Housing

Debate between Hilary Benn and Clive Betts

Wednesday 8th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

I give way to the Chair of the Select Committee.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

Given that the Help to Buy scheme is such a major plank of Government housing policy, does my right hon. Friend not think that the Government should have made a detailed assessment of its likely impact on house building and house prices before introducing it? When the Treasury Select Committee asked officials from the Department for Communities and Local Government about that in November, they said that it was not a matter for them; they said it was a matter for the Treasury. When asked whether any officials at DCLG had had any discussions with Treasury officials about the impact of the scheme, they said no. Is not that a complete dereliction of duty on the part of DCLG with regard to this important policy?

[Hilary Benn]

I agree; my hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have called on the Bank of England to look into the operation of the Help to Buy scheme now, rather than in a year’s time, precisely so that those points can be taken on board.

I want to move on to discuss what else could be done to get the land, the finance and the planning consent required to build more homes. Ministers seem to argue that nothing is really wrong with the way in which the land market is working. I have to say to the Secretary of State that we disagree. The planning Minister, in his latest written answer to me, has said there are more than 523,000 units with planning permission, of which 241,500 have not yet even been started on site. That represents a lot of homes that could be built, yet companies are sitting on the land, with planning permission, waiting for it to increase in value and not building on it.

The Office of Fair Trading looked into this matter and found that strategic land banks, including optioned land, were worth 14.3 years, which is about enough land to build 1.4 million homes. That is why we think it perfectly reasonable for communities that have given planning permission to say to those who sought it, “Look, will you please get on and build the homes you said you wanted to build? And if you don’t, then after a time we will start levying a charge. After all, if you had built them, we would now be getting council tax revenue. In the most extreme cases, we will use compulsory purchase powers to take the land off you, with the permission, and sell it to someone else who will build the homes.”

I know that Ministers spluttered into their Cornflakes when we announced that policy, and that the Mayor of London described it as a “Mugabe-style” land grab, but I would gently point out that among those who support the idea of charging when permission has been granted but no houses have been built are the International Monetary Fund and someone who goes by the name of Boris Johnson, who, when I last checked, was the Mayor of London. Moreover, the planning Minister once called for a tax on land to “deter speculative land banks”. The hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen has also spoken up in favour of the proposal, and the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) has tried to claim it as a Conservative idea. With such illustrious backing, how could Labour’s proposal be anything other than a very good plan indeed?

Local Government Finance (England)

Debate between Hilary Benn and Clive Betts

Wednesday 13th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

I do indeed stand by the statement my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling), when Chancellor of the Exchequer, placed before the House and the country. I remind the hon. Gentleman that when he and his colleagues came into government the economy was growing—[Interruption.] It was. There is no good shouting about it. The signal achievement of the Chancellor over the past three years has been to put the British economy flat on its back, which is why we are in such difficulty.

The consequences of what is going on are these: first, local government is having to deal with cuts that are unfairly distributed; secondly, residents are having to come face to face with the consequences of those cuts; and, thirdly, the changes to council tax benefit are being made even worse by the effects of the overall cuts to council budgets. I want to address each of those in turn.

The Local Government Association says that

“funding for local government is projected to fall by 3.9% in 2013-14 and a further 8.5% in 2014-15. This means that the grant to local government will fall by 33% in real terms over the current spending review period.”

It is not possible, by any measure, to call that scale of reduction modest. The LGA goes on to say:

“Modelling work from the local government association shows a funding gap of £16.5 billion by 2019-20, if reductions in support continue on current trends.”

It is not modest; it is massive, and it is about time that Ministers started to recognise the truth of what they are doing.

If denial was not bad enough, the language that Ministers have used about those who are serving in local government has been, frankly, extraordinary and offensive. According to The Daily Telegraph, the Conservative council leaders of Derbyshire, Essex, Buckinghamshire, Wiltshire, Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, Kent and East and West Sussex wrote to the Prime Minister last month to complain about the Ministers on the Government Front Bench. They referred to “patronising language” and said that the nature and tone of constant criticisms of councillors’ work by Conservative Ministers is “most worrying”. They also highlighted

“ill-informed…criticism and sometimes highly inaccurate personal attacks.”

