Terrorist Offenders (Restriction of Early Release) Bill

Alex Chalk Excerpts

Committee stage & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons & 3rd reading & Committee: 1st sitting
Wednesday 12th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

I am grateful to the Minister for those indications about sentencing. Does he agree that the review needs to consider all terrorist offences, including relatively minor ones—such as offences under sections 57 and 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000 relating to possession of materials—that might in and of themselves not attract a particularly long sentence? Given that they are responsible for almost half of all terrorist sentences handed out, does he agree that they need to be considered as part of the review?

[Chris Philp]

We will consider all terrorist offenders as part of the review. Of course, the sentencing provisions I just described would not be appropriate for all terror offenders—just the most serious—but I assure my hon. Friend that we will be considering the totality of terror offending. Of course, the Streatham offender had committed one of the offences that my hon. Friend just described—possession of terrorist material—so we must be mindful that even when someone commits an offence that, on the face of it, is at the less serious end of the offending spectrum, they can none the less go on to do quite serious things. The Government are extremely mindful of that.

Criminal Law

Alex Chalk Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that case once again. I completely agree with the sentiment that he expresses. When a perpetrator of a serious offence automatically gets released only halfway through their sentence, victims very often feel that justice has not been done. Today’s regulations are a small first step in addressing the wider problem to which he refers. We can and we will return to the wider question and see whether we can go further via the White Paper and sentencing Bill later this year. This is very much a first step in the direction that my hon. Friend and other hon. Members have mentioned.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

I understand entirely the logic behind these proposals, but what analysis has been made of the impact on the prison population and how many further places, if any, will be required?

[Chris Philp]

I would expect nothing less from my hon. Friend than a forensic and detailed question. In fact, I do have those figures. Perhaps it would be worth going through the details of how this scheme will operate and the consequential impact on the prison population and other matters. In answering his question, let me start by defining exactly what offences are in the scope of today’s regulations. We are talking about the offences appearing in parts 1 and 2 of schedule 15 to the Criminal Justice Act 2003, which could attract a life sentence. They include offences such as rape and grievous bodily harm with intent. Currently, there are three types of sentence that might be handed down for those offences. The first, which is for the most serious offences, is a life sentence with a tariff—the tariff is the minimum amount the offender will serve, after which they are eligible for release by the Parole Board at its discretion. The second type of sentence—the next most serious—is for offenders deemed by the judge to be dangerous. That is called an extended determinate sentence. For those offences, the prisoner is eligible for release after two thirds of their sentence, subject to Parole Board discretion. After release and after their prison sentence, they are subject to an extended period on licence.

The third type of sentence—the type that we are going to talk about today—is a standard determinate sentence, for which somebody is eligible for automatic release at the halfway point, with no involvement from the Parole Board. Those are the sentences that most concern the Government, and on which we are acting today.

Let me turn to the numbers. In 2018, just under 6,000—5,862 to be precise—sentences were handed down that met the criteria I have just laid out. Some people online have suggested that, mostly, these are extended determinate sentences and that today’s regulations will therefore make very little difference. That is categorically untrue. Of those 5,862 sentences, only 90 were life sentences and 243 were extended determinate sentences, but 4,735—81% of those sentences—were standard determinate sentences with automatic release at the halfway point. The vast majority of those sentences for very serious crimes had automatic release after only half the sentence. Some 84% of rape convictions had a standard determinate sentence. That means that 84% of incarcerated rapists were eligible for automatic release at the halfway point. We take the view that that is simply not right.

Building Safety

Alex Chalk Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I am happy to review that once again, but as I said in response to previous questions, we have provided £600 million of funding to ensure that properties in the private and social sectors are remediated as swiftly as possible.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for the urgency with which he has approached this issue. Employers who employ people in unsafe conditions could be liable to prosecution under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, and there is a parallel with this issue. Does the Secretary of State agree that if this final opportunity to make safe these dwellings is not taken, enforcement action should not be ruled out?

[Robert Jenrick]

Absolutely, and we have not ruled it out. Local authorities have the power to take enforcement action, and we are working closely with them to ensure that they do so if progress is too slow. When we have legislated for our new building safety regime and put the regulator on a statutory footing, there will be new criminal offences in this area. Every building will have a named individual who is responsible for its safety, not just at the point that it is built, but for the whole of its life, and that individual will be criminally liable for the safety of that building.

Leasehold Reform

Alex Chalk Excerpts

Thursday 11th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)]

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government estimates that there are 4 million leasehold homes in England, of which 70% are flats. Because almost all flats are leasehold, leasehold transactions are more common in London. In my constituency, in the Colindale ward, there are almost 10,000 new properties—predominantly flats—on 10 hectares of land. That figure does not include the additional developments in Millbrook Park in Mill Hill, Stonegrove in Edgware and the additional properties proposed by the Mayor of London.

When I owned a flat in the Hendon area, there would always be a problem with the service charge. I had a neighbour, Les Miller, who would always challenge the service charge and speak to the managing agents, and he would always resolve the problems. Not everyone is fortunate enough to have someone like Les, but he was the perfect candidate because he was retired and could devote his time to that. However, some residents’ groups have appeared in places like Colindale. At the Colindale Village residents association at the Pulse in Colindale, Joey Sky acts on behalf of many people who have problems—especially parking problems—on the estate. That situation has arisen because there are three different managing agents for the same development, and there are just 48 parking spaces for 1,000 tenants of the properties. With the introduction of a controlled parking zone in Colindale, residents are going through hell as they simply cannot park on or off the street.

Up the road, at the development in Beaufort Park, residents are paying around £800 to park their cars. For that, they do not receive a designated parking space but are simply allowed to park in a vacant space in a parking zone. The Beaufort Park residents association is not recognised by the developers, who say that they will recognise any such group only if a percentage of the owner-occupiers come together and form it. Unfortunately, because there are so many overseas investors in the development, the residents’ concerns are ignored. That is a great mistake, as these are very sensible people who are seeking solutions to the problems that many experience.

Other parts of my constituency are having problems with leaseholds. The residents of the Edgware Green development in Edgware have been trying to buy the freehold of their properties from Barrett Evolution. The issue is complicated by the discovery that some freeholds have already been sold on to another company. Many residents were not aware of this and were not given the opportunity to purchase. The new freeholder has increased the annual ground rent by almost 32%, and the residents have had to engage a solicitor collectively to assist with their purchase, as the matter is really not very straightforward.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

There is a similar situation in Cheltenham where a freehold has been passed on. The freeholder then completely goes to ground, so when my constituents try to make contact with the company, they cannot get hold of it and are unable to sell their properties. It is an appalling situation. Does my hon. Friend not agree?

