Oral Answers to Questions

Priti Patel Excerpts

Monday 22nd July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

As the hon. Gentleman pointed out, we commenced a formal process of intervention in 15 local authorities to ensure that they fulfil their obligations. I have spent the last 12 months touring the country, exhorting local authorities not only to get a local plan in place, but to do so on a long-term basis so that people can see the kind of decadal-scale planning that is required to get to 300,000 homes a year. If local authorities remain sluggish in producing a plan, as the hon. Gentleman claims his local authority has been—I think that its plan is due for submission in August 2020, which does seem a little tardy—action may be required, beyond just a stiffly-worded letter.

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

When district councils do not have a local plan and a five-year land supply in place, it is villages and parishes that face the consequences of planning development. What protections will the Minister and his Department put in place for communities trying to establish neighbourhood plans, and will he reflect on his Department’s recent decision to grant planning permission to two sites in Hatfield Peverel that go against the neighbourhood plan?

[Kit Malthouse]

My right hon. Friend, with her usual skill, puts up a stout defence on behalf of her constituents. She is quite right that protections that would otherwise exist for neighbourhood plans recede where a local plan is not in place, particularly when there is not a five-year land supply. I would point out that having a five-year land supply is not a necessary condition of having a local plan. It is possible to have one without the other, and I hope that her local authority will seek to do so. We will shortly be issuing planning guidance on plan making, wherein I hope we will include measures to strengthen neighbourhood plans, either in the absence of a local plan or where they are not co-terminus.

Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government

Priti Patel Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 2nd July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones). I normally agree with him on so many things, but since he touched on the Conservative party leadership contest, let me say that there is a hustings for Conservative councillors taking place at this very moment at the Local Government Association conference. Of course, they are at the forefront of public service and our local communities, and they are proud Conservatives in the role they play in local government. I had better declare an interest: I am married to a Conservative councillor, so I will double down and reiterate that point.

I think all Members would agree that local government stands at the forefront of the delivery of so many services across our country, and that so many of our constituents depend on those services. I think it is fair to say, on the basis of the comments we have heard, that we all know there are challenges with that across our constituencies. It is appropriate that we should debate local government and the MHCLG estimates on the day that the Local Government Association holds its conference in Bournemouth, because councils are responsible for the delivery of so many vital services in our communities. I want to touch on a number of them, including housing, adult social care and supporting children with special needs, with reference to the challenges of growing demand.

Much of this has been mentioned already, but I would like to give some examples from Essex, where we also have funding pressures. It is not a policy of discrimination, if I may say so in reply to the points made by the right hon. Member for North Durham. Despite facing a tight squeeze on the funds they receive from central Government—a squeeze that started before 2010—local authorities have worked hard, and we should pay tribute to all councils, whatever their composition, because they have all worked hard to balance their books.

We know that efficiencies have been made. We know that local authorities have been innovative: services have been shared, procurement strategies changed, and some services reduced or changed. But rising demand has put councils at a tipping point where they now need some increases in resource from central Government, certainty about medium-term settlements and more flexibility over the powers they have and the ways they can generate income.

In the amazing and incredible county of Essex, the county council has delivered £311 million of savings over the last four years, a significant sum, and it is working to make a further £176 million of savings by 2021-22. The reason for those savings is to ensure that resources are naturally focused on investing in adult social care and the council’s outstanding children’s services. It received an outstanding Ofsted score, and I am very proud of the council for its sheer determination and the work it has done to receive that score. But the savings target is a stretch, because there is little left to cut. There is little more that the council can slice off because demand on services is growing at a startling rate. For adult services, we see a growing number of service users who use services for longer and have more complex needs. Over the next decade, the number of residents in Essex aged over 80 will rise by 60% and the number of those aged over 90 will double. There are also growing numbers of adults with learning disabilities who we want to support as much as possible. That is the right and compassionate thing to do, and we want to provide fairness and opportunities in doing so.

We must see the Government do more to give councils such as Essex the resources to meet these needs. We also need to see the Government recognise that our councils need more resources to support children’s services and those with special needs and disabilities. The hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) also mentioned that in her opening remarks, and that touches on education, health and care plans too. While councils’ budgets have been squeezed, they have had to provide for more services and new responsibilities, and it is right that we all recognise that.

The introduction and roll-out of education, health and care plans has caused a 35% increase across the county in the number of pupils covered by EHCPs in the four years between 2013-14 and 2017-18. It is right that we recognise the impact that is having on budgets for supporting children with special educational needs, because it has not been met by the high needs funding block.

Councils now face the challenge of carrying deficits and they do not know what the Government will do to address that. In Essex, the deficit is now £15 million and it is set to double. Across the country, it could hit £1.6 billion by 2020-21. That challenge needs to be addressed. We have all heard about funding reforms and we have all participated in many debates and presented the issues to Ministers, stressing that those matters will have to be addressed through the comprehensive funding review and fair funding review, when they come. Those reviews must deliver genuine reform. We cannot tinker around the edges any more.

The process must include addressing the regional inequalities that other hon. Members have mentioned in funding for councils such as Essex. Despite the growing levels of demand on services, Essex is underfunded compared to many other areas. In Essex, the funding level is £271 per person per year for services, whereas the figure elsewhere is much higher, doubling to £563 per person in parts of London. As a result of those pressures, the council is looking at making very difficult decisions just to close the £176 million funding gap.

