My Lords, I have given notice that I think Clause 77 should not stand part of the Bill. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, for her helpful introduction and explanation of the situation. This is a clause which is out of place in the Bill in the first place, but, more to the point, assuming that we will have to consider it, this is a clause in search of a problem and I cannot find out what the problem is.
If you turn to the impact assessment, the very first questions posed by every impact assessment are: what is the problem under consideration, and why is government action or intervention necessary? The impact assessment for this Bill is 101 pages long; I may not have been a very diligent reader, but I could not find any reference in it to this clause. It would appear that the Government have not answered the question in an impact assessment of what the problem under consideration is and why action is necessary. That has not stopped us getting a clause which is 67 lines long and covers two pages. It has not stopped us getting Schedule 5; I do not suppose too many noble Lords have ploughed through Schedule 5, but what it does is repeal the existing powers that there are for councils to change street names.
So I am none the wiser. Is this clause here to enable residents to change an unpopular street name in the face of a recalcitrant council that will not shift—perhaps they live in Savile Row and the word Savile has dropped out of favour and needs to be changed, but the council will not hear of it? Or is it here to prevent councils introducing an unpopular change that residents oppose? Putting it another way, is the target councils that insist on changing street names or councils that refuse to change street names?
One way or another, I was an elected representative for 37 years on various councils and at the other end of this building and never, in all my time, did I come across a case where either of these things obtained. I did come across cases where people wanted to change names or the council might think it was a good idea to change names. There was a straightforward discussion and consensus reached as to whether it should or should not happen.
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The power that exists at the moment goes back a very long way to the 1907 Act. Section 21 states that a local authority requires two-thirds of the number of ratepayers and those liable to pay council tax in any street to have voted in favour of the street name alteration before it can be made. That exists as one route to change, so there is not a problem that there is no power to change street names and there is not a problem that street names might be changed over the heads of residents without them being consulted. The Minister may say, “Ah, but there’s a second way that councils can change names”, and that is true—but if you simply want to give more power to residents, just insist that all councils have to use the 1907 regulations; do not waste time in this Bill introducing what is in front of us today.
My second question to the Minister is: what has proved to be the harm or defect in the current arrangements in Section 21 of the 1907 Act? Everybody
agrees that sometimes changes are needed. It might be because language changes and the street name is clearly now just plain offensive. I have a practical personal example. In my area, going back to before 1907, the inhabitants of a place called Bullock Smithy decided that it would be appropriate to get a different name for their area. They petitioned the local council, and it was agreed that the place could change its name from Bullock Smithy to Hazel Grove. Hence, I became the MP for Hazel Grove, not the MP for Bullock Smithy. It is helpful to know that at that time there was no Secretary of State to write regulations. It was perfectly competent and possible for a whole community to change its name, and street names are surely rather smaller beer than that.
The current practice is that, if residents want a change, they normally get some sort of petition together and a bit of publicity and talk to their local councillors or send a letter to the town hall. The town hall would have some sort of consultation and the name would be changed or not changed. Of course, there are considerable barriers to changing a street name, such as inconvenience to business. I mentioned Savile Row. I dare say businesses in Savile Row would not be very pleased about having the name changed because it is part of their brand to be in Savile Row. There is also a cost to residents and the friends of residents who have to change all their address books. If the council wants to recognise a newly found hero or perhaps some Roman coins, as the noble Baroness said, evidently in Stevenage you put them in the next street you develop; you do not change an existing street name. I would have thought that that is what 99% of councils would do if they had an Olympic winner, for example in cycling. Let us mention Stockport in particular, as we have plenty of them. We do not rename streets; we name new streets for our Olympic winners.
That touches on a point that the noble Baroness raised. I think this is something that has come out of a pigeonhole. I think it has probably come out of a pigeonhole at CCHQ, and it has been there since the 1960s when Conservative MPs were screaming their heads off because roads were being named after Nelson Mandela. I have to say that some of those same MPs came to Westminster Hall a few decades later to give a round of applause to the Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela. There are fashions in these things in the Conservative Party as well as fashions in culture.
The delegated regulation book brings me to the next point. What assessment of the number of local authorities where disputes have arisen has the Minister made? Is this an entirely fabricated case or is there actually a real case, or two or three real cases, that the Minister could relay to your Lordships? I note that in the delegated regulations book—which is quite a slender document, just 400-odd pages—there is a page on the amendments here. It refers several times to the public consultation of 22 May on how the regulations under this new provision might be conducted. Now I have done a fair amount of reading on this, but I drew the line at finding out whether that consultation had actually been published. My question to the Minister is straightforward: has that consultation been published and what were the responses to it? Did it get the very big raspberry that it thoroughly deserved?