[Dr Offord]

I certainly do agree. It is such a frustrating scenario when it is not even possible to find out who is responsible. I think that the managing agents in that scenario will be particularly keen on sending their bills to my hon. Friend’s constituents and will not be very slow in forwarding those invoices.

Three years ago, residents at Kennyland Court in Hendon were asked by their managing agents to pay for roof repairs despite a 20-year guarantee being in place since 2003. The managing agents said in their defence that the guarantee was for 15 years and was on a reduced basis, but even my maths shows me that 2016, when the bills were issued, was still two years before the end of the guarantee. However, residents were just given two repair options and no real response to the matter of the guarantee. They felt that they were being bullied by the managing agents into accepting the repair bill without any answers to their legitimate questions.

A constituent at the Brinsdale Park development in Hendon is having difficulty with a managing agent over vague bills and a lack of invoices. She says that the managing agent has consistently sent coercive demands for what she believes to be incorrect service charges. She has now invoked sections 21 and 22 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985. Section 21 relates to service charge information and section 22 relates to a request to inspect supporting accounts. This all seems very reasonable: someone receives an invoice, invokes sections 21 and 22, and sees the information. However, the managing agent has responded by sending emails accusing my constituent of harassing him in seeking such information.

It appears, judging from this debate, that there is widespread dissatisfaction about the way that many of our constituents are being treated. Indeed, that dissatisfaction has been expressed by leaseholders themselves regarding service charges. Of 1,244 leaseholders surveyed by the Leasehold Advisory Service in 2016, 40% strongly disagreed that service charges represented value for money and 62% agreed that the services provided had not improved in the past two years.

The problems are quite simple. There is difficulty buying freeholds. There is a lack of transparency around the additional medium-term and long-term cost of a leasehold compared with buying a freehold. There are significant legal and surveying costs when leaseholders want to purchase part of the freehold, or, indeed, part of the land itself. There is an excessive increase in ground rents, a lack of transparency around service charges and freeholds not being offered to leaseholders before being sold off to a third party. This situation really is intolerable for so many people, particularly in my own constituency. I understand that the Government have sought a consultation. I hope that they act on it, because the way that residents are being treated is not only unfair but, in many ways, morally corrupt, and we must act sooner rather than later.

Local Government and Social Care Funding

Alex Chalk Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

Let me point out to the hon. Gentleman that this year we have given our local authorities access to £46.4 billion, a cash increase of 2.8% and a real-terms increase in funding. The settlement includes extra funds for local services, with a strong focus on support for some of our most vulnerable groups. It is part of a four-year settlement that has been accepted by 97% of local authorities, and gives so many areas access to substantially more funding than the least deprived. The average spending power per dwelling for the 10% most deprived authorities in 2019-20 is about 22% more than that for the least deprived.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that as part of the process of increasing the funding that is available, we should increase the practice of business rates retention as a way of incentivising local innovation and enterprise? In places like Cheltenham, it provides an incentive to build out things like our cyber-park, which will create a pipeline of local businesses providing income that can be spent on vital public services.

[James Brokenshire]

My hon. Friend makes the point very effectively about the innovation that we see in local authorities and he rightly underlines the work in his own community. Local authorities have campaigned for more flexibility and control over the money they raise, including the ability to create a more self-sufficient sector funded from their own resources. That includes the move to 75% business rate retention, with the benefits that that brings.

Housing

Alex Chalk Excerpts

Thursday 28th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bacon]

I do, and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for reminding me of that. There is a lot of evidence that if people live in better, more spacious, healthier homes, there are lower costs for the NHS and lower sickness rates; it is better for employees and employers. There are lots of other ancillary benefits of having better homes, as well as their being good in themselves.

I am keeping a close eye on the clock, Madam Deputy Speaker. I planned to start with a preamble, which I seem to be doing without too much trouble, and then get into the specifics of what I want to say to the Minister about the Right to Build Task Force, but I will say one or two more things before I do that.

The situation we face is one in which an entire generation have basically given up on the chance of either owning a property or even being able to afford to rent one. In general, and especially in the big cities like London, Birmingham and Manchester, people spend an absurd proportion of their income on rent. When it is costing people over 50% of their net monthly salary to rent a ghastly little bedsit where the mattress is hanging over the sink—I do not exaggerate; I saw such an example on a Channel 4 documentary a while ago—we obviously have a big problem.

I was at a dinner at the London School of Economics where a professor was talking about a graduate student of his who was about to start working in the Bank of England on a not inconsiderable salary, but he was going to be living at home with his mum. The chap from KPMG around the table said, “Well, that’s nothing. We start our graduates on £45,000, and they can’t afford to buy anywhere.” Then the chap from BlackRock said, “Well, that’s nothing. We start our graduates on £75,000, and they can’t afford to buy anywhere, certainly not within a decent distance of our office.” It has got completely out of sync, and the Government have to fix it.

There is, of course, a political problem for our own party. I will address that later, but it is perfectly obvious that if people cannot get somewhere to live at a price they can afford, they will not vote for a party that cannot provide that for them. We need a fundamental change. We have dug ourselves a big hole over the last 20 to 25 years, and it will take us 20 to 25 years to dig ourselves out of it. If we are not careful, we will be in the same position in 20 to 25 years, only worse, unless we have the right policy proposals for fixing it. That is what I want to come to.

When I came off the Public Accounts Committee in 2017, it was to spend time on the Right to Build Task Force, an initiative set up by the National Custom and Self Build Association to help local councils, developers, community groups and landowners who want to bring forward self-build and custom house building projects on serviced plots of land—that is to say, where all the difficult bits such as fresh water, sewage, electricity, broad- band and so on are already dealt with—in order to increase supply and give people more choice. That is what I have spent most of the last two years in this place doing.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

In Cheltenham, the overwhelming majority of the house building taking place in the town centre is for retirement apartments. Does my hon. Friend agree that if we want to maintain the culture, vitality and vibrancy, we have to ensure that young people can afford to live there as well? Will he join me in congratulating the Government on providing, through the home improvement fund, millions of pounds for a Portland Place development in Cheltenham that subsidises marginal viability schemes, to ensure that young people can truly live in the town centre and contribute to its vibrancy?