They—remember that these are Tory council leaders—concluded by saying:

“We believe it is essential to bring to your attention our concerns regarding some government policy affecting local government, the rhetoric that accompanies it and the effect it is having on our people.”

It is no good Ministers asking local government to take on an enormous challenge—which it is doing—if at the same time the people they expect to step up and respond are criticised, patronised and belittled.

Perhaps the Minister will explain why allowing councillors to save for a pension has, in his words,

“a corrosive influence on…independent thought”—[Official Report, 19 December 2012; Vol. 555, c. 105WS.]

Let us stop and think about that statement. If being able to save for a pension has a corrosive influence on independent thought, what hope is there for all of us in this House? That is an insult to councillors and it shows a fundamental lack of respect for people who are working really hard to cope in difficult circumstances.

[Mr Betts]

Is my right hon. Friend aware that the Communities and Local Government Committee produced a report recently on councillors and the community? We looked at the barriers experienced by people, particularly younger people in work, in becoming councillors. Many of them lose income because they give up work and have to attend council meetings. Is it not an absolute disgrace to suggest that they should give up their pension as well, so that their income suffers in later life, and a discouragement to people of working age from becoming councillors?

[Hilary Benn]

I agree completely. What makes it even more inexplicable is that elected mayors will be able to keep their right to save for a pension. That is what the Minister announced. Will his colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the right hon. Member for Bath (Mr Foster), explain when he winds up the debate the difference, in time, effort, commitment and dedication to the job, between an elected mayor and the leaders of Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds city councils, who also work full time and are dedicated and committed to their jobs?

According to the LGA, 19 December was the latest that a provisional local government financial settlement has ever been published. This has caused problems for councils trying to finalise their budgets for the forthcoming year. Council representatives to whom I have spoken talk of errors and double counting in the provisional settlement, which the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis)—perhaps not surprisingly—did not mention and which does not inspire confidence. Will he explain how that came to pass and what steps he is taking to ensure that it does not happen again?

When the provisional settlement was announced, the Secretary of State said:

“Concerns that the poorest councils or those in the north would suffer disproportionately are well wide of the mark. The spending power for places in the north compares well with those in the south.”—[Official Report, 19 December 2013; Vol. 555, c. 874.]

I am afraid that the figures simply do not support that assertion.

Let us take a comparison between Wokingham, which the Minister referred to, and Leeds. The final figures in the Government’s documents show that spending power per dwelling in Leeds will be £1,874 in 2013-14, while in Wokingham it will be £1,815. The following year, it will be £1,800 for Leeds and £1,796 for Wokingham—a difference of just under £5. It is clear that the figures do not take account of relative need, because the percentage of children in out-of-work families in receipt of child tax credit is three times higher in Leeds than it is in Wokingham, the percentage of 18 to 64-year-olds claiming income-based benefits is more than three times higher in Leeds than it is in Wokingham, and the percentage of the population claiming incapacity benefit or disability living allowance is twice as high in Leeds as it is in Wokingham. How can that be fair?

Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Hilary Benn and Clive Betts

Monday 5th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

I accept the hon. Gentleman’s argument. The regional spatial strategies meant that local authorities had a responsibility to build houses. He has to acknowledge, however, that the regime before us, which I recognise he played an important part in setting up, will produce exactly the same numbers. That is because the same number of people will need to be housed and there will be the same increase in population. They are two different ways of doing it. However, it is the Secretary of State who has made great play of localism but who is now turning it on its head.

If the Secretary of State is thinking of using as his proxy the speed and percentage of planning applications overturned, people should, as I have indicated, go away very quickly and see where their local authorities are in the league table. To add insult to injury, however—this is pretty bad—he is taking the power to require local authorities to do all the work in connection with applications, even though they will not be taking the decisions and even though the Planning Inspectorate will be paid the fees. That is what he is doing in the Bill.

