Draft European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (Repeal of EU Restrictions in Devolution Legislation, etc.) Regulations 2022

Alex Norris Excerpts

Thursday 3rd March 2022 General Committees

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Dr Huq.

I am grateful for the Minister’s explanation. I do not intend either to divide or to detain the Committee today—[Interruption.] Well, I can do a longer version if colleagues want. I could not tell whether that was agreement or murmurings of massive disappointment; I shall err on the side of caution, because I would wish never to displease colleagues.

We talk a lot about what ought to be on the statute book, but it is right that as custodians of it we should seek to remove redundant powers. Clearly, these were seen as valuable safeguards at the time to ensure orderly transition, but the moment for that has certainly passed. Although we are debating their removal, it is worth reflecting that it is significantly undesirable to put a freeze on the devolution settlement. That was done in pursuit of what was a significant goal at the time, but any such action weakens the settlement, and at a time when we need to build and strengthen our Union, that does not help. As the Minister said, the powers were never needed; instead, we have seen that the operation of the different Parliaments with good faith, good relationships and shared goals is a better way to do it than via regulation. I hope to hear from the Minister that there are no plans for similar powers in other legislation, whether related to transition issues or anything else.

I will stop there because I am not sure that I enjoyed the debates on this matter the first time. I look around the room and see many Members who were not here for those; I envy them greatly. I do not think rehashing those points would serve much of a purpose because, as the Minister and I have said, the provisions have not been used, they will not now be needed and, in any event, they have not been usable since the end of January. On that basis, the Labour party is happy to repeal them.

Draft Representation of the People (Proxy Vote Applications) (Coronavirus) (Amendment) Regulations 2022

Alex Norris Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2022 General Committees

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Dr Huq. As with the 2021 iteration, we support these draft regulations, so I will keep my contribution brief and not divide the Committee. Before we start, I want to pass on the best wishes of Labour Members to the Minister for Levelling Up Communities, the hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Kemi Badenoch), who we would normally expect to field this instrument. As she is going through something really awful, our thoughts and prayers are with her. I hope the Minister will pass that on to her.

Allowing for late urgent applications to vote by proxy when an individual is required to self-isolate or in response to other coronavirus-related medical advice, or if things change for a proxy who goes through the same thing, is an important part of maintaining our democracy during uncertain times. The reality is that we will be dealing with the pandemic for some time as we learn to live with it, but we might still need sensible adjustments to ensure that we can, and this instrument is one of those.

This morning a member of my staff tested positive for coronavirus for the first time in this pandemic. If this was polling day and these regulations were not in place, he would not be able to vote. That would not be right, so it is right that there is capacity to get a proxy up until quite late on polling day, as these provisions allow.

I want to be doubly reassured about a point that I think I heard in the Minister’s contribution. The wording has been updated to ensure that the regulations align with current medical guidance, which does not ask the clinically extremely vulnerable to self-isolate, but the assurance in the explanatory notes—and, I think, what the Minister said—was that those individuals will still have access to a proxy in the way that they did, provided that that is in line with what their medical practitioner advises. I think that is what the Minister said, but I am keen to have clarification.

To build on the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham, I say to the Minister and his colleagues that this is how legislation relating to elections ought to be: working to ensure the maximum legitimate participation. This is a practical instrument in the pursuit of tackling a real-world problem. It is incongruous with the Government’s Elections Bill, which creates new hurdles to participation in pursuit of tackling a problem for which evidence is flimsy at best, but that might be a matter for another day.

