(5 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberMy right hon. Friend has made an important point. I thank him for his welcome for the extra £400 million for Northern Ireland, and also for his reference to levelling growth across the country. In my statement, I referred a number of times to the need to ensure that we have growth in every part of our great United Kingdom. That will require infrastructure investment and I hope that, when I set out the infrastructure strategy later this year, he will welcome it for those reasons.
Will the Chancellor tell us when we can expect an announcement on funding for serviced plots of land?
Let me take this opportunity to thank my hon. Friend for all the work that he has done in relation to self-build homes and more generally, in promoting easier access to homes for everyone. We are discussing that issue with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, but I will pursue it further and get back to him.
(6 years ago)
General CommitteesMay I say how delighted I am that the Government are taking an approach that allows discretion? That was one enormous problem at the time of the financial crash, which was also a sovereign debt crisis. The hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde forgot to mention who was in charge at the time. That crisis was exemplified perhaps most clearly by Gordon Brown standing outside the shiny new Lehman Brothers office when it opened, shortly before the crash. The capital regime was so inadequate at the time under that regime—
Yes indeed. Part of the problem with the sovereign debt crisis—perhaps the biggest problem—was the equal treatment of lots of different kinds of sovereign assets, such as Greek Government bonds, when in fact they were nothing like equal. That led to the distortion that helped to cause the problem.
The Government and regulators are clear on the imperative to work closely with industry to ensure that change is not disruptive for firms. UK regulators will be given the ability to phase changes in over the next two years. We will treat all third countries similarly, which means, to answer the point made by the hon. Member for Glasgow Central, continuing to co-operate through international crisis management groups to plan and resolve issues with cross-border firms. The UK’s participation, and enthusiasm to participate, in such forums will be undiminished. Nothing in the draft regulations will change how the UK co-operates with third countries.
The hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde raised the bank recovery and resolution SI and concerns around the appearance of disengagement. There is no intention whatsoever for the UK Government or regulators to be isolated in any way. We will continue to participate. However, these steps are necessary to domesticise our regulations in the context of a no-deal scenario.
The hon. Member for Glasgow Central has on several occasions, and perfectly sensibly, mentioned the regulatory burden and additional costs. She is right to draw attention to the £1.7 million assessment for the capital requirements SI and the £400,000 for the bank recovery SI. I point out to her that those are one-off familiarisation costs. For the 1,000 companies she mentioned, they are one-off costs of around £1,700 and £1,200 for some of the very biggest institutions. I accept that it would be desirable for them to not have those costs, but it will be necessary in a situation in which we do not secure a deal.
(6 years ago)
Commons ChamberI hear the hon. Gentleman’s point, but I repeat what I have just said. We have to remember that people coming into national insurance at a lower rate also means people coming into entitlement to contributory benefits at that rate. We have a contributory principle in our benefits system, and national insurance is the key to it.
When income tax was first introduced, it was supposed to be temporary. Can the Chancellor of the Exchequer update us on his plans finally to get rid of this tax, or will it, like the backstop, be with us for the next 200 years?
When I was in Brussels the other day, I was reliably informed that the kingdom of Belgium was originally intended to be a temporary construct, but it still seems to be with us. The world has moved on since the Napoleonic wars, as my hon. Friend may or may not celebrate, and I have to tell him that the Government have no plans to abolish income tax.
(6 years, 1 month ago)
General CommitteesIt is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey. I have two or three questions for the Minister. First, in relation to cold calling and the general consensus that there is a great deal of mistrust of CMCs—even though, as the Minister said, there is a place for the CMC model—can the Minister explain what the current status of a person making a cold call would be? I speak from personal experience, because for some reason they have recently started targeting me. Not having experienced it much before, I must have had six or a dozen calls in the past five months, and for some reason, they always refer to an accident on 24 January or a date in early March. I remember thinking at the time, “Is the person making that call currently committing an offence and, if not, will they be under these regulations?” If they refer to an accident that did not take place, some sort of misleading or fraud is plainly going on. Is a crime being committed, or will a crime be committed, either by the person who makes the telephone call or by the promoters or owners of the business? If not, perhaps the Minister can explain why not.