At the moment, the council is consulting on proposals to change library services, which could lead to seven of the eight libraries in the Witham constituency closing if community management proposals do not come forward. I should add that that is not the sole answer when it comes to addressing library services. The total budget for libraries is about £13 million, and, while there may be some merit in looking at ways in which to bring more community management and involvement into our libraries and modernise services, the potential impact on our communities is significant. I do not think anyone in the House can dispute that, especially given that reductions in the libraries budget will make barely a dent in the £176 million savings target.

No one will be surprised to learn that I have met many residents throughout my constituency who are campaigning passionately to save our libraries, including those in Wickham Bishops, Kelvedon and Coggeshall. They want those vital services and facilities to remain open. I hope that the Government will reflect on what they can do in the long term to continue to safeguard the community lifelines about which so many of us feel so strongly.

The issue of planning and development is highly controversial in many parts of the country, but it is incredibly controversial from an Essex perspective. We want to see communities, not housing estates, being built. In Essex, and especially in my part of Essex, we know that the building of new homes is absolutely right because it gives families more security, including financial security, but we are aware of the challenges that local authorities face in respect of the five-year land supply.

My communities are open-minded about development, but they are frustrated by a lack of infrastructure and a lack of support. We must be radical in our use of, for instance, the new homes bonus to support more infrastructure, and change the way in which we support local government funding across the country.

Housing

Priti Patel Excerpts

Tuesday 9th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

The residents of the Witham constituency are concerned about a wide range of housing matters. Ministers might be familiar with some of them, but I want to pick on three examples.

First, the issue of how the five-year land supply is calculated affects communities across the country. In planning applications and appeals, we see developers trying to pick apart the declared pipelines in councils’ local plans. To be frank, highly paid consultants and advisers are producing lengthy reports for applications and appeals, and the public struggle to contest them because they do not have the resources. I have seen many cases in my constituency of developers trying to pick apart the council’s supply pipeline and go against local community planning and the council’s planning objectives. That is not good enough.

We all recognise that the delivery of land and housing can sometimes be beyond councils’ framework and mandate. I urge the Government to look again at how much weight is applied to the five-year supply. We must ensure that councils and communities have more protection. Developers think that by ripping apart five-year supply calculations, they can develop almost anywhere. That is a major issue across the board.

[Kit Malthouse]

I hear what my right hon. Friend is saying. She is making a strong point. I hope she agrees that part of the solution is to encourage neighbourhood plans, particularly in her constituency.

[Priti Patel]

I thank the Minister for that point. I will come on to that. Like all Members of Parliament, I want to see my communities empowered in planning decision making. In Witham town, there was recently an application for Gimsons—a site at River View in Witham—which is deemed a visually important site and is highly regarded by everyone in the community. The current local plan protects it from development. The draft local plan, which could be two years away from adoption, recommends approximately 40 dwellings, but an application for 78 came along and was granted permission. The residents were appalled that their views were ignored.

I am a great believer in neighbourhood plans and I encourage all my parishes to develop them. We want much more support for community-based planning and neighbourhood plans, particularly with parish councils. I urge the Minister and his team to give more resource to parishes and communities so we can ensure that they are protected from developers, who sometimes come along wanting to rip up the five-year land supply and to challenge councils and communities. Importantly, we must ensure that there are resources and that place-shaping can happen. The Minister has already spoken about that.

My final point is about the ways in which we can support housing and development. The Minister spoke about garden settlements. We have had many conversations and I urge him to ask the Secretary of State to reply to me—we have some outstanding correspondence. There is a huge opportunity for all Departments to work together to ensure we have integrated planning. That means that we have the right infrastructure, including road and rail, health, schools, and public amenities and services. That is a great programme that our Government could take forward. I urge the Minister and his colleagues across Government to work in an integrated way so we can drive the right kind of local community outcomes on housing and planning.

Oral Answers to Questions

Priti Patel Excerpts

Monday 8th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

Essex County Council is set to carry a £15 million deficit for special educational needs and vulnerable children. I hear what the Minister says about working with the Department for Education, but what are it and MHCLG doing collectively to ensure that the Treasury looks at the long-term needs of the many children who are currently not funded?

[Rishi Sunak]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that question. Her county council is a leader when it comes to dealing with vulnerable children; it is an example for others across the country to follow. I assure her that we are working very closely with the Department for Education. We are jointly undertaking a review to understand the exact drivers of the increased need that she mentioned, and we will make a compelling and evidence-based pitch to the Treasury come the spending review.

Oral Answers to Questions

Priti Patel Excerpts

Monday 28th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

This Government are committed to ensuring that every resident in this country gets the funding they need to have the services they deserve. The upcoming fair funding review is based on transparent, simple analytics and I am happy to hear from any colleagues if they disagree with the numbers.

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

Residents across my constituency and beyond are extremely concerned about the Rivenhall incinerator development, which was originally approved by the last Labour Government. With revised planning applications being considered, will the Secretary of State listen to my constituents and act by calling this application in?

[James Brokenshire]

I note the way in which my right hon. Friend is championing her constituents in her customary powerful and passionate way. She will understand, on the issue of calling in, that this is quasi-judicial and I am therefore unable to comment. However, I note the way in which she has championed the cause.

