Port Agents: Medical Duty of Care

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Thursday 20th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker. For transparency, I make the House aware that I have declared a relevant interest with the Table Office.

On 13 February this year, Gordon Hoyland Spencer passed away at the Sue Ryder Wheatfields Hospice in Leeds. He was a beloved husband, father, grandfather, and also my much cherished father-in-law. This did not need to happen.

Gordon Spencer was a hard-working entrepreneur who, with his wife Jackie and family, built a large and successful enterprise. Gordon and his wife Jackie started life in the back streets of Leeds, working on the shop floor in the industrial and textile mills. However, both of them had an indomitable entrepreneurial spirit and, coupled with a hard-working ethic, this led to them building two large and successful businesses in facilities management and property. Their facilities management company started out as a window-cleaning round that Gordon bought to earn some extra income in order to buy a carpet for their cottage some 60 years ago. Their son, daughter, daughter-in-law and grandson all work in the business, making the companies a truly family enterprise. Combined, these companies today now employ over 11,000 people in the UK and it is one of the largest privately-owned facilities management companies in the country—a true facilitator of the northern powerhouse.

Gordon was also instrumental, as part of a group of Leeds-based landlords, in contributing to the Housing Act 1988, which brought in protection for both landlords and tenants through the shorthold tenancy agreement. He wanted to ensure not only that landlords would be able to receive the rent that they were owed but that tenants had protection from unscrupulous landlords.

Gordon and Jackie were married for 62 years—something quite unheard of these days. They have three children and two very adored grandchildren. Gordon was very much a family-oriented man and loved nothing more than spending time with his family. He was a devoted dad, husband and grandfather. In their retirement, Gordon and Jackie enjoyed travelling and had undertaken several world cruises, but two destinations had always eluded them: the cherry blossoms in Japan for Jackie and the Taj Mahal in India for Gordon. On 5 January this year, Gordon and Jackie set sail on a four-month world cruise with Cruise & Maritime Voyages that would take them to these last two bucket-list destinations.

Shortly after the cruise started, Gordon became unwell with a chest infection and cough. Jackie took Gordon to see the ship’s doctor, who diagnosed double pneumonia and high blood pressure and started treatment with antibiotics. Through an ECG, it was diagnosed that Gordon had a left bundle branch block, which causes an irregularity in the heartbeat but is not considered pre-emptive to a heart attack. The doctor also performed troponin tests and categorically confirmed that Gordon had not had a heart attack. Troponin is an enzyme that the heart emits. A higher level of troponin is the indication of myocardial infarction, or a heart attack. Despite the high blood pressure and the left bundle branch block, because Gordon’s troponin tests were negative, there was not sufficient evidence to suggest that Gordon had had a heart attack or was at risk of having a heart attack. This is a very significant point, in relation to the actions that happened next when Gordon and Jackie were disembarked in Barbados and where they consequently were sent for medical treatment.

Bridgetown is the capital of Barbados and is home to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, which is the island’s primary acute medical care facility and provides extensive care in a wide array of medical specialties. A report in 2013 entitled “Caring for Non-residents in Barbados” by the Medical Tourism Research Group outlined the medical arrangements in Barbados. It states:

“Within the Caribbean, Barbados is regarded as a favoured destination for regional patients, particularly for those from smaller islands lacking advanced diagnostic and treatment facilities and the capacity to offer to treat high-risk patients…BFC, the Sparman Clinic, Island Dialysis, and Bayview Hospital all attract private regional patients; however, according to our interviewees, the public Queen Elizabeth Hospital is the primary health care destination for regional patients.

The Queen Elizabeth Hospital serves as the main referral hospital for the entire Eastern Caribbean…Consultants at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital…have the ability to admit private patients such as ill vacationers not covered by the island’s public system”.

On Friday 18 January, with a major hospital available just two miles from the port for an 86-year-old man with double pneumonia—who, according to the ship’s doctor, was improving at the point of medical disembarkation—the port agent in Bridgetown decided to send Gordon to the privately run Sparman clinic, some three miles from the port. The clinic is owned and operated by Dr Alfred Sparman, and is advertised as a heart specialist clinic. The ship’s doctor’s notes and lab results, which clearly stated that Gordon had not had a heart attack, were given to the Sparman clinic on Gordon’s arrival. However, the medical notes made by Dr Sparman afterwards state that Gordon was admitted to the clinic with double pneumonia and having had a heart attack, which was not the case.

On arrival at the clinic, Jackie was asked to pay US$10,000 before the clinic would admit or treat Gordon. Jackie maxed out her credit cards to pay the up-front costs, which left her without funds to find accommodation while in Barbados. On Monday 21 January—I emphasise that I am speaking about this year—Gordon’s children arrived in Barbados to assist their parents. At that point, Gordon was on a nasal cannula and an antibiotic drip, but had received no further treatment during the three days since being admitted to the clinic. He appeared to be weak and short of breath, but was able to sit up in bed, was eating, and was fully coherent.