These are the same planning officers in whom the Secretary of State, in effect, had no confidence to start with—that is why he chose to designate authorities. It is therefore crystal clear what the clause is about: it is about his saying, in respect of councils whose decisions he does not like or which he thinks are being too tardy, that it is the elected council members whom he does not trust. That makes the purpose of the clause plain. He is saying, “I want this power because I think I’m in a better place to take decisions than the local communities themselves.” That is why the clause is so objectionable.

[Mr Betts]

My right hon. Friend makes a good case against the Secretary of State taking from local authorities the power to determine planning applications. He has also pointed out that the applicant will lose the right to appeal. When this matter came before the Select Committee, the Minister with responsibility for planning accepted in effect that the consultation arrangements for local communities would not have to be the same as if the local authority was taking the decisions, but that the statutorily required level of consultation would apply, which could be somewhat less. Local communities could suffer in that way as well.

[Hilary Benn]

My hon. Friend, who chairs the Select Committee so ably, is absolutely right. That is another example of how local communities will lose out as a result of this change.

I am genuinely surprised that the Secretary of State has turned out like this, especially given what he said in his speech to the Conservative party conference last month. He explained, in a purple passage, why, alongside the bust of Disraeli and the poster of Winston Churchill, he had a photograph on his wall of Che Guevara smoking a large Havana cigar. He told the delegates:

“It is there to remind me that without constant vigilance, the cigar-chomping Commies will take over. Well, that isn’t going to happen on my watch.”

Well, it has happened—with this Bill. There are a couple of words for what he is doing. It is a concept much loved by communist parties the world over. It is called democratic centralism—telling other people what to think and do. The powers he is asking the House to give him in clause 1 are, frankly, enough to make any self-respecting democratic centralist slap him on the back in gratitude and give him a cigar to chomp on. In no time at all, he has gone from claiming to be the friend of localism to taking a hammer and sickle to local democratic decision making. He fools nobody by trying to describe it as muscular localism. The really puzzling question is whether this is a genuine conversion. The House must ask itself whether the Secretary of State decided of his own volition to dump everything that he previously believed in. I doubt it; I suspect that the truth is rather different.

I think the truth is that the Secretary of State lost control of planning policy during the summer. He told us just a few months ago, “Here’s my shiny new national planning policy framework. It’s fit for a new century”, and he must have been bewildered to read those unattributed briefings suddenly appearing in the newspapers—the criticisms of his shiny new planning system from the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and I bet he was particularly irritated by the summonses to attend urgent meetings at 10 Downing street. Whoever was in charge of planning policy over the summer, I do not think it was the Secretary of State.

Local Government Finance

Debate between Hilary Benn and Clive Betts

Wednesday 8th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely powerful point about the impact of all this on the overall economy, and I shall say a few words about the effect on jobs shortly.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies reports on another area that has been affected. It says that significant reductions in expenditure on planning and economic development are being seen. Councils will need as much resource as possible to respond to the national planning policy framework, and in particular to draw up their new plans if they have not got them, or to revise the plans if they have got them, because if they do not do that, developers can come in and say, “We want to make use of the presumption in favour of sustainable development.” However, they will find that the resource they need to do that work will largely have disappeared.

I am reluctant to raise this point, but I shall: it is extraordinary that although the Minister stands up and says, “Money’s very tight,” his Secretary of State has found £0.25 billion to try to persuade councils to change their minds about how to collect their rubbish. The great localist thinks he knows better than they do how it should be done, even though household recycling rates have more than doubled since 1997, thus saving residents a lot of money in landfill levy, and the majority of councils whose minds he is trying to change with his cash are controlled by councillors from his own party. It is a very expensive family disagreement.

[Mr Betts]

Is it not incredible that this nest egg of money has been trailed before councils, which are to put in bids for a scheme we are not sure about? No prudent council would formulate next year’s budget on the basis that there might be some money at some time coming from the Secretary of State. Also, it is completely wrong of the Deputy Prime Minister to criticise Sheffield council for not taking account of this possible money before setting its budget for next year.

