Health and Social Care
Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Clive Betts(7 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Betts
We heard quite a lot of evidence that, as a percentage of our national income, we do not spend as much as several others on health and social care combined. The Communities and Local Government Committee will reflect on that. Of course, it is not simply a question of asking for more public funding; I would not come to that conclusion, although I might personally believe it. There is, however, an issue with where we get the private funding from, because nobody has argued to us so far that the whole of social care can be publicly funded. There will be private contributions, so how do we raise that private money? Should it come from individuals who simply need care at that point in time, or should we ask people to pay more into an insurance system? How do we put in more money from the public sector? Indeed, can we rely on local authority funding alone, particularly if it comes largely from business rates, which will not grow at the same rate as the number of people who want social care?
Kevin Hollinrake
It was a pleasure to join the hon. Gentleman and other members of the Select Committee on that visit. Does he agree that the German example is all the more pertinent given that its system was also funded by local authorities prior to the change to social insurance in 1995? It discovered 20 years ago that that system was not fit for purpose and moved to a new system that, as he says, has cross-party support and is a long-term, sustainable solution.
Mr Betts
I just want us to have a process that gets us to a similar position. Even if local authorities remain part of the funding solution, we cannot assume that the increase in business rates and council tax will keep pace with the level of demand.
I know that you have encouraged us to keep to a time limit, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Local Government Finance
Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Clive Betts(7 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
The obvious point is that there is no change from the provisional settlement. We are talking about the same figures as the Government presented to us a few weeks ago. It is difficult to imagine that nothing any local council has said in that time has been relevant to its financial circumstances to the extent that Ministers feel the need to respond in some way. That is the case: no change whatever to the initial proposals.
The settlement therefore represents a continuation of the cuts that began in 2010. I welcome, as I have previously, the four-year spending settlements being given to councils. The settlements are a helpful step forward that local government has also welcomed in general. This is a cash-flat settlement over a four-year period, which therefore means a continuation of cuts because cash buys less over a four-year period not merely because of inflationary pressures, but because of the additional pressures on services from the growing number of elderly people and the extra pressures of the Care Act 2014 and the Children and Families Act 2014. Local authorities are having to absorb all those pressures within the cash-flat settlement.
The Comptroller and Auditor General, Amyas Morse, has figures showing that the spending power of local authorities, in real terms, reduced by 25% between 2010 and 2016. He has also said that there will be a further 6% reduction up to 2020. Amyas Morse says that the cuts are continuing.
Furthermore, it is very clear that local government has received bigger cuts over a longer period than any other service provided by Government—far bigger than any service provided by any other central Government Department. The reality of the situation is that no other Department has had cuts on this scale, and that cannot be challenged because those are the facts.
The Local Government Association has said that, by 2020, at the end of the spending review period, there will be a gap of £5.8 billion. That is the LGA’s figure, and I know that some people will say, “Well they would say that, wouldn’t they? They want extra money.” Those people might be right, but there may be demands on service provision that cannot be met by the agreed funding settlement.
All I ask of the Secretary of State and the Minister is that they please think carefully when the time comes to make decisions about the scheme for 100% business rate retention and about allocating the extra £11 billion to £13 billion. The Local Government Association is clearly saying that the first call on those resources should be the existing services that cannot be funded with local government’s existing money. That is a fundamental point.
I hear what Conservative Members are saying about getting the needs assessment right. One of my Select Committee colleagues, the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), is nodding in agreement. The Committee is considering the needs assessment, and we have commissioned work on that, too, but it is no good getting the needs assessment right on the allocation of resources to individual authorities if, at the beginning of the process, we get it wrong on the overall needs of local government as a whole. That is why we need to take particular account of that demand.
My local authority in Sheffield faces challenges next year. It is saying to me that there will be another £23 million cut in revenue support grant; that it will need to make £40 million of savings to meet inflation and the extra demands that it, like any other council, has to deal with, particularly those relating to social care; and that all that will mean reductions in the standard of service provision across the board. It will try to protect social care, but that means less money for other services, such as parks and open spaces, on which the Select Committee has just published a report that shows the stresses and strains on those services.
