amendment of the law
Debate between Lord Pickles and John Redwood(10 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Eric Pickles)
Before I start, may I say what a pleasure it is to see the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) replying to the debate? The House had an opportunity last week to express its great affection for his father. But no matter how distinguished or old a person is when they depart, to lose a parent, as those of us who have lost a parent understand, is a bitter blow. I just wanted the right hon. Gentleman to know that we express our deep condolences to him and his family at this very difficult time, and we wish him very well.
By sticking to our long-term economic plan, we have brought the deficit down by a third, we have helped a record number of people into work and we are continuing to boost Britain’s resilient economic growth. This is a Budget that literally places new pounds in the pockets of taxpayers. It is creating opportunity and putting Britain on a path to a secure future, and it will reward pensioners, savers and hard-working families. It has drawn a clear distinction between a coalition Government doing everything in their power to bolster Britain’s recovery, and a Labour party that just offers more borrowing, more debt, and more taxes, and ducks the major challenge.
We want to see a fair and fast recovery across the country. This can only be achieved by galvanising all forms of growth—whether inside a local enterprise zone or on a building site—and by firing up businesses and home builders, getting them investing, exporting and creating jobs. Local economies are providing the solid foundation for a national recovery. The economy is stronger and more resilient, and is rewarding the hard-working British public.
The Budget has recognised those who were so badly affected by poor winter weather. Some £300 million has already been announced to support the individuals, businesses and councils that were hardest hit by the flooding and storms. The Chancellor has made available an additional £140 million—money that will go towards immediate repairs to, and maintenance of, damaged flood defences across Britain. The £200 million pothole challenge fund will fill holes in the road that have already been a blight to road users.
Getting these communities back on their feet after such a devastating period of weather remains a high priority across government.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Those are very welcome announcements. Is my right hon. Friend also going to take action to stop rapacious councils making a misery of the lives of normally law-abiding motorists who slightly overstay their welcome at parking places and are then treated as if they were criminals? I am sure it would lift confidence if they were spared some of the excess.
Mr Pickles
My right hon. Friend and I are as one on that matter. He will recall that the Government have consulted on this and on other issues related to parking, and that the consultation period has recently ended. We hope to make an announcement in the very near future.
New measures in the Budget will also help to support the building of a further 200,000 new homes for hard-working people, on top of the work we have already done to kick-start house building. New house building and construction output in England is now at its highest level since 2008, and new housing construction orders are at their highest levels since 2007. More than 170,000 affordable homes have been delivered since 2010, and £20 billion has been invested in affordable housing over the spending review period.
More council housing has been built under this coalition Government than in all the 13 years of the previous Government. I honestly do not understand why Labour Governments do not build council houses. Since the last quarter of the last century, the two really big builders of houses have been the Thatcher Administration and this coalition Government.
The number of first-time buyers is at its highest since 2007, and mortgage arrears at their lowest since the Bank of England’s figures began in 2007. The number of empty homes is at its lowest rate since records began and, in the last year, new housing registrations rose by 30% in England and by a massive 60% in London. In fact, the number of new homes registered in London last year was the highest since electronic records began more than 26 years ago.
By contrast, new home registrations fell in Labour-run Wales. House builders have shifted their business across the border to England because of the Welsh Government’s anti-business policies. This is due to Labour’s extra red tape, and to its botched implementation of home ownership schemes. By contrast, thanks to this Government, more than 17,000 people have already bought a home through Help to Buy. Overwhelmingly, these are first-time buyers, and they are mainly outside London and the south-east. This shows how we are supporting all parts of the country, north and south. Help to Buy is a key part of our long-term economic plan, giving thousands more people the security and independence that comes from owning their own home.
The Budget’s pension reforms will offer freedom of choice for people who work hard. It would be helpful if the right hon. Member for Leeds Central could clarify whether the Opposition support these reforms, or whether some ambiguity still exists. Our pension reforms, such as allowing the newly retired to pay off their mortgage and be liberated from the banks, will also lead to greater security in old age. I do not agree with the doom-mongers who say that this will somehow lead to a problem with buy to let. This Government are dramatically expanding the opportunities for institutional investment in the private rented sector, through guarantees and our build to rent schemes. These offer the opportunity for savers to invest in new built rented accommodation and to receive long-term, stable returns from the property market.
Mr Pickles
My right hon. Friend has carefully, and with his customary style, signposted where developers should go, from his constituency to parts of Kent. The top-down eco-towns built nothing but resentment, but this Government are working with communities to support large-scale development. As he said, this works only if local councils are in favour, and we work with local developers and with the local community to build something together in a proper partnership.
Mr Redwood
My right hon. Friend might like to know that about a decade ago I wrote a pamphlet called “Thames Reach”, recommending a new town in the Ebbsfleet area. I recommended it to the Labour Government, as I am full of generous good ideas and thought they might want to take it up. I think they agreed with it, but they did absolutely nothing. Can he explain why?
