Management of the Economy and Ministerial Severance Payments

Alex Burghart Excerpts

Tuesday 15th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Alex Burghart)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen). This afternoon’s debate has been very interesting, but at times we have strayed quite a long way from the motion. During my summing up, I will try to bring us back a bit.

[Rachel Hopkins]

On that point, will the Minister give way?

[Alex Burghart]

I will make just a little progress, but don’t worry—we have plenty of time.

In a debate like this, it is important to be clear and a bit careful. There are two things going on when we talk about the economy in general: the international situation and the effect of decisions made by the previous Administration. It is true that both have had an effect; Conservative Members accept that. The Opposition will know that, having heard what the Chancellor said in this House on 17 October and what the Prime Minister said on the steps of Downing Street on 25 October. Listening to many Opposition Members’ speeches this afternoon, however, one would be forgiven for thinking that they had either not heard those statements or completely chosen to ignore them.

The fact is that the Chancellor and the Prime Minister have accepted that mistakes were made in the previous Administration, but it is also the case that a very serious international situation is affecting all major economies. That is why the IMF expects one third of the world to go into recession. It does hon. Members on either side no credit not to acknowledge those facts.

The shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), talked about a £30 billion figure, but she was not able to identify the source of that analysis or how it was calculated. [Interruption.] From a sedentary position, the hon. Member for Luton North says, “Her brain.” No doubt the brain of the hon. Member for Wigan is very large, but it is not itself the source of the analysis. Were she to footnote her brain in a report, she would rightly be called up on it.

The motion, from which we have strayed repeatedly during the debate, is about severance pay, about mortgages and about an attempt to censure two Members of this House. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister of State made clear at the start, payments connected to the loss of ministerial office are defined in legislation that has been passed by Parliament and has been in effect for successive Administrations.

[Clive Efford]

The Minister asks where the figure of a £35 billion gap comes from. It comes from the Resolution Foundation, which states that £45 billion is attributable to the unfunded tax cuts. The higher interest rates account for £30 billion. Offset against the £29 billion for the mini-Budget U-turns and £11 billion for the lower interest rates, that leaves a £35 billion gap entirely attributable to the mini-Budget—a waste of £35 billion that taxpayers are going to be asked to pay for on Thursday.

[Alex Burghart]

I do not believe that the hon. Gentleman’s figures take account—

[Clive Efford]

Read what the Resolution Foundation says.

[Alex Burghart]

I certainly will, but I do not believe that the hon. Gentleman’s figures take account of the fact that many of the measures in that mini-Budget have now been reversed.

[David Linden]

Does the Minister understand that some of us see a hint of irony in how he chastises Opposition Members about where they are getting their figures? The disastrous mini-Budget was brought forward without a forecast from the OBR. The Government locked them in the boot.

[Alex Burghart]

The hon. Gentleman is an established and experienced debater in this Chamber. He will know that it is important for Members of this House to choose their figures wisely and get them right. If they intend to build a case, it is important that they do their analysis properly.

Ministerial pay arrangements have been in place for a number of Administrations. Ministerial changes and departures are part of the fabric of government; all Administrations experience them and they are a routine part of the operation of government.

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Alex Burghart]

I will come to the point that I am going to make and then give way to the hon. Gentleman.

The payments that are being discussed today exist because of the unpredictable nature of ministerial office. Unlike in other employment contexts, there are no periods of notice, no consultations and no redundancy arrangements. This statutory entitlement has existed for several decades, and has been implemented by all Governments during that period. Payments on ceasing office were accepted by outgoing Labour Ministers in the Blair and Brown years, and by Liberal Democrat Ministers during the coalition Government. As has been pointed out by a number of Members, data published in 2010 indicated that severance payments made to outgoing Labour Ministers in that year amounted to £1 million.

[Rachel Hopkins]

I thank the Minister for giving way at this point, because I value the opportunity to talk about figures that he has mentioned. The average mortgage-paying householder in Luton South will have to pay an extra £500 a month as a consequence of the failure of this Government. Let me return to the motion, however. Can the Minister confirm that if it is passed, the Government will either reduce the ministerial severance payments by £6,000—the equivalent of a year’s worth of increased mortgage payments for my constituents—or seek to recover the amounts from the Members concerned?

[Alex Burghart]

As I was about to make clear, it is not within the Government’s power to do that. This is a power set in law. It is a power set in the Ministerial and other Pensions and Salaries Act 1991.

[Sarah Owen]

The Minister has laid out the legalities behind severance pay for Ministers, but—we on the Labour Benches have already asked this question several times—does he feel that it is right for the former Prime Minister and the former Chancellor who crashed the economy to take that severance pay?