Social care has rightly been given a lot of attention. Along with the Chairs of the Health Committee and the Public Accounts Committee, I wrote to the Prime Minister to ask for an all-party review of long-term social care funding needs. That still needs to be done; we have to reach a new settlement because the existing system clearly does not work. We have to make the best of it for the time being, but we need to reach a general agreement on something more substantial for the longer term that will stand the test of time, so that review still needs to be done.
Let us look at the immediate situation. The LGA is saying that there will be a £2.6 billion deficit in social care funding by the end of this financial settlement in 2020, and that £1.3 billion of that is here and now. Despite the Government’s proposal to increase the precept by 3%, and the cut in the new homes bonus to allow for extra social care grant, the LGA is still saying there will be a £1.3 billion deficit next year. The Select Committee is currently conducting an inquiry into social care. We will be producing reports in due course, so it would be wrong of me to prejudge the outcome, but I can say that we have had evidence from the King’s Fund, the Nuffield Trust and the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and all gave similar figures about the current funding gap. They may disagree by a few hundred thousand pounds, but essentially they all say there is currently a gap in the money local authorities have available for the provision of adult social care.
Kevin Hollinrake
The Chair of the Select Committee spoke earlier about a long-term solution for adult social care. He and I went to Germany to look at the care system there, and we were both impressed by how it had achieved cross-party consensus on a future solution for adult social care. Would he advocate our looking at this on a long-term, cross-party basis?
Mr Betts
Absolutely. The system in Germany may not be one that we could immediately transfer over here, but the people there said to us that 20 years ago they sat down and dealt with this on a cross-party basis and got cross-party agreement. They are now having to put up their contribution rates, but they are doing so with cross-party agreement and with general public support because they have in place a system that is standing the test of time. That is an example of how to do it. Even if we end up coming up with a slightly different solution, we should at least look at the method they used to reach that agreement so that we can put in place a system that stands the test of time. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right on that.
The Government have given local authorities the right to increase the precept by 3% in the next financial year, and I welcome the fact that most have chosen to do that. There are problems with council tax—it is not the most progressive of taxes and we could make some reforms to improve it—but in the end, local authorities, faced with the prospect of not having enough money to pay for their elderly people, have explained to their council tax payers why an increase is necessary, and have then taken the difficult decision to do it. That is absolutely right, and they should be congratulated on that.
Nevertheless, the £543 million that the LGA estimates is going to be raised by the precept will just about cover the cost of the increase to the minimum wage, or the national living wage, as the Government call it. In other words, the money has gone straight out the door in extra pay. It is absolutely right that it goes to low-paid workers who in most cases do a superb job—they are under great stress and strain to deliver that care, so it is absolutely right that they get more pay—but the reality is that the money raised by the precept is not even going to sustain the current level of social care, given the extra demands.
Let me just mention the cut in the new homes bonus. Although I live in Sheffield, which is a unitary authority, I do reflect on the issues facing two-tier authorities. County councils, for example, are getting extra social care grant, but the money is coming from the budgets of the district councils and the cut in the new homes bonus. The new homes bonus was not officially part of the four-year settlement, but for the smaller district councils, which had factored it into their future plans, it came as a considerable financial shock to the system to have a whole element of it removed, and it was a very difficult thing to address at short notice. I have a lot of sympathy for councillors and their officials in those small district councils who are struggling as a result of this change, as it creates the very uncertainty that the Government were trying to remove with the creation of a four-year settlement, and that is something on which we should all reflect.
Let me reflect on one or two comments that have been made by Amyas Morse, the Comptroller and Auditor General. I do not know whether Members have read his article in which he talks about social care, cuts in funding, and the NHS. He refers to a lack of “joined-up thinking”. He talks about central Government making decisions. It might be appropriate for me to read the words that he uses. He says that it is easy to allocate savings
“to be made by those operating outside a department’s boundary or with a different mandate, without necessarily understanding their effect.”
In other words, Government Departments are allocating savings for someone else to make without understanding their impact. It sounds horribly true when it is put like that. He talks about central Government being slow to adjust, often acting only when serious failure occurs.