It is right that this instrument is carried over, but can the Minister give us clarity on why this covid-related one has been extended and others have not—for example, the instrument allowing councils to choose how they meet, including, perhaps, virtually? The hon. Member for Mansfield is a member of Nottinghamshire County Council, my neighbouring authority. Indeed, he is the leader. I have counselled him against it, but he never listens to me. He will correct me if I am wrong, but Nottinghamshire is probably one of the longest north-to-south counties, if not the longest; it is very long. There is a great distance between County Hall in the south and Bassetlaw in the north, so there could be an argument—this would be for the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues, not me, to say—that it would be better for certain committees to meet virtually. I cannot understand why we in this place would want to take that option away from them. They had that chance during the pandemic, and it worked effectively. I am surprised that the Government have not at least given that another year in order to evaluate its use. I hope the Minister might talk about why these covid-related regulations have been extended and others have not. I will stop there.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alex Norris Excerpts

Monday 24th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend, like me, abjures the whole idea of pork barrels. What we both believe in is allocating funding on the basis of merit and need. I can assure him that he has been in the same Division Lobby as me more often, I believe—although I stand to be corrected by the Whips—than the deputy leader of the Labour party, the shadow Defence Secretary, the shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, the shadow Culture Secretary or the shadow Social Care Secretary, all of whom have benefited from levelling-up funds. If a requirement for Government funding were voting with the Government, I fear that the deputy leader of the Labour party, my dear friend, would have lost out. However, I am delighted that her constituents in Ashton-under-Lyne have benefited from our funding, because we are committed to levelling up and uniting the country, irrespective of political colour.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

Analysis of levelling-up funding published recently by NPC—New Philanthropy Capital—found that, despite strong public support, homelessness is not being properly addressed. It found that communities with the highest concentrations of black, African and Caribbean communities fared poorly, and that four of the most deprived communities missed out entirely. Both the Secretary of State and the Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the hon. Member for Harborough (Neil O'Brien) have sought to make a supposed joke of this, but I do not think it is laughing matter that while poorer communities have missed out, the constituencies of at least three Cabinet Ministers, which are considerably more affluent, were successful in their bids. Beyond the jokes and the spin, does the Secretary of State honestly expect the House to believe that the Government have acted equitably rather than defaulting to the usual approach of pursuing narrow self-interest?

[Michael Gove]

I cannot see how it would be in the narrow self-interest of the Government, if operating on partisan lines, to have given the hon. Gentleman’s constituency £18 million for transport improvements from the levelling-up fund. These are not jokes; these are serious matters. We work with people across this House, including and especially in the Labour party, to ensure that funding goes where it is required. Lying behind the allegations made by him and others is a suggestion that somehow civil servants would conspire with Ministers deliberately to favour constituencies on the basis of political colouration.

My new opposite number, the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy)—I offer her my congratulations on her elevation—recently wrote to me to ask whether we would make transparent the basis on which we allocate that funding. We have: it is published on a website called gov.uk. Google can sometimes be helpful to all of us.

Levelling Up: East of England

Alex Norris Excerpts

Tuesday 18th January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms McVey. I sincerely thank the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) for securing the debate, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting it.

I will confess that I love fielding debates for the Opposition in this place. No other parliamentary moment offers the chance to hear the hon. Member for Waveney talk in such depth and with such thoughtfulness to make his case. I was glad to be here and learn plenty from it, as I am sure the Minister did, although I have my own reflections. It set the tone for what has been a brilliant debate. He said at the beginning that his purpose was to highlight the possibility of the east of England being ignored by the levelling-up White Paper and to seek to avoid that. I suspect he managed that with aplomb, with the support of colleagues across party. His case was very well made.

As the hon. Member said, it has been two and half years since the Prime Minister spoke of the need to level up Britain. Two and half years later we are still waiting to find out what that means. It appears we may not have to wait too much longer. I hope the Minister will give us a little sneak preview among friends, including a sense of the timing, though I suspect he might wish to keep his powder dry, as might I to an extent. I might disappoint the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock) who wants a detailed response and an alternative, but the Government will have to show their hand first. After all, we have waited two and half years. The case made around regional and local authority disparities is important. As the conversations on levelling up evolve, that will become even more important.

I will reflect on contributions from colleagues. My hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), chair of the all-party parliamentary group on the East of England, made an important point about the London effect. We need to have that understanding at a regional, sub-regional and local authority level about how data can be skewed. So that, in trying to ensure that communities are not left behind—not a great phrase but we know what it means—we do not create a new collection of left-behind areas.