Jackie had been sleeping on the couch in the observation room, because she did not have the funds to procure other accommodation. The Sparman clinic is actually a doctor’s surgery with a waiting area, one small operating theatre where most cardiovascular surgeries are performed, and an observation room which doubles as a patient bedroom and intensive care unit and contains mostly wooden and soft furniture.

Dr Sparman met the family to discuss Gordon’s prognosis in the clinic’s conference room, which contained a cracked board table held together with gaffer tape and several broken and cracked leather chairs. In addition, client records were strewn across the floor and piled high in boxes. I mention the dilapidated state of the entire clinic because, given that a state-of-the-art hospital was less than half a mile away in Bridgetown, it is difficult to understand how this clinic was deemed appropriate to offer any level of suitable healthcare to a critically ill patient with double pneumonia.

During the meeting, Dr Sparman advised the family that Gordon was very ill and had suffered a heart attack as a result of the strain that the pneumonia had put on his heart. He suspected that Gordon also had a blockage in one of his arteries, and therefore needed an angioplasty and an angiogram. He ended the meeting by stating that once the surgery was completed, Gordon would feel much better—better than he had felt for years —and that the family would be able to fly him home via a commercial airline by the end of the week. However, the medical report received from the clinic after Gordon was released clearly shows that at the time of the meeting with Dr Sparman, Gordon’s troponin levels, while now showing positive for the enzyme, were still well outside the parameters that would indicate that a heart attack had occurred or was likely to occur.

In the days leading up to the operation, Gordon’s condition began to deteriorate. He was in a highly agitated state. He lacked the strength to move his position in the bed, and was offered little assistance from the nurses, which led to great discomfort for him. Moreover, the air conditioning in the observation room, where Gordon was staying, was not working, which resulted in uncomfortable temperatures in a Caribbean hospital—so much so that Gordon had struggled to sleep since his arrival at the clinic, and was now exhausted. Despite several requests from the family for the unit to be mended, the clinic never repaired it. Gordon was clearly weakening. By the day of the operation he had been refusing food for more than 24 hours, had developed spasms that wracked his entire body, and had begun vomiting.

The operation finally took place six days after Gordon had arrived at the clinic. This was a man who had been able to walk, talk and eat just a few days earlier, but who was now visibly declining in front of everyone. This was due to a combination of lack of sleep because of the broken air-conditioning unit, lack of nutrition because Gordon was not placed on a protein drip until several days after he had stopped eating, considerable discomfort from his lack of strength to move position, and no aid offered and an overall general lack of proper nursing care.

Yet there were still more delays, not least when the family were then presented with a bill for $45,000 and advised that Dr Sparman would not perform the surgery without the money first. The family came up with the money and, despite Gordon’s severely weakened state, Dr Sparman proceeded with the surgery.

If Gordon had been admitted to the general hospital in the first place it is highly likely that he would have received pre-emptive treatment much earlier and would not have had to wait six days for a corrective procedure had he needed it. He most likely would have been making a full recovery, but at the Sparman Clinic there were continuous delays and a general lack of care.

According to the lab results, half an hour before the operation a troponin test was conducted. At this point, Gordon’s troponin levels had elevated to a point that showed that a heart attack was imminent. The family was not aware of this, but Dr Sparman would have been. Within half an hour of the operation commencing Dr Sparman returned to the family and said he had been unable to perform the procedure as Gordon had started going into cardiac arrest, so the operation was aborted.

After the operation Gordon began to deteriorate rapidly and within 24 hours he was under sedation and had been placed on tracheal intubation. A ventilator did the breathing for him, which was strapped to Gordon’s face using string. His blood pressure was now dangerously low, his body was still racked with spasms and he now also had kidney failure.

Gordon was initially sedated using Valium, but after he came round twice and tried to pull the tube from his mouth Dr Sparman changed the sedation to diazepam and tied Gordon’s hands to the bedframe. The diazepam worked in terms of ensuring that Gordon did not come round again and it also stopped the spasms; however, Gordon never fully regained consciousness after the drug was administered. For the remaining three days that Gordon spent at the clinic under sedation and intubated his body position was never moved once by the nursing staff and his family were not permitted to move him.

At this point, a member of staff at the clinic—who would prefer to remain anonymous—advised that Gordon should be airlifted out of the clinic as soon as possible. It was implied that he was not going to get better at the Sparman Clinic. The family immediately started to arrange a medical airlift back to the UK. At this very stressful time, the family were presented with another bill, for $11,000.

I hope I have managed to describe to the House the utter lack of care that Gordon received, and that the primary motivation appeared to be to delay the correct and proper treatment that Gordon needed in order to extract more money from the family.

