Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Stunell Excerpts

Tuesday 18th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As I explained, excessive neatness—the idea that we have everything rolled into one single process and decided simultaneously—is probably unrealistic and undesirable. But especially in the wake of the Smith commission and the debates we are having about how we administer votes in this House on English and Welsh matters, we need a wider constitutional convention stretching into the next Parliament to bring all the different threads together in the way that the hon. Gentleman implies.

[Sir Andrew Stunell (Hazel Grove) (LD)]

T11. I thank the Deputy Prime Minister for the energy that he has put into making the northern futures project work. Does he agree that growth in investment in infrastructure is a fundamental part of that? Does he also agree that getting the second phase of the Hazel Grove by-pass in my constituency has to be a part of that process?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I am sure that the Hazel Grove by-pass weighs heavily on the mind of the Chancellor, much as it does on my right hon. Friend’s and mine. He is right to say that revamping our national infrastructure, particularly those parts of our transport infrastructure that are still Victorian and in some cases somewhat dilapidated, is a major national mission that we must persist with over many years.

Cost of Living: Energy and Housing

Lord Stunell Excerpts

Thursday 5th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir Andrew Stunell (Hazel Grove) (LD)]

I greatly welcome the Queen’s Speech and the provisions set out in it. Having served on the Modern Slavery Joint Committee with Members of the House of Lords, I particularly welcome the Modern Slavery Bill. There is a long list of things I could welcome, but I want to focus on energy and housing as they are the topics for today. However, in passing I think I need to reply a little to the hon. Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling), who spoke of the particular pressures that women, and perhaps women care workers, were under, by pointing out to her that 3 million people have been taken out of income tax by the raising of the tax threshold and that a large majority of them are women in low-paid jobs. I hope she will give us some credit for some of the good things we are doing.

Energy and housing are closely linked, because 27% of the carbon dioxide that is emitted in this country is produced from our housing stock. The link between energy, climate change and housing is very close indeed, therefore. I have long posed this question to those who give advice to Government and others: “If you’ve got £100 million to spend, what is the cheapest way of reducing carbon by the greatest amount?” The answer every time is to tackle housing. That is cheaper than paying for new generating equipment and cheaper than policies to cut carbon for transport, and it is certainly a longer-term solution than any gimcrack price fixing of energy policy.

I am delighted that we have doubled the amount of renewable energy which is contributing to electrical generation since 2010. I welcome our approach to generating energy, and I particularly welcome what we are doing to control energy and improve efficiency in housing. That has been a long-term interest of mine, and I steered on to the statute book the Sustainable and Secure Buildings Act 2004. I was very pleased that this coalition Government adopted the green deal, too. As a Minister I had the opportunity to sign through the first step forward in energy-efficiency for housing in October 2010, and I am pleased to see that there is going to be delivery on zero-carbon homes by 2016. The announcement is somewhat overdue. The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government is in his place and knows my views about that. It nearly happened in 2012 and again in 2013, but it has happened in 2014: we have a clear announcement about the commissioning of allowable solutions, and we can now get the industry making the preparations it needs, building the confidence to invest that it needs and making sure that it can really deliver for us in 2016.

In parallel with yesterday’s Queen Speech, the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Stephen Williams), made a written statement today on zero-carbon homes. I want to comment briefly on one aspect of that: what is described as a “small site exemption”. Perhaps the Secretary of State can give us a little more information on that. I remind him that there is no need to exclude small sites from the application of allowable solutions. We already have a system, very often played out through section 106, whereby if recreational facilities cannot be provided on site, a developer will contribute to a fund for those facilities to be provided elsewhere. That mostly applies to small sites, because they are the ones where a playground cannot be fitted in easily and so money is paid to enhance playgrounds nearby. He is going to be consulting on the small site exemption and I urge him to accept that my consultation number for the size of small sites should be zero homes and no bigger.