[Alex Burghart]

The House will be aware that my right hon. Friends the Members for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) and for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) served continuously as Members of Parliament for long periods before taking up the offices of Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer—in the case of the former Prime Minister, for 10 years, and in the case of the former Chancellor, for four.

Let me be clear. The fact that this is a statutory entitlement does not mean that Ministers are not able to waive such payments. However, that is a matter not for the Government but for the individuals involved. I am not a Treasury Minister; I am a Minister for the Cabinet Office. This is one of the basic facts that the Opposition do not seem to have picked up on when they embarked on the motion.

Let me now address the points raised throughout the debate about mortgages and housing. I recognise the anxiety that people feel about mortgage payments, which obviously constitute one of the biggest bills that many people experience. There are a range of factors affecting mortgage and other interest rates, but this Government will do everything possible, under this Prime Minister and this Chancellor, to get a grip on the problem of inflation and seek to limit the impact that it has on mortgage rates.

The Government are providing unprecedented levels of support to tackle the rising cost of living. From last week, nearly one in four families across the UK will receive a £324 cost of living payment as part of our £1,200 package for the 8 million most vulnerable families. Our energy price guarantee will save a typical household £700 this winter, on top of the £400 through the energy bills discount.

[Emma Hardy]

In an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen), I referred to evidence given to the Treasury Committee. Joanne Elson, the chief executive officer of the Money Advice Trust, said that the Prime Minister, when he was the Chancellor, had signed off changes regarding access to the mortgage interest rate relief scheme, but the trust was still waiting for them to be implemented. Those changes would mean that people need not have zero income to claim the relief. I recognise that the hon. Gentleman is a Cabinet Office Minister, but I wonder what pressure he could put on his Treasury colleagues to ensure that that promise made a month ago is realised today.

[Alex Burghart]

I am delighted to be able to tell the hon. Lady that on Thursday she will have an opportunity to ask the Chancellor about that issue.

Let me return to the motion, Mr Speaker. [Interruption.] Please forgive me, Madam Deputy Speaker! A thousand apologies. I am so sorry.

The motion claims that mortgage payments rose by £500 a month as a result of the mini-Budget. I think the Opposition will have noticed that on 12 October Full Fact rubbished this claim, pointing out that that figure comes from comparing mortgages available now with those available in August 2020, so it is not a comparison with those available immediately before the mini-Budget. While mortgage rates have risen sharply since the mini-Budget, much of the £500 estimated by Labour is due to rates climbing before it took place.

Once again during this debate we have seen that the Opposition do not have a grasp of the basic facts. Essentially, the facts must not be treated as an afterthought. They are not an afterthought on severance pay, on mortgages or to the international backdrop. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor are apprised of the facts and on Thursday they will bring a statement to this House that will look after the most vulnerable in our society and rebuild our economy.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House censures the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk, and the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, the right hon. Member for Spelthorne, for their mismanagement of the economy while in office, which has resulted in an average increase of £500 per month in mortgage payments for families across the UK; and believes that, if they have not already done so, both right hon. Members should waive at least £6,000 of their ministerial severance payments.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alex Burghart Excerpts

Monday 22nd July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Scott Mann (North Cornwall) (Con)]

1. What steps his Department is taking to reduce the time it takes to build new homes.

[Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con)]

19. What steps his Department is taking to reduce the time it takes to build new homes.

[The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (James Brokenshire)]

More housing was delivered across England last year than in all but one of the past 31 years. We have examined the recommendations of my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) on the build-out review, and the Government responded in full at the spring statement earlier this year with a commitment to speed up the planning system and introduce new guidance to encourage diversification.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Burghart]

Does the Secretary of State think that modular building methods could play a bigger role in helping us to increase the supply of housing?

[James Brokenshire]

I do, in short. Modular building is an essential part of our work to get speedier build out, to ensure diversification of materials, and to get skills for people. It has been good to see how housing associations and the private sector are starting to embrace it. There is more to do, but I recognise my hon. Friend’s point.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alex Burghart Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Wheeler]

I do understand the particular problem that the hon. Lady is having in Westminster, but it is the London boroughs. We have been clear that placing families out of borough should be a last resort, and we have now committed £40 million to a London collaborative project that will ensure that families are placed in temporary accommodation close to home. We also recently launched the £20 million private rented sector access fund to support those who are homeless, or who are at risk of becoming homeless, to access sustainable accommodation. Finally, our specialist homelessness advisers are working closely with London boroughs in particular to provide support to limit the number of out-of-borough moves altogether.

[Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con)]

The Housing First initiative has clear potential to prevent homelessness. What is the Department doing to monitor the effectiveness of pilots in Manchester and other cities, and what are its plans for taking the evidence forward?

[Mrs Wheeler]

My hon. Friend is right. The Housing First projects in Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool are backed by the £1.2 billion that we have committed to tackle all forms of homelessness and rough sleeping across the country through to 2020. Housing First and the private rented sector access fund are also providing local authorities with flexible funding to tackle the homelessness pressures they are facing.

Budget Resolutions

Alex Burghart Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Thursday 1st November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con)]

Before I come to my main speech, I wish to refer to some comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Leo Docherty) about Marxism and sausages. During my hon. Friend’s speech, the hon. Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd), of whom I am perpetually fond, shouted from a sedentary position, “How were the sausages in Soviet Russia?” Let me tell him that they were awful—awful. They were so bad that they were made with wood chipping. It was said that the people of Soviet Russia preferred to eat sausages that had gone off because they at least knew that they had been edible at some point. That was what Marxism did to the sausage; that was what Marxism did to the people of Russia.

The truth is that it is the free market that brings prosperity to us all. There was much in this Budget to encourage and help the free market on which the prosperity of my constituency is based. We are a constituency in Essex that is built on the hard work of small and medium-sized enterprises, which will benefit greatly from measures to help entrepreneurs, the reduction of business rates by a third, and the new fund to help our high streets. This is hugely appreciated by the hard-working people of my constituency.

The Chancellor also announced some very good news that we have perhaps become too acclimatised to in this House. Employment in this country is at record levels. That is not something that we can gloss over lightly. The actions of this Government since 2010 have enabled more people to go to work and earn more money so that they can support their families, pay their taxes, and help their communities and public services to thrive. That is something of which we should be proud. The work of this Government will see the deficit reduce from over 10% to—in 2023-24—less than 1%.

Debt as a proportion of GDP is falling. One of the things that we should care about most is the legacy that we leave in the long term. When I was born, the debt-to-GDP ratio was about 35%. When the Labour party took power, it was slightly higher. By the time Labour left office, it had more than doubled. If this generation cannot reduce that figure, we are simply piling burdens on to our children and our grandchildren.

Rating (Property in Common Occupation) and Council Tax (Empty Dwellings) Bill

Alex Burghart Excerpts

Tuesday 16th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

I will be careful not to stray too far from my brief, but the Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Mrs Wheeler), who has responsibility for housing and homelessness, is actively looking into appropriate regulation in the private rented sector and the potential introduction of a single housing ombudsman, among other things. I should point out that the Government introduced measures to tackle rogue landlords and, indeed, created a rogue landlord database and a new set of penalties to tackle the issue. I hope that the hon. Gentleman finds some comfort in that and will wait for my colleague’s findings on the general regulation of the private rented sector.

Before 2013, councils could not collect any council tax from properties that were empty for up to six months, so the coalition Government at the time decided to support councils and ensure that they had the freedom, should they want it, to charge the full rate of council tax on such properties. That same year, the Government enabled local authorities to charge a council tax premium of up to 50% on long-term empty homes.

[Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con)]

I strongly welcome the Minister’s comments. There are a number of empty properties in my constituency that I would very much like to see come back on the market. Will the Minister tell us what effect the Government’s action has had in this policy area? By what proportion has the number of empty homes come down since the Government made those changes?

[Rishi Sunak]

I am pleased to tell my hon. Friend that the powers that were introduced in 2013 have been taken up by around 90% of all local authorities, all but three of which applied the full 50% rate. I am glad to tell him that the number of long-term empty properties subject to a premium has fallen by 9% among those councils that have used the power every year since 2013.

There are carrots as well as sticks. Our new homes bonus scheme gives local authorities the same financial reward for bringing an empty home back into use as for building a new home. We have allocated £7 billion in new homes bonus payments to local authorities since 2011. Following those interventions, the number of properties that are empty for six months or longer is down by a third since 2010, from 300,000 to just over 200,000.

It is worth touching on one or two local authorities that have done a particularly impressive job of tackling the scourge of long-term empty properties in their areas. Several years ago, Bolton had close to 3,000 empty properties, but now has fewer than half that number. Bolton Council offered interest-free loans to bring a long-term empty property up to a suitable standard for rental. The council has also introduced an online matchmaker scheme that matches empty-home owners with potential buyers and offers advice about how to rent out properties through the Bolton landlord accreditation scheme. Between March and October of last year alone, more than 300 long-term empty properties were brought back into use. The council has recently joined forces with Bolton College and the University of Bolton on a new pilot project to bring a rundown empty house back into use.