Local Government Funding

Priti Patel Excerpts

Tuesday 15th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in the debate and to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker. I congratulate the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) on securing this debate, and I thank her for her remarks. It is fair to say that she has covered a full gamut of aspects of local government. Like her, I pay tribute to the many thousands of councillors up and down the country who work tirelessly in their community as public servants, delivering some very difficult portfolios and in some very challenging parts of the country. At this time of year, councils across the country are in the process of finalising their budgets for the next financial year, which is why the hon. Lady’s debate is so timely.

My constituency covers three lower-tier authorities—Braintree District Council, Colchester Borough Council and Maldon District Council—as well as an upper-tier authority, which is Essex County Council. I pay tribute to all my colleagues at all the authorities, particularly Essex County Council, who are faced with a number of pressures, including growing demand on services—it is a theme that no doubt we will hear throughout the debate—and the overall impact of the Government’s financial settlements on them and on councils across the country. My colleagues at Essex County Council work very well with the Local Government Association, which has campaigned clearly and robustly on areas where more needs to be done. There is always scope for innovation, efficiency and transformation. Naturally, these local councils look to central Government to provide more certainty on the future of their finances and the level of support they receive from the Government.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the hon. Lady accept that one way central Government give certainty is by letting authorities that had the benefit of the retention of business rates know what the Government’s plans for the future are? At the moment, it is very uncertain.

[Priti Patel]

I will touch on business rates later. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and councils need to be getting on with their own plans.

With the comprehensive spending review taking place later this year, rate reform and the fair funding review—I know the Minister is well aware of this—the Government have the opportunity to consider carefully the various submissions and representations from local authorities. Compared with other local areas, we are underfunded in Essex not just through local government, but through our police and health services. I very much hope that the Minister and the Government will be sympathetic and understanding, and that they will use this as an opportunity to rebalance resources towards our county, particularly our county council, which has the responsibility for adults and children. Essex County Council is experiencing considerable budgetary pressures, which the Government will know about from the various representations that my colleagues across the county and I have constantly made to the Department.

Essex faces significant financial challenges in adult social care, which accounted for 45% of the council’s total spend, with a budget of £646 million in 2017-18. The council is collecting over £82 million in fees and charges from residents, but budgets are being squeezed and it already faces demographic pressures and challenges. The number of people aged over 80 is set to grow over the next decade by 61%, and those over 90 by 100%. The council is facing rising costs as it seeks to provide support to around 4,000 residents with learning disabilities, including cases that are very complex to resolve. Its objective is to provide those residents and all citizens with a good quality of life.

On top of those pressures, provider costs for care packages are increasing while the supply of beds and residential accommodation by providers is falling. Some 362 beds were lost to the market in 2018 as seven care homes closed, and contracts from domiciliary providers have been handed back. These are continuous pressures on funding social care. We know that money has been put aside for social care, which is of course welcome, but it is not meeting the growing pressures and demands in Essex and around the country, too.

I hope to work with the Government and my councils to look at how we can constructively address these pressures and constraints. The council faces pressures on education and special needs in addition to social care. I appreciate that this issue rests primarily with the Department for Education, but resources are being squeezed and I have many concerns. I have a vast number of constituents coming to me, and it is pretty clear that their needs, challenges and concerns are not being met in the way that we as a Government would like. The council has been proactive in its own representations to Ministers, and I very much look forward to the Government working with it.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston made a strong and important point on public health. Across the country—I see this in Essex—we are seeing pressures on public health. We can do much more to prevent many of the pressures on A&E, our hospitals and GP surgeries. One of the greatest challenges that we face, which relates directly to planning, is that the population of my constituency, and the number of houses, is growing. We have to meet those challenges by ensuring that the right kind of support goes into public health and infrastructure provision, so that we can get a new health centre for primary care in Witham and invest in our roads and in other aspects of local amenities and public services, too.

I come back to the point on education. When the provisional settlement was announced last month, Essex County Council was very keen to ensure that it was part of the pilot round for local business rates. It was pretty disappointed not to be, and I make a plea to the Minister for some kind of reconsideration or to ensure that Essex features in future schemes.

Essex is a county that constantly innovates. We want to strive for excellence while delivering value for money and meeting our service requirements to deliver to the public. There are endless pressures. Across the county of Essex, there are some big challenges that we want to work on with central Government to look for innovative solutions and ideas about how we can address many of those concerns.

Housing and Home Ownership

Priti Patel Excerpts

Tuesday 16th October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Neil O'Brien]

I utterly agree; I was about to make that very point. At the moment, we infill bits on the edges of every village and town. We are effectively building in the places that annoy people the most, so we do not build enough homes, as my hon. Friend said. When we do that, we cannot keep up with the infrastructure needs of these places, because it is physically impossible. Perhaps the primary school is on too small a plot or we cannot widen a road that has become a rat run because there is not enough money to meet infrastructure needs.

Previously, we did things very differently. There was the new towns programme: those new towns now house more than 2 million people very successfully. They are fast-growing places. Mrs Thatcher created docklands in London and Liverpool, and the model was roughly the same for both. A development corporation would buy land cheap at existing low values. It would assemble the land, install the infrastructure and sell on that land for uplifted values, therefore paying for itself. That model has been used successfully all over the world.

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend who, as ever, is making a very persuasive case. His Onwards report is very good, and he is contributing to what I would call the battle of ideas. He mentioned Margaret Thatcher, who was at the forefront of that. The Centre for Policy Studies published a paper on “help to own” on Monday. We want to be in this space to address some of the big challenges we are facing on planning, taxation and infrastructure, but we also need to try to persuade other parts of the Government—including the Treasury and our dear colleague in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government—to address some of the bigger issues of intergenerational fairness. A whole generation is locked out of home ownership, and we want to help them get back on the ladder so that we can become that property-owning democracy again.

