Lord Pickles
Main Page: Lord Pickles (Conservative - Life peer)
Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)
1. If he will bring forward proposals to increase the powers of local authorities to prevent infill and garden development.
The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Eric Pickles)
Further to the coalition agreement—
Mr Speaker
Order. I think the right hon. Gentleman should have requested a grouping with questions 9 and 15.
Mr Pickles
You are absolutely right, Mr Speaker. I was just so happy to be here. I hope that I do not go on too long—[Hon. Members: “So do we.”] Well, I was not thinking of putting it to a vote.
Mr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)
9. If he will bring forward proposals to increase the powers of local authorities to prevent infill and garden development.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
15. If he will bring forward proposals to increase the powers of local authorities to prevent infill and garden development.
Mr Pickles
Further to the coalition agreement, the Minister of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), who has responsibilities for decentralisation and planning, gave notice to the House that we are changing planning guidance and that we have taken back gardens out of the definition of brownfield land. In addition, we have removed density requirements. The matter is now for local people to decide.
Zac Goldsmith
I should like to take this opportunity to congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on his welcome return to the Communities and Local Government brief. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Minister, not only for his recent work in developing the Government’s ambitious low-carbon economy programme, but for his long-term battle to give communities the power they need to stand up for themselves against inappropriate development.
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for his answer, but will he reassure the House and my constituents that he intends to repeal perverse rules that prevent local councillors from standing up for their constituents—
Mr Speaker
Order. I am sorry, but I must now cut off the hon. Gentleman. From now on, questions and answers must be briefer.
Mr Pickles
I think I got the gist; I think my hon. Friend was referring to predetermination and I am delighted to inform the House that it is our intention to repeal those regulations. That means we can give local councils the thing that Members of Parliament so desire—that councillors with opinions can actually vote on those opinions.
Bob Blackman
In Harrow East, the decision to safeguard gardens will be warmly welcomed, but another problem remains: unscrupulous developers whose planning application is turned down by councillors at local level, but who then appeal. What proposals are there to prevent the overturning of local planning decisions on appeal?
Mr Pickles
I understand what my hon. Friend is saying. We are determined to ensure that planning remains local, but of course an applicant’s right to appeal against a decision will remain.
Mr Nick Raynsford (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
I welcome the Secretary of State to his new post. What estimate has his Department made of the impact of the potential changes to planning policy implicit in this question and the other changes his Government have announced, given that Savills, the respected commentators on housing, project that on current trends and patterns there will be a cumulative shortfall of more than 1 million homes within five years?
Mr Pickles
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his welcome. It is entirely typical of his courtesy that his was the first letter of congratulation that I received. However, I have to tell him that it seems perverse for the Labour party to be concerned about housing numbers. After all, last year the lowest number of houses was built since 1946. Under Labour, it would appear that more damage was done to the housing industry than the Luftwaffe did.
Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)
Does the Secretary of State recognise that, stretching back to the time of Herbert Morrison, the green belt is a great Labour achievement? Does he also recognise that the urban densification policy of the past 13 years has protected the green belt and regenerated our cities? Does the policy review announced today put in jeopardy all that good work?
Mr Pickles
I recall hearing our former colleague John Prescott say from this Dispatch Box that the green belt was a great achievement of the Labour party and that it intended to build on it. That indeed seems to have been the case.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
I understand fully the concerns about garden grabbing, but I urge the Secretary of State to adopt a careful approach to how he intends to tackle the issue, because some infill is absolutely necessary in urban areas. Can he assure me that planning policy will be flexible enough to assist and not to detract from urban renewal in constituencies such as mine?
Mr Pickles
I very much welcome the hon. Gentleman’s support of the coalition’s policy, and I thank him for being part of that consensus. He should understand that these matters will now be decided locally, and the Government think that the most sensible people to decide matters of density and particular applications are the local communities that must bear the consequences of those developments.
Lorraine Fullbrook (South Ribble) (Con)
2. What ministerial directions in respect of an action likely to breach the requirements of financial propriety or regularity were issued to the accounting officer of his Department in the past 12 months.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Eric Pickles)
I and my ministerial colleagues have already announced new powers for councils to resist unwanted garden grabbing; the abolition of Labour’s cumbersome comprehensive area assessments; the vetoing of a proposed salary package of nearly £250,000 for the chief executive of the Audit Commission; a new era of town hall transparency for councils to be able to show the people of this country the money; the burying of John Prescott’s regional spatial strategies and the unwanted regional assemblies; the abolition of the red tape of Labour’s home information packs; and the end of Labour’s hated bin taxes.
Fiona Mactaggart
I am shocked that in that list, the Secretary of State did not refer to the cuts announcement that he has just made in his written statement. I have just calculated that in his plans, 90% of cuts in the diverse and deprived town of Slough, which I represent, will land on education and children’s services and community safety initiatives. If someone is not protected or dies as a result, whose fault will it be, Slough council’s or his?