It is a very interesting article, because Morse talks about local councils initially responding to those cuts with efficiency savings—I know that Government Members have called for more efficiency savings from local councils. Morse then goes on to say that that is okay at the beginning, but, over time, while councils could initially respond with “more for less”, we have now got to the point where it is “less for less.” He says that
“during this progressive reduction in funding, I have not seen any evidence-based effort to reconcile funding to local needs. In my view, the policy objectives for local government and the local government statutory duties have not been properly weighted against potential efficiency savings.”
He goes on to say that although local authorities have tried to protect social care, there has, nevertheless, been a 7% reduction in real terms, and that
“Besides the direct effect on care service users, this reduction has a deleterious effect on the NHS... Costs are effectively being shunted from one part of the connected system to another.”
He is blaming not local councils for that but central Government for having got it so badly wrong. He also says—Government Members may not be always willing to accept this—that areas with the greatest needs have lost the most. That comes from an independent review from the Comptroller and Auditor General.
The Comptroller and Auditor General goes on to say:
“Central savings may have been secured, but significant damage has been done.”
Again, that is from a senior official looking at the public accounts of this country. It is a damning indictment of what has happened with regards to cuts to social care—I am talking about the impact on users and the knock-on consequences and damage to the NHS, including bed-blocking, which is a horrible term that I do not like. Basically, this is about elderly people who need to come out of their bed in hospital and receive care in the community not getting that care because it simply is not available. There are also individuals who could, with earlier prevention, have avoided going into hospital in the first place, but that earlier prevention is not there either.
Finally, all my sympathy goes to the Secretary of State on the issue of business rates. The revaluation is simply about re-allocating the total payment to different businesses. It reflects the changes in the prosperity of different parts of the United Kingdom since the last revaluation seven years ago: businesses in more prosperous areas with greater growth will find that their rates go up, while others will find that their rates go down. I understand the point that has been made: this is not a way of raising extra money but of reflecting the different changes in prosperity in different parts of the United Kingdom over the past few years.
I welcome what the Secretary of State has said about looking again at how the money raised is balanced between, say, a shop in the high street and a business on an out-of-town retail park, or between a retail business that sells directly to the public and an online business that probably has far lower rates. It will be interesting to see what the Government propose.
Although I disagree with many items in the funding settlement, I say to the Secretary of State that if the Select Committee can help to look at the issue of how business rates reform could take place to reflect more properly who should be paying what in the system, we will be more than happy to work with him.
Transport and Local Infrastructure
Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Clive Betts(8 years, 6 months ago)
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Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
I wish to focus my remarks on neighbourhood planning and the effects on housing delivery, but first let me draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Just before the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones), leaves the Chamber, may I make a very quick pitch for the A64? I welcome the £100 billion investment in infrastructure and the £13 billion investment in the northern powerhouse in this Parliament. A small part of that—£250 million—has been allocated to the A64, for the Hopgrove Lane roundabout. If that improvement does not include a dual carriageway as far as Barton Hill, it will simply kick that pinchpoint down the road. I ask him to bear that in mind and look at it in future discussions with Highways England.
I was astounded to hear the Leader of the Opposition claim in this House yesterday that
“housebuilding has sunk to its lowest level since the 1920s.”—[Official Report, 18 May 2016; Vol. 611, c. 15.]
According to the Office for National Statistics, quarterly housing starts, which are without doubt the most reliable guide to housing activity, have doubled from fewer than 20,000 in the first quarter of 2009 to more than 40,000 in the current quarter. For further proof, I suggest that Opposition Members visit any builder’s merchant or building site and talk to any brickie, chippie or sparky who will put them right. If they do not know any of these business people, I am happy to put them in touch with some.
I welcome the Government’s approach to local plans, which requires all local authorities to have a plan in place by 2017, and to neighbourhood plans. Neighbourhood plans give local people and local communities a say in what is built where, and what the building or settlement will look like. Clearly, neighbourhood planning must work with local authorities to agree the numbers allocated to a particular settlement. I am very grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) who has been generous with his time not only in his work with the Government, but in volunteering to visit my constituency to help our local communities to develop their own neighbourhood plans.