I wish to focus on one other aspect of energy policy as it affects housing efficiency, and it relates to clause 29 of the Deregulation Bill. Again, there is some history here. In 2003, the London borough of Merton won a High Court case allowing it to set energy standards for housing in its borough. That was strongly challenged by the then Labour Government and came at the same time as the Bill that became my 2004 Act was going through Parliament. I wrote into my Bill a clause that “legitimised” the Merton ruling, but the Labour Government and the local government Minister at the time took stock and decided that the embarrassment of challenging this sensible provision outweighed anything else. The Labour Government announced that they were not going to challenge the ruling, and the clause came out of my draft Bill, as it then was, and did not need to find its form in that legislation. I say to the Secretary of State that it was a good localism measure, predating the very good work he has put in place since 2010. I urge him to talk to his colleagues across government and persuade them that we do not need clause 29 of this new Bill, or that if we do, it should not come into force until zero-carbon homes are in place in 2016. Otherwise, we shall have a gap in the provision of energy performance for housing, which nobody wants and nobody needs. Let us be the greenest Government ever.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Stunell Excerpts

Tuesday 11th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I certainly agree with the characterisation that over-centralisation, both economically and politically, is a problem that has blighted our country for a very, very long time, which is why I would highlight the importance of city deals—the most radical cutting of the purse strings that have controlled the way in which cities in the north of England and elsewhere behave by the Treasury. It is a radical step in decentralisation, as is the localising of business rates and the investment in HS2 to make sure that the north prospers in future just as much as the south.

[Sir Andrew Stunell (Hazel Grove) (LD)]

T8. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the electoral conduct report by the all-party group against anti-Semitism has provided useful recommendations on how we can conduct our election campaigns vigorously, but without grossly discriminatory campaigning? Will he agree to meet a deputation from that panel to discuss its recommendations?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I certainly thank my right hon. Friend and the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel), the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee, and others for their report, which is extremely good. We have looked closely at the recommendations, and I wrote to the Chair recently with my views both as a party leader and on behalf of the Government on how we can respond to them. Quite a lot of the recommendations, funnily enough, are enshrined in the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act 2014, especially on non-party campaigning. A number of other recommendations can be dealt with only with proper cross-party consensus, with political parties taking action as political parties, and I very much hope that we will all do that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Stunell Excerpts

Tuesday 19th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

It is incumbent on everybody on both sides of the House to make sure that the statistics we use, much as we might challenge them, are based in objective fact. However, on the day that the Labour party is literally making it up about child care costs and has been shown overnight to be using misleading statistics, and on the day when it claims that it will pay for new child care policies with a bank bonus tax that it has already spent 10 times over, I suggest that the hon. Lady’s colleagues think more carefully about the statistics they use.

[Sir Andrew Stunell (Hazel Grove) (LD)]

T2. Now that Labour’s disastrous social housing policy of selling and spending is over, will my right hon. Friend congratulate Stockport Homes on its work on rebuilding Stockport’s social housing stock, and will he have a word with the Chancellor to see whether Stockport can have greater financial flexibility to build more homes, which my constituents desperately need?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I certainly want to congratulate Stockport council on its very innovative scheme. I also want to pay tribute to my right hon. Friend who, in government, did a great deal to ensure that the £4 billion-plus that we are investing in affordable homes really translates into more affordable homes being built at a higher rate than was the case under the previous Administration.

My right hon. Friend will know that we, as the Liberal Democrat party within the coalition, think that there is a case for looking at greater flexibility in the headroom in housing revenue accounts, where those accounts are not fully used by councils, and we will continue to discuss that within the Government.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Stunell Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As I say, we have made a number of changes already to the detail of the spare room subsidy. We have provided a considerable amount of extra money for discretionary housing payments. Councils, including the council of the hon. Gentleman’s constituent, have discretion to use that money and to change the way the policy is adapted in practice. However, we will, of course, look at these difficult cases, work with councils and, if we need to, further adapt the way in which the policy is implemented.

[Andrew Stunell (Hazel Grove) (LD)]

I thoroughly welcome what my right hon. Friend said about city deals. Will he take note of the governance model for Greater Manchester, and does he recognise the value of a system that does not have a big mayoral figure?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I do not know which big mayoral figure my right hon. Friend might be thinking of, but I agree with him about the model of co-operation between local authorities of different political persuasions in Greater Manchester, which operates under the city deal system. Greater Manchester is pioneering the earn-back system, where Greater Manchester will be able to keep more revenue for infrastructure investment in the local area to the benefit of the people in Greater Manchester. That may prove to be a model that others seek to emulate elsewhere.