Five-year Land Supply

Iain Stewart Excerpts

Wednesday 4th July 2018 Westminster Hall

[Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (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 this important debate. I concur with everything he said—in the interests of brevity, I will not repeat his comments. I will use my contribution to give the example of Milton Keynes, our surrounding authorities and indeed the whole Oxford-Milton Keynes-Cambridge arc, to show why there is an urgent need for much greater flexibility in the five-year supply requirements.

Milton Keynes has over 20,000 housing permissions granted, yet our build-out rate is such that we have recently been judged by the inspector as not having a five-year supply. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk and others have suggested, that is the open door for speculative developments, both small and—ironically—large ones. It defies common sense that, if there is an inability to build out existing large developments, developers will have the resources, skills and raw materials to develop new large sites. It just defies logic.

In addition, and as my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) mentioned, there are neighbouring authorities to consider. Aylesbury Vale District Council, which is next door to Milton Keynes, is planning substantial new developments right on our boundary, which will be technically part of its authority but for all intents and purposes part of the urban footprint of Milton Keynes, using all our infrastructure and services without those being enhanced to take account of the additional population.

Within the whole Oxford-Cambridge corridor, for which I am the Government’s champion, there is a complete misalignment of timescales and objectives. The National Infrastructure Commission has an ambition for 1 million new homes—the Government are yet to publish their formal response to that. This is an area of the country where there is a need for new homes, and in many parts of it there is an appetite for them, but not for homes that are just scattered around the place randomly. They must be properly planned, they must be sympathetic to the existing urban and rural environment, and they must have proper infrastructure and public services.

Yet all the timescales are misaligned. Councils have to make short-term decisions on their housing allocations without knowledge of, for example, where the new Oxford-Cambridge expressway is going to be routed. That does not make sense. So there is an urgent need to realign these timescales, and to pause the current local plan and five-year supply timetables, so as to give a space in which to properly sequence all these decisions.

That is not to say that we do not need houses now; we absolutely do. Many areas in the Oxford-Cambridge corridor have an overheated property market, which is not just pricing people out of living there but is actually inhibiting economic growth, because employers cannot recruit the people they need, because the people they need cannot find a place to live that is affordable or suitably connected.

We have to find a way of accelerating the build-out rate of existing developments. As has been mentioned, my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) will bring forward a range of solutions to the problem, and I urge the Government to implement urgently what he proposes. That would give us the space, if the Government are willing to give some leeway on the targets, to align properly all these decisions that have to be made. People have an appetite for development, but only if the houses are of good quality. We need to look not only at overall numbers, but at the types of housing that we build—social housing, houses for the elderly, and traditional, family-sized homes. Much more careful thought and planning needs to go into these long-term developments.

Development must be sympathetic to existing settlements and the rural environment. People will not just accept endless, soulless, identical housing estates being scattered across the countryside. However, we can use our knowledge and expertise in this country to build good-quality, attractive places that people will actively welcome, which will enhance existing settlements and provide the homes for future generations. That is within our gift, but we have to get away from our current rigid and inflexible system, which does not have public consent. Indeed, it is undermining the whole process of neighbourhood planning and local accountability.

Trade Bill (Third sitting)

Iain Stewart Excerpts

Committee Debate: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 25th January 2018 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

We have a maximum of 20 minutes left and at least six people still wanting to ask questions. If we have short questions and concise answers, we can get as many people in to ask a question as is possible.

[Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)]

Before I ask my question, can I just point out an important error in some of the official documents? Whisky is spelled with an “e” on some of the documents, and that is a very different product from Scotch whisky. On Burns night, I thought it was appropriate to point that out.

[Barry Gardiner]

The Government cannot be trusted.

[Iain Stewart]

Q I would like to get a sense from the witnesses of what the impact would be on the food and drinks sector, particularly in Scotland, if this Bill did not happen and we left the EU without the carry-over of the existing EU free trade agreements. Have you quantified the value of transferring over what we already have into our domestic legislation?

Sarah Dickson: For us, 10% of our exports go to those countries and benefit from them. I cannot give you an overall figure, but obviously, if you are not paying the tariff, you are not paying the tariff and you do not have that cost. It would make a difference to about 10% of our exports, and our exports were £4 billion in 2016.

Elspeth Macdonald: I do not have figures in front of me, but I think the document the Scottish Government published recently, “Scotland’s Place in Europe”, about business, jobs and the economy, touched on exactly those issues and put some economic analysis around some of that in terms of trade.

