Investigatory Powers (Amendment)Bill [Lords]

Debate between Lord Beamish and Michael Gove

Report stage
Monday 25th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jones]

The Minister says that he was going to, but if he had done that last week we could perhaps have had very short discussions tonight.

[The Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Michael Gove)]

Some of us should take yes for an answer.

Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill

Debate between Lord Beamish and Michael Gove

2nd reading
Monday 11th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I just want to make one or two additional points and then I am happy to give way.

Personally, one of the moments where I realised that the system, which is hard to defend in any case, was fundamentally broken was in the aftermath of the Grenfell tragedy. We knew then that it was important that responsibility be taken for remediating buildings that were unsafe. We knew then that individuals and organisations had to take that responsibility on their own shoulders. We knew then that freeholders, if they were true to the spirit of the original legislation, would say, “Yes, we have a responsibility for this building and for all those within it. We have a responsibility to make sure this building is safe. Therefore, we should have a responsibility to pay for the remediation.”

But did we find freeholders queueing up to do that? Absolutely not. They were there ready to extract income at the highest possible rate whenever they could, through ground rents and service charges, but when they were called upon to discharge their responsibility to the leaseholders within those flats, they were absent. They ran away from their responsibilities. That is why I have limited to no patience now with the well-funded lobby groups that stand up for those freeholders and seek to ensure that they can continue to extract money from leaseholders. It seems to me that, at a critical point, the argument that is sometimes made on behalf of those people disappeared because of their negligence and their moral fault.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman says that traditionally it was flats that were leasehold, but increasingly it was houses, mainly fuelled by the Government’s Help to Buy scheme. In my constituency, Persimmon Homes’s business model was structured around not only selling on the leaseholds, but the tactic of including areas of the estate that traditionally would have been passed over to local authorities as the responsibility of the leaseholders. Would he agree that the Government need to take some responsibility for the tsunami of money they threw at some of those developers, and for turning a blind eye to what they were doing in their business models?

[Michael Gove]

I take the right hon. Gentleman’s point, but he is conflating two things. Help to Buy can be criticised or defended on its own terms, and I believe it was the right intervention to ensure, in particular, that more first-time buyers could get on to the property market. However, he is also right that leasehold, which as he says was originally a tenure designed for flats, was then extended to houses, and in a way that is difficult to defend. It has expanded over recent years. That is why we are legislating now to ensure that we can stop it. There are two separate arguments that can be had there.

Local Government Finance (England)

Debate between Lord Beamish and Michael Gove

Wednesday 9th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I talked to James Jamieson this morning, as I do most weeks. One reason why he leads the LGA is that he is a brilliant Conservative council leader. If James were here, I think he would say he was not criticising but encouraging us, as any friend would, to do even better. It is striking that the welcome that the local government sector gave this year’s funding settlement was broader, deeper and more cordial than it has been for some years. Politics being politics, any sector will always, entirely understandably, want its champion to be someone who can ask for more.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I note that the Secretary of State does not want to talk about what has happened in the past, but my hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey) raised a point about need. It was no accident that the Government took the needs formula out of the local government settlement, meaning that areas such as mine and hers, which have high demand for social services—County Durham has over 900 looked-after children in care—have been the net losers. I am sorry, but it is not about pitting cities or areas against one another; it is just a matter of fact that certain areas have higher demands because of their demographics. That has to be taken into consideration, but the Secretary of State’s Government took the needs formula out during the coalition era.

[Michael Gove]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a number of points and ensuring that I addressed them all would mean that I would be here well after the moment of interruption. We could discuss the difficult economic situation that the coalition Government inherited in 2010. We could discuss the way that we unringfenced funding to ensure that local authorities could respond to that. We could discuss the particular way in which some local authorities, irrespective of political colour, were able to use their resources more effectively. We could discuss the way in which interventions beyond direct local government funding under the coalition Government sought to address deprivation. It is striking, for example, that between 2010 and 2014 the Education Secretary—whoever he was—managed to introduce a pupil premium that saw millions flowing to the very poorest students, an initiative that had not been introduced under the previous Labour Government and that helped to close the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged children.

The right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) is an brilliant campaigner for citizens in Stanley and North Durham. He makes his case effectively and he is right to remind us that when we look at local government finance it is important to bear in mind need and deprivation. That is what we are doing as we look overall at how we can review local government funding later on.

[Mr Jones]

rose—

[Michael Gove]

I can never resist the right hon. Gentleman, so I am happy to give way again.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jones]

The Secretary of State just does not get it. Those were not options; they were political choices taken by the coalition Government. The point that my hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles and I are making is that on issues such as looked-after children and adult social care—he should remember that in County Durham life expectancy has gone down in the past 10 years—it is not optional for councils to intervene. They have a statutory obligation to do so and if that is not taken into account in the formula, councils in areas such as County Durham and Salford and Eccles will always be at a disadvantage because the right hon. Gentleman’s Government, of which he is a part, took that out of the funding formula.

[Michael Gove]

Again, the hon. Gentleman—my apologies, the right hon. Gentleman, and quite right too —makes three important points. On looked-after children, the whole position that we have had to take over the past 10 years on children in social care has been driven by a variety of factors that mean that we deal with the challenges of looked-after children and children at risk of abuse and neglect in a more intense fashion. That is why Josh MacAlister’s review of children in social care is so important and I hope that when it is published the right hon. Gentleman will welcome it.