Without question, neighbourhood plans are part of the solution to the increase in housebuilding that we need. I welcome the changes contained in the Queen’s Speech to make neighbourhood planning easier and more powerful for local communities. I do not support any community right of appeal, as planning is tough enough without adding more obstacles to the planning process. However, current rules and subjective calculations of the five-year land supply can undermine the expensive and time-consuming process of neighbourhood planning. For example, Gladman, a name that strikes fear in many planning officers, has been successful twice recently at Kirbymoorside and Easingwold in my constituency.
Gladman was successful on appeal in Easingwold thanks to its ability to demonstrate that Hambleton District Council had only 4.17 years of land supply. Nine months later, after a revised analysis carried out by another expensive consultant for the local authority, Hambleton District Council now believes that it has an eight-plus year land supply. In effect, this creates two perverse outcomes. A subjective approach to the assessment of housing market needs incentivises the kite-flying carpetbaggers such as Gladman to game the system, but it also disincentivises local communities from establishing a neighbourhood plan. Even though a neighbourhood may be ahead of its own housing numbers, a shortage in the local authority overall can mean that an inappropriate development is forced on that local community.
Perhaps I can suggest two simple solutions, consistent with the recommendations of the local plans expert group, which says that there is currently no definitive guidance on the way to prepare the strategic housing market assessment. The first solution would be simple definitive and objective guidance on assessment of housing needs, revised only at specified intervals. I suggest that one might base that on a brutally simple formula. There are 26 million homes in the UK, and we need to build around 250,000 homes per annum—roughly 1%. If each local authority grew by a minimum of 1%, we would meet our national housing targets for the first time in decades.
Secondly, there should be a housing delivery test for a neighbourhood planning area so that if the neighbourhood was hitting its prescribed numbers, it could not be subject to an aggressive application based on local authority under-delivery. That would simultaneously deter the kite flyers and encourage and incentivise more communities to develop their own neighbourhood plans and schemes that communities had proposed and consented to.
Mr Betts
I am interested in the hon. Gentleman’s comments about a common basis for assessing housing need. It is something that the Communities and Local Government Committee recommended in the previous Parliament, something that the specialist group that the Minister set up has recommended, and something that Lord Taylor of Goss Moor recommended in his work on planning guidance. It would take a lot of the heat out of local controversy about how numbers were arrived at, and it would be there for local authorities to take up if they wanted to. The hon. Gentleman makes a good proposal that the Government ought to take seriously.
Kevin Hollinrake
I am very grateful. As on many occasions in the Select Committee, the hon. Gentleman and I are in full agreement.
I now move on to another important issue in my community. According to almost every business person and key business organisations such as the Institute of Directors, the No. 1 business priority in the UK and for many business people in my community is access to digital connections—superfast broadband and mobile phone networks. To give the Government credit, we have seen a step change in access to these networks since 2010. Even in rural North Yorkshire, 88% of premises are now covered by superfast broadband; 91% will be by 2017, and 95% by 2019. However, there is a growing gap between the haves and the have nots. As coverage increases, the voices of those without broadband understandably grow louder and more vociferous. For home or business, superfast broadband is no longer regarded as a luxury but as an essential fourth utility, and we must treat it as such.
I welcome the bold ambition in the Queen’s Speech for our universal service obligation—a digital imperative that the Government will deliver on. To meet this imperative and the further commitment to increase speed as demand and activity also increase, we need a new relationship between the consumer and the network operator, especially BT Openreach. I must say, I am sceptical about Ofcom’s halfway house solution—an internal separation of Openreach and BT. It is, to my mind, inconceivable that a separate board and a separation of assets will separate the vested interest of a network from the commercial opportunity of the wholesale, retail and content provider operations of BT.
I and many colleagues will hold Ofcom and BT Openreach to account for the huge improvements required, especially including fair cost for access to its ducts and poles and a clear network map of their locations. Only this and a technology-neutral approach will deliver the solutions that we need. BT Openreach has actively thus far deterred third-party operators and complementary technology solutions from reaching the parts that other technologies cannot reach, namely, point-to-point wireless, wireless DSLAM—digital subscriber line access multiplexer—units and, of course a roll-out of fibre to the premises, or FTTP, the only future-proof solution available. Our penetration for fibre to premises in the UK is 2%, compared with 60% in Spain, where competitors can access ducts and poles more cheaply and readily.