[Neil O'Brien]

My right hon. Friend makes an extremely profound and important point.

A lot of councils are now getting back into the business of building new places. They are being forced to, because if they do not want to mess up every village and town in their area, they need to build new stand-alone places. We need to ensure that they have the tools and expertise they need to make that work.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Housing (Kit Malthouse)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your guiding hand, Mr Pritchard. It is a great pleasure to respond to this very important debate secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien). In his report, “Green, pleasant and affordable,” he has presented a smorgasbord—a veritable cornucopia—of radical and interesting ideas. In the time I have available, I want to go through a number of the areas that the report covers, in particular supply and home ownership.

The first issue he quite rightly raises is that of getting the most out of land. In order to increase housing supply, we understand that local authorities need to be empowered to make the most effective use of the land that is present across all our towns and cities.

In its recent report on land value capture, the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee made several recommendations for reform of compulsory purchase compensation. Its recommendations included restricting compensation by removing hope value from the assessment of the market value of land. The Government will publish their response to the Committee’s report shortly. As I explained when I gave evidence to the Committee, we have very recently introduced wide-ranging reforms to make the compulsory purchase process clearer, fairer and faster for all. That includes changes to the Land Compensation Act 1961. We are keen to let those important reforms bed in. The revised national planning policy framework, to which my hon. Friend referred, encourages local authorities to make more proactive use of their extensive land assembly powers. We will keep the operation of the system under review.

We also recognise that the availability of sustainable infrastructure is important to support new housing. That is why we have introduced changes to the NPPF that will ensure that developers know what contributions they are expected to make towards affordable housing and essential infrastructure, that local communities are clear about the infrastructure and affordable housing, and that local authorities can hold them to account. The revised NPPF requires local authorities to set clearer policy requirements for infrastructure and affordable housing through plans, informed by more transparent viability assessments. It will also support local authorities to ensure that development meets the policy requirements set out in the local plan.

Fundamentally, what we are trying to do in the NPPF is to give clarity up front to developers and local communities about what will be expected, which will allow them to factor that into land value over time. My hon. Friend quite rightly expressed dissatisfaction with the amount of value that is captured from land. He is correct that often in a viability assessment, it is the community infrastructure component—the section 106 component—that gets squeezed. That is largely because the negotiation takes place after planning permission has been granted. We are trying to give more clarity up front through the planning system, so that developers know what the requirements are going to be, whether that is infrastructure or affordable housing, and can factor that into the value that they pay for the land, so that fundamentally it is the land value that will get squeezed.

We have consulted on further reforms to developer contributions, including removing existing restrictions in certain circumstances that prevent local planning authorities pooling more than five section 106 planning obligations towards a single piece of infrastructure. We will be responding to that consultation in the near future as well.

Local authorities are also able to use the community infrastructure levy to help to fund the supporting infrastructure that is needed to address the cumulative impact of development. Where authorities have introduced CIL, 15% is specifically allocated to meet local priorities, and that is increased to 25% in areas with a neighbourhood plan in place. In an area that has a parish council, the money is passed directly to it. That neighbourhood allocation from CIL gives communities real power in deciding and delivering their infrastructure priorities for their area and will hopefully encourage the spread of neighbourhood planning.

In his report, my hon. Friend also considered the creation of new communities. We believe strongly that the creation of new garden communities can play a vital role in helping to meet this country’s housing need well into the future. Our current programme supports 23 locally-led garden communities that have the potential to deliver more than 200,000 homes by 2050. They range in size from 1,500 to more than 40,000 new homes in one place. We have just launched a new garden communities prospectus, inviting ambitious proposals for new garden communities at scale. This is not just about getting the numbers up; it is about building quality, innovative places that people are happy to call home.

[Priti Patel]

The Minister has lit the blue touch paper in mentioning garden communities. He will know from my correspondence with his Department that one of those garden community proposals covers my constituency, and the Braintree district and Colchester borough. Can he provide any clarity on the conditional requirements that the Department is putting in place for the development of those schemes—where public funds are being used—to support the concept of garden communities?

[Kit Malthouse]

The primary requirement we have for garden communities is that they have strong local support and are supported by local democratically elected politicians. We would, for example, not countenance a proposal for a garden community that came forward against the wishes of the local authority or local authorities concerned. My right hon. Friend may have noticed—this points to an issue that my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough raised about capacity and capability—that we recently changed the regulations so that we can have locally-led development corporations. They are brought together and approved by the Secretary of State, but under local initiatives and with local control, to try to deliver some of those communities more effectively. Local control, consent and engagement are key, in terms of both acceptability and development.

Another issue that has been raised is increasing density, which we believe is also important. We need to make sure that we make the most effective use of underutilised land. That is a crucial part of our focus. Higher density development and the development of brownfield land can play a significant role in increasing housing supply in urban locations, especially in areas that are well served by public transport and in town and city centre locations. The revised NPPF requires local planning authorities to be more proactive in identifying opportunities to make more effective use of land. That includes planning for higher densities in locations that are well served by public transport, and reallocating underutilised land to serve local development needs better.