[Mr Bacon]

Yes, I do, although I could easily get into a long discussion about viability that would consume the rest of this debate, which I cannot do. There are big problems with the whole concept of the way in which we calculate viability. However, I congratulate the Government on helping Cheltenham bring forward what sounds like a very important scheme.

The Right to Build Task Force has been going for two years. We have scraped together £300,000, courtesy of the Nationwide building society’s charitable foundation, the Nationwide Foundation. Over 50 organisations have been helped, of which 60% are local councils, with the rest being community groups, landowners and developers. There is a whole range of examples of its work. Aylesbury Woodlands in Buckinghamshire will have a project where 15% of all the new homes are custom and self-build. Cornwall has an ambition to bring forward up to 1,000 serviced plots across the county. I am looking around for my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Scott Mann), who arranged the meeting we had with the Prime Minister on this very subject and who is a passionate believer in more serviced plots. North Northamptonshire has a plan whereby as many as 10% of homes could be custom and self-built across several different local authorities. There are rural areas such as Eden in Cumbria, which is looking at a range of opportunities for affordable homes for local people. King’s Lynn and North Norfolk, in my own county of Norfolk, has agreed an action plan to drive up delivery across the area with landowners and smaller builders. A lot is going on already, but the thing is that there could be very much more going on.

This is the fundamental point. It is a quote from Andrew Baddeley-Chappell, a former director of Nationwide building society, who is now the chief executive of NaCSBA, while still chairing the Bank of England residential property forum. He has said:

“Custom and Self-build can deliver more and better homes that more people aspire to live in and that communities are happier to see built.”

An exegesis of that would basically cover most of what I want to say.

If we want more homes, we have to build them in a way that people want. At the moment, the problem is that most local people feel they have no say or voice in what gets built, where it gets built, what it looks like, how it performs—its thermal performance and therefore what it costs to run—and, absolutely crucially, who gets the chance to live there. If we change all that, we change the conversation. As the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), the former shadow Secretary of State said, we need to turn NIMBYs into YIMBYs. Prince Charles put it even better when His Royal Highness referred to BIMBYs—beauty in my backyard. We need to create an environment in which people actually welcome housing. We have reached the tipping point now in that more people want it than do not, because people have begun to realise how serious the crisis is.

As the Minister would expect, I have a small number of specific asks. The first is that we should have more Government support for the taskforce. We have already had some. I persuaded my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid), when he was the Housing Secretary, to lend us a civil servant—a qualified planner and career civil servant. He would prefer me not to mention his name, but I will because we are so indebted to him. His name is Mario Wolf, and he directs the work of the taskforce. We are very grateful for the loan of Mario Wolf from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. He has done an enormous amount with very little in the way of resources. I mentioned some of the work earlier.

It is of course true that if we had more Government support, we could do more. The Help to Buy programme, which I will come on to in a moment, has so far spent £10.6 billion, and plans to have spent £22 billion by 2021. In other words, 35,000 times more is spent on subsidising demand than on a scheme to subsidise supply, albeit indirectly by helping to facilitate and increase choice for consumers—except, of course, that the Government are not actually paying for it; Nationwide building society is paying for it. I hope to have a discussion about that with the Minister at some point, because we are of course implementing Government policy. If hon. Members read the housing White Paper, they can see that we are implementing Government policy. If they read the Homes England strategy, it is very clear that the strategy calls for diversification of housing.

The second thing I would like the Minister to consider is a review of the planning guidance on custom and self-build housing—the guidance that supports the revised national planning policy framework—because at the moment it is outdated. Three things need urgent attention. On land allocation, many councils do not even know if they are allowed to allocate land specifically for custom and self-build housing, even though they are, and councils such as Bristol City Council are already doing so.

We also need clarity about what counts. Some local authorities are gaming the system, and in some cases local authorities are not clear what counts towards their legal obligations to provide permissioned plots of land. Some councils are allowing the conversion of holiday lets into private dwellings under the happy delusion that that counts towards meeting their legal obligations under the right to build legislation, and some of them may be in for a rude awakening at some point.

There is also the issue of viability. For as long as one has viability assessments, the Government need to look carefully at how they should work in relation to custom and self-build; they will not necessarily be the same as for market housing. I would be grateful if the Minister engaged with the taskforce on updating the guidance generally, so that it is more fit for purpose.

My third request is about the Planning Inspectorate. It is absolutely imperative that Government planning inspectors properly apply the current provisions of the legislation when they determine planning appeals and when they examine local plans. There is clear evidence that that is not happening as it should—mostly because planning inspectors are unfamiliar with the law in this area, which is still quite new. The obvious answer is to have training for inspectors. The Secretary of State has agreed with me at the Dispatch Box that we should do that, although it has not happened yet. I urge the Minister to pursue that and engage with the taskforce in identifying exactly what training is required.

We need something to help raise consumer awareness. Most people would like to commission a project of their own at some point in their lives; 1 million people would like to do that in the next 12 months, yet only 12,000 to 15,000 do. The reason is that it is very difficult to get a serviced plot of land. If getting one were as easy as it is to go into a Ford dealership and buy a Ford Fiesta, far more people would do it.

We are spending a significant amount of public money on housing, but at the moment I am not convinced that we are not simply making the problem worse. Help to Buy will have spent £22 billion by 2021 on helping 360,000 households. If we divide one figure by the other, we get £61,111—that is per household. We should be spending that better. At the moment, we are propping up an oligopoly that performs well financially for itself, with some horrible results, while making itself unpopular with consumers who cannot afford its products.

Stronger Towns Fund

Alex Chalk Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

The hon. Gentleman has made his point about HMRC, and I will ensure that it is relayed to the appropriate Treasury Minister.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

Cheltenham has areas of relative affluence but also pockets of intense deprivation. Does my right hon. Friend agree that any applications must be assessed against the circumstances that prevail in individual neighbourhoods, rather than the town overall, which might lead to an artificial assessment?

[James Brokenshire]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. As we form the prospectus for the £600 million element of the fund, it is precisely these factors that we will weigh and consider to ensure it has the impact we want it to have.

