Middle Level Bill

Debate between Lord Bellingham and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 29th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

I begin with the remark that all politics is local. We are now discussing the Middle Level Bill, while earlier today we were talking about major geo-political issues, including the invoking of article 50. Such is the cornucopia of delights available in the House of Commons.

We should not divide on this Bill. It is important to have a full and comprehensive debate today, but it should then proceed to Committee so that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) who so eloquently introduced the Bill as sponsor said, it can be looked at in greater detail.

I am a local Member of Parliament, but, as the Minister said, it has not been possible for Ministers directly affected by this Bill, principally my parliamentary neighbour my hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Stephen Barclay), who is a Government Whip, to speak to it. However, as Members will know, the waterways we are discussing meet the River Nene at the city of Peterborough, and I therefore have a direct connection with and interest in the debate. Incidentally, in Cambridgeshire it is the River Nene, whereas in Northamptonshire, across the county line, it is—for some bizarre reason—the River Nen.

I pay tribute to one of the petitioners, my constituent Chris Taylor of Newborough, who has been indefatigable in raising this important issue and holding the Middle Level Commissioners to account. Like him, I believe that the petition period was insufficient and that there has not been a proper debate, but my principal worry is that there has been no cost-benefit analysis.

As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay earlier, we are not talking about a navigation authority that is analogous with authorities such as the Broads Authority and other authorities throughout the country that provide better facilities—in fact, provide any facilities—and I think that legislating for a power to impose tolls and charges without upgrading those facilities would be a draconian and retrograde step, which is why, in my view, we need to debate the issue further in Committee.

I appreciate that it is imperative to regularise the legal basis for the navigation authority’s duties and responsibilities, with—as the Minister said—the proviso that the Government do not become involved in the detailed operational matters of the Middle Level Commissioners, but oversee their statutory duties. I understand that the Government broadly support the need to update and amend the existing legislation, on the basis of what is in the documentation. As the Minister said, it is very aged legislation. There is not just the 17th-century legislation that she mentioned; there are the Middle Level Acts of 1810 to 1874, the Nene Navigation Act 1753, the Land Drainage Act 1991, and the Flood and Water Management Act 2010.

As I said earlier, what we are discussing is not a traditional canal or river, but interconnected open drains. The land was drained in the 17th century to release it for agricultural and other uses. As it is below sea level, until then it was effectively an inland sea. As for the town of Whittlesey, the clue is in the name. It was pretty wet, and was not used greatly. However—of course I would say this, as the local Member of Parliament—it contains some of the finest agricultural land in Britain, if not Europe, because it is incredibly well irrigated. We must bear in mind that the Middle Level Commissioners differ substantially from the more traditional navigation authorities.

The key issue that has caused concern is not just the basic issue of charges, as covered in clause 3 and, potentially, clause 9, which deals with byelaws. I accept that the petitioners are in the minority, but they contend that their public rights of navigation—not exactly ancient rights, but very well-established historical rights, bestowed on them in the latter part of the 17th century by the Duke of Bedford, who was a major landowner to the east of Peterborough and in the fens as a whole—are being curtailed and reduced. Indeed, they contend, in their petition and in further papers, that those rights go back much further, beyond even Magna Carta in 1215: as far back as the 4th century. That is a major issue.

Let me give some more details of the petitioners’ complaint. We must bear it in mind that this is about charges on the 600 to 1,000 pleasure boats that use these 100 miles of waterways every year; it is not about commercial activity. I accept that in these straitened economic times public authorities have to look where they can to secure extra funding, and that it cannot just come from landowners, farmers and the taxpayer. I do not have an ideological aversion to further tolls and charges, therefore, but I do have an aversion to any unfairness to existing users of the facilities.

At the moment there are no services on this waterway: there are no water points, changing facilities, moorings, toilets, showers or collection points for rubbish. More importantly, notwithstanding the fact that secondary legislation might ameliorate the issue, at the moment that is not covered by the Bill and is not promised. That is an important point made in the documentation by the Residential Boat Owners Association and the National Bargee Travellers Association.

My hon. Friend the Member for Torbay rightly pointed out that there is a human rights legislation issue, because if we are curtailing the right to a family life under article 8 by removing the capacity of people to enjoy what is their home—a barge, for instance, or a pleasure cruiser—that is a wider legal issue. That could be explored further in Committee.