I disagree slightly with my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough about the requirement to build towers to achieve density. In central London—a place that I know very well, having served there as a London Assembly member and councillor—some of the densest areas are in fact some of the most desirable, and they are low-rise. It is probably still the case that the densest part of central London is Cadogan Square. Towers do not necessarily deliver density, and they can often be intrusive. Our framework goes further by stating that local authorities should support the use of airspace above existing residential and commercial buildings to provide new homes, as my hon. Friend said. We recognise that there is more to be done, and that is why we have just announced that we will publish proposals for a national permitted development right to permit people to build upwards on existing buildings rather than just to build out.

Important in all of this is the need to diversify the market. We believe that to increase our housing supply we have to be innovative and boost the development sector to allow both large and small builders to flourish and to build the homes that our communities need. The Government fully recognise the important role that small and medium-sized house builders play in delivering much-needed housing in this country, and we are committed to ensuring that this support is in the right place. We have already put in place a number of initiatives to help SME house builders to grow and develop, including the home building fund, the housing growth fund and the housing delivery fund, as well as proposals to make it easier for SMEs to identify land.

We believe that that is a critical way to encourage innovation. The market has agglomerated into a small number of large players, which are perhaps not as innovative as they could be. If we can create a more vigorous market of people competing to build houses and competing for our custom, they are likely to be much more innovative in their method, supply and typography of housing, and they may well cater to different parts of the market and look at sites that larger builders might not.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kit Malthouse]

By sheer coincidence, on my accession to the chrysanthemum throne in housing, I raised a similar possibility, should we look at some way of transferring from landlord to tenant in the future. Those issues of tax, stamp duty and ownership are way above my pay grade, but I have no doubt that the report will have winged its way to the Treasury, where our colleagues will be considering its efficacy. I can see why it might be attractive from a landlord transfer to ownership point of view, although we would have to study its fiscal effects to see what the cost might be.

[Priti Patel]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Kit Malthouse]

I will make a bit of progress. I want to address the issue of home ownership, because it is fundamental to the report and it is, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough quite rightly said, one of the most important challenges of our time. As he mentioned, we must find ways to improve home ownership. Rising demand for housing has increased prices and in many cases pushed down home ownership. The Government believe that people should be free to purchase a second home or invest in a buy-to-let property. However, we are aware that that can make it difficult for other people, particularly first-time buyers, to get on the property ladder. That is why in April 2016 the Government introduced higher rates of stamp duty land tax on purchases of additional properties.

Since the council tax empty homes premium was introduced in April 2013, the number of long-term empty residential properties has fallen. When it is in force, the Rating (Property in Common Occupation) and Council Tax (Empty Dwellings) Bill will allow councils to go further, increasing the premium by up to 300% in some cases. That will allow authorities to encourage better use of the existing housing stock in their area. As the Prime Minister announced, the Government are also taking action on non-resident purchases of residential property, which can make it more difficult for UK residents to purchase a home of their own. The Government will publish a consultation on introducing an increased stamp duty land tax charge on non-residents buying property in England and Northern Ireland. More details will be brought forward through that consultation in due course, following the normal tax policy-making process set out by the Government—the legislation will be in a future Finance Bill.

We must also support our younger generation, who find it increasingly hard to get on to the property ladder. We are supporting people’s aspirations to buy through a range of initiatives, including Help to Buy, right to buy, greater funding for shared ownership, and rent to buy. Since the spring of 2010, Government-backed schemes have helped more than 481,000 households to buy a home. Younger people are also helped directly by our investment in affordable housing. The Government are investing more than £9 billion in the affordable homes programme to deliver a wide range of affordable homes, including shared ownership homes, by 2022. Since 2010, we have delivered more than 60,000 shared ownership properties, helping people to take their first steps into home ownership. Our recent Green Paper, “A new deal for social housing”, announced that we would be exploring innovative, affordable home ownership models to support those who are struggling to raise a deposit.

The Prime Minister has made it clear that this should be a country that works for everyone. That means building more of the right homes in the right places and ensuring that the housing market works for all parts of our community. It is this Government’s mission to reverse the decline in home ownership and to revive the dream of Britain as a property-owning democracy. We must revive that dream for ordinary people—for those striving on low and middle incomes, who find the first rung of the housing ladder beyond their reach. The Government are committed to tackling this challenge to make the housing market work. By the mid-2020s, we aim to have increased house building to an average of 300,000 net new homes a year.

On planning permissions, which my hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti) mentioned, we are now granting more than 350,000 permissions a year against a building target of 300,000 houses. That is another challenge that I face. In the time that I have in this job, I am always open to ideas. I certainly welcome the radical thinking that my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough and his collaborators on the paper have injected into the debate. I will be studying the paper in some detail and I hope to weave some of his thinking into our policies in the future.

Question put and agreed to.

Anti-Semitism

Priti Patel Excerpts

Tuesday 17th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

I start by paying tribute to our colleagues, the hon. Members for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth), for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) and for Bassetlaw (John Mann), for their sheer determination and the courage with which they have spoken today. It is with a great sense of sadness and anger that I feel compelled to speak in the debate today. It is appalling that, in the 21st century, we are having to discuss the growing tide of anti-Semitism in the United Kingdom. I say this as the daughter of migrants who fled persecution and hate; it is appalling, and anyone who has endured hate crime or been on the receiving end of abusive comments about their religion, their culture, the colour of their skin or their heritage will know just how disgusting and hurtful those comments can be. Many, including myself, had hoped that the attitudes of the past would have disappeared by now, and that we would never see them repeated, yet they feature prominently in our society and our politics today. I hoped that we would have become much more respectful and tolerant as a society.