The family were now working fastidiously with a medical flight team to repatriate Gordon to the UK. However, after speaking with consultants in the UK it was deemed that Gordon was too ill to endure the flight and needed to have an angioplasty and angiogram prior to repatriation, but it was also advised that in Gordon’s present condition this operation was high risk. Gordon was critically ill, and the risk factors associated with either the operation or the flight carried great life-threatening consequences.

Dr Sparman made it clear that the decision to have the surgery was entirely up to the family. I must reiterate this point: Dr Sparman placed life-threatening medical decisions in the hands of Gordon’s family, who had no medical training whatever. At a loss to know what choice to make, the family consulted the head cardiologist at the Queen Elizabeth hospital, who advised them to remove Gordon from the Sparman Clinic immediately and bring him to the hospital as soon as possible, and not to go ahead with the surgery. The family began making plans to move Gordon, but Dr Sparman advised them that he was too ill and would not make the journey and now began pressuring them to go ahead with the surgery.

In desperation, the family sought further advice from a relative in England who is a doctor. Based on the information that Sparman provided to the relative, it was advised that the surgery should go ahead. So the family had no choice but to put their faith in Dr Sparman.

At this point, the family were presented with another bill, for a total of $70,000, of which the family had already paid $56,000. The family were advised that the surgery would not go ahead without the balance being paid, so they had no choice but to once again come up with the money. It would appear that, in response to the threat to move Gordon out of the clinic, Dr Sparman was determined to now go ahead with the surgery, putting immense emotional pressure on my family and presenting more bills, in case he lost “the business.”

Gordon came out of surgery with only a 10% chance of survival according to Dr Sparman and two days later he was deemed stable enough for the medical evacuation. Dr Sparman arranged the medication to be administered during the medical flight, and this was given to the flight team—in a fast food bag. The sedative he provided for Gordon for the flight was once again diazepam. The air medical team queried the use of the drug as a sedative, saying that such a high quantity as had been prescribed to Gordon was not administered in the USA because it took far too long to disperse through the system in patients with that level of critical illness and especially patients with kidney failure. The absolute failure to care for Gordon’s wellbeing, coupled with a wholly inappropriate drug for his age and state of illness and in a quantity that was beyond irresponsible, placed a constant strain on his heart.

I must emphasise that we would never have been in this position had Gordon been sent to the main hospital and properly treated for the pneumonia the moment he arrived.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I interrupt my good friend to ask something I have been waiting to hear. Who made the decision to send Gordon to Sparman rather than the hospital? Was the decision taken on board the ship? Was there some kind of cosy arrangement or deal? Does he know?

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I am most grateful to my hon. and gallant Friend. I will come to that in my speech, but it was not the decision of the cruise liner; it was the decision of the port agent.

In the 11 days Gordon spent at the Sparman clinic, he received limited nutritional care and substandard nursing that gave rise to horrific first-degree bed sores that visibly shocked the medical staff at the Leeds General Infirmary and was placed in a poorly air-conditioned room, which led to his exhaustion. This all led Gordon to have much higher levels of anxiety, fear, pain and rapid health deterioration, which put increased pressure on his heart, at a time when he should have been able to rest, be properly hydrated and nutritiously fed, and so continue the recovery from his pneumonia that the ship’s doctor said he was comfortably making without any heart issues at that time.

Gordon was repatriated to the UK and admitted to the Leeds General Infirmary early on Tuesday 28 January. On inspecting the report from Dr Sparman, the consultants could not understand why Gordon was still so critically ill. The medical reports implied that he was and should be in recovery. They were also very concerned at the gravity of Gordon’s bed sores, which were first degree and had resulted from his position not being changed whilst he was in the Sparman clinic. I re-emphasise that not only did the nursing staff refuse to move Gordon, but Dr Sparman had tied his hands to the bed and prevented the family from moving him. These are basic nursing practices. Anybody in the medical profession knows that patients left in the same position will develop bed sores. I emphasise again that the staff at the Leeds General Infirmary audibly gasped when they saw the state of my father-in-law. They also questioned the prolonged use and high dosage of the drug diazepam that was administered.

Sadly, after the consultants at the LGI had performed their tests on Gordon, it was determined that his heart had greatly deteriorated and was in a much worse condition than had been reflected in Dr Sparman’s notes. In fact, the prognosis was not good. In addition to chronic heart failure, Gordon had kidney failure and brain damage from lack of oxygen. Despite his being taken off the diazepam sedation on arrival at the LGI, Gordon’s kidneys were not able to dispel the drug, and that, coupled with his now having multiple organ failure and brain damage, meant that Gordon never properly regained consciousness. Thirteen days after being admitted to the LGI, the family, with very heavy hearts, had to admit defeat and Gordon’s life support was stopped. He died on 13 February, leaving behind a devastated and traumatised family.

Owing to the circumstances around Gordon’s death the post mortem is still ongoing as the Coroner’s Office considers it to be a very complex case, which means we have been unable to get the final pathology report and still await his final death certificate.