Gary Stephenson: All I can say is that I think about 37% of exports of food from Scotland are to non-EU countries, but we have not quantified exactly what the impact would be and how much of that is going to countries with a free trade agreement. I cannot give an exact answer, but it will have an impact.

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

Q My question relates to non-tariff measures, which you have all spoken about in varying ways; of course there are food standards, phytosanitary standards and so on. What level of consultation do you think is appropriate for the Government to carry out with the sectors affected, prior to any negotiation on those provisions?

Gary Stephenson: There has to be deep consultation. The people with the expertise are the ones shipping the products, so they need to be consulted in detail on those provisions, which are very specific. You mentioned phytosanitary; obviously seed potatoes are a big product for Scotland, and they are highly dependent on phytosanitary requirements.

Trade Bill (Second sitting)

Iain Stewart Excerpts

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 23rd January 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Anna McMorrin]

Q To follow up quickly, perhaps addressing Michael Clancy directly, what role do you believe the devolved Governments would have in trade negotiation prior to agreements being concluded? Do you think the Bill sets out suitable frameworks within which matters of devolved competence can be represented?

Michael Clancy: Under the Scotland Act 1998, paragraph 7 of schedule 5, international agreements, including trade agreements, are not within the competence of the Scottish Parliament. In that sense there is no formal role in agreeing international agreements. That being said, one of the things we have sought to promote throughout this process, with the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, this Bill and associated measures, is that there should be some form of whole-of-governance conversation about getting things right. As we know, this Bill will affect the competence of Scottish Ministers and allow orders to be made that may amend, for instance, Acts of the Scottish Parliament, and measures from Wales and Northern Ireland too.

There is clearly an issue about how the Sewel convention or legislative consent convention is interpreted in respect of that. Under devolution guidance note 10, any proposals in UK Parliament legislation that seek to alter the legislative competence of the Parliament or of Scottish Ministers require the consent of the Parliament. That also applies to the National Assembly for Wales and the Northern Ireland Assembly. Therefore, there is an issue. Today in the Scottish Parliament there is a debate about legislative consent in respect of the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, and the Finance and Constitution Committee of the Scottish Parliament is currently consulting on the legislative consent memorandum on this Bill, where the Scottish Government have indicated that they would not recommend that the Parliament pass it.

It is a matter of political debate and discussion, and something that I know both the Scottish and UK Governments have in their sights in the concordat they are thinking about. That includes a framework for dealing with trade matters. There is a role, but I do not know it yet, because neither the Scottish nor the UK Government have told us what it is.

[Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)]

Q I would like to ask Professor Winters a question about part 3 of the Bill, which concerns trade information. Would you agree that the information that this Bill enables will help the Government to shape their export support programme? Are there any additional powers that you would like to see this part of the Bill contain?

Professor Winters: Information is very important, not least in my trade, for analysing what goes on. The case for collecting reasonable amounts of information, as long as it is cheap to do so, is very strong indeed, subject to the standard confidentiality requirements. I confess, on reading the Bill it did not strike me that there were obvious things that were missing, but I would not want to assert that I read it sufficiently carefully to say that nothing is missing. It is important that the Government have the right to collect information, and that information should be made as widely available as possible. The Government clearly need to make policy, but there needs to be public debate, too; it is not just the Government who need to discuss policy issues. I did not interpret this as being part of the Bill, but in general, information other than private or commercially confidential information really should be made available to a wide community of people to enable them to analyse policy.

[Iain Stewart]

Q Do you have any concerns about the practicalities of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs operating the system, as envisaged by the Bill?

Professor Winters: I am not sure that I can comment on the practicalities. They certainly want a large amount of information. My general rule would be that that needs to be information that firms collect anyway in the normal course of their business, and that it should be a simple matter to transfer it to HMRC.

[Faisal Rashid]

Q Professor Winters, given what you discuss in the UKTPO paper with the example of South Korea, do you think it is fair to say that what the Government are presenting as bilateral discussions are actually trilateral discussions?

Professor Winters: Yes. I gave the example of rules of origin and tariff-rate quotas. Those very clearly have to be negotiated with the EU, because the EU is intimately involved in them, and they have to be negotiated with the partner. We cannot just arrive in Korea and say, “Here it is. We don’t want to talk about it.” They very clearly have trilateral dimensions, which I guess need to be sequenced and taken seriously.

