Flooding
Debate between Lord Pickles and Chris Williamson(10 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Pickles
I will raise that issue with the Environment Agency, which I found very responsive to individual schemes. If my hon. Friend would be kind enough to give me more precise details, I will try to get an answer for her.
Mr Pickles
The hon. Lady only has to look around to see how effective the new schemes have been. We have continued producing schemes. A number of Members have stood up and recognised what has happened. To be frank, I am pretty partisan and I am doing my best to be restrained. I point out politely that the last Labour Chancellor announced that if the Labour party won the last election, capital schemes would be cut by half. I do not believe for one moment that flood defences would have been exempt from that. After all, the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood, who has many fine qualities, has not been able to give a commitment that she would match the spending plans of the coalition Government.
Mr Pickles
Oh no, I don’t think so—not for a while.
Councils have the discretion to extend the relief. Since April, they have had the ability to waive the council tax exemption on empty homes to get them back into use, and to use the money to support front-line services or keep council tax down. The Leader of the Opposition supports that policy. However, I believe that the right hon. Member for Leeds Central has his doubts about it. It would be helpful if, in his summation, he made those doubts clear or demonstrated that he is at one with his leader.
The Government have been clear that we can give councils local flexibility. Councils can continue to use their discretionary powers to offer council tax relief to people whose homes are empty through no fault of their own. If councils are raising extra funds by waiving the exemption, they have a moral obligation to fund council tax relief for flooded homes for as long as it takes for families to get back into them. It would be most unfortunate if councils were portrayed as making money from misery.
To support home owners and businesses, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is providing a repair and renewal grant of up to £5,000 per household.
Mr Pickles
Certainly part of the amount that I have just announced with regard to businesses will be, although the rate rebate will not be available. This is perhaps a good opportunity for me to apologise to my right hon. Friend because I am afraid my office did not inform him of my visit to his constituency, which was made at short notice. I deeply regret that because he is a most diligent constituency MP, and I know he had been at the site the previous day. That was a good example of how adaptable firefighters have been: the use of the underpass as a balancing pool was a work of absolute genius, and it undoubtedly saved that important pumping station.
Chris Williamson
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way. I indicated that I might mention firefighters, but I think I will save that for a little later. He spoke earlier about a moral obligation on local authorities, but are the Government not under a moral obligation to reinstate the significant cuts that they made to the flood defence scheme when they came to power, particularly in view of the Prime Minister’s statement at the press conference he called on 11 February, when he said that the Government
“will build a more resilient country for the future”?
What does that mean if not reinstating those cuts?
Winter Floods
Debate between Lord Pickles and Chris Williamson(10 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Pickles
It is important for us to emphasise that we should not just look after people who live in towns or rural areas, but ensure that agriculture can survive and thrive in rural areas, so my hon. Friend makes an absolutely excellent point.
Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)
The Secretary of State said that the Government will work to defend “both town and country” and that there are lessons to be learned about the “resilience of our nation”, so I assume that he regrets the swingeing cuts to flood defence work. In view of the increased extreme weather, will he accept that it is time to implement the Pitt review in relation to the statutory responsibilities of the fire and rescue services, and to reverse the cuts that he is making to firefighters? [Interruption.] There will 5,000 fewer firefighters by 2015 than there were in 2010. They do heroic work in rescuing people—[Interruption.]
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. I think that the Secretary of State has certainly got the message. It is not helpful for other hon. Members to join in, because I may have to ask for the question to be repeated if I cannot hear it. I want to get you all in, but please help me to do so.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lord Pickles and Chris Williamson(10 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Pickles
I congratulate my hon. Friend and the local authority. There is a certain irony in the fact that the two Administrations of the past 40 years who have built the greatest number of council homes are Margaret Thatcher’s Administration and this Administration. In the past few years, we have built more council houses than the Labour party built in 13 years.
Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)
The Government give private landlords £9.5 billion every year through housing benefit, and yet they spend only £1.1 billion on building affordable homes. If they spent all that money on affordable homes, they could build 600,000 homes every year. Why does not the Minister stop picking on and vilifying low-income tenants, and call time on profiteering landlords by capping rents and using the savings in housing benefit to build more council houses?