May I also suggest to the Government that we look at creative community solutions? The voucher scheme for satellite is welcome, but would Ministers consider allowing residents to combine vouchers to contribute to the cost of installing community-based fibre schemes? We also need more clarity and co-operation between backbone operator Openreach and other technologies so that solutions can be provided today. If community or commercial point-to-point wireless providers are deterred through future roll-out plans, uncertainty about those solutions means that they are sidelined rather than rolled out to people in need.
These are real people with real businesses and real jobs. Ample Bosom in Cold Kirby in my constituency provides quality ladies’ garments for the larger lady; the Construction Equipment Association in Sproxton provides services for exhibitions around the world; the Black Swan is an award-winning hostelry close to where I live in Oldstead. They are all suffering and losing business as a result of the broadband delays and deferrals.
I am very pleased with the measures in the Queen’s Speech and commend those policy initiatives to the House.
Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Clive Betts
Mr Betts
The most astounding thing about the Government’s proposals is that we are expected to make decisions about them today without any idea of the costings. When the Minister came to the Communities and Local Government Committee, he said the Government would produce costings in due course—I think he actually said spring was the likely time. Well, here we are in the spring, and I have not seen any figures.
It is astounding that we should hear from the Government over and over again that the sale of a, now, higher-value council home will pay for the replacement of that home, the replacement of a housing association property that is sold and the £1 billion fund for remedial work on brownfield land. If the Government are clear that that is what their policies will do, will they please show us the figures? If they are clear that that is what will happen, they must have the figures to have made their promises on. Or are they simply telling us they believe that that is how things will work out, but without any clear evidence to support that?
That is a matter of great concern. It was a concern to the Select Committee, which, having heard the evidence, correctly said:
“We have not seen evidence that the Government has fully costed the proposals and we call on it to do so as a matter of urgency.”
That was agreed at the beginning of February; we are now three months further on, but we still have no figures. The Public Accounts Committee made exactly the same point in its report, and it seemed a very reasonable point, regardless of whether we think the PAC should look at policy before or after it is implemented. The Committee said:
“The Department should publish a full impact assessment containing analysis in line with the guidance on policy appraisal in HM Treasury’s Green Book, to accompany the proposed secondary legislation”.
When will we see the figures? We have not got them for the Bill. Will we have them before any secondary legislation comes before the House for approval? Will the Minister make a firm promise that that will be the case? He referred to further secondary legislation on higher-value council homes. Will these proposals be thoroughly and properly costed before we reach that point? This is a serious matter—the right of the House to have information before it passes legislation.
Let me come now to starter homes. Again, it has been a little hard to understand how the Government’s policy will work. When the Minister came before the Communities and Local Government Committee, he said that local authorities meeting developers to discuss section 106 agreements would have discretion over what mix of affordable housing would be built. Can we have some clarity on that? Will starter homes take absolute priority, with local authorities having no choice but to build them to hit the Government’s 200,000 target, and if there is a bit of money left, perhaps putting one or two affordable homes for rent on the site? Or will local authorities, as they are currently allowed to, come to their own view about section 106 agreements and about the right mix of affordable homes on the site, whether that means starter homes—now defined as affordable homes—homes to rent or shared ownership? What is actually going to be the case?
What about areas of land in my constituency where there is no requirement for any affordable housing at present because the sites are not considered to be viable, yet viability is an important test under the national planning policy framework guidelines that local authorities have to work to? Will the Government insist that starter homes are built on a site where it is not currently considered viable to have any section 106 provision for affordable housing? How is that going to work—or will there be local discretion in that regard as well? We need some clarity.
We also need clarity about the replacement of the higher-value council homes as to precisely what sort of homes they will be replaced with, how that will be defined, and what the negotiation process between Government and local authorities will look like. Will it be a case of starter homes at all costs, or are we going to be in a position where affordable homes to rent can be part of the replacement situation, going back to “like-for-like”?