Remember that there is a further wrinkle: these are going to be new trade agreements and we are going to have to notify them to the WTO. Although the WTO procedure for reviewing regional trading arrangements does not require us to ask permission, the WTO secretariat will make a good deal of information available to members, and other members may wish to clarify things to discuss and even, ultimately, to dispute. It is actually somewhat broader than trilateral, but you cannot avoid a tripartite discussion on quite a lot of aspects.

--- Later in debate ---

[Barry Gardiner]

Q I will kick off, then, with the British Retail Consortium. [Laughter.] I am just keeping you on your toes!

The BRC has identified, among others, the agreements involving Norway and Turkey as the most significant of our EU FTAs. Of course, the Government have already indicated that there will be an end to free movement, which rules out simply replicating the Norway model, and that we will leave the customs union, which rules out simply rolling over the Turkish model, so what elements of the agreements—not just those two, but the others—do you consider it most important to replicate on substantially the same terms?

William Bain: The key provisions are those on tariffs, because if the UK leaves the European Union, it is not part of the EU’s common external tariff system, and we could then face higher tariffs on imported goods. A great deal depends on the kind of transitional arrangements that are adopted, but the kind of additional MFN tariffs that would apply would be 12% in relation to clothing from Turkey, 13% in relation to soft fruit from Chile and Peru and 27% on imported processed canned tuna from the Seychelles. Those would, I think, lead retailers and consumers to face considerable price pressures, so the main element that we would want to see is replication of the zero-tariff or low-tariff provisions on imports.

The other key areas that are very difficult in terms of replication and, we believe, may require a degree of assistance from the European Union are in relation to rules of origin. For example, with the Canada trade agreement, there is a complex rule of origin. The same is true in relation to South Korea. I think that diagonal cumulation is involved in the rules of origin in respect of the CARIFORUM trade agreements.

These are areas where it seems that time is running out, the clock is ticking, and a solution needs to be found if British business and British consumers are not to face a large cliff edge in March 2019.

Anastassia Beliakova: Absolutely. Rules of origin are a headache for businesses, and if we consider that there is the likelihood, in the roll-over of existing trade agreements, that they may have to comply with tougher rules of origin or that some of the benefits that they currently get by counting both EU and UK origin as single origin might be lost, that is very concerning. For about one in seven of our members, the existence of a free trade agreement is the determining factor in whether they export to or import from a country. I urge the Government to give stronger assurances for those agreements, as Mr Bain has mentioned, that already provide for, or have clauses mentioning, diagonal cumulation, but also to look at all the EU trade agreements and particularly those that have the greatest economic significance for the UK, and open up those discussions to provide for that as they are rolled over into UK-third country FTAs.

[Iain Stewart]

Q I would like to put to the panel the same question I asked the previous panel about part 3 of the Bill, which relates to trade information and the collection of exporter information by HMRC in particular. Are you content with the content of the Bill in this part? Is there anything missing or do you foresee any practical difficulties in HMRC collating this information?

Anastassia Beliakova: Not at first glance. However, the wider picture around trade data is that trade data is imperfect. It is particularly lacking when it comes to services, of course, and when it comes to intra-EU trading data. That is where we currently have significant gaps. If, in the future, there can be a more robust collection of data and stronger assessments of UK-third country trade, that would be helpful.

Stephen Jones: I have nothing to add.

Edward Bowles: Obviously, the collection of data is largely in respect of goods that cross borders. It is very difficult to do that for services, so I would have thought that a way of more robustly measuring cross-border flows of services would be quite an important thing to look at, so that you can get a better grip on revenue as much as anything else. Largely, it is more on the goods side than it is on the services side.

[Faisal Rashid]

Q My question is to Mr Bowles: one of your chief economists for the African region noted that African countries such as Kenya were extremely concerned about having to renegotiate trade agreements with the EU and the UK. However, she concluded—her name is Razia Khan—that this process has taken many years already. Can you tell us what your views are on how long these deals will take and what difficulties will be encountered in the negotiations, from your point of view?

Edward Bowles: The great thing about having economists is that they are independent of those of us who do jobs outside of research. Razia is an expert in her own right and would be the best placed person to speak to those issues.

In fact, they are not really trade agreements; they are economic partnership agreements that the EU has with most African, sub-Saharan and, indeed, subcontinent markets. It is certainly true that they have undergone a high degree of revision under the current Commission’s administration. I am not aware, frankly, of any overwhelming dissatisfaction. I attended a recent meeting only two months ago between quite a lot of these markets and Cecilia Malmström, so things do seem to be moving in a good direction. The question is what the UK’s approach would be to that and how much it might be minded to depart, if at all, from the approach. The starting point must be simply to mirror the current arrangements, as was said on Second Reading and in the Government’s response to the consultation on the Trade Bill.