My family paid approximately $200,000 in total for the barbaric treatment my father-in-law received in Barbados and the subsequent medical repatriation to the UK, and they have nothing to show for that money other than traumatic memories of the tragic and painful death of Gordon. After the horrific treatment and trauma my father-in-law had been through, we did not think we could be hit with anything else, but we were. It was only after returning to the UK that the family started doing simple Google searches on Dr Alfred Sparman, and they highlighted a horrifying picture.

In 1986, Sparman was convicted of the offence of disorderly conduct, to which he pleaded guilty. In 1991, he was convicted of the crimes of sexual abuse in the first degree and unlawful imprisonment in New York and sentenced to five years’ probation. In January 1996, Sparman was registered as a sex offender in Florida, but in June he applied for licensure to practise medicine in Florida. The state of Florida revoked his medical licence in 1997. In 1999, Sparman received a licence to practise medicine in Tennessee, but this was revoked in February 2001 owing to

“unprofessional conduct; a previous felony conviction for sexual abuse in New York, and false statement on medical application.”

In June 2001, he was again registered as a sex offender in the state of Florida.

It was in 2001 that Sparman went to Barbados and opened his clinic. In 2004, he had his board certification in internal medicine suspended by the American Board of Internal Medicine, but he continues to this day to advertise himself as an “American Board-Certified Physician”. In 2005, he was reregistered as a sexual predator and offender in the state of Florida. In 2010, he was reregistered as a sex offender in the state of Tennessee, and the register also contains a list of Sparman’s aliases: John W. Freeman and Alfred W. Eversley.

On top of the crimes for which he has been convicted, Sparman has advertised himself as a “Board-Certified Cardiologist” but never passed the board certification cardiology exams in the USA. He has also advertised himself as a Fellow of the American College of Cardiology but the FACC has no record of his being a fellow. He was reprimanded by the Medical Council of Barbados and asked to remove “FACC” from his letterhead. He advertises himself as an interventional cardiologist but has no specialist training in interventional cardiology. He has had a number of complaints made against him to the Medical Council of Barbados. He has also tried to poach paying cardiology patients—that is, tourists—from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. All this information can be found in a simple online due diligence check. In addition, there are countless stories online of other people who have suffered at the hands of Dr Sparman.

So why was Gordon sent to the clinic of a supposed doctor who was stripped of his licence to practise medicine in the US, who is a registered sex offender, who has numerous speculations surrounding him regarding his conduct and who has blatantly lied about his accreditations? Why was Gordon sent to a heart clinic in the first place when he was diagnosed with double pneumonia, rather than being sent to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital? We will never know the answers to those questions.

A representative of Cruise & Maritime Voyages has confirmed that it was the port agent who determined where my father-in-law was taken for his medical care once he was disembarked. The port agent is governed by maritime law. A port agent is the designated person or agency held responsible for handling shipments and cargo and the general interest of its customers at ports and harbours worldwide, on behalf of ship owners, managers and charterers. Quite frankly, the decision that the port agent made to send Gordon to the Sparman clinic, instead of to the main hospital, killed him. And to add a final insult to all the injury, instead of Gordon visiting his “bucket list” destination, the Taj Mahal, with his beloved wife, Jackie instead laid his ashes there.

I ask the Minister and her Department today to seek a change to international maritime law, by lobbying the International Maritime Organisation, regarding the duty of care and due diligence, through a fit and proper persons test, that a port agent must carry out when identifying and commissioning onshore medical facilities and practitioners for those who are disembarked for medical emergencies. The international conventions for the safety of life at sea of 1974 and 1988 have been used to bring in the highest standards of health and safety for those at sea, whether they be crew or passengers. These provisions were amended in 2004 through the international ship and port facility security code after the security concerns raised after 9/11, and I would argue that this shows that the wellbeing of seafarers carries on within the port, not just on the vessel.

Gordon was always proud of the work he did in bringing about changes to landlord law to achieve the protection and standards required, especially for tenants, and although this will never bring him back, it would be a final fitting tribute to his life to know that, even in death, he was able to try to make the world a better place, to ensure that this never happens to anybody else.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I must start by passing on my deepest condolences to my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) and his family on the tragic death of Gordon Hoyland Spencer. I had the privilege of meeting Mr Spencer’s family earlier today and saw their grief and despair. My hon. Friend gave a powerful, brave, emotional speech, and it was incredibly difficult to digest such a long list of tragic incidents that should just not have happened. What makes Mr Spencer’s death all the more heartbreaking is that it could so easily have been prevented by prompt and correct treatment and good quality care. Quite understandably, my hon. Friend wants action to prevent any other families going through a similar agony.