Economic Growth: South-west

Alex Chalk Excerpts

Tuesday 5th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Sir Gary Streeter]

Not long enough, I know. Thirteen of those years have been under a Conservative Government and 13 under a Labour Government, and the reality is that there has been under-investment in our region’s vital infrastructure for the entirety of those 26 years. At last we have a Government who are listening, and now we need to see delivery to our ambitious region.

First of all, I will just say a few words about what our region actually is. I suppose that the best way of describing it is variable geometry. For some purposes, it is the seven counties that are in the European region—dare I use that expression in the company of some of my hon. Friends? For some of us, it is the two counties of Devon and Cornwall. Increasingly, however, we can talk about the four counties of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Somerset working together. There are four counties and three local enterprise partnerships working together to make the peninsula—

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

May I remind the hon. Gentleman that Cheltenham is a proud part of the south-west? It is the gateway to the south-west and, in fact, the jewel of the south-west. Does he agree?

[Sir Gary Streeter]

All of those things are true, of course, but I did say that “for some” the south-west is the seven counties, including even Gloucestershire, which Cheltenham is in. I understand that Cheltenham itself is a small market town somewhere to the north-east.

I will describe that which is going well, what we welcome from the Government already and what we still want to see. First, what is going well? Of course, our natural assets are still there and they remain unrivalled: the sea, the coast, the moor, the areas of outstanding natural beauty, the stunning landscapes and the beautiful towns and villages. The south-west is a region like no other.

I am delighted to say that tourism is flourishing. We have more quality places to stay, and better visitor destinations and tourist attractions. Mr Owen, you might be interested to know that I will make the case that we are not just a tourist region—far from it—but 311,000 people were employed in the hospitality sector in 2017 and it provides roughly 11% of the overall regional employment. So tourism remains significant and it is doing well, thanks partly to the fact that we had some wonderful weather last year and the roads were full all the time.

The second thing that is going well is the collaboration between our local enterprise partnerships, and our local authorities and national parks. That collaboration is the closest and most effective since records began, and in all my time in this House I have certainly never seen our various component parts working together as they are today. There is also a close working relationship with the private sector. Some colleagues in Westminster Hall today will recall the “Back The South West” campaign that we launched in 2016, with the charter—the south-west growth charter—that I will refer to shortly. All of that is driven by private sector companies that are ambitious for our region and determined to deliver.

At the 2016 Exeter conference, the then Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government came down and made a great and passionate speech, and told us to speak with a single voice in the south-west. We have done that; we are more joined-up than ever before, and I think it is beginning to make its mark upon Government.

Far from being just a tourist area, our region boasts some wonderful companies. For example, Princess Yachts in Plymouth employs 3,000 people and Babcock employs 4,500 people in the dockyard and naval base. That is to name but two; there are many other companies and I am sure that colleagues will mention some of the high-performing companies in their constituencies.

I will single out just two companies from the south-west that are doing particularly well. First, there is the Pennon Group. Brilliantly led by Chris Loughlin, it includes South West Water, which is a leading national water and sewerage company that will make £1 billion of investment in our region by 2025. Its business plan has been fast-tracked by Ofwat for the second time in a row, which I think is unique among the water companies. Pennon Group also includes Viridor, which is the UK’s largest recycling company, so we have this successful and ambitious green company that employs over 5,000 people UK-wide. It is a company that our region is rightly proud of and it generates over 6,000 jobs in our region alone through direct and indirect employment. We thank the Pennon Group for all it does for our region.

The second company is Thales, which is a major global defence contractor that employs over 1,100 people in the wider south-west, including in Cheltenham. Thales stated recently that it sees huge potential for its business in the south-west and the region as a whole:

“There is the opportunity to put the region on the map in the digital technology and maritime space and with the support of Government we think the region can go from strength to strength.”

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[Peter Heaton-Jones (North Devon) (Con)]

rose—

[Alex Chalk]

rose—

[Albert Owen (in the Chair)]

I call Peter Heaton-Jones. There are approximately eight minutes remaining and two Members who wish to speak.

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[Alex Chalk]

Town!

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

Oh, it is a town—well, there we are; even less of a reason.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Owen, and to speak in this debate initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for South West Devon (Sir Gary Streeter). I thank him for his kind words about the campaign to get funds for the north Devon link road. Yes, that is something I have gone on about. As a relatively new Member, my name popped up on the Order Paper to ask a question of the Prime Minister. The then Prime Minister, David Cameron, approached me in the Lobby and said, “I bet you’re going to bang on about the north Devon link road.” I said, “Absolutely, Prime Minister, I am.” When he said that to me, I thought, “Well, we’ve won this battle, and I am proud to be banging on about it.” We made that happen with the success that comes with £83 million of Government funding, plus £10 million from Devon County Council. The north Devon link road is a vital bit of our infrastructure and part of the connectivity that my hon. Friend and other colleagues so correctly identified.

Connectivity is a vital driver of the economy not only in north Devon, but in the entire south-west. That includes roads such as the A361, the A303, the A30 and the A358, but it is also about railways, which have been mentioned at some length. I echo what has been said to the Minister. This is not his Department, but perhaps he could have a quiet word in the ears of his hon. Friends in the Department for Transport and ensure that when we have an announcement, it will be the news that we need about long-overdue investment in the resilience of the vital route that connects the south-west peninsula with the rest of the country. I look forward to that happening; I hope it will be in the next couple of weeks.

I also wish to mention the railway line in my constituency, and I declare an interest because I am proud to be the honorary president of the Tarka Rail Association—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] Thank you. It is one of the roles that I am proudest to hold, because that organisation has done much to promote the need for investment in the line that links Exeter and Barnstaple, and will continue so to do.

In 2019, connectivity also means digital connectivity. I have had numerous meetings with Connecting Devon and Somerset, British Telecom, and Airband, which unlike in the rest of our region—it is not Gigaclear—is the contract holder to provide fast and superfast broadband in north Devon. I have had a number of meetings with Airband to try to push that agenda forward. It is vital that that continues, because although a lot of good work has been done so far, we need to do more.

Those who put together the south-west growth strategy reckon that properly investing in our region’s connectivity could produce gross value added economic benefits of more than £41 billion and create 22,000 jobs—that is how important it is to get connectivity right. Colleagues have also mentioned agriculture, which is extraordinarily important in north Devon and the greater south-west, and a great contributor to economic growth. There are excellent farming businesses in my local economy, and it is well documented that they can help to close the productivity gap.