Mr Pickles
If the hon. Lady is complaining about a 0.91% cut, goodness knows what she must have said about Labour, which allocated cuts of £50 billion, and the effect that that would have had on communities. If the hon. Lady wants to make complaints about anybody, she should look to herself.
Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)
T3. Will the Secretary of State tell us whether the Government intend soon to go ahead with their policy of giving the power of general competence to local councils, which my colleagues and many councils will warmly welcome?
Mr Pickles
I am very pleased to confirm to my hon. Friend that that is exactly what the Government intend to do, and the matter will be included in the new localism Bill.
Mr John Denham (Southampton, Itchen) (Lab)
I welcome the Secretary of State to his post. He and I have known each other since we worked together at the British Youth Council, which will give the House some idea of how long ago it was. I wish him well in his new role and hope that he does a great deal better in the months ahead than he has in his first month, because has he not failed to defend his Department, meaning that local communities and local services will bear the biggest share of the cuts, and introduced a package of cuts to services and housing that will fall unfairly on the communities with the greatest need? He needs to do better than that. He has failed in his job so far, and he will have to be a great deal more careful in what he does in the future.
Mr Pickles
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his words of welcome. We have indeed known each other for a very long time, but at least he is still recognisable from his photographs from those days, unlike myself. I wish him well in the forthcoming elections to the shadow Cabinet.
The right hon. Gentleman operated an extremely effective burnt earth policy within the Department. He left a legacy in which the cupboard was bare. All that was missing was a note of apology. The cuts that we have had to make have been imposed on us by him. We have managed to ensure that formula grant has not been touched and that no authority will face a revenue cut greater than 2%. That is much better than the £50 billion of unallocated cuts that was the legacy left to our Department.
Mr Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
T4. I understand that, notwithstanding the announcement that the Standards Board will be abolished, the big cheeses of that organisation have written to chief executives of local authorities asking them to supply more business in the form of complaints against accountable and elected representatives. Has the Treasury Bench considered making an example of this quango for its impertinence?
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
T2. Can the Secretary of State explain to people in Chesterfield, who suffered so badly from unemployment under the last Conservative Government, why one of the first measures that he has taken is to move £160,000 out of the working neighbourhoods fund? That money was being well spent by our council helping unemployed people back into work. Was not the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), right when he said that the poorest people will bear the cost of the cuts under this Conservative Government?
Mr Pickles
The hon. Gentleman’s council faces cuts of 1.36%. If his council cannot cope with that, it should ask him why the Labour party spent the country’s money without making adequate allocations and why the then Government planned cuts of £50 billion, of which local government’s share would have been about £13 billion.
Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)
T5. The coalition programme for government pledges to incentivise local business growth. Will that involve giving local authorities back a greater share of the tax revenue raised locally from business rates?
Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)
Can the Minister give Bolsover council an assurance that the plans concerning the 108 prefabricated Tarran bungalows occupied mainly by elderly people will receive the go-ahead? We already have the plans. There were plans to get rid of 20 in the first tranche, and to get rid of the lot in the future. We received a nice letter from the then Housing Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey). Surely, in a deprived area, this Government will not cut those plans to replace the prefabricated bungalows for elderly people in Bolsover.
Mr Pickles
I am sorry that, after 13 years of a Labour Government, people in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency are still living in prefabs—I can recall them from my youth. I do not know about the particular scheme, but I will ensure that he is written to.
Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)
I welcome the answers given to questions 1 and 4 earlier. What advice and guidance will be given to local authorities, and particularly the Planning Inspectorate, when dealing with applications prior to the new legislation going through?
David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)
Has the Secretary of State had a chance to estimate the change in the number of unauthorised Traveller sites since Labour came to power in 1997?
Mr Pickles
By a weird coincidence, I happen to have with me the figures for unauthorised sites—because my hon. Friend’s question was on the Order Paper. The number of caravans on unauthorised developments has increased from 887 in 1997 to 2,395 in 2010, which is an increase of 170%.
Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)
How can the Secretary of State reconcile his pre-election commitment to localism with his subsequent ministerial diktats, and why did he snub the Conservative-dominated Local Government Association over his Government’s cuts programme?
Mr Pickles
The hon. Gentleman is wrong. The first person who came to see me was Dame Margaret Eaton from the LGA. It has been informed throughout the process, and we have a very constructive relationship, not surprisingly because the Government intend to pass substantial powers down to local authorities. That represents a new constitutional settlement in which local people have power.
Matthew Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)
Is the Minister aware of how many messages of support I have received today for the plans to allow council buildings to fly the England flag during England games, and will he tell us more about what he intends to do to allow that to happen?
Mr Pickles
It is certainly our intention to encourage local authorities to have Gypsy and Traveller sites, and we will be announcing an incentive scheme. This is an important issue, and I want to ensure that we treat Gypsies and Travellers with respect. However, the hon. Gentleman must understand that we are in this position only because of the inheritance that we received. We had to take that money out, and if we had not done so, the prospect of our being able to provide sensible accommodation for Gypsies and Travellers would have been diminished, because of the profligacy of the Labour party.