Under the International Labour Organisation’s maritime labour convention, ships carrying 100 or more persons and ordinarily engaged on international voyages of more than three days’ duration shall carry a qualified medical doctor who is responsible for providing medical care. Ships’ doctors, like any other doctor, have a duty of care to their patients governed by ethical responsibilities. That would usually include discharging sick patients into what they consider appropriate medical care facilities ashore, in compliance with the code of medical ethics in their country of registration or licence. In doing so, a ship’s doctor may liaise with an assistance company appointed by the passenger’s insurer, which should be able to advise on appropriate care providers ashore.

According to my hon. Friend’s account, it would appear that Mr Spencer received appropriate care and treatment while on board the vessel and was recovering—we must note that. However, the facilities available on board were not sufficient to further Mr Spencer’s recovery and a decision was made that he should be medically discharged in Barbados. I understand that the port agent facilitated the transfer of Mr Spencer to a cardiology clinic rather than to the general hospital.

The port agent’s role is primarily to help facilitate the ship’s transit through the port, and the engagement and choice of an agent is at the shipping company’s discretion. A ship’s agent may, if asked, provide the details of local medical facilities, but the responsibility remains with the ship’s doctor to discharge sick passengers into what they consider to be an appropriate medical facility ashore. My hon. Friend has requested that international maritime law should be amended to place a duty of care and due diligence on a port agent, through a fit and proper person test, when they are identifying and commissioning onshore medical facilities for those who are disembarked for medical emergencies.

Port agents are required to comply with relevant domestic law and the port statute, but they are not regulated by international maritime law. However, considering the case that my hon. Friend has presented today, I will ask the officials at the Department for Transport and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency to consider whether such regulation would fall within the remit of the International Maritime Organisation or whether it would be appropriate for another international body. I will also write to the Cruise Lines International Association, the international trade association for the industry, to highlight the issues that this incident has raised in order to highlight its duty of care and responsibilities with regard to port agents.

Furthermore, I will raise the case directly with the IMO, and, considering how personal the case is for my hon. Friend, I wonder whether he could bear to share his experiences again. I know that this will be emotional and difficult for him, but I respectfully ask him to join me for a meeting that I will convene directly with the IMO’s secretary-general so that my hon. Friend can share his experiences and make representations to see whether we can lobby and obtain a change in the law.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for that offer. I wonder whether the invitation could be extended to my family, who were in Barbados at the time and experienced what happened at first hand.

[Ms Ghani]

That would be absolutely fit and proper. I accept it, and we will do what we can as soon as we can.

We have heard this afternoon of the tragic and preventable death of Gordon Hoyland Spencer. I share my hon. Friend’s commitment that, although nothing can be done to reverse what happened, Gordon’s death should act as a call for action to the maritime industry. Passengers should be cared for to the highest possible standard, particularly when they are most in need, and the Government will play their part in helping to ensure that no one has to repeat the painful experiences of Gordon and his family.

HS2: Buckinghamshire

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Monday 29th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Ms Ghani]

We are committed to funding railways in the north. My hon. Friend mentions investment around the ports, and he will see the work I have undertaken with Maritime 2050 to encourage investment in infrastructure and research and evaluation around maritime that will benefit his community. He makes a valid point. The project has taken a long time to get to this point—never mind the first scheduled trains—and as a long-term project it requires solid commitment from Ministers and Members of Parliament. If we are ever to undertake programmes of work that are truly transformative and long-term, we will have to show commitment over a long period. If £94 billion is returned to the economy and 100,000 jobs are created, it will play some part in regeneration in his community as well.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

I have always supported this project—it will come through my constituency, but the benefits to my constituency will be huge in terms of jobs created, the rolling stock depot and various other aspects—but there is a problem. We were supposed to vote on phase 2b of the route in 2019, but that has been pushed back and back. My constituents near to the route are getting no answers or timeline and are having to battle tooth and nail to get compensation from HS2. I urge my hon. Friend to tell HS2 that its community engagement does not do what it says on the tin. I have met HS2 several times and pointed out areas of the route that need improvement, and every time I have another meeting, it is like the last one never happened. More importantly, in meetings with my constituents, it is also like the last one never happened.

There are two problems that I think my hon. Friend needs to address. First, the time overrun is costing money, and secondly, the engagement with my constituents is not working properly. Can we learn the lessons from what is going on with phase 1—I hope that that keeps me in order, Mr Speaker—to ensure that we do not go through this process again when we reach phase 2?

[Ms Ghani]

I absolutely take on board my hon. Friend’s frustration. He has already made a number of representations to me and to the Secretary of State. HS2 Ltd must get better. I am hearing that at the Dispatch Box, and HS2 will be hearing it too. HS2 must improve its community engagement: it must ensure that the community engagement managers are working effectively and in a timely fashion, and ensure that answers are given to the questions that are being posed. I do not think it is fair that Members of Parliament are having to make representations on behalf of their constituents. HS2 should be sorting out the issues so that they do not even reach MPs’ surgeries, and I shall be taking that back to it as well.