Racist and anti-Semitic attitudes have festered and brewed on the hard right but also on the left, and there is absolutely no justification for those attitudes or behaviours. There is no justification for people to claim to be emboldened, perhaps through social media, to make vicious and vitriolic comments about the “Jewish lobby” and the “Israeli lobby”, or about “conspiracies”. There is no justification for the stereotypical racist attitudes and abuse that are deliberately targeted at members of the Jewish community in Britain today. It is appalling that we now see anti-Semitism in all forms, and it is right that hon. and right hon. Members across the Chamber have unequivocally condemned those who hold such extremist views.

I pay tribute not only to colleagues but to the Community Security Trust, which has done so much to support the Jewish community and keep it safe. In the community that I grew up in, in Radlett in Hertfordshire, we saw the CST outside synagogues and schools, protecting children and families. Now, however, we see Jewish students at university who feel unsafe because they are being threatened, victimised and targeted. I was shocked to read an account of a debate at City University this year in which a female student was being targeted and experiencing pure hatred. People were taking pictures of her and whispering obscenities in her ear to try to intimidate her. She said that she now felt completely unsafe being a Jew in the city of London. That is shocking and disgraceful, and as politicians, it is right that we should be held to high standards and that we should call out that kind of behaviour.

It is particularly alarming and shocking to hear about what is happening in the Labour party, with Momentum and the hard left now out there perpetrating awful comments and actually celebrating and cheering some of the comments that they are putting out. I pay tribute to the Labour Members who have stood up to anti-Semitism in their party. We must all stand shoulder to shoulder with them. The hard left’s hatred and intolerance for those with different opinions has gone much too far.

We have heard today about the suffering and persecution that the Jewish community has faced for hundreds of years through mass expulsions, persecution and lies. Jewish people have been stigmatised, forced to wear badges and treated with suspicion. In one of the darkest chapters in human history, they were forced to go through all sorts of horrors that we should not have to speak about in this day and age. Each and every one of us has a responsibility to speak up and be a strong voice against the forces of hatred, prejudice and discrimination within our own community. We must ensure that we continue to stand up against the racism and anti-Semitism that we now see across society and across our politics today.

Department for Transport

Priti Patel Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 27th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson), who has made a clear case for the vital role of transport infrastructure across our country. I want to talk specifically about the great county of Essex and our transport needs today. You will know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that Essex contributes more than £38 billion in gross value added to the UK economy, but with investment in transport infrastructure, we have the potential to do so much more.

I want to focus today on strategic rail and strategic road investments. Essex and East Anglia have historically missed out on funding from central Government sources. As a country, we are investing more in the railways since the Victorian era—something we should be proud of—with public and private sector funds making a significant contribution. Investment in the rail network now could put our economy in an even stronger position as we look to future-proof and grow our economy accordingly. Much of the investment in rail infrastructure comes from the public purse, and last year the Government announced their statement of funds available—famously known as SOFA—which totals £47.9 billion for control period 6, which covers from 2019 to 2024. That level of investment is of course welcome, and it is possible only because of this Government’s record on sound finances and the strong economy.

Within the Greater Anglia region, Network Rail’s route manager is seeking more than £2 billion of that funding for the Anglia route. My hon. Friend the Minister of State will be well aware of the bids that are coming through, and I hope that the Government will look favourably on that particular request. However, that investment would be for renewals and maintenance, and it would not include major strategic enhancements. Because of the changes that the Government are making, major infrastructure schemes are determined through a new process rather than through multi-year strategic control periods.

The great eastern main line needs significant improvements, and I know that the Department is well and truly versed in its needs, because Members of Parliament from Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, north Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire came together through the GEML Taskforce to develop a prospectus for rail investment. That prospectus, published in 2014, was supported by the Government, including the former Chancellor, and contained a number of long-term proposals to improve services particularly for our long-suffering commuters, including new trains, which are coming, and, importantly, infrastructure enhancements such as the Witham loops to boost capacity, the Trowse swing bridge, upgrades to Hawley junction, re-signalling south of Colchester, improvements to Liverpool Street station and other schemes that can no longer be kicked into the long grass.

Investing in these schemes will add over £4 billion to our economy, meaning more jobs, more income for families and more revenue for the Exchequer. That is based on a 2014 analysis, and I am sure a more recent review of the figures, given the additional housing supply in that part of Essex and in East Anglia, will project a greater boost.

Passengers who use the GEML pay more in fares each year, and over the next few years they will be subsidising the rest of the rail network by providing the Treasury with a £3.7 billion windfall. We would like to see that money coming back for long-term investments, because it is rail users in the region who are paying for that. They are contributing hugely and want to see the benefits coming back within the region. It is a complete “no-brainer.” The Government and the Chancellor spoke favourably about this at questions today and understand the significance of it all.

I also want to touch on the two roads that impact on Essex: the A12 and the A120, which connects Stansted to Harwich. They are economic corridors, and delays and congestion on them hold business back, costing companies millions of pounds each year. These roads have been earmarked for widening schemes, but they are subject to various processes within the Department for Transport, and I plead with the Minister to ensure we unblock any bottlenecks to those schemes.

As we consider the supply estimates today, I urge the Minister and the Government to ensure that these schemes can progress and are developed for the long-term benefit of the east of England.