[Sir Henry Bellingham]

I thank my hon. Friend and constituency near neighbour for giving way. Does he accept that this is not just a question of using the levies for fees for providing services, because essential bank maintenance is also needed? Unless the banks are properly maintained, in a worst-case scenario there could be appalling flooding with the banks giving way, because, as he rightly points out, this area was extensively drained in the 16th century. So it is not just a question of providing facilities; it is also a question of maintaining the fabric of the waterways.

[Mr Jackson]

May I add to the congratulations of the House on my hon. Friend’s birthday? If I may say so, he is pretty ageless—he has not aged during the 12 years I have been in Parliament—and felicitations to my hon. Friend.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that flood prevention and flood amelioration are massively important; we agree on that.

Devolution (East Anglia)

Debate between Lord Bellingham and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Wednesday 27th April 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Government proposals for devolution in East Anglia.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Crausby. It is also a pleasure to see the Minister, who in his relatively short time in post has done an excellent job of driving the Government’s regional and devolution agenda, particularly as the Minister with responsibility for the northern powerhouse.

I come to this debate wearing two hats: one as the Member of Parliament for Peterborough for the past 11 years; and one as someone who is genuinely asking the Government to explain more coherently their rationale for this policy as it pertains to East Anglia. Obviously, we are a proud municipal entity in Peterborough. Our local authority was first incorporated in 1874, and 20 years ago we were liberated by throwing off the yoke of Cambridgeshire County Council to become, like other notable cities in England, a unitary authority as the city and county of Peterborough.

I am not ideologically against devolution in any sense, but it is incumbent on the Government to explain their position. It would be remiss of me not to draw the House’s attention to the excellent National Audit Office report published on 20 April, which was considered by the Public Accounts Committee on Monday in unison with another excellent report, produced on 23 March, on local enterprise partnerships.

Obviously, devolution is predicated on Government functions being moved to local areas and local entities. It is very much a bottom-up, not a top-down, process. That has certainly been the case in the majority of the 34 English local government areas that submitted bids following the Government’s invitation in 2014—the successful bids were announced in the 2015 autumn statement—but the policy of devolution must be seen within a wider context.

When the coalition Government were elected in 2010, we expressly set our face against regional government. We got rid of regional assemblies, having seen the mess made by the regional policy of the previous Labour Government, the rejection of regional government by the people of the north-east and, particularly, the rejection of the regional spatial strategies that had been trying to force inappropriate housing on many largely rural areas across the country. That was the basis of the Government’s position, and the then Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Sir Eric Pickles), specifically said at the time that there would be no further local government reorganisation.

It seems strange that, in what is essentially a financial statement, the Government disregarded the good work being done in places such as Manchester and Birmingham to announce, out of the blue and with limited consultation and collaboration with key stakeholders, local enterprise partnerships, local authority leaders and majority groups, three further devolution schemes in Greater Lincolnshire, the west of England and, of course, East Anglia. Given that the overall tone of the NAO report is that the process is a potential risk, and complex, the Government need to explain why that happened.

The policy involves 16 million people across 10 deals, and it arises from the Cities and Local Government Devolution Act 2016. I can understand why the policy is attractive to local authorities. It involves a cumulative sum of £7.4 billion over a 30-year period, or about £246.5 million per annum, but in the east of England it is only £30 million, which has to be set in the broader financial context. Currently, the three counties in the East Anglia scheme already spend £660 million in capital infrastructure funding and have already received £37 million of growth funding in the last financial year. The deal promises officially the lowest per capita funding of all the 10 devolution deals: £13 a head. That compares, for instance, with £22 a head for Sheffield, £20 a head for Liverpool and £23 a head for Tees valley—I am sure the Minister will have something to say about Tees valley.

If it were genuine devolution, I would be a bit more sanguine. I agree, of course, that it is not an ignoble aspiration for any Government to integrate and promote collaboration between key public services to improve them in sectors such as transport, business support, further education, housing and planning, although, incidentally, we are not devolving to any great extent the work of the Department for Work and Pensions, which has never been very agreeable to having any kind of subsidiarity or devolution. Also, the area of health is pick ‘n’ mix; some of the deals will have some health funding devolved and some will not.

A number of key issues cause me concern. One is about synergies. Is there really a synergy between the Suffolk coast, south Suffolk, St Neots, King’s Lynn and the city of Peterborough? I do not think there is. We should remember that the regional policy of the Labour Government was about reducing inequalities in the economies within regions and between regions, but the local enterprise partnerships that were established by the previous coalition Government were intended to take into account infrastructure and economic growth in travel-to-work areas, which, incidentally, are not coterminous with these new devolution deal areas.