Secondly, I refer the Minister to the BBC magazine programme “You and Yours”, which had an item today—perhaps not coincidentally, because this instrument is before the House today—that included the director general or executive director of the trade body that represents CMCs. They pointed out that many banks were misleading their own customers when they inquired directly whether they had payment protection insurance claims. Those people were told categorically by a series of high street banks that they did not have claims, but discovered subsequently that they did. In one case, a listener had phoned up asking whether he had a claim, knowing full well that he had PPI because he had the piece of paper from 20 years ago, and was told by the bank that he did not. He later got the obligatory apology from the high street bank. My second question is this: to what extent, if at all, does the instrument cover the banks? I assume that they are covered separately by the FCA, but perhaps the Minister could confirm that.
Thirdly, I was interested to hear that solicitors are exempt from the regulations. I was particularly prompted to think about this when the hon. Member for Oxford East mentioned the figure of £16 million, which I understand to be the cost of the scheme. The reason is that some years ago, when the coalminers’ compensation scheme was going on, there was a solicitor in Doncaster, in Yorkshire, who was heavily involved in processing claims for people who had been made medically unfit for work or had become ill in one way or another through working in a coalmine. That solicitor was paying himself a salary of £16.7 million a year. I remember that well, because I got the permanent secretary of the Department of Trade and Industry, as it then was, to confirm on the record that the Government’s policy in managing the scheme was not to make multimillionaires of solicitors in Doncaster, although that was its effect.
I feel that I have to intervene. The hon. Gentleman is right; not just in Doncaster but in other coalmining areas solicitors took advantage of the situation. Even though the Government were paying them for their services in handling the claims, they took compensation money from the individuals concerned. Does he agree that it is important that the Government look at every possible scenario where such loopholes can be found? If we do not think about loopholes ahead of the game, I am afraid that some of these characters will find them.
That is precisely my concern. In my latter years on the Public Accounts Committee, where I was sent to the salt mines for 16 years, the right hon. Lady—I will call her my right hon. Friend for these purposes—served alongside me. Indeed, we went jointly to Commonwealth workshops overseas.
For the record, will the hon. Gentleman confirm that I left rather early and that he stayed until the early hours of the morning?
Order. I could never have believed that a debate on claims management companies could get so interesting. However, I feel that the debate is moving off the core issues. If we could return to them, that would be helpful.
I agree, Mr Bailey. I will make one further point, to which the right hon. Lady alluded. We cannot assume that the solicitors who continue to engage in the process and are exempt because, in the words of the Minister, they are regulated separately through the Solicitors Regulation Authority, will all be as high-minded as one would hope they would be as solicitors of the Supreme Court. They might not be. My concern is not that we have dual regulation. Like the Minister, I very much hope that we avoid dual regulation. My concern is that we avoid creating opportunities for regulatory arbitrage.
For my sins, I think I served in Committee for both the Compensation Act 2006 and the Legal Services Act 2007. The point is that claims management companies were brought under regulation in 2006. Solicitors got a hefty improvement, or increase, in their regulation the following year.
I understand my right hon. and learned Friend’s point. He speaks with authority as a former Solicitor General. I hope that the Minister can reassure us that any regulation by the Solicitors Regulation Authority or by the Financial Conduct Authority for what is essentially the same activity but carried out by different parties—whether solicitors or others—should mirror and match, so that opportunities for regulatory arbitrage do not emerge.
I endorse the earlier point about a five-year review period, which seems to me to be generous, if not naive. We should keep a close watch on it. With that, I will make no further remarks.
Good, because I would still like to hear an answer to whether, in making the phone call, the person, who plainly has my name and number and who refers in the opening sales pitch of the conversation to an accident that did not take place, is committing a crime now, or will be under the new regulations.
I will move on sequentially through the points made.