Housing, Planning and Infrastructure: Essex

Priti Patel Excerpts

Thursday 1st February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

I am grateful to Mr Speaker for granting this debate. I welcome my hon. Friend the Minister to his role, and the opportunity to hear about my constituency.

My constituency covers three lower tiers of local planning authorities while Essex County Council has responsibility for waste and minerals, which partly explains why the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government holds such a high volume of correspondence from me on behalf of my constituents. If the Minister visits Witham, which he is very welcome to do, he will see at first hand the boundless economic potential of this part of Essex and of the entire county. He will also note the appetite among our local communities to take a positive, proactive approach to housing, planning and infrastructure. Many parishes are working on neighbourhood development plans and want to deliver on the localism agenda advocated by our Government. They want to exercise the powers at their disposal to allocate preferred sites for housing and business uses, and for protection.

We want to deliver ambitious plans to support economic growth and bring more local homes to our communities. We want and need new infrastructure to support growth, including the widening of the A12, the upgrading of the A120, and investment in the Great Eastern main line. I welcome today’s announcement of more than £7 million for the Heybridge flood alleviation and regeneration scheme, in the district of Maldon just outside my constituency, and I hope for more investment rounds to support planning and development.

We recognise that development brings with it employment opportunities, investment in infrastructure and new public services, including schools and GP services, but that should not mean housing at any cost and in any location. I want to draw the Minister’s attention to some issues and causes of concern in which localism is being undermined and opportunities to deliver locally led planning are being missed. I appreciate and respect the fact that the Minister cannot give detailed responses on specific planning cases that are live and under consideration, but I hope that he and his Department will reflect on them.

First, the Minister will be aware of the Secretary of State’s decision to call in planning applications for up to 260 new dwellings on two sites in Hatfield Peverel, at Stonepath Meadow and Gleneagles Way. A hearing took place in December, and I pay tribute to the residents in Hatfield Peverel and members of our parish council who came together to oppose those unwelcome developments. Their dedication to their local community has been outstanding. Both developments are outside the settlement boundary in the current and emerging local plans and the emerging neighbourhood plan, because they would be detrimental to the countryside. They would also place unacceptable pressures on an already full general practice, with no guarantees of any financial contributions to enhance the service.

Our local schools are also full, but no contributions are being sought because of the community infrastructure levy pooling restrictions. The applicants seem to think it acceptable for primary school pupils—children—to be forced to walk more than two miles along the busy A12 to a school in Witham. As for secondary school pupils, First Bus is axing the 72 bus route, which connects Hatfield Peverel with Maltings Academy and New Rickstones Academy in Witham, so there will be no direct bus service for pupils in the village to use.

We are not opposed to housing in Hatfield Peverel—quite the reverse. That wonderful village is already set to accommodate new housing in an emerging local plan focused elsewhere in the village in the comprehensive redevelopment area covering land between the A12 and the Great Eastern main line. Some 250 new dwellings are already—and rightly—going through the planning process. However, the village is taking its fair share of new housing and cannot take any more.

There are many other reasons why the two applications are totally unsuitable for development. I trust that the Secretary of State will consider those points, and the strong objections that have been made, when the inspector hands him the report of his findings.

Although the Minister cannot comment on the specifics of the two applications, I would welcome his clarification of some wider issues that have arisen. First, councils such as Braintree, and parish councils such as Hatfield Peverel, which are in the process of putting together local and neighbourhood plans that embrace the principles of localism, are being undermined by planning applications many of which pre-empt and undermine those democratic processes. Other villages, such as Kelvedon and Feering, have been similarly bombarded with applications. Those communities need to be protected, and they need the Government to allow them time to put their plans in place.

Secondly, the issue of the five-year land supply of deliverable sites has arisen. Speculative, predatory developers are seeking to exploit the council’s claim that it does not have a five-year land supply. The main reason for Braintree’s identified supply shortfall is the failure of the last Labour Government’s regional spatial strategies, whose housing targets were lower than those in the most recent objectively assessed housing need research. I hope that the Minister can assure communities in the district that they will not be punished because of the last Labour Government’s failures, and that decision makers can exercise discretion over the housing supply figures. Councils need flexibility on this issue, and that includes the ability to use the Liverpool method when it best suits them, in respect of, for instance, sites in draft allocations. I hope that the Minister will be able to give some assurances about that as well.

My third point is on the effectiveness of pre-application consultation. In Hatfield Peverel, one applicant issued a so-called consultation that contained false information about education and health provision—which the applicant had not bothered to check—and sought to frighten residents. It also submitted a planning application within a few weeks of securing rights from landowners to promote the site and less than two working days after holding a pre-application discussion with council officers; that is not nearly enough time to take account of local comments. Then, when the council and local community were taking time to resolve issues that had been raised as a result of the applicant’s failures—such as the impact on schools, the NHS and landscapes—the applicant had the audacity to threaten to take the application to the Planning Inspectorate for non-determination.

For other sites in the district, such referrals to the Planning Inspectorate to deliberately bypass local decision making have been made. This abuse of the planning system must stop, and I hope the Ministry will consider how to address these problems. There are some good examples of positive developer engagement with local communities and we need to make sure that more of that happens. Those who fiddle consultations and circumvent pre-application engagement should be sanctioned for doing so.