Mr Pickles
No, I cannot explain why. I suspect that my right hon. Friend’s reputation as a scourge from the right may have put the Labour Government off. I suspect they never got further than the title page, but had they gone on they would have seen some very sensible suggestions. We are free from that prejudice and, of course, he is an inspiration to us all.
Further support will come in due course from the second round of the local infrastructure fund and a prospectus on support for locally led garden cities. Increased output, increased supply and increased jobs, with stable recovery, low interest rates, and support for firms and sites of all size—we have got Britain building again. Labour’s threats of land grabs and a new development tax on house builders would cut the level of house building and undermine investment in complex land assembly projects. Against a backdrop of anti-business sentiment, perhaps epitomised by the Labour Department for Communities and Local Government team’s campaign against free Waitrose coffee, it is no surprise that this week’s Investors Chronicle warns savers to sell their shares in house builders if Labour were to win the election. That is not going to build more homes; it is a recipe for stagnation and for unemployment. As Wales shows, Labour’s anti-business dogma will have a chilling effect on jobs and the economy.
By contrast, this Government welcome enterprise and the free market. Enterprise zones have led the way in creating jobs all over the country, as well as helping the UK to become a world leader in a range of technologies and for inward investment.
Flooding
Debate between Lord Pickles and John Redwood(10 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Pickles
Of course, we take climate change into consideration in all the modelling we do with regard to flooding, but the hon. Lady will accept that the weather patterns we have had have been truly remarkable—nothing like them have been seen since the latter part of the 18th century. I will ensure that her remarks on flooding are passed on to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
As the two main A roads from my constituency into Reading have been closed by floods, and as many homes, businesses and gardens have been inundated, sometimes with foul as well as surface water, will my right hon. Friend assure me that, in future, the £1,200 million budget and the near £100 million cash that the Environment Agency started the year with will be available for schemes that I and others recommend which could stop that water in future? Is it not about time that we had the promise of some action from the Environment Agency?
Mr Pickles
We need to deal with the short-term effects of the floods given what is likely to happen over the next few weeks, but my right hon. Friend makes a reasonable point—it is not just the size of the Environment Agency budget, but what it does with it and what priorities it has. I am sure that, as the water recedes, there will be a lot of discussion between the Government and the Environment Agency.
Local Audit and Accountability Bill [Lords]
Debate between Lord Pickles and John Redwood
The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Eric Pickles)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
This Bill is a natural progression of the coalition Government’s programme for reform. It decentralises power away from quangos to local people, it saves taxpayers money by cutting waste and red tape, and it replaces top-down inspection with local accountability and transparency.
The Bill will do three things. First, it will abolish the residual Audit Commission. We have already abolished its interfering and ineffective inspection regimes, such as comprehensive area assessment. We have successfully outsourced its local audit contracts, building on the fact that a lot was already outsourced. This Bill provides for the primary legislation to finish the job. There is an obvious question to ask at the outset: if companies and charities can choose their own auditors, why should councils be any different?
The Audit Commission was born of good intentions, but in a different age. Local government has changed since the 1980s, in part due to the reforming legislation of that decade which helped stamp out corruption and jobs for the boys, but by the end of the century the Audit Commission was no longer the protector of the public purse under the new regime. It had become a top-down regulator of local government, micro-managing local services and imposing excessive and questionable red tape.
The Audit Commission was a creature of the centralised state, more interested in the views of “central Government stakeholders”—to use a dreadful phrase—than of local taxpayers. For example, it failed to act on the real problems of dysfunctional administration in Doncaster. It praised Corby council for its financial controls, missing wholly the Corby cube scandal. It was caught up in the Icelandic banking collapse, and then tried to shift the blame on to councils, while it had itself badly invested £10 million in Iceland. Meanwhile, councils, like my own in Brentwood, were marked down for having weekly rubbish collections because Millbank-based inspectors did not like them.
Research before the general election suggested that local government inspection and performance regimes added up to 40% to core council expenditure. Even the Department for Communities and Local Government’s own documents admitted that the performance management regime was “unbalanced”, with 80% focused on meeting top-down requirements.
Meanwhile, the Audit Commission itself wasted taxpayers’ money with a culture of excess. The Audit Commission hired lobbyists to stop the abolition of comprehensive area assessment, and indeed, to
“combat the activities of Eric Pickles.”
I have no idea how that ended. It splurged on corporate credit cards, including £770 for a lavish meal in an oyster bar for its board members to discuss better “corporate governance”. The commission subsequently lost the bill for its own dinner. It spent £53,000 on designer chairs for meeting rooms in 2010, with some costing as much as £900. The Audit Commission spent, in its latter time, far too much time sitting comfortably.