Local Government Bill [Lords]
Debate between Lord Pickles and Chris Williamson(14 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Pickles
I think we have a little bit of time, with your indulgence, Mr Deputy Speaker. I was wondering about Ian Gibson, a very distinguished Member of this House, who was deselected. Was that not bullying because the leadership did not like what he had to say?
Chris Williamson
The Secretary of State is really scraping the barrel. If that is the best he can come up with, it demonstrates the paucity of his argument.
The hon. Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson) talked about democracy and said that there would be “no advantage”—I think those were his words—to local people of a unitary council. I wonder what planet he is living on, because clearly there is a significant benefit to local people from a unitary local authority, and it is clear that the people in Exeter and in Norwich want a unitary authority. There is a streak of gerrymandering running all the way through the Conservative party: it wants to gerrymander constituencies across the country and to gerrymander in local government. The views of local people—
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lord Pickles and Chris Williamson
Mr Pickles
When the hon. Gentleman was in another job, during his brief interregnum between spells in this place, he used to advise me solidly to cut away waste and speed things up, and I have followed that advice. HIPs were just part of a service that was provided. We have just heard from the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) about energy certificates, and a number of such services are available.
It has to be said that it is not as though the removal of HIPs came as a shock. It appeared clearly in the manifestos of the Conservative party and the Liberal Democrats, and in the coalition document.
Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)
2. Whether he plans to introduce a national register of private landlords.
Local Government Financing
Debate between Lord Pickles and Chris Williamson
Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)
Local government has been at the vanguard of progressive change for more than a century. Some of the most significant and innovative advances originated in local government. The introduction of modern sewerage systems in our towns and cities, the replacement of slum dwellings with decent public housing, the development of comprehensive schools and the provision of care for elderly and disabled people are just a few examples of the improvements brought about by local government.
When the Tories were last in power they did their level best to annihilate local government, and now that they are back they have set their sights on finishing the job. It is the local government equivalent of the return of the Daleks, with the right hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr Pickles) playing the role of Davros, the supreme leader of the Daleks, determined to exterminate progressive local government once and for all, aided and abetted by the Cybermen Liberal Democrats. The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government should be standing up for local government, not seeking to strike it down.
Given the Secretary of State’s dismal record as leader of Bradford city council, where he first gained his notoriety for vicious cuts, we should not be too surprised that he is now using the national stage to inflict his cuts agenda on the whole country. An article published last year in The Independent reminded us about his period as leader of Bradford city council. It stated that
“having gained control of the Conservatives’ only inner-city council”
he
“set about an unprecedented round of cuts, sell-offs, price rises and job losses. At the first meeting, £5.8 million was cut from the budget, chiefly in education. Council rents went up. So did charges for leisure centres, car parks, school meals, home helps, meals on wheels, OAP luncheon clubs and cemeteries.”
He did not finish there. The article goes on to say:
“Teachers, caretakers, maintenance workers, crèche and nursery staff, social workers and council officers all lost their jobs. Old people’s homes were sold off and Benefit Advice Centres closed.”
Sounds familiar, does it not?
The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Eric Pickles)
The hon. Gentleman should realise that the only people who sold off old people’s homes were in the Labour council that followed. He should realise that there were more teachers at the end of my period as leader of the council. The people who cut the teaching numbers were in the Labour council.
Chris Williamson
As Corporal Jones used to say, “They don’t like it up ’em,” do they? The sad fact is that the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government knows from his period as council leader that his cuts package will hit the poorest areas the hardest and he knows that some of our most vulnerable citizens throughout the country rely on the very council services that he wants to destroy. He knows, but he just does not care. He also knows that despite the local government aberration that was Bradford city council under his leadership, it was local government that helped to lead the resistance to the malevolent policies of Margaret Thatcher’s and John Major’s Administrations. It was local authorities—
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lord Pickles and Chris Williamson
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.