can the Minister also say a little about how the tax provisions are intended to work? Presumably they are to avoid spurious tax charges arising from the scheme transfers, given that the nature of the scheme is by way of an “internal” reorganisation of assets. However, will each of the specific public bodies be non-tax-paying entities, and what is the intent regarding assets acquired from the HCA? On what basis will someone acquire those assets?
There is a wider issue concerning where value will accrue under the transfers. Will it be in the Treasury? If the scheme means that transactions are bypassing the parent department, how is all this to work? I beg to move.