Budget Resolutions

Alex Chalk Excerpts

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

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

I rise to support this Budget—a Budget that allows our country to say with confidence, after staring into the economic abyss 10 years ago, that our best days lie ahead.

We are talking today about families and communities. In that vein, before drilling into the specific measures in the Budget, it is helpful to take stock of how far we have come in respect of jobs. Why is that? It is because there are some in this House who are in danger of forgetting what unemployment means for families and communities. It means misery, lack of self-esteem and wasted potential. It means hollowed-out communities and a grinding, corrosive sense of despair. Unemployment in our country is just 4%. In Cheltenham, it is under 2%. Yet in France it is 9% and in the eurozone it is 8%. In April 2010, there were 2.5 million unemployed people in our country, over 900,000 aged between 16 and 24, with a lack of opportunity and a lack of life chances. This country is turning that around.

There is no true economic strength without fairness too. It was the right decision in the Budget to raise the national living wage, which will go up by nearly 5% to £8.21 per hour. That will deliver an extra £690 to a full-time worker, while ensuring that businesses can thrive and expand. Raising the personal allowance one year early to £12,500 will save a typical basic rate taxpayer £130.

Stronger families mean healthier families. We should be in no doubt about the steps that this Government have taken to invest in the NHS. The figures are stark, and they are so great that it is sometimes hard to take them in. Some £122 billion is spent annually today, but by 2023 that figure will go up to £149 billion—the largest peacetime investment in history. In Cheltenham, that is over and above the £39 million capital investment in Gloucestershire’s hospitals.

Stronger families need good housing too. That is why I welcome the measures in the Budget to help turn derelict retail outlets into homes. Before carving up the countryside, we should look to meet as much of our housing need as possible from brownfield sites. With every challenge comes an opportunity, if we have the vision and energy to seize it, and that is the opportunity that arises from the changes in retail. We can consolidate our shopping districts, rebalance our town centres and make them vibrant and prosperous.

On education, there is more to say and much I want to discuss. At the comprehensive spending review, we need to look at how we can support those with the greatest needs. But overall, the careful stewardship of this economy and the hard work of the British people mean that tough decisions have been made—the right ones—and the future for our country is bright.

Shale Gas Development

Alex Chalk Excerpts

Wednesday 31st October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mark Menzies) on securing this debate. Let me be clear on two points: first, I am intensely sceptical about whether fracking is sensible at all, but secondly, I am very clear that the expansion of permitted development to circumvent the normal planning process is disproportionate and potentially counterproductive.

Environmentally, the starting point has to be that we should seek to keep fossil fuels in the ground. We have obligations under the Climate Change Act 2008. The only argument I have heard that gives some possible justification is the potential for fracking to be a bridging fuel so that we can phase out dirty coal as quickly as possible. The problem is that the science is as yet unproven. I will listen carefully to what the Minister has to say about whether that is a credible argument. The second and perhaps even more important point is that the principle must be that we should depart from the ordinary standards of consultation with local communities only in exceptional circumstances. That hurdle has not been jumped here.

The point has already been made about the inconsistency that exists. As someone who sat on a planning committee for a very long time, I know that the most serious applications ordinarily go through the local scrutiny procedure. There is no reason not to do so in these circumstances. I suggest that not to do so is dangerous and could be highly counterproductive.

Ipswich-London Rail Fares

Alex Chalk Excerpts

Monday 15th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Joseph Johnson]

Of course I agree that performance, whether measured by reliability or punctuality, is exceptionally important to passengers and their perception of value for money. Performance on Greater Anglia has been reasonably good over recent weeks. From memory—I am seeking a prompt—I think its public performance measure is around 89%, so just a couple of percentage points off its target for the relevant period, but there is always room for improvement and we carefully monitor how it is doing against its targets.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

I take an interest in this because Cheltenham, perhaps like Ipswich, is affected by pricing perversity, meaning it is much more expensive per mile to travel from Cheltenham—[Interruption.]—and indeed from Stroud, which the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Drew) represents, than from other equivalent parts of the country. I am delighted about the review, therefore, but will it address this geographical perversity, which disadvantages my constituents?

[Joseph Johnson]

No one could defend the current fares system, and I will certainly not attempt to do so; it needs thorough reform, and the rail review’s work will