[Hilary Benn]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and it will be interesting to see in the end how many councils choose to take it up, not least because there is a knock-on consequence over the five years for which the Government are expecting them to change their system. Frankly, £250 million could have been better spent on social care, aid and adaptations, and meals on wheels.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) pointed out a moment ago, one consequence of all this has been huge job losses. As we know, the Office for Budget Responsibility announced in November a dramatic revision of its projection of the total number of jobs that would be lost in the public sector, including in local government—up from 410,000 to 710,000 in the years ahead—in part because of what has been happening in local government, and in part because of the front-loading of the cuts.

For England and Wales as a whole, the reduction in the number of workers employed by councils between the first quarter of 2010 and the second quarter of 2011 totalled 129,000, of which women accounted for two thirds. In other words, women are bearing the brunt of these reductions, and it is one of the reasons why the Chancellor’s economic plan is frankly in such a mess. In 2010, he boasted in his first Budget, “Never mind about the jobs that will be lost in the public sector, because they’re going to be replaced by jobs created in the private sector”, assuring us that that would be the case. What has actually happened? In the last quarter, for every 13 jobs that went in the public sector—all 67,000 of them—just one was created in the private sector. That is why the economy is not growing, the plan is not working and the Government are having to borrow more than they said they would.

I have a couple of specific questions that I hope the Minister will respond to. On academies funding, the Local Government Association’s view is that the £265 million that the Education Secretary has finally decided to top-slice—having at one point threatened to take even more—is too high a figure because it does not reflect the actual savings that will accrue to local education authorities. I agree with the LGA. Do Ministers share that view, have they argued local government’s case with the Education Secretary, and does the Minister think that will be enough to put off a resumption of the stalled judicial reviews on this matter? Secondly, on the business rates pooling account, I should be grateful if the Minister clarified whether the Government plan to run a surplus again this year, as they did last year, and if so how it complies with the law on the account’s operation.

The third and last area I wish to turn to is uncertainty, particularly that created by the Local Government Finance Bill. Many councils have no idea, frankly, what their financial position will be next year because the Government’s policy is to localise uncertainty and volatility. As things stand, no council knows what its baseline will be next year under the legislation going through the House, what top-slice share the Government want to take, how the levy will work, how the safety net will operate or what impact, for example, the closure of a large employer in its area would have on business rate income. Nor do councils know, given the 1% average limit on pay increases, how much will be taken off them by the Treasury, although there are estimates of £200 million in 2013-14 and £400 million in 2014-15.

Furthermore, on the council tax benefit, nobody knows exactly how the budget minus the 10% will be distributed, what the take-up will be, and how councils are meant to cope with a rise in unemployment and, therefore, with an increase in applications in their areas. I gently advise Government Members to have a very good look at what this will mean for their constituents, because many Government Members represent areas where the proportion of pensioners is higher than the average. The more that is true, the greater the cut in council tax benefit or, to put it another way, the bigger the council tax bill that will have to be paid by their voters on low incomes, who have absolutely no idea what the coalition Government have in store for them.

Business of the House (Thursday)

Debate between Hilary Benn and Clive Betts

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

What happened last night was certainly extremely unusual, and the Leader of the House did not seek to enlighten us this evening as to why the Government pulled the plug on their own proposal. Perhaps he anticipated the debate that we were going to have this evening, and the opposition to the motion that was going to be expressed on this side of the Chamber.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

I am sure that my right hon. Friend really wants to help the Leader of the House to find some additional time, so I refer back to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds). We were given an indication last week that an unspecified Bill was going to come before the House next Wednesday. The rumour is that it is the long-awaited and much-heralded localism Bill. There is a further rumour, however, that the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government is more enthusiastic about that Bill than some of his Cabinet colleagues. If that is the case, can my right hon. Friend give us any more information about whether the Bill has been lost in the fog of Whitehall, and whether there might after all be time to debate this business next Wednesday?

[Hilary Benn]

rose—