Let me acknowledge David Ralph, who is in the Public Gallery. He is head of the Heart of the South West local enterprise partnership, and it is good to see so much support for the region as a whole. According to the excellent report by the South West Rural Productivity Commission, our rural local authority areas account for 60% of all workforce jobs—far above the figures for elsewhere in England—which shows how important it is to get growth right in our rural areas.

Let me raise a couple of other issues that I think are important. We have placed a bid for a south-west institute of technology in our area, which is vital. Petroc College and other institutions in my constituency are really pushing hard for that, and part of it will be based in Barnstaple. That could be a real driver as far as the Government’s economic and industrial strategies are concerned. I see that time is running away, so I will end with pretty much the same phrase as the one with which I ended another debate on this subject, initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for South West Devon about 18 months ago. We hear a great deal about the midlands engine and the northern powerhouse, and of course they are important. In the south-west, however, we are like a coiled spring. We have so much potential ready to be unleashed, so I say to the northern powerhouse, “You ain’t seen nothing yet!”

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[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

In the three minutes available, may I say that although we rightly talk about economic growth, we need to step back and ask what we mean by that and why it matters? It matters, because it is all very well for us to say that we believe in social mobility—I dare say we all do, across the House—but we should also believe that economic growth provides opportunities for people from all walks of life, and allows people who come from deprived communities to go as far as their talents will take them. I therefore think it is incredibly important to focus on that issue, and we have a moral duty to do so.

When I was elected in Cheltenham in 2015, a lot of Members might have assumed that it was an area of great affluence, which to some extent it is. However, we also have pockets of genuine and grinding deprivation. Importantly, when I looked at the growth figures, I saw that Cheltenham’s growth rate was less than the national average. It seems to me that increasing economic growth is an important way to tackle those areas of deprivation, and I feel that very passionately. There are two elements to this. First, we must ensure that we have a supremely well-educated workforce. That is why I welcome the increased emphasis on fair funding. We have not yet completed the task, and although Cheltenham’s secondary schools get £1.2 million more a year than they did before, we need to increase that. We also need great job opportunities for people once they leave school.

I want to focus on Cheltenham’s cyber future. In November 2015, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, came to GCHQ and said that an arc of cyber-prosperity could extend from Cheltenham all the way down through the south-west. That critical sector will generate £20 billion a year for the UK economy and, crucially, we can be part of that by leveraging some of our state expertise in facilities such as GCHQ to improve our local economy. There is so much more to talk about, including the A417 missing link, and I am delighted that the Government are investing more than £400 million in improving that road, because doing so will unlock that corridor of prosperity. This is a moral duty. If we want to achieve social mobility, economic prosperity and a plan for growth must be at its heart.

[Albert Owen (in the Chair)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman and to all Back-Benchers for their restraint. I will now call the Front Bench spokespeople, who I am sure will leave a few minutes for Mr Streeter to wind up. I call Chi Onwurah.

Section 21 Evictions

Alex Chalk Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2018 Westminster Hall

[Ms Buck]

Of course it does. As we have been discussing in the context of the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017, local authorities, because of the sheer pressure of homelessness applications, are also expecting tenants to wait until the court order has been issued and to wait until the bailiffs have been instructed and a date for the bailiffs to arrive has been received before they will consider the homelessness application. Landlords hate that, and one can understand exactly why—because of the insecurity about what happens to their rental payments. But the tenants absolutely loathe it and find it wholly traumatic to have to wait, often with their children, for the bailiffs to turn up before they can be rehoused by the local authority.

Research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation last year found that the number of private tenants being evicted had risen by one fifth, that the overwhelming majority of the increase in possessions was driven by section 21, and that that was highly concentrated, with four out of five such repossessions being in London and the south-east, where rents are highest. It is precisely that concentration of section 21 use in certain areas correlating with the areas where market rents have risen most rapidly that I think is a real cause for concern.

The London boroughs identified by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation were all in the top 10 for the largest and fastest market rent increases from an initially low level. Although correlation must be treated cautiously, it is hard not to conclude that there is causation between increases in market rent levels and the use of section 21, whether that involves evicting tenants in rent arrears because of high rent levels, or evicting tenants in order to raise rents.

If anything, the flattening off of possession claims over the period 2015 to 2017—that has flattened from a period when it rose very steeply—has happened at a time when the private rental market has been under pressure from several other directions. It tends to reinforce the point that section 21 use reflects wider trends in relation to rents and that, crucially, we cannot stop worrying about it because there has been something of a flattening off in the last couple of years. If anything, now is the moment when we need to review the law, because if rents start picking up again, as over the longer term they almost certainly will, we will find that there will be a further acceleration in its use.

The Residential Landlords Association makes the case that its research shows that in half of all places where section 21 notices are served, that is because there is an alleged fault, such as rent arrears, but that argument is somewhat undermined by the local authority homelessness experience, because local authority acceptances of people who have been evicted from the private rented sector will happen only after there has been an inquiry into the cause of homelessness and it has been found that the homelessness is not a result of fault on the part of the tenant.

Homelessness is therefore a major factor in our wanting to reconsider the use of section 21, but it is of course only the sharp end of a much wider experience of insecurity. Unchosen ends of tenancies are disruptive, expensive and often traumatic for those involved. Having to make frequent moves, especially for families with children and for vulnerable and older tenants, is a deeply negative experience, even when it has not been imposed by a court order.

Shelter estimates that 27% of renters with children have moved three or more times in the past five years. That takes a toll on physical and mental wellbeing and on educational achievement. It also undermines communities and civic engagement. A very powerful case was made a few years ago by the Electoral Commission on the impact of high turnover and churn in the private rented sector. I know from my own casework, as I am sure all hon. Members do, just how distressing parents—it is not only parents, but it is parents in particular—find it to have to move around, changing schools and disrupting support networks. I could have chosen dozens of cases from my own case load to illustrate that point, but I have chosen the details of just one to read out— it is only a few paragraphs—with your permission, Mr Hollobone.

My constituent says:

“I have lived in this area for over 30 years. Due to overcrowding in our family home I was asked to leave in 2010, at which point I made a housing application to”

the local authority. They continue:

“The Council accepted a…duty and provided us with temporary accommodation in East London. We stayed in Dagenham for a short while before being lured back to Westminster by the Private Sector Team, reassuring us that this was a better option…When we signed a private tenancy we were promptly notified that the council has discharged its duty towards us because we have accepted private rent. We only rented for a year before the Housing Benefit was reduced under the new welfare reforms. As we could no longer afford the rent, we were obliged to find alternative accommodation”.