Another major development issue affecting my constituency is the proposed garden settlement for the Colchester Borough Council/Braintree District Council border. That proposal has the potential to deliver thousands of new homes and bring in urgently needed infrastructure upgrades and public services. The Government have recognised this and provided over £1.3 million to Colchester Borough Council to work on this project.

However, a number of questions and concerns have been raised about the proposals. Primarily, these relate to infrastructure and public services. Residents want to be assured that if this project gets the green light, significant new infrastructure and public services will be put in place and phased in to meet future demand. It is pointless to put in the infrastructure and services once the developments are being occupied; they must be put in in advance, and to a clear timetable. That means that the Ministry, the Department for Transport, the Treasury, local councils and the private sector will need to come together to ensure that the funding is in place to upgrade the A120, widen the A12 and increase capacity on the Great Eastern main line with a passing loop, as well as providing for new GP surgeries and schools.

Questions have also been raised about the delivery vehicle, local engagement, availability of employment opportunities and how the councils have spent the moneys provided to them by the Government. The garden settlement proposals are in the process of being examined as part of the local plan process, but I urge the Minster and Secretary of State to look carefully at these matters. Some residents are opposed to this project; others are in favour. However, it is essential that if this major project goes ahead, it is done correctly and done in the right way.

One of the other reasons why there are concerns about garden settlements is the appalling record of Colchester Borough Council. On planning matters, this Lib Dem and Labour-run council is rotten to the core. The Minister has the background on this and will know that last year, the Secretary of State granted planning permission for a new leisure and retail development known as Tollgate Village in Stanway. The development was supported by an overwhelming majority of local people and transforms a derelict site into a development creating hundreds of new local jobs and tens of millions of pounds of inward investment.

However, Colchester Borough Council tried everything possible to block it. It claimed it would be a loss of employment land, even though there was no interest in using the site in that way. It tried to pit Tollgate Village against Colchester town centre, and it even tried to smear me by making up a false claim that my representations in writing were somehow improper, and leaked that to the local media. It behaved disgracefully and yet not a single senior officer or senior political figure has taken responsibility. They blocked the creation of jobs, prevented investment and wasted public money.

Close to that site, the council acted in a similar way on the Stane Park scheme, another private investment project which it blocked but which was granted consent on appeal. Also in Stanway, on the Lakelands housing development, the council completely neglected and ignored residents in causing the loss of a green space at Churchfields Avenue and Partridge Way, in an area of land known as parcel SR6.

That area of land should have been landscaped; it was not, as the council failed to enforce a planning condition. It was then designated for protection as open space in the council’s local plan. However, behind closed doors and without any consultation, the council allowed a new masterplan to be approved that designated the site for intensive housing. Residents were made aware of this only when the reserved matters application was made in 2015. Despite complaints and concerns about the process, the council approved the construction of 27 new dwellings and the loss of that space in autumn 2016. The matter has been with the local government ombudsman for over a year due to the complexities of the issues involved. This shows once again how Colchester Borough Council is problematic and not fit for purpose. It allowed an area that should have been green open space to be lost without any consultation, and kept residents in the dark for years.

--- Later in debate ---

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Nigel Adams.)

[Priti Patel]

I shall move on to another planning area outside Colchester borough. Thousands of my constituents and residents across Essex and beyond are deeply concerned about the prospect of the Rivenhall incinerator receiving further planning consents and becoming operational. The incinerator was originally granted planning permission by the last Labour Government in March 2010, just weeks before the general election. Since then, however, the applicants have made a number of changes to the site. It has been described as an integrated waste management facility, but the recycling capacity has been reduced and the waste incineration capacity increased by 65% from 360,000 to 595,000 tonnes.

Another planning application is being considered by Essex County Council to increase the stack height to help the site meet Environment Agency requirements. However, given the concerns with the incinerator, the impact on the environment and the new proposals on waste put forward by the Government, the incinerator is not only unwelcome but out of date. It has no energy recovery mechanisms, which makes it all the more damaging to the environment. My constituents would like the latest planning application to be refused, and called in by the Secretary of State to ensure its refusal if necessary. I trust that the Minister will convey that message to the Secretary of State and look at all the submissions that will be coming his way.

My constituent, John Patrick, has had a long chain of correspondence and representations with my hon. Friend’s Department. He is well known to the Department. He runs a rural nursery business growing plants. When he moved in, there was live-in accommodation on site. A long and protracted planning dispute involving numerous applications, appeals and enforcement notices has taken place with the local planning authority. He feels that planning policies justify his being able to operate his business and live on site. I ask the Minister to review the case and, importantly, to learn the lessons from it and respond to the most recent representations that have been made.

The last case I want to highlight involves a development outside my constituency, but the medium-sized developer is based in the Witham constituency. Wickford Developments is involved in the development of a site in the Uttlesford District Council area. What appears to be a restrictive planning policy requiring a development to include a lift could prevent the company from providing much-needed social housing. I would welcome the Ministry looking into the case and assisting the company to resolve this issue, if that cannot be done directly with the council.

As the Minister can see, my constituency has a wide range of planning and development issues, and there are many more that time has prevented me from raising. I want to leave him with this message from my constituency: we need the new Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to ensure that local communities can embrace localism in order to deliver sustainable developments and the housing that we need, to prevent unwelcome development and abuses in the planning system, to ensure that intervention takes place in the cases listed, and to guarantee that as new developments take place, local communities can benefit from them with the provision of new infrastructure and key public services.