I share a lot of the frustrations of my hon. Friends the Members for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins), for Bedford (Mohammad Yasin) and for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) around how things have been done previously. It is sad, avoidable and reductive, and does not serve an agenda of trying to move the country forward together, that we seem to be constantly pitted against each other in bidding rounds, where some must be winners and others must be losers. The funding is one off, so maybe someone wins today and loses tomorrow, or vice versa. In reality, no community that has been funded through levelling-up programmes so far that is not worse off when losses to the local authority are taken into account. That test must be passed, and it must be a comprehensive settlement that everybody has a stake in.

I will reiterate a point made by colleagues of all persuasions. The Opposition do not accept the framing of levelling up as north versus south. That was a point made by the hon. Members for North Norfolk (Duncan Baker) and for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew). I represent one of the poorest communities in the country, based in the east midlands, and I hate the assumptions that come with that. That cuts both ways and I should not make assumptions about communities that might be better off according to their top lines. I should not assume that that is a place with streets paved with gold, with no social problems, challenges or pockets of deprivation. That is not what the evidence shows.

This is an all-regions approach, and the east of England is a study in that. Taken as a whole, looking at those top lines, the region is a net contributor, with an above average GDP growth rate over the past decade, which is forecast to continue, above average employment, below average unemployment and above average house prices. That would suggest that the east of England is fine and that levelling up should happen elsewhere. As we have heard, the reality is different. There is a different experience for those in the south of the region, which makes up the London commuter belt, while much of East Anglia would not. Even within those communities, there are pockets of deprivation.

We have heard that there are many areas that suffer high levels of deprivation. Those could be coastal communities, such as Lowestoft, referred to by the hon. Member for Waveney, Great Yarmouth just up the coast, and Clacton-on-Sea, as the hon. Member for Clacton (Giles Watling) mentioned, or they could be rural areas with associated challenges, such as Thetford, March and Wisbech, or parts of cities such as Peterborough and Norwich.

When the levelling-up White Paper is finally published, that nuanced understanding of regional variation will be one of the tests by which colleagues will judge it. However, the key point, which my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich South made in a couple of different contexts, is not just adopting the same approaches, because they will get the same outcomes. He made an important point about sustainability, saying that levelling up is not just about helping different communities to catch up on the same development model, because we know the impact that will have. That is profoundly true globally, and the question of how we support global development so that we do not just repeat the old models is a thorny question that we must address. However, it is true at home, too.

The East of England Local Government Association’s analysis of the autumn Budget was interesting, showing once again that 40% less—considerably less—was being made available for the east of England than for other areas. Of course, that was repeated in round one of the levelling-up fund bid, with just three of the seven of the region’s priority 1 projects having success. The EELGA is worried and says there is a clear risk that other deprived areas in the east of England will be left out and left behind, presumably on account of the wider region’s overall performance. Again, that creates a profound challenge, which applies across the region.

Transport is another key theme. I dare say that the Minister and I will participate in a lot of debates about different regions and different communities, which I very much look forward to, and transport will be a constant theme. It sometimes felt necessary to have an A to Z to follow things in this debate, but the sheer volume of A roads referred to was illustrative, telling us an awful lot about the natural geography and the infrastructure of the east of England, and about the challenges that come with that sort of road. The focus over the last year has been more on city region settlements, particularly around rail, but that focus alone clearly will not pass the overall test, because otherwise this becomes a long-running, self-perpetuating cycle.

The publication of the White Paper really ought to be the moment that that cycle is broken, because many rural and coastal communities—across the country, but particularly in the east of England—have faced significant challenges for a long time. As the hon. Member for Waveney said, over the past 40 years good jobs have left the region and not always been replaced, forcing young people to leave the area and seek opportunities elsewhere, taking their spending power away with them, which causes high streets to struggle, local institutions to decay and transport networks to close down. And so it goes, and so it goes. More of that decline just begets even more and more, until we break the cycle.