Despite their need for three-bedroom accommodation, they moved into two-bedroom accommodation. The council said that it

“could not and would not help us. I have a local connection as I have my family here. I look after my elderly father”,

who has cancer.

“I have 3 dependent children…attending local schools. I sit on the board of governors and play an active role in the…running of the school. I am…a member of the Parent Council.”

My constituent says that they are

“employed…and have served 18 years”

in their job in the local area. They say they have been served another

“Section 21 Notice by the landlords Agents requiring possession of the flat on 02^nd October.”

That will be the family’s fifth move in eight years. It is a simple example. It involves no fault, no arrears, no bad behaviour on the part of the tenants, but an imposed move of a vulnerable local family, and it is only too typical.

Renting privately is overall less secure than other tenures. Some 860,000 tenants moved between private rentals in 2016, up from 465,000 20 years ago, and one in 10 movers said that their move was down to being given notice by their landlord.

My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel) talked about retaliatory eviction. A significant minority of tenants fear retaliatory eviction if they make a complaint and so may be deterred from pursuing their rights for fear of the consequences. That unfortunately undermines efforts to improve standards in the private rented sector, despite its having, of all tenures, the highest level of substandard accommodation.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making a powerful speech, and the examples she is giving emphasise why it is important to re-examine the balance in this area; she has made that argument powerfully. Has she made any assessment of what the potential impact could be on the pipeline of available housing? I am always mindful in this place of the law of unintended consequences. I would be interested to hear her thoughts on that.

[Ms Buck]

It is a fair point. As always, a balance has to be struck. The private rented sector is important, and as much as we would like to build more social housing to accommodate some of the people in it, that would take longer than we can afford to take to accommodate the people in the pipeline. That has to be considered. It is fundamentally unknowable, because it cannot be taken out of the context of so many other aspects of housing need and supply, including the Government’s 2015 tax changes, which landlords are extremely concerned about, and the overall number of tenants seeking accommodation.

The fact is that if we get the balance right and remove no-fault from the equation, and if we concentrate on providing a means for landlords who legitimately need to recover their property for whatever reason and deal with some of their concerns about the operation of that system, there is no reason on earth people should regard that as unacceptable.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Buck]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that point. Certainly the landlord associations and landlords make the argument that the court process takes too long and is too complicated and, in many cases, too expensive for them to operate. I am unconvinced by that argument, because the figures that the landlord associations have put forward for the period of waiting for a court date or until a warrant can be issued are significantly different from the figures that the Library has provided for the debate. I am not sure that the associations are not using a different definition of average to make their case.

Obviously, once a landlord has decided that they want to recover a property, they will want to do so as quickly as possibly—that is inevitable—but whether the period that landlords have to wait and the quality of evidence that they have to provide if they are seeking a fault-based eviction should be lowered to make it easier for them, to the point where it effectively allows them to act without due regard for the rights of tenants, is a highly moot point.

[Alex Chalk]

I am entirely persuaded that landlords who issue a notice in a cynical, cruel and egregious way—in an almost deliberately upsetting way—should not be in a position to do so. The difficulty is in what an appropriate pretext or legitimate reason to seek to end a tenancy is. Can the hon. Lady say more about how she would crystallise and identify what amounts to a good cause?

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to say a few words with you in the Chair, Mr Hollobone. I thank the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) for her excellent speech. I had not intended to speak in this debate, but I wanted to say that I find it very powerful, and I personally am persuaded that this is something we need to look at again. I should declare an interest: my brother, my sister and I are joint landlords of a cottage just outside my constituency. I wanted to give a few words of perspective.

First, it is worth emphasising that a house is not like any other commodity: it is not like anything else that one might consume. It is a matter of supreme, central importance to the security of individuals, their sense of wellbeing and their mental health. In those circumstances, it is critically important that we have a framework in place that ensures that on the one hand, there is a sufficient pipeline of that essential resource, and on the other, the pipeline is regulated in a way that is fair to all parties, particularly those who dwell in those houses.

It would be unfair to suggest that we have not come an awfully long way, and this Government can take some credit for the extent to which they have properly rebalanced the tenant-landlord relationship. I am thinking, of course, about the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Bill: it is axiomatic that homes should be fit for human habitation, and I am glad that that Bill will be in statute. I am also glad that there is a more rigorous system of penalties for rogue landlords who act in a capricious and vicious way, or do not take proper account of the wellbeing of their tenants. I am thinking, of course, about legislation regarding carbon monoxide detectors and so on. The penalties are now far more severe—financial penalties and potentially even criminal penalties. That is as it should be.

I feel it would be appropriate to look again at the issue of no-fault evictions. Although it is right to say that in the overwhelming majority of cases, landlords behave appropriately and with a proper sense of their responsibility to their fellow citizens, it does cause me some unease that there remains scope in the legislation for landlords to act in a capricious way. The hon. Member for Westminster North has identified some chilling examples, and the quote that she read, while wholly unrepresentative of the broad mass of landlords, revealed that a landlord could seek to leave someone homeless over the Christmas period for vindictive reasons. That would be an act of appalling cruelty.

However, I wanted to make some other points, very gently. As the hon. Lady was right to mention and acknowledge, this is a balance, and it is important that as part of any examination of this matter, the Government should consider what the implications are for the pipeline of homes. I say that because there is a potential risk—probably a tolerable risk, but none the less a risk—that further measures could seek to interfere with that pipeline. For the reasons that the hon. Lady indicated, I suspect that risk is tolerable, and if the conditions were crafted appropriately to ensure that there was a genuinely good reason to issue a notice, that risk ought not to eventuate. It would be important to allow landlords to issue a notice if, for example, their financial circumstances had changed or they were selling up to move abroad.

Any measures would have to be drawn up with appropriate flexibility. However, as long as that could take place, as long as any examination proceeded with care, and as long as projections could satisfy us that those measures would not lead to an intolerable diminution in the pipeline of available homes, the hon. Lady has a point—a point that the Government would in conscience do well to consider. We should keep this matter under constant review, and I pay tribute to the hon. Lady for drawing this important issue to the attention of the House.