The Chartered Institute of Housing produced evidence to the Select Committee in which it estimated that during the course of this Parliament there would be 300,000 fewer social homes to rent than there were at the beginning. The Minister likes to take credit for the previous coalition Government having built more council homes than were built under the Labour Government, but let us get to the point: during this Parliament, will there be 300,000 fewer social homes to rent, not just council homes but housing association properties, as the Chartered Institute of Housing has estimated? The Government disagree with that figure, but will they say what they expect their policies to produce by the end of this Parliament?
Kevin Hollinrake
The hon. Gentleman will remember the clear evidence given by David Orr of the National Housing Federation, who said that because of these proposals housing associations will be building more properties of all tenures.
Litter and Fly-tipping: England
Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Clive Betts(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
I congratulate the Chair of the Select Committee on introducing this important debate. He mentions fixed penalty notices, which I understand can potentially lead to criminal convictions if further steps are taken. Some local authorities might be reluctant to take those steps on the basis that they might criminalise young people. Should we perhaps consider making fixed penalty notices a civil offence?
Mr Betts
That is an interesting idea. The Committee misunderstood the position—we do not always get everything absolutely right, but we try. We said that fixed penalty notices are easy because of their civil nature, but the Government corrected us and said that they are a criminal penalty. The Government should think about the hon. Gentleman’s suggestion, because that is an issue. If people are fined, we want to deter them and we want a process that is easier than going through the courts to get a fine. That could be looked at without reducing the intention to deter.
The advantage of fixed penalty notices is that the money goes back to the local authority. In the past, the Committee suggested that the Government should think about allowing money from other fines to go back to local authorities. The authority bears the costs, but the fines go to the Treasury. There is a disjuncture between the revenue from fixed penalty notices, which goes to the local authority, and fines, which go to the Treasury. Could we not have a more joined-up approach so that the local authorities, which incur the cost, get the returns from any action they take?
We then looked at the types of litter and tried to distinguish between them. Cigarettes are the most littered object. The problem is that many people do not see puffing away on a cigarette and then putting it out on the floor as littering—“It’s only a cigarette butt”—but it is. Cigarette butts are the most common item of litter. We had quite a discussion about that, and we were surprised when the then Minister, the hon. Member for Keighley (Kris Hopkins), said that the Department suggested to the Chancellor that part of any extra tax on tobacco products should go to local authorities. The Department dismissed that in its response, but the suggestion was made by a Government Minister. The hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) is nodding away because he was in the Committee and heard the evidence. I do not know whether the Government changed their mind or whether—surely not—one Government Department has a different view from another. We now understand that Ministers have different views. Indeed, we are getting quite used to that idea on certain subjects. Anyway, the Minister might like to reflect on those points.
Mr Betts
We had a serious look at that and received a lot of evidence. We deliberated and came to a reasonable conclusion. The Local Government Association was absolutely clear in its evidence that it is signed up to the local government declaration on tobacco control and believes that that means that the LGA and local authorities must have nothing at all to do with tobacco companies. The view is that, because of the nature of tobacco and the need to get the message across, in particular to young people, that tobacco products kill, there should be no connection at all and that the tobacco industry should not get involved with democratically elected bodies. Indeed, I understand that the national health service takes exactly the same line nationally: no connection at all.
Mr Betts
The Committee did not say that no one should engage, but we placed strong caveats on any engagement, for obvious reasons. In the end, we said it was down to local authorities to make a decision, but we also thought the Government might make a contribution from the tobacco tax levies.
The other interesting thing about our discussion on the involvement of tobacco companies was that we had two Ministers—one from the Department for Communities and Local Government and one from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs—who gave us completely different evidence. They sat and disagreed with each other in front of the Committee. We had two different political parties coming up to a general election, so perhaps collective responsibility was breaking down in the last Parliament, for reasons different from those in this Parliament.
Again, in the end we said it was down to local authorities, but we emphasised over and over again that tobacco companies should in no way be allowed to pay out money as a salve for their consciences and to show that they are okay and not really the bad guys because they are making a public contribution. They are not okay; they sell a dangerous product, which the House has recognised through legislation in a number of ways in recent years, and I think we all support that. We do not want to do anything to give the tobacco companies a way into the public’s good books.