I know that my hon. Friend—a bit like me—wants the line to come as soon as possible, but there was a slight delay to ensure that we were considering Northern Powerhouse Rail. He may remember that there was also an election, which took up a substantial amount of time.

Leaving the EU: Economic Analysis

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Wednesday 28th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

We have done precisely what the House required us to do in setting out the estimated impacts of the deal, of an average free trade agreement, of an EEA-style scenario and, indeed, of a no deal. As for the hon. Lady’s point about the legal advice, I know that the Attorney General will be making a statement to the House in due course.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

Is not the truth that the range of economic forecasts published today show the importance of trying to secure the withdrawal agreement? When I look at my constituents, I see the small to medium-sized enterprise manufacturing base that employs so many people who feed into the supply chain to the big companies that export frictionlessly into the European Union. It is important that we honour the result of the referendum, but that we also do everything possible to ensure that we do not fall off the cliff edge. The figures published today show that that would be catastrophic. We can argue about the size of those figures, but one thing is clear: if we do not allow a proper withdrawal agreement to take place, there will be a catastrophic economic impact, and it is the responsibility of us in the House to make sure we do everything possible to avoid that.

[Mel Stride]

My hon. Friend’s assertions lie at the heart of what we are all considering: the future of our country and the expressed will of the British people at the time of the referendum. What this deal—as opposed to no deal—will do is safeguard our economy and the jobs that we have created as a Government, ensure that we deliver on our pledge to take control of our borders, our money and our laws in order to protect the integrity of the United Kingdom, and enable us to go out as a globally facing nation and do deals with other countries around the world.

Five-year Land Supply

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Wednesday 4th July 2018 Westminster Hall

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

The simple truth is that our constituents, the public, have no faith left in the planning system. That is hardly a surprise when one is dealing with, to be frank, the rank incompetence of a council such as Leeds City Council. It has created a totally over-inflated housing target figure, which even the academics at Leeds University have claimed simply could not be built in the timeframe laid out, yet in the next couple of weeks we are to go into a public inquiry in which we assess whether Leeds City Council’s site allocations plan is sound. How can something be sound if it is based on fantasy figures?

Leeds City Council has lost almost every single Planning Advisory Service appeal; every time, the PAS says, “You don’t have a five-year land supply.” But the figure is being inflated to say that we need tens of thousands more houses than we actually need. It is, therefore, very difficult to come up with the land supply for houses that are never going to be built.

What are the consequences of that? Sites are being put forward to be built on that should never have been involved. They are the prime sites, where a developer will say, “I’m going to build on that site and get the housing numbers up.” They quite legitimately do not have to build on the brownfield sites, because the council has said, “This is a site you can build on.” The developer then starts to build on that green-belt and greenfield site, and they get far more revenue from that. There is no incentive for them to move elsewhere.

In the past five years, Leeds City Council has granted 25,148 planning permissions. Of those, 4,429 expired—they were not built within the specified timeframe—and only 3,680 were built. Therefore 17,039 remain unbuilt, yet Leeds says that we need to find planning and space for another 70,000 houses.

I realise that the Minister cannot respond to this, but his constituency neighbours mine, and the councils in his constituency, especially Harrogate Borough Council, are planning to build tens of thousands of houses on the border of my constituency. At the moment, Leeds City Council is not taking any notice of that, and it is saying that we need to expand. Councillor Alan Lamb from Wetherby, Councillor Ryan Stephenson from Harewood, and Councillor Matthew Robinson have been at the forefront of fighting back against Leeds City Council, but it is a Labour majority council by quite some margin. Even the independents—I pay tribute to Councillor Mark Dobson, who is an independent in Garforth in my constituency—have been fighting against the Labour council on those numbers, but they just get ridden roughshod over.

On 1 August, I will be at a site allocations plan inquiry arguing why a grade II listed parks and gardens site should not be built on. I will be doing that because Leeds City Council refuses to reassess the numbers it came up with on the basis of totally out-of-date migration figures from the early and mid-2000s, when numbers were much higher than they are now. Even now, demand is declining, although the council says that it is going up. The inspector has said, “It is not my job to assess the numbers. That was done in 2012. We are here to judge the soundness of the SAP.” How can we possibly judge the soundness of the plan when we are dealing with fantasy numbers?

We have lost every PAS site appeal in my constituency. The only one left is Scholes. The plan to try to save that PAS site and build somewhere else on the Parlington estate would increase the traffic flow through that village by 300%—that is Leeds City Council’s highways department’s own figure. Even the solutions that Leeds City Council comes up with to try to save a village actually destroy that village by shifting the problem elsewhere.

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge), and I congratulate him on securing this debate. I also congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert). It has to be about how many houses we build, not how many permissions we have. Quite simply, in my constituency alone, almost 75% of the planning permissions have gone unbuilt. How on earth can someone put forward a plan that says, “Actually, Elmet and Rothwell needs another 12,000 houses,” when 75% of the permissions granted have not yet been built? The whole thing needs to be reassessed.