Economy and Jobs

Iain Stewart Excerpts

Thursday 29th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)]

I want to highlight four aspects of the Queen’s Speech that are particularly welcome. It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint); with my first point, I want to strike a consensual note and agree with her. We need to continue investment in the nation’s infrastructure. I was particularly pleased that the Queen’s Speech included a recommitment to legislate for the full network of HS2. To stop the project after part 1 would be a false economy. If we cannot move our people and goods around quickly, efficiently and safely, both within these isles and in order to connect with our key markets overseas, we will lose out to our competitors, who are investing heavily in infrastructure.

I agree that it is about not just investment in London and north-south investment, but east-west investment. My passion for east-west communications lies a little further south than the right hon. Lady’s. I want to see the early completion of the east-west rail line that will connect my constituency to Oxford and Cambridge and will form an important part of the nation’s rail infrastructure. That infrastructure will rebalance the economic growth around the country that we all want to see, and I welcome the Government’s commitment to that in the Queen’s Speech.

Related to that is my second point, which is about the welcome commitment to a modern industrial strategy. We had the White Paper before the general election and we must ensure that the UK is a world leader in fast-emerging new technologies. Of particular interest to me is the intelligent mobility market. The Transport Systems Catapult in my constituency forecasts that that market will be worth £90 billion by 2025, and we must ensure that we get a large slice of it if we are to maintain our competitive edge in the world.

That policy and many others like it link to a lot of other areas. We need to invest heavily in our skills agenda because we are not producing enough young people with the necessary skills. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Dame Caroline Spelman) said, that is the welcome second pillar of the industrial strategy.

The world of work is going to change. Many jobs that are currently done by people will be carried out by machines in the not-too-distant future. We urgently need to reskill our workforce to ensure that we can take advantage of new technologies and give people the jobs of the future. If we do not, we will face serious social challenges.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

If we retrofit new technology on old systems, we create a double problem for the future. How will the Government deal with that? Will they retrofit to the past, or will they look to places such as Estonia or Japan, which were building new and efficient systems nearly 50 years ago while we were living in the dark ages?

--- Later in debate ---

[Iain Stewart]

I invite the hon. Gentleman to look at the innovation in my constituency, including the development of smart city technology, in which we are world leaders. I invite him to stop off in Milton Keynes when he next travels north so that we can show him what we are doing.

Developing the intelligent mobility network touches on other areas of Government policy, so I urge Ministers to take a holistic view. It links with cyber-security, data protection and an effective trade policy. Our need to develop and export intelligent mobility technology is just one example of why we require a global independent trade policy, and that is the third part of the Queen’s Speech that I applaud.

Brexit is only one aspect of the work of the Department for International Trade, and I praise what my right hon. Friend Secretary of State for International Trade is doing to ensure that we seek out and develop our trade markets right around the world. Our country has underperformed in this sphere for decades. The world does not owe us a living. If we do not get out there and sell our goods and services, we will lose out—we will not generate the wealth the country needs. That will not just come to us; we have to be out there. The measures in the Queen’s Speech to improve our trade performance are incredibly welcome.

For my final point, I return to the fact that the world does not owe us a living. We must create wealth to generate the resources to fund the public services that we all want. I thank the Opposition for their general election manifesto because it reminded me why I am a Conservative. They believe in taxing entrepreneurship, innovation and success; we believe in letting people create the wealth that the country needs. It is not austerity; it is living within our means. It sounds so seductive to make generous spending pledges right around the country and to suggest that only a tiny number at the top will pay, but that does not work. Lady Thatcher has been mentioned once or twice in this debate, and she never said truer words than, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money to spend.”

Our goal must be to maximise entrepreneurship and wealth creation. We tax it at lower levels and at fair levels. I do not want to see tax avoidance—I want big corporations such as Google, Apple and Starbucks to pay their fair share—but do not choke the entrepreneurial spirit. The Opposition’s policy would result in higher taxes for everyone as the wealth creators go elsewhere. It would create a vicious downwards spiral. The only alternative would be to tax ordinary people more and to borrow more. Do not forget that we spend £46 billion a year on debt interest payments—more than on housing, transport and public safety. What right do we have to live beyond our means and pass on that burden to the next generation? When the Leader of the Opposition and Jon Snow were at Glastonbury, did they tell the young people there that the result of Labour’s policy would be that they would pay?