The Tobacco Manufacturers Association made the interesting suggestion that tobacco litter is not that bad because portable, fold-up ashtrays mean that people do not have to drop ash. We said, “Great! Why don’t you issue them free with all packets of cigarettes?” I have not noticed that that has happened in the months since they made that suggestion. Was it just a publicity gimmick to suggest that they are not as bad as everyone makes out? It is quite a good idea, but nothing has happened. We should encourage them to consider it again if they want to do something practical to alleviate the problem.
Kevin Hollinrake
The hon. Gentleman is speaking about tobacco companies, and I mentioned chewing gum, but my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) just reminded me of companies such as McDonald’s. Our highways are often a litter-strewn disgrace, and while there are duties under section 89 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 to keep those highways clean, there is conflict between local authorities, which have the duty, and Highways England, which is required to provide protection for local authority employees for health and safety reasons. Highways England charges for that, so highways are not being kept clean—they are cleaned only occasionally when someone complains. In my constituency, the A64 is a litter-strewn disgrace that deters the tourism that my areas relies on, yet there is no joined-up thinking about how to clean the highways. Do we need to consider that as part of the national strategy to which he referred?
Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Clive Betts
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
I shall begin with the aspects of the Bill with which I agree. There are some measures on the private rented sector that I can support, not least because the proposals on fixed penalty notices are an easier way to deal with landlords who are misbehaving in certain circumstances, and the rent repayment orders were recommendations of the Select Committee, as set out in its report during the last Parliament.
I am sorry that the Government have not gone further in dealing with the continuing problem of the very short tenures that most people in the private rented sector have or with the problem of the lack of resources of local authorities. The Government ought to consider allowing local authorities to keep fines that are levied on landlords, so as to help pay the cost of prosecuting those landlords who behave badly and bring the whole sector into disrepute. I hope that the Government will consider placing in the Bill a measure to ensure five-yearly checks on electrical safety in homes. The Government could achieve that very easily and it would help greatly.
On affordable housing, my great worry about the Bill is that if we are to achieve the 200,000 homes a year that the Government aspire to building—or the 250,000-plus homes that we really need—it can be done only through a serious long-term plan to build social housing for rent in this country. There has been a long-term decline in house building because that whole sector has diminished. What concerns me is that measures in the Bill will lead to the building of fewer houses at rents that people can afford, and that by the end of the current Parliament in 2020 there will be fewer homes to rent than there were in 2015.
Let us consider some of those measures. First, let us consider the right to buy. It is possible that some housing associations, if they chose—and it will be a choice—could replace properties on a like-for-like basis in their localities, although that would depend very much on their circumstances, but no information that I have seen, from Ministers or from anyone else, has persuaded me that local authorities have any chance of replacing the properties that they will have to sell off on a like-for-like basis in their localities. I am sure that the Select Committee will explore that issue further. It will be very interesting if Ministers are able to provide the Committee with evidence.
The starter home measures also present problems and challenges, because they do not propose the building of a single new home. Every starter home will be built in place of the affordable home that would otherwise be built under the current section 106 arrangements. In the last 10 years, nearly a quarter of a million homes have been built for housing associations as a result of section 106 agreements, but no more will be built during this Parliament. There will be starter homes costing up to £450,000, but a whole range of homes for affordable rents will not now be built.
Kevin Hollinrake
What does the hon. Gentleman make of the comments of the chief executive of the National Housing Federation, who has said that
“our offer to the government will see an increase in the number of new homes built”
and will
“ease pressure in all parts of the market”?
Mr Betts
David Orr, who gave evidence to the Select Committee the other day, said that he believed that more homes would be built as a result of the right-to-buy proposals, but also said that the federation did not support the proposals to force a sell-off of council homes to pay for them. He made that very clear. The federation also came out very strongly against the changes in rent levels which the Chancellor introduced in his Budget, and which will cause significant reductions in the number of homes that can be built by both local authorities and housing associations. As a result of these measures, Sheffield county council will lose £27 million of revenue from its housing account and South Yorkshire housing association will lose £7 million over the current Parliament.