On the question about why the Government are not banning all cold calls, which I think is behind all this, we are determined to tackle CMC cold calling and pensions cold calling, but a balance needs to be struck between ensuring that consumers are adequately protected and providing the right conditions for the legitimate direct marketing industry to operate. I recognise that there is a debate about the extent of the coverage and which sectors should be covered, but we took a view about what should be included at this time so that we could make progress and lay the order. We are actively prepared to consider further sectors that should come under the order.
The hon. Member for Oxford East raised the issue of the interim regime’s funding. The FCA is making a one-off levy from April 2019, and it will continue to collect fees from industry. Having recently closed a fees consultation, it will release a policy statement later this year about the funding mechanism for that transition period.
It would be a criminal offence, but I will be happy to clarify the situation exactly in a letter to my hon. Friend subsequently. I think that I have covered the point about the SRA and regulatory arbitrage.
A point was raised about other sectors—this point came through a lot in the passage of the main legislation —by the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood. The Government are actively examining the extent of the coverage. According to my initial statistics, in 2017-18 financial products and services claims made up 79% of CMC turnover and personal injury made up all the remaining turnover. A point that has often come up is about coalminers. If they do not already come under personal injury, we will be able continually to observe, and possibly extend, coverage, based on whether a discrete additional category is needed.
In relation to the next steps on this regulation, if the Committee approves the order today, the regulation will transfer to the FCA on 1 April 2019. The FCA regularly updates its rulebook. It is a robust regulator, which I have frequent dialogue with, and is subject to scrutiny.
(6 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberAs the hon. Lady will know, under this Government income inequality is far lower than it was under Labour. I am not going to start getting involved in a running commentary on the negotiations and the various impacts thereof, as that would not be helpful, other than to restate that a full and appropriate analysis will be provided to the House prior to the meaningful vote.
Will Ministers consider moving the trigger point for the application of the zero rate of VAT for new build dwellings as defined in the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, which would end the unintended discrimination, both before and after we leave the EU, against self-build and custom house building projects, while not harming Government revenue?
That is possibly the most ingenious question I have ever heard in this House, and it is indicative of my hon. Friend’s passion for and commitment to this matter. I recognise the issue he raises on the zero-rating of new builds, on which he wishes to extend the scope somewhat. I believe that my office has now arranged a meeting with him, and I look forward to it taking place within the coming days and weeks.
As the Chancellor pointed out, we have already put an additional £1.3 billion into schools’ budgets, which means that they are rising in real terms, and it is entirely proper for Education Ministers to appear in front of the Select Committee to discuss those issues.
I have heard my hon. Friend’s representations on behalf of self-builders; twice in one sitting is probably a record. I will treat them as representations for the next fiscal event and will look at them accordingly.
(7 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberAfter 13 minutes of what I am sure we all agree was pure gold from the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), I am going to make a more focused and narrow-cast speech. I particularly welcome this opportunity to follow a fellow graduate of the London School of Economics, although before he started slating soft social science degrees, he might have declared his own interest, in that he wrote a book about Harold Laski, who probably did more damage to the world economy through the people he taught over 50 years than almost any other human being alive. I should like to declare my own interest, in that I am a member of the right to build taskforce, which was referenced in the White Paper. I thank the Secretary of State for seconding Mario Wolf, an official from the Department for Communities and Local Government, to run the taskforce. I should also like to thank the Nationwide Foundation for funding it for the next three years.
I welcome this Budget. It is a Budget for housing, and I particularly welcome the announcement that my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) is going to carry out an urgent review of why there is such a gap between extant planning permissions and actual build-out of housing. This is a complicated subject, but it is not that complicated. The real reason for the gap is that house builders have no incentive to build more houses than they can sell. The Home Builders Federation, the trade body for the volume house builders, did a study entitled “Why buy new? Home buyer intentions and opinions”. It was commissioned from YouGov, a professional opinion poll firm, and its conclusions were startling. It found that 67% of people would prefer not to or were unlikely to buy the product of the volume house builders—in other words, a new home. If 67% of people do not want to buy your product, you might consider changing your product, but that would involve severe risks for volume house builders, because they already face a welter of planning conditions before they can even start.