I do not believe that there is any synergy. In fact, this is unprecedented. Unless we count Boadicea and Hereward the Wake, no one has ever decided it would be a good idea to have an overarching governance structure for the whole of these three counties in East Anglia. This is different from the other schemes. Of course, the Greater Manchester scheme and the Birmingham scheme effectively reconfigure the old Greater Manchester County Council and the West Midlands County Council, and they make sense. But regarding economic, demographic and social links, the East Anglia scheme does not stack up and it looks like a back-of-an-envelope calculation by someone in the Treasury.

That is an issue that concerns me. Another is duplication. Let me give just two examples. What is the point of LEPs now if some of their key functions in sectors such as skills and training are devolved to an executive elected mayor and a cabinet, with the numbers, powers, duties and responsibilities unspecified? We read that the combined authority will have an education committee. What will happen to Norfolk County Council’s education committee, or Suffolk County Council’s education committee and the cabinet functions that they discharge as local education authorities?

These are important issues and I do not believe that the Minister or the Government have addressed the potential for duplication across four tiers, and that is not including parish councils. The four tiers will be the LEP, the combined authority with the elected mayor, county councils and district councils. Quite reasonably, each of those bodies—particularly the district council and county council—is saying, “Which one of us is going to be abolished?”

[Sir Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is presenting a superb case. Where would the police and crime commissioners, who have only been going for four years and who the Government now say are doing a very good job, go in all this? They are another elected tier and are doing well. Chances are that, if the elected mayor comes in, the PCC will disappear, as will the LEPs. Those two initiatives, which are actually working very well, would effectively be scrapped.

[Mr Jackson]

My hon. Friend makes a very pertinent point and I pay tribute—

Land Registry

Debate between Lord Bellingham and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Tuesday 25th February 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Walker. I congratulate the hon. Member for Swansea East (Mrs James) on her speech, and I would like to put on the record that she will be a loss to the House when she leaves at the general election. She is a diligent and hard-working Member.

Almost four years ago, I stood on the other side of the Chamber opposite the then Justice Minister Michael Wills, who represented North Swindon. During that debate, I argued against the changes to the Land Registry estate that had been mooted by the previous Labour Government. Those changes were driven by the Lyons review of 2004, which focused on capital, land and buildings, and rental values.

I opposed the proposal because the methodology used was flawed, and it was very much a top-line, cost-saving exercise rather than one about efficiency and effectiveness. It did not take into account the great professionalism, esprit de corps and commitment of my constituents, some 210 of whom work in the Land Registry in Peterborough. I seek, as always, to protect the interests of my constituents; those are good-quality, white-collar jobs in Peterborough.

There is a difference between those proposals and the current ones, however. I echo the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (Mr Bellingham). There should be a consultation, but the Government should consider extending it because the proposals will have implications for many small and medium-sized enterprises involved in conveyancing and other property-related activities. If there is inherent merit in the Government’s case, I do not think that it will be damaged by extending the consultation.

[Mr Bellingham]

Does my hon. Friend agree that outside London and the south-east the housing market is still quite fragile, so any change in that local authority-based arrangement may lead to a great deal of uncertainty? That is another reason why the consultation period might easily be extended a bit.

[Mr Jackson]

I take my hon. Friend’s point, and I largely agree with him. However, it would be remiss of the Government not to look at different models for the delivery of necessary public services. In some important public service activities, even the previous Government looked at substantial changes in governance. That is the distinction between the proposals enunciated by the previous Government between 2008 and 2010—as hon. Members will have concluded, they resulted in the saving of the Peterborough Land Registry office and others across the country—and the current proposals, which are much more about governance.

For the record, 10 constituents have written to or e-mailed me about the matter, which is substantially fewer than contacted me about the debate four years ago. I make no comment on that; I merely highlight it for comparison. I support a proper debate on the delivery of such an important service, but I have no ideological opposition to the splitting of functions, whereby a GovCo might carry out practical land registration functions separately from the office of the chief land registrar, which is much more policy-based.

I agree that there must be a new business model, not least because we must always be mindful of the fact that our first priority as constituency MPs is to protect our constituents’ job opportunities, as the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) says, particularly in areas with high unemployment. However, we also have a wider responsibility to other stakeholders, including the taxpayer and businesses that rely on the Land Registry being efficient and delivering a good service. It is an important tripartite approach.