The other day, in the Chamber, I congratulated the Secretary of State on his decentralisation proposals, but another key problem with the Bill is that it is very centralist. The starter homes programme involves micromanaged section 106 agreements. Local authorities currently do a deal on each individual site, but decisions on what homes should be built on each site will now be imposed from the centre. Moreover, planning permissions for building on brownfield sites will be given automatically, and local authorities will not have the right to negotiate infrastructure deals as part of those permissions. In the case of major infrastructure projects, it will be possible for housing to be approved with no local consent whatsoever. The Royal Town Planning Institute has said that
“the increase in the powers of Whitehall through these measures is extraordinary.”
Control of total rents, control of the rents paid by so-called high-income families, and controls forcing local authorities to sell off properties will mean that the housing revenue account—a stand-alone account that was introduced by the Secretary of State when he was a junior Minister a few years ago—is now very firmly in the Chancellor’s pocket.
Let me make two final points. Can anyone seriously believe that homes costing £450,000 are affordable, or that the income of a family in which two members are working hard and earning the living wage can be described as high, as it is in the Bill? Those two points alone show how out of touch the Government are, and how irrelevant these measures are to the real problems that face most people in this country.
Rural Broadband
Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Clive Betts(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Betts, for giving me the opportunity to speak in the debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) on securing it. One of our roles as parliamentarians must be to create a level playing field, so that businesses can compete wherever they are situated. I give credit to the Government and to the Minister, because we have seen huge improvements. I am referring to the £1.7 billion of investment, the target of 95% of people getting superfast broadband by 2017 and the fact that we are one of the leading nations in the European Union for broadband access.
However, the issue is not just what we are spending, but where. The key question is whether we have a level playing field. Some 5% do not get good access; they have poor or absent broadband and mobile phone coverage. There is the issue of rural areas gaining access to schemes such as the £3,000 broadband connection voucher scheme, which was aimed only at cities.
As we have heard, broadband is now an essential service. The Institute of Directors names it as its No. 1 priority for businesses. Rural Action Yorkshire says that it is now a “necessity” and that poor mobile coverage and slow broadband make it nearly impossible to run a business. Many businesses in my constituency are struggling to compete. Businesses used to compete just locally, but now businesses compete nationally and internationally. I recently visited a Michelin-starred restaurant in my constituency that is competing against other Michelin-starred restaurants in other parts of the country. If people are sat waiting to be able to book a client in online and the screen will not change, they are losing business. Other companies selling goods online are competing against businesses internationally.
We want to attract great businesses such as architects and graphic designers, but they cannot operate in rural areas with slow broadband, which means that they will relocate out of our areas. They will move to urban areas or places where they will get faster broadband. It is not a level playing field, and that is contributing to a depopulation of young people and businesses, which hampers job creation and investment.
A report by the National Farmers Union recently stated that 40% of farmers are without access to broadband and 90% have no reliable service. Despite that, we expect them to fill in forms, use the common agricultural policy information service, complete VAT returns and manage vehicle tax and animal passports online. North Yorkshire County Council recently announced that its third-stage investment in broadband would still mean that some isolated areas would not get access to high-speed broadband, so those businesses have no prospect of a solution in the foreseeable future.
The position is similar for mobile phone coverage. Yes, there have been improvements, and we are delighted to hear of the £5 billion investment in new masts in our major networks around the UK. On the ground, however, we see little apparent improvement in access to mobile phone coverage.
How do we help rural businesses on to that level playing field? There are solutions, of course. Point-to-point wireless is an effective solution. Fixed-line to wireless and back to fixed-line is another. I am grateful to the Minister for agreeing to meet in October one of my providers, Moorsweb, which provides those excellent solutions in my area. Its business model is contingent on finding long-term customers in its area, but as soon as it achieves market penetration, BT or Openreach can come into the area and take those customers back. As a result, Moorsweb has no long-term customer base, which is a disincentive to it to invest. It is a good, not-for-profit organisation that is keen to deliver a service to local people, but when it invests, there is no long-term return. We need to make sure that such providers have security of commercial opportunity.
Effectively, we have a market failure. The bundling of BT with Openreach almost disincentivises the company from rolling out superfast broadband to industrial estates, where it already has leased lines—
Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)
Order. I am sorry to cut the hon. Gentleman off, but we have to move on to the next contribution.