We have a broken housing market in which demand cannot sufficiently influence supply and drive volumes. I therefore particularly welcome the housing White Paper, because it offers the first explicit acknowledgement that we have a housing model that is broken. The precondition for solving our problems is that we acknowledge the existence of those problems, and Government policy is now to acknowledge that we have a broken housing model and that we need to fix it. This Budget takes many good steps in that direction.
It is my fundamental belief that the only way to make “development” a good word—it is often seen as a pejorative term, and the word “developer” is often viewed as a swear word—is to have good development. At the moment, however, most people feel that they have no say over what gets built, where it gets built, what it looks like or who has the first chance to live there. We need to change all that. We need to change the conversation. Development should be about making well-designed, well-built places that are well connected, well served and well run with good governance. They should be environmentally sensitive places where green is normal, and with a thriving economy offering local jobs. They should be active, inclusive and safe, and fair for everyone. In other words, we should separate the business of place-making—which is what all those things are about—from the business of home building.
All those things that I have just described are part of the public weal. They are part of the public responsibility to make great places. That is why the people who work in the planning profession go into planning, but when they get there they often find that they are unable to achieve those things, and end up being the person who says no. The way to separate place-making from home-making, and to make home-making available for everyone, is to have large numbers of serviced plots at scale, and thanks to the Self-build and Custom Housebuilding Act 2015, which is now on the statute book, that is now going to be easier than ever before.
People sometimes think that this is a minor obsession of mine, and they would be right, but it is for a good reason. There is no area of public policy that this does not touch on. Under that Act, it is not only individuals who can register for the chance to get a piece of land; associations of individuals can also do so. It is tenure neutral. Those associations of individuals could be the governors of a high school looking to fill difficult-to-fill teaching posts; they could be the directors of a social services department trying to recruit new senior social work managers to difficult-to-fill positions; they could be the Ministry of Defence looking to retain military personnel; they could be the Royal British Legion seeking to look after veterans better; and they could even be ex-offenders. I was pleased to have had the chance last week to brief the Secretary of State on the right to build taskforce’s latest proposals, and the Lord Chancellor has now invited me to do the same in relation to ex-offenders, because there is so much more that this policy could do.
I thank all the 30 or so hon. Members who have contributed to today’s debate for their very thoughtful speeches. I will make sure that all their points, suggestions and concerns—including the specific ones mentioned by the hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith), my hon. Friends the Members for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) and for North Cornwall (Scott Mann), and especially my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Sir Michael Fallon)—are raised with the relevant Departments. I gently say to the House that we have had many representations regretting what was not in the Budget, but I am not sure that we received so many in advance of it and before its details were set, even though my door was always open and I met colleagues from all parties.
I will focus my comments on housing. This is a Budget that builds a Britain fit for the future. It is one that aims to ensure that every generation prospers and can look forward to a better standard of living than the previous one. When he opened the debate, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government spoke very passionately about the importance of home ownership, and I simply could not agree with him more. Providing homes is key to building communities, and to giving families the stability and the security they deserve. Moreover, bringing home ownership back within the reach of first-time buyers is part of our broader intergenerational commitment to younger generations.
However, affordability is a problem. The average house price is now almost eight times the average person’s salary, compared with just 3.6 times two decades ago—in my own area, the ratio is over 14 times—and the number of 25 to 34-year-olds owning their own home has dropped from 59% to just 38% over the past 13 years.
The core of this problem is clearly a lack of supply. However, we have delivered 1.1 million new homes since 2010, including nearly 350,000 affordable homes, and the total housing supply reached 217,000 last year. It is worth noting that that was the first time in almost a decade that the 200,000 milestone had been reached. We of course need to go further, and to make sure that more homes are built. This Budget sets in train a comprehensive set of reforms to address the failure of, I must say, successive Governments to provide enough homes.
I simply say to my hon. Friend that I know he has worked very hard on this issue. I welcome his work, and he has made a very valuable contribution to the housing debate.
This Budget sets out an ambition to deliver 300,000 new homes every year, which is 40% more than the current output and 50% more than the target we were left by Labour.