Kent is another example of a local authority on the cutting edge of tackling this issue. Several years ago, Kent County Council launched the “No Use Empty” programme to bring empty homes back into use. Loans available through the scheme are repayable over five years and then recycled for further use. The scheme has now administered loans totalling almost £20 million, unlocking investment from owners totalling a further £20 million, and has returned over 5,000 empty homes back into use over the past decade. Notably, the programme ran a £3 million project to deliver new homes on the site of a former pub in Herne Bay that had been empty for five years following a fire. The pub’s conversion was undertaken in partnership with a local developer, which bought the property and applied for a loan from the “No Use Empty” fund to unlock the redevelopment. The project has now delivered 14 new apartments.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Burghart]

I sorry to ask the Minister this question; it is ignorance on my part. How do councils ascertain that properties are empty? Might we need to give councils additional powers so that they can identify which properties are truly empty?

[Rishi Sunak]

That is a very thoughtful question. Every council takes a slightly different approach. An interesting method is to offer a temporary discount on empty homes for a short period of time, providing a financial incentive for homeowners to register their home as empty. Down the line, the council then has a list of properties that might become long-term empty. Of course, councils also require people to fill out forms, and there are civil and criminal penalties for filling them out with false or misleading information. Indeed, the authority also has other intelligence from the various other ways in which it touches an individual property. Together, councils can build up a picture of which homes are long-term empty, and apply the appropriate premium as and when necessary.

Hon. Members may be interested to know that the proportion of dwelling stock across the country that has been empty for six months or longer is about 0.85%, with the lowest numbers being found in London and the south-east, and the highest being found in the north-east and the north-west.

Gypsies and Travellers

Alex Burghart Excerpts

Monday 10th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous]

I particularly welcome the hon. Lady’s intervention because—I say this to my hon. Friend the Minister—there are many Members from all parties who realise that this is a serious problem and want a humane, decent and fair response to it.

[Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is being extremely generous with his time. I fully support his comments about extending the trespass law in the UK as it has been in Ireland. It is currently possible for travelling families to come to an agreement with private landlords so that they can settle on their land. Does my hon. Friend agree that by building those relationships, which is what decent travelling families do, we should be able to single out those who break the law and infringe on the rights of private landlords?

[Andrew Selous]

I am particularly grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point, because as I said earlier and will say again—it needs to be said many times in this debate—there are many decent, law-abiding Travellers who want to do the right thing and pay their way, who clean up, and who are respectful of the local community and, indeed, contribute hugely to it. The sadness is that that is not the case with all Travellers. I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for making that important point.

I will provide the Minister with a written list of requests from both Central Bedfordshire Council and Bedfordshire police, as I do not have time to go into them all tonight. I am strongly encouraging Central Bedfordshire Council to adopt the policy of Sandwell Council in having a temporary stopping site. The provision of that site has led to a significant decrease in unauthorised encampments and the associated clear-up costs and environmental degradation that sadly so often accompany them.

Central Bedfordshire Council wants the power to seize vehicles associated with unlawful or illegal activity, whoever the owner is. It wants the Environment Agency to prosecute or close non-compliant sites, where living conditions are often atrocious. It wants all land on Traveller sites to have an owner who is properly registered with the Land Registry, without which proper enforcement cannot take place.

Bedfordshire police say that the current legislation on aggravated trespass is inadequate, as the hon. Member for High Peak (Ruth George) said, because there are difficulties in proving the offence. They would also like section 61 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 to be extended to include highway land and significant impact on local communities, as that would replicate the legislation in Northern Ireland.

In the past 12 months, Central Bedfordshire Council has issued 335 parking enforcement notices to foreign vehicles. So far, 250 of those have been cancelled because the owners could not be traced. It is a criminal offence for the owners of foreign vehicles not to register their vehicles if they have been in the UK for more than six months, but the police have no record of foreign vehicles that have been in the UK for more than six months, and I do not believe that the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency has either. The result is that those with foreign number plates—including quite a large number of Irish-registered vehicles in my area—can park with impunity, while drivers with British-registered vehicles have to pay penalty charge notices. Again, this just leads to fair-minded people coming to the conclusion that there is no equality under the law.