[Wera Hobhouse]

On a point of order, Mr Hollobone. I failed to draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Interests, and I do so now. I apologise that I failed to do so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Slaughter]

What my hon. Friend says is absolutely true: tenants are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. If they leave too early, they can be criticised by the local authority; if they leave too late, apart from the cost risk, they may find that time has literally run out. Increasingly, tenants are coming to me and saying that they have been evicted and lost their belongings, which were in the property after the bailiffs arrived, and that they and their children are sleeping on somebody’s floor, sofa-surfing or in wholly inadequate hostel accommodation and being moved on night by night. My council acts as responsibly as it can to try to keep families together and ensure that people are rehoused in the borough or as close to it as possible, but as we all know, schooling, employment, support networks and caring responsibilities are all disrupted by the process—that is very common now.

I hope that nobody here has experienced eviction at first hand, but I am sure we have all met many constituents who have. It is one of the most traumatic things that someone can go through. The humiliation, the cost, the uncertainty, the rejection—the whole process is just appalling, and it is now accelerating as a consequence of simple greed or commercial practice. Unfortunately, with the growth of buy-to-let and temptation in the private rented market, rents are escalating at a huge rate.

Only the other day, we were talking about the difficulty of building affordable homes. I am proud to say that my local authority is now building 1,500 new affordable homes, rather than knocking them down as it did when it was Conservative. However, the rent for a new social rented home is about 20% of the market rate, which means that building it requires a huge subsidy, which is very difficult to obtain. [Interruption.] I can hear the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) tutting, but he knows that that will just encourage me.

In 2010, all the support for subsidy for social rented homes was removed, so it is no wonder that there has been a huge decline in availability and more reliance on the private rented sector. There is a fourfold or fivefold discrepancy in rent levels and landlords are being tempted to increase their income substantially simply by evicting tenants and replacing them with others. Alternatively, they may be thinking, “I don’t want to make more of a profit than I make already, but with benefit caps and restrictions on the rent that the tenant can pay”—given London rents, tenants will inevitably be partially reliant on housing benefit, even if they are working full-time—“I cannot afford to rent to them any more, so I’m evicting them.”

[Alex Chalk]

The hon. Gentleman knows how fond I am of him and his remarks, but his slightly party political point tempts me to intervene. This debate is about whether it is right to update the 1988 legislation. Does he accept that his party was in power between 1997 and 2010 but declined to do so? Does he agree that we ought to consider the matter in a more cross-party, consensual and reasonable way, rather than drawing party political points? [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn) is shaking her head, but does the hon. Gentleman agree that this need not be too partisan an issue?

[Melanie Onn]

You’re in the minority here—you should be careful!

Parking (Code of Practice) Bill

Alex Chalk Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 23rd November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sir Christopher Chope]

In my submission, if an aggrieved member of the public felt that the Government had not been using their best endeavours to bring forward the code of practice and were thereby delaying the implementation of the will of Parliament, it would be open to that person to raise the matter by way of a judicial review, so there would be an enforcement mechanism.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

Is this amendment not a licence to take power away from this House and put it into the courts? This House should be responsible for its own legislation. If there had been a failure of a dilatory nature from the Government, then my hon. Friend could no doubt call them to account in this House. However, ceding power to the courts to make a decision on whether best endeavours have been used seems to me to be a complete abdication of responsibility.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

What my hon. Friend says is interesting if one applies the analogy of best endeavours to what is being discussed in the context of article 184 of the EU withdrawal agreement. In answer to another parliamentary question, the Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) the Minister with responsibility for exiting the European Union stated:

“the primary remedy would be that the party in default would be obliged to return to the negotiating table and modify its position. In the event that there was further non-compliance, remedies may be imposed under the processes established by the withdrawal agreement.”

It may be that my amendment is just as weak as article 184 of the proposed EU withdrawal agreement seems to be.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

What a pleasure it is to follow the hon. Member for Warrington South (Faisal Rashid) and his excellent contribution. I could not agree more with the points that he has made, and I entirely endorse this Bill. I just want to make a few additional remarks. The overarching point —it has been indicated before but it bears emphasis—is that so many of these companies are a law unto themselves, and it is important to iterate the distress and concern that their actions can cause. When someone is faced with what looks like an official letter demanding considerable sums of money, they can become enormously distressed by that. The concern is that these individuals are making these demands on an entirely specious basis, and I want to give the House two examples—

[Pete Wishart]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is about to come to the amendments. We are now discussing the amendments that have been tabled by the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight) and the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope), and we are all desperate to make our Third Reading speeches, which will deal with some of the finer features of the Bill. I want to know what the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) thinks about the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire’s fine amendment about the appeals process.

[Alex Chalk]

I will be getting to that point, but it is important to set the context as well.

My first example affects one of my own constituents. I was making a point about the distress that can be caused by these demands, many of which are being issued on a specious basis. I had a constituent in Cheltenham, in a road near Montpellier Terrace, who received a letter demanding that a fine be paid. However, it turned out that the company demanding the money was seeking to claim a parking ticket in respect of land that belonged to the person receiving the ticket. That was an extraordinary situation. In other words, the company had not bothered to check with the Land Registry to find out who owned the land. When I looked into it, it turned out that the parking company had been called in because of a vexatious neighbour dispute. The neighbour had called in the parking company to try to get at his own neighbour. This is a prime example of why we need a sensible system of regulation, to ensure that the system is not misused in that way.

The second example that I want to give, before turning expeditiously to the amendments that the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) has mentioned, relates to my own situation. Seven years after the event, a parking company wrote to me to suggest that my car, which had long since been sold on, had been wrongly parked. I knew that this area of law was covered by contract law, and that this was way out of time in any event, even if the underlying suggestion was correct. The truth is, I could not remember, because it had happened seven years previously. However, such an episode would be upsetting for people who did not have that knowledge and who would not realise that such a demand was time-barred.

I shall now turn to the new clause and the amendments tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight), whom I congratulate on bringing forward this brilliant Bill. He is right to have a single point of appeal; that is enormously sensible. There is not a great deal that I want to add to that, other than to say that I hope that the clause will be flexible enough to ensure that there are sufficient resources to deal with these points. The reason I say that is that new clause 1(1) states:

“This section applies if the parking code contains guidance recommending that all parking appeals are dealt with by a single person who is independent of persons providing private parking facilities.”