I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to feed back to his Department that, unless the numbers are accurate, these processes are completely unsound. All we are doing is giving a licence to build on the green belt and greenfield land, rather than tackling brownfield land, which consequently means there is no affordable housing.

[Lee Rowley (North East Derbyshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) on securing the debate. The problem is countrywide and it affects North East Derbyshire. At times, this debate has seemed like a self-help group where we all put our concerns and difficulties on the table.

We are experiencing similar difficulties in my constituency, because a council has abjectly failed to discharge its responsibilities over several years—more than a decade. Just as my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) described, that will bring about a plan loaded with too high a number of houses to be built in my part of the world. At the same time, because the five-year housing land supply has only just been put in place, it has caused a significant number of speculative planning developments to be submitted in places that are inappropriate under the plan and objectively inappropriate for people who live in the area and know it best.

Over the past couple of years, North East Derbyshire has experienced 11 separate planning applications in areas that the local plan would not allow to be developed under any other circumstances. Those applications are for more than 1,300 homes. Given that our district has to build only 6,600 homes over a 15 to 20-year timeframe, 1,300 homes that should not have been applied for in the first place represent a significant increase in the number of houses that are needed. The area in the bottom half of my constituency is already slated to take 3,000 new houses that local residents have accepted and, in some ways, embraced, so this is not about nimbyism. It is about houses being built in the wrong place because councils are failing to put in place the right plans and failing to discharge their responsibilities. As a result, we are seeing the loss of greenfield sites and other places where houses would otherwise be considered completely inappropriate.

I draw hon. Members’ attention to two problems with the five-year housing land supply. The first is methodology. My hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell made the point about over-inflated numbers. In the same way, my district council did not get the target figure of 280 houses a year right in the first place, and it is now about to replace that with a figure of 332 houses a year, which will further undermine local residents’ confidence that our planning system knows what it is doing.

Despite not having the correct top-line figure, when the council assesses the deliverability of the planning permissions that have been put in place, it talks to the developers themselves, so the developers get a second opportunity to say whether they will build in places where they already have planning permission. That retards the overall five-year housing land supply and gives developers more opportunity to get housing planning permissions through. That methodology is a huge problem.

The second problem is competence. The political leadership in my local council has been thoroughly incompetent in ensuring that North East Derbyshire is protected from inappropriate and speculative housing developments. The authority monitoring report, which my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) outlined to some extent, is a publication that appears and disappears at will. The 2014 version appeared a year late—a full year after the council decided it had a 2.15-year housing land supply. The 2015 version did not even appear, and was just amalgamated into a 2015 and 2016 report. Again, that appeared nine months after the number was calculated.

We did not know what our housing land supply was until a special report was taken to the council in October. I am pretty sure, because I spent some of last summer trying to calculate it, that the council knew many months beforehand that it had hit the five-year housing land supply, but it chose not to report or announce it until October. When some planning applications went through, including one on Fanny Avenue, Killamarsh, it was stated that the absence of a five-year housing land supply was at least partly why they were approved.

My council is clearly completely failing, not just on the plan as a whole, but on the five-year housing land supply, and as a result I have to go and talk to residents in Wingerworth, Old Tupton, Ashover, Killamarsh and North Wingfield, where another 250 houses have just been put on a site that should not be developed on, and never has been, because the plan is not in place. That is unacceptable. I support the Government’s localism angle, and I accept that it works in principle, but when councils do not discharge their responsibilities, we reach the point that North East Derbyshire has got to. A huge number of houses are being built, potentially in the wrong places, and the only way to stop them is a huge amount of heartache and angst and huge numbers of planning inquiries.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

On the point about councils’ incompetence, Leeds City Council has been heard to say that it simply cannot be bothered to reassess the numbers. It has now moved to a position of saying, “We will assess the numbers after the site allocations plan.” If it reduces the numbers, it makes it even easier to build on the green belt and greenfield land.

[Lee Rowley]

My hon. Friend makes a correct and important point.

The only way that we can have any semblance of control over the planning system is by extraordinary displays of public opposition to applications that should never have gone through in the first place. Hundreds of hours of residents’ time are lost on many meetings that should not have to happen. Hundreds of thousands of pounds are allocated to planning inquiries that should never have started. All of that retards confidence in a planning system that is quite rightly trying to deliver the houses we need in this country for the long term. I understand that this is a challenging area, and hon. Members from both sides of the House have outlined why, but when councils do not discharge their responsibilities, we get to the place that North East Derbyshire has got to, which totally undermines the trust and belief that councils and the planning system can deliver.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil O'Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) on securing this important debate and on his thoughtful speech.