Windrush

Alex Burghart Excerpts

Monday 30th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

The hon. Lady asks me about the taskforce. I understand that more than 50 officials are working on it, and we can increase that number if necessary. They are dealing with all the calls as they come in, and they have set up appointments for face-to-face meetings. As I said earlier, 500 appointments have been scheduled and 100 cases already resolved. If we need to add further resources, we will. If any member of the public who is listening wants to know, the number for the hotline is 0800 678 1925.

[Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con)]

I welcome the Secretary of State to his position. My constituents want to know not only that the taskforce is doing its job and reaching out to encourage people to get in touch with the Home Secretary, but that the Government are using all the resources at their disposal to find out about registration for national insurance, electoral registration and registration for council tax to help people prove that they have been in this country for a long time.

[Sajid Javid]

I assure my hon. Friend on that front that officials and Ministers have been looking carefully to see what else can be done to help with finding appropriate documentation. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Immigration has already had meetings with other Departments to try to achieve just that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alex Burghart Excerpts

Monday 12th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Mrs Heather Wheeler)]

I reiterate that we are raising the housing revenue account borrowing limit to £1 billion for local authorities where there is the highest need for new council housing to be built. Again, please may I ask the hon. Gentleman to encourage councils in his area to apply?

[Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con)]

T5. What recent assessment has the Department made of the success of the troubled families programme?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Rishi Sunak)]

I know that my hon. Friend has a long history of being interested in this programme. He will be pleased to know that the evaluation reports published in December showed promising progress, particularly with regard to children in need. Further findings will be published in the annual report, and I look forward to discussing them at length with my hon. Friend then.

Homelessness

Alex Burghart Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in the debate. I have been looking at homelessness and its associated problems for a number of years. For four years, I was director of policy at the Centre for Social Justice, which looks at the root causes of poverty in the UK. We specialised in looking at long-term worklessness, addiction, educational failure, serious personal debt and the like. One of the things we discovered when looking at those problems, each of which can cause subsequent problems and hold people back, was that even when people had a lot else that was going right in their life, those other points of stability were undermined if they did not have a stable home.

That is one of the reasons why it has been so depressing to see homelessness creeping up. We know that the problem has a number of root causes, and it is good to see the Government starting to get to grips with them. First, there is an over-inflated housing market in parts of our country. The price of property, particularly for rental, is simply too high. As Members on both sides of the House have said, this has led to instances of young families who are in work finding that they cannot afford to get themselves back into the rental market when they fall out. People who are doing all the right things find themselves trapped outside the rental market for want of an up-front payment. Also, house prices are far too high in certain centres of population.

All that is why it is so important that the Government continue their major investment in home building. The £44 billion announced by the Chancellor in last year’s Budget will go a long way towards solving the long-term supply problem in our housing market. I am very proud that the Government have set themselves the excellent ambition of getting 300,000 new homes a year built. We must get on top of that as quickly as possible, and it is very good that the start-up figures show we are moving in that direction.

There are also more complex problems that lead to people falling out of even temporary accommodation and on to the streets. These are problems of mental health, addiction and entrenched issues that are not always dealt with in a timely fashion. That is why we need to back the pilots the Government are putting money into. Housing First was championed in a report by the Centre for Social Justice—it was after I left; I cannot take any credit for it. It showed that when such a policy had been implemented in Belgium, Finland and parts of the USA, meaning that housing accommodation was given to people first—rather than treatment first, which is still the predominant model—it gave homeless people the base that they need if treatment is to work. It gave them stable foundations so that they could fix the other problems in their lives and stay off the street permanently. That has to be the right approach. We need to create an environment that makes it possible for people to overcome complex mental health problems and complex problems of addiction. The street is simply not the right environment in which to do that, and I would go so far as to say that many of our current hostels and places of supported housing are also not the right environment. We need a much more secure base for those most vulnerable people.

The housing first initiative in Finland, which my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mary Robinson) mentioned, has led to a dramatic reduction in the number of people who are homeless or sleeping rough since 2008. In its first seven years, homelessness in Finland fell by 35%, which was a remarkable achievement. We will all be looking to the pilots in Manchester, Liverpool and the west midlands.

While dwelling on Housing First, I always think of a chap called Wayne, whom I came across in north London. He had been in the Army. He left with post-traumatic stress disorder and ended up on the streets within a year, and he had stayed on the streets for the better part of a decade. During that time, he had been in and out of the court system on account of stealing so that he could fuel his alcohol problem. Within six months of his having come under the Housing First initiative, he had started to receive mental health treatment and treatment for his alcohol problems. Within a year, he was staying out of the court system entirely, and now he has moved into work and a private rental settlement of his own. This intervention is the future; it is absolutely right that the Government are backing it.

[Several hon. Members rose—]