All I can say is that I hope there will be more than one person, because there are likely to be a great number of appeals. I hope that it will be appropriate for the singular to include the plural. I am sure that that point will be dealt with, but there needs to be more than one person.

I also want to deal with the proposal from my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch about the use by the Secretary of State of “his best endeavour”. I understand the logic behind his proposal, but I respectfully suggest that it is unnecessary in this case. The point has been made that there is a danger of seeing ghosts where none exists, so to speak. The wider point, however, is that, were this provision to be required, it would surely be required in every piece of legislation that this House passes. That would transfer power from this House, where hon. Members can properly hold the Executive to account for allegedly dilatory behaviour, to outside the House because, as my hon. Friend rightly acknowledges, the issue would become justiciable. We could then have a situation where a person could serve a writ suggesting that the Government had not used best endeavours to bring legislation into effect, which would cost a huge amount of time, expense and inconvenience. More importantly, this House would effectively be precluded from discussing it, because it would then be a matter under discussion by the High Court, which would be an unsatisfactory state of affairs.

[Michael Tomlinson]

As ever, my hon. Friend is using his forensic intellect to consider these matters, but is not the situation worse than that? Even if it were justiciable, the phrase “best endeavour” is simply too vague. It would be impossible to judge, as the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) pointed out in an earlier exchange, whether a Minister had or had not used best endeavour.

[Alex Chalk]

Absolutely right. The Court would not thank this House at all for requiring it to make that kind of assessment. One could imagine how the evidence would have to be provided on both sides. The Minister would provide timelines, and then the Court might have to consider what the Opposition had to say. How on earth would the Court be meant to make a judgment?

[Kevin Brennan]

Does the hon. Gentleman suspect, as I do, that the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) has tabled his amendments to make a point about Brexit, rather than about this Bill? We would therefore forgive him if, at this stage, he chose not to press his amendments, having made that point so well in his contribution today.

[Alex Chalk]

The hon. Gentleman recognises that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch is a Member of great distinction and resourcefulness. It may just be possible that that is his intention. If it is his intention, he has certainly made the point with his customary eloquence and effectiveness. Yes, I think this would be an excellent moment for him to recognise that the point is made, and he could therefore graciously not press his amendments.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

My amendment 8, which seeks to incorporate the phrase “best endeavour”, is completely nugatory in terms of legality or enforceability, and I take the point made by the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) and by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson) that “best endeavour” is a meaningless phrase. I therefore will not press the amendment. We would not want to litter our statute book with meaningless phrases, whether it be in the withdrawal Act or in this Bill.

[Alex Chalk]

That was elegantly done. Well, on that basis, I do not have much more to say. I have made the points I wanted to make.

With the Bill being improved in the way that has been proposed, I end by congratulating my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire. This is past time, and the Bill will be welcomed in my constituency, by the constituent I mentioned, by me and, I am sure, by Members on both sides of the House.

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

It is wonderful when both sides of the House come together to support and put in place legislation that will make a practical difference to the day-to-day lives of the millions of people we represent. In that vein, I wholeheartedly congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight) on highlighting this issue, and on the tenacity and diligence with which he has brought the issue to the Floor of the House and to Committee. I pay tribute to him, and many people will be grateful for his efforts.

I will speak briefly now, and perhaps respond to hon. Members’ comments more generally on Third Reading. For now, I will limit my remarks to the various new clauses and amendments.

New clause 1 will appoint a single appeals service to create further clarity for consumers, giving a well-signposted route to appeal a private parking ticket. I am delighted on behalf of the Government to support the new clause. It and the associated amendments will ensure that there is a fair, transparent and consistent appeals service for motorists. This has been warmly welcomed by consumer groups and the parking industry alike.

I am pleased to tell the House that Steve Gooding, the director of the RAC Foundation, has said:

“we particularly welcome the proposal for a single, independent appeals service, which, together with a single, clear code of practice should establish a better, clearer framework and a level playing field that is fairer for all”.

The foundation has challenged the effectiveness of self-regulation in the parking industry. Only this week, it drew attention to the fact that in the second quarter of the financial year, private parking companies sought yet another record number of vehicle keeper details from the DVLA with which to pursue ordinary drivers and motorists.

The chief executive of one of the industry’s leading trade associations, the British Parking Association, has said that the association welcomes the amendments tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire, commenting that they

“chime with our call for a single standard body, single code of practice and a single independent appeals service. This framework provides a unique opportunity to deliver greater consistency and consumer confidence”.

The BPA looks forward to pushing

“for a positive outcome for all.”

It is therefore with pleasure that the Government can support new clause 1.

I am also pleased to support, on behalf of the Government, amendments 1 to 6, which are pragmatic alterations that will support the Bill’s delivery through secondary legislation. They will give the Secretary of State the ability to delegate functions to non-public bodies, such as experts in auditing, as seems eminently sensible. They will clarify the role of the Secretary of State, in that he or she will have final approval of the code of practice and any subsequent alterations that will be submitted to Parliament. Finally, as my right hon. Friend stated, the amendments will expand the existing levy under the Bill to cover the cost of appointing and maintaining a single appeals service. The Government support all the amendments.

Let me turn briefly to the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope). I welcome his broad support for the Bill’s measures, and share his commitment to, and enthusiasm for, ensuring that the measures start making a practical difference to people as soon as possible. However, following the arguments that have already been made by various Members on both sides of the House, I, too, do not believe that the amendments are necessary. I can personally assure my hon. Friend that the Government and I are committed to creating and publishing a code of practice for the private parking industry as soon as is practically possible. I can confirm that considerable work has already gone into this, and I will happily walk the House through that in a second.

More generally, placing an arbitrary timeline on the process of developing a code and implementing the Bill would compromise our ability to make sure that the Bill comes into force in the way that we want it to, and with the impact that we all desire it to have. For example, a consultation with the public is necessary. Given the scale and volume of the correspondence to our postbags and email inboxes, which are already full regarding this topic, one can imagine that that consultation will be of extreme importance to many people whom we represent. They will want time to have their say, and we should make sure that that is possible. Furthermore, as has already been outlined, procurement practices might be required, and if they should be required, they will be subject to statutory timelines that need to be obeyed. Lastly, if the code of practice was going to put in place new provisions around such things as standard signage, standard forms of parking tickets or standard language, it would be appropriate for a suitable transition period to be put in place to allow companies to adjust to the new, fairer measures.