Let me take a step back. Why is it that the centre of Government in the UK has felt the need over successive generations—from the planning by appeal of the 1980s, to the regional spatial strategies of the 1990s, to the five-year land supply—to have some vehicle to ensure that councils come up with local plans and that they deliver housing? Why is it that so many people oppose new housing in our country and so many councils oppose what developers come up with?

I think that there are two underlying reasons why people oppose so much new development. First, we build in the wrong places. Too much development is tacked on to the end of existing villages and towns, without the proper infrastructure—the new roads, parking spaces, GP surgeries and school places—that is necessary to support it. There is a terrible example of that in my own constituency on the Gartree Road, where the local Lib Dem-run council has decided to put in its own local plan a proposal for a large site on a road that is already congested, with the proposed houses being pushed right up against existing residents’ homes, when there is no need for that to be the case.

Secondly, there is no benefit or compensation for existing residents who are affected by new development. On Farndon Fields in my constituency, residents have to put up with construction traffic coming past their new homes, as well as dust and noise from the construction site, and there is no pay-off or compensation of any kind for them for putting up with all that.

How can we remedy these underlying reasons why so many of us oppose new development? The first thing we need to do is capture more of the benefits of development for the community. At the moment, only around a quarter of that huge uplift in value that we see when planning permission is granted is captured by the local community, with the overwhelming majority going to the lucky landowner and the developer. Other countries capture far more value from development for the community, which is then ploughed into decent landscaping, greater separation areas, more green space and better infrastructure for the community.

The second thing we need to do is give councils greater discretion over how they spend the revenues they get from the community infrastructure levy and section 106 agreements. Although we capture more value than we did 10 years ago, once we take out the amount that is spent on social and affordable housing, less money is actually being spent now in real terms than 10 years ago on landscaping, community infrastructure and all the things that benefit existing residents. Therefore, let us give councils more discretion over the way they spend those revenues.

Finally, let us make sure that councils have the powers—be it through compulsory purchase order, or through their ability to buy and control land—to do what local councils in other countries in Europe, the US and Asia already do: provide a lead role in assembling and preparing land for development. That is the norm in most of the rest of the world; the UK is unusual in not having that arrangement. That is why a UK council cannot control the speed with which a developer builds out.

In fact, in the UK the one thing that is not up for negotiation is the price paid to the landowner. Everything else can go hang. The amount of social contributions can be pushed down by the developer, and the speed of build-out can be extended over many, many years in order to keep the price up. The only thing that is fixed in our system is the price paid to the landowner. Let us turn the system around and have a more European-style approach to the matter.

As well as doing all those things, let us have a different approach to the way we go about development. In more rural or suburban areas, such as mine, I would love to see more development happening in stand-alone developments, so that we can provide infrastructure and a whole planned approach to a new community, rather than tacking things on and overloading all of our existing villages and towns. Let us build new communities where we will disturb fewer people.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

On that point, I share my hon. Friend’s view that when there is the demand to build such huge numbers of homes, there should be a stand-alone community. However, the phrase “stand-alone” must mean stand-alone, and not a community that is dumped in a place, such as the Parlington estate in my constituency, which would have a massive effect on the villages around it? Development needs to be stand-alone.

[Neil O'Brien]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right and we are lucky to have with us here today one of the Members for Milton Keynes, because Milton Keynes shows us what proper, planned development can do; it can create nice places that lots of people want to live in.

I would like to see more of the development in this country happening in our cities. Changes such as the development of the modern knowledge-based economy mean that our cities are both where support for new development is highest and where the demand for new development is highest. Let us try to build more in our cities. Let us help inner-city councils build more, by liberalising building up, by giving them devolved powers over public transport, and by giving them the powers to assemble land, in order to unlock fragmented brownfield sites, so that we can actually get more built in our cities. That is how we can have a new approach.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk is right to raise the issue of the five-year land supply. At the moment we have three tests on local councils: the requirement to have a local plan, the five-year land supply and the new delivery test that will be coming in over the coming year. Effectively, we have a belt and two braces. Of those three tests, the most opaque is the five-year land supply. It is extremely difficult for a council to know whether it has a five-year land supply, and it is extremely easy for developers to game that process and keep councils deliberately below the five-year land supply to stop them getting control over development in their area. It is the weakest of the three existing tests.

I end by agreeing strongly with my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk. He said, “It is perfectly reasonable to expect our councils to have a local plan, but how can we impose these tests on them without giving them the tools to control developers, development and where things happen?” The heartbreaking thing in many constituencies is where a council wants to do good development and build a real new community with proper infrastructure and a real heart, or the community has worked for two years to come up with a neighbourhood plan that works for the specific circumstances in that area, and developers come along, game the system and cut off at the knees our local elected representatives and the people who have worked hard to build neighbourhood plans. That is the killer in those situations. There is nothing more corrosive for public support for our current planning system than when we see councils that want to be brave and do good new development have their good plans cut off at the knees by developers gaming the system.