On adult social care, the right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that there is a greater degree of pressure, not just because we have an ageing population, although I note his important point about life expectancy in County Durham, but because we have more people moving into adulthood who, thanks to advances in medical care, also require social care. That is why in this settlement local authorities can make use of more than £1 billion of additional resource specifically for social care. On top of that funding, as was outlined in the presentation of the White Paper earlier today by my hon. Friend the Minister for Health, £162 million in adult social care reform funding is also being allocated to help local authorities.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jones]

Yes, I am, and the hon. Member for Redcar (Jacob Young) called me an anorak, so possibly I am both.

The White Paper’s analysis is not bad in that it raises the issue that we should be tackling, but it offers no solution to enable us to do that. I really enjoyed the undergraduate thesis on the Venetian city state and how Babylon was built, but again it did not reach any conclusions. Nevertheless, we have a Government who talk in terms of levelling up. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East is right: you cannot have levelling up if you exclude the way in which local government is financed.

The other sad thing is that the Government’s approach has mainly been around capital projects. I think it is because the Prime Minister has a fixation—he has a fixation on quite a few things—on projects where you can see that something is being built. No doubt a Minister or local Conservative Member of Parliament can unveil a plaque and say, “This is what we have achieved.” As my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Sir George Howarth) said, if it was a fair process, fine.

I used to have a saying, when I was in local government, that any idiot can spend capital, which they can. The more difficult thing is to get the revenue streams into the future. Like my right hon. Friend, distantly I used to understand local government finance, but no doubt my knowledge is a bit out of date. What I do recognise is that we can spend as much capital on projects as we like, but what is needed is the revenue funding to go alongside it for the day-to-day needs of our local communities.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley covered the bidding process very well, but the point is that, if it were a fair process, then fine, but it is not. Quite clearly, it is a pork barrel approach to the doling out of money to certain Conservative seats. Let me give an example in County Durham. Which constituency has either got new towns funding or levelling-up funding? The answer is Bishop Auckland.

[Michael Gove]

A great place.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I do not disagree with the Secretary of State. County Durham is a wonderful county. It has some great towns and, more importantly, great people. But why did Bishop Auckland get that money as opposed to any of the other towns in County Durham? Well, it has a Conservative Member of Parliament. I doubt that it will be getting much funding in the future, following the recent antics of the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison), with her criticism and plotting against the Prime Minister. She will be on the naughty step for a while, and will not get any future funding. The important thing is that this must be clear. I also question the bidding process. The problem with the process, as my right hon. Friend has said, is that it takes a lot of time and effort to take this through. Officer time is taken up, and councils are limited in the amount of officer time that they have. Then they have to go into some beauty parade, which is clearly rigged by the Government. The real issue in terms of levelling up is this—

Levelling Up

Debate between Lord Beamish and Michael Gove

Wednesday 2nd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My right hon. Friend’s new model institute is a perfect model of what was envisaged by the former Member of Parliament for Orpington when he was the higher education Minister and introduced reform to ensure that we improved access to higher education, but with a particular focus on skills and jobs. I look forward to working with him and the Education Secretary to spread this model through across the UK.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. He announced a county devolution deal for County Durham, which has lost £224 million in Government grants since 2010. At the same time, his own county council’s spending powers have gone up. Will the devolution deal replace anywhere near the £22.4 million a year that County Durham has lost?

[Michael Gove]

I am looking forward to working with the new Conservative and Liberal Democrat Administration in Durham county—the first non-Labour Administration for many years, following on from the success of my hon. Friends the Members for North West Durham (Mr Holden), for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison) and for Sedgefield (Paul Howell) in winning their seats at the last general election. Sadly, the Labour Administration of Durham County Council were responsible for significant maladministration and the waste of resources. I am convinced that the new Administration will spend taxpayers’ money better.

Ministerial Code

Debate between Lord Beamish and Michael Gove

Monday 26th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

That seems to be an important point and one for the House to consider.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

In reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), the Minister made a virtue of the Prime Minister having paid for the refurbishment of the Downing Street flat. There have been several weeks of speculation about this and it was only last Friday that Downing Street confirmed that he had. Will the Minister clarify whether the Prime Minister paid the original invoices for this work, or did he reimburse the donors who allegedly donated money to this fund or to the Conservative party?

[Michael Gove]

As I pointed out earlier, the Prime Minister paid for the renovation of the flat. All donations to the Prime Minister, to any other Member of Parliament, or indeed to political parties, will be declared appropriately and properly. Of course, the Cabinet Secretary also made clear in his hearing with the Select Committee on Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs the background to this issue.

Civil Service Appointments

Debate between Lord Beamish and Michael Gove

Tuesday 30th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend, the Chairman of the Select Committee, makes a very important point. David Frost has already appeared in front of Select Committees—the Select Committee on the Future Relationship with the European Union and also the House of Lords European Union Committee—and I am sure that he would be delighted to take up that invitation. As my hon. Friend quite rightly points out, the building and maintenance of alliances are critical to projecting our interests and protecting our values globally.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

Can I add my thanks to Mark Sedwill for his work both in security and as Cabinet Secretary? Mr Frost is a political appointment. He has been given a seat in the other place, but he is not a Minister; he is a special envoy. Picking up on the question that the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee has just raised, will the ISC and other Committees that scrutinise his work be able to summon him before them to scrutinise what he is doing? That is important if we are going to have clear parliamentary oversight of his role. I think that needs clarifying, because the Minister in his reply to the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee did not answer that question.

[Michael Gove]

I am sorry if I failed to provide the clarity required, but I am sure that for all Select Committees, including the very important ISC, David Frost will make himself and his colleagues available so that he can answer questions.