I will conclude there, because I know that colleagues will be keen that the long list of issues that have been put to the Minister are all comprehensively addressed, with a commitment today to addressing them. However, I will just say finally that in preparing for this debate, I thought that we were perhaps a couple of weeks—three or four weeks—too early, and timing is everything in politics, because we do not yet know what the Government will say on levelling up, I suspect that they may not quite know themselves yet what they will say. Actually, though, the timing for this debate was perfect, because the east of England offers an illustrative case of what has happened in the past, which we do not want to see repeated, and it is better for the Minister to hear that before the Government make their statement than it would be afterwards. I look forward to hearing his response to the debate.

[Esther McVey (in the Chair)]

I call the Minister to respond, and also mention that Peter Aldous needs a couple of minutes at the end to wind up the debate.

Arcadia and Debenhams: Business Support and Job Retention

Alex Norris Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

I thank my hon. Friend, and I commend his work in retail before; many others around the House have done such work. Yes, as well as offering them support through universal credit and other benefits, we will work with them through the Jobcentre Plus and its frontline workers to help them with CV writing, creating opportunities for and sharing opportunities with them, and ensuring that transferable skills have a massive role to play in that.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

Up and down high streets in Nottingham, businesses big and small are really worried about their viability in the early parts of next year. They look at us talking about Debenhams and Arcadia today, and they think we will be back in January, February and March talking about them unless something changes. I ask the Minister the same question they are asking me: beyond reviews and promises of reform in the future, what support is coming now to keep our high streets viable?

[Paul Scully]

We are keeping our high streets viable by giving people business rates relief and giving businesses a moratorium to make sure they cannot be evicted and cannot be chased for rent debts, but, most importantly, by keeping retail open in all three tiers so that they can actually trade their way out of this. What they want is not handouts, ideally, although they do need the support; they want customers. They want customers for long- term support.

Covid-19: Housing Market

Alex Norris Excerpts

Wednesday 13th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op) [V]]

At the beginning of this crisis, the Secretary of State said “Everyone in”, and that he would fund councils to end homelessness. Since then, it has been suggested that that might not apply to those with no recourse to public funds. That is nonsense: the virus could not care less about someone’s migration status. Will the Secretary of State take this opportunity to clarify that when he said everybody he meant absolutely everybody, and that he will be providing funding to make sure this happens?

[Robert Jenrick]

I am extremely grateful for the work of local councils and charities in places such as Nottingham: they did an amazing job in bringing at least 90% of those individuals who were sleeping rough at the onset of the crisis into safer accommodation. In some parts of the country, the numbers of rough sleepers have now fallen to as low as one, two or three individuals. We believe that the success rate could even be as much as 98% so far, but the challenge is by no means complete and there is more work to do. We have said that the Government’s policy on no recourse to public funds has not changed, but councils do have flexibility, as they know, to support those individuals when there is a risk to life and serious concern. They should behave humanely and compassionately.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alex Norris Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

May I praise my hon. Friend for the hard work that he has done on behalf of his communities, who have faced severe flooding over the past two weeks? We have worked together and brought forward a significant financial package that is comparable to that provided in 2015. I do not believe that anyone has yet approached the Government to ask for match funding for a charity foundation, for example, as happened in 2015, but I would be happy to consider that if it was suggested.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

Later this afternoon we will discuss the local government finance report, but there will be no true long-term sustainability for any local authority until adult social care has been resolved in this generation. We have heard lots about the Government’s desire to create a consensus on the issue. Where are the proposals so that we can start to discuss them?

[Luke Hall]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that, on top of putting £1 billion a year into social care, we will be bringing forward that long-term plan this year. We of course look forward to those discussions in the weeks and months ahead. I very much hope that a true cross-party consensus can be reached, because we need to resolve this so that everyone has the dignity and security they deserve.