We have already shut down most of the Audit Commission. This Bill will close it down for good and introduce a new, localised audit regime, with estimates suggesting it could save £1.2 billion over the next 10 years —with councils saving the most. Local bodies will appoint their own auditors from an open and competitive market, with thousands more contracts up for grabs. There will be a significant opportunities for small firms to bid and expand their businesses. Local bodies will be able to choose their own auditors, join forces to appoint auditors together or establish a body to appoint auditors on their behalf. The key principle is that they can choose auditors in a way that best suits their needs.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Does the Secretary of State agree that what we want is an audit system that does not equate amounts of money with outcomes without proper testing of that? We seem to have an audit system that says, “This council spends twice as much as that council, so it must be twice as good.” We want to know what we get for the extra money.
Mr Pickles
My right hon. Friend makes a reasonable point. The audit regime is just part of the process of transparency; the publication of amounts above £500 and the right to be able to see what the council is doing increase the opportunity for the taxpayer, the voter and the local press to investigate.
Growth and Infrastructure Bill
Debate between Lord Pickles and John Redwood
Mr Pickles
Well, one might be concerned that this might be misrepresented as a money-raising exercise—a nice little earner—for local authorities, and that it would be in their financial interests for us to accept amendment 7. It is important that the British public—or the English public in this case—have confidence in the planning system.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
I would like a little more information. Will the Secretary of State give us his forecast of how many extra extensions we would get in the first year under his proposal, and how many might be lost with the amendment?
Mr Pickles
My right hon. Friend recognises that this represents a boost to industry. [Interruption.] I am sorry if the idea of helping local builders and do-it-yourselfers and people who earn their own living is regarded as unimportant.
Growth and Infrastructure Bill
Debate between Lord Pickles and John Redwood
Mr Pickles
I think it would be reasonable to make a little progress now.
Now some reforms can be delivered by circular and some by order, while others rightly require primary legislation in Parliament. The Bill we are introducing today has three key themes: boosting Britain’s infrastructure, cutting excessive red tape and helping local firms to grow. Let me deal with each in turn.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
I welcome the wish to get on with sensible infrastructure development, and I see that there are provisions to speed up planning permissions for power stations. As EU carbon dioxide regulations will entail the closure of a lot of necessary power stations quite soon, how much quicker will things be under the new procedures? We need to get on with it.
Mr Pickles
The new procedures remove a lot of the old regulations, which have been superseded by time, and make it much easier for those providing power to adapt to modern conditions. Technologies have improved, and the new procedures will enable us to adapt to them.
Mr Pickles
Of course this is not going to be done on the basis of a developer’s word—developers will have to demonstrate clearly to an inspector that the current targets are uneconomic. I believe that we will get more social houses built because of this measure and I believe that we will have more affordable houses. We have put additional sums in, as my right hon. Friend will recall, and fairly soon the schemes will be going out to tender.
Mr John Redwood
I think that this is the best bit in the Bill. It is so obvious that we have to allow the developers and the council to decide what is affordable and realistic. It may be that in some cases all we can get built is houses for sale. What is wrong with that?
Mr Pickles
There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, but I am afraid that a strange municipal machismo has grown up—if one authority managed 40%, another would say, “Well we managed to negotiate 50%.” It is wholly unrealistic.
Local Government Finance
Debate between Lord Pickles and John Redwood
Mr Pickles
The hon. Gentleman, who is distinguished in these matters—I am rather hoping that the Communities and Local Government Committee, which he chairs, might consider holding a special hearing on it—is entirely wrong. The levy system is there to pick up various authorities that will enjoy extra growth. [Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) will contain herself, I shall explain. Different parts of the country will enjoy economic growth at different rates. We will ensure that if areas of the country see disproportionate growth—Kensington and Chelsea, the City of London or the authorities next to Lakeside or Bluewater, for example—the money will be distributed. If we did not do that everybody would go and live there, because the pavements would be covered in gold. It is a natural process. Rather than people being on their bended knees, we will ensure that poorer parts of the country not only enjoy the benefits of economic growth through what they themselves achieve, but benefit from prosperity in the wider community.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Will the Secretary of State confirm that the increase in the business rate will still be set nationally, in order to reassure business people?
Mr Pickles
My right hon. Friend raises an important point. In order to ensure that the system works, business needs to have certainty and predictability, and because we want growth to be generated, we cannot allow businesses to be used as some kind of favourite cash machine for councils. The rate will continue to be set by formula and from the centre. However, local authorities can work closely with business to bring in new businesses.
Amendment of the Law
Debate between Lord Pickles and John Redwood(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Pickles
We will certainly look at that, but may I remind the hon. Lady that Labour councils are of the view that it would be “barmy” not to have the freeze, and that the freeze itself is “great news”? She should really get with the programme.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
That is great news on the council tax—fantastic. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that, every year of this Parliament, total spending goes up in cash terms, so, if the public sector can control costs and inflation, the situation need not be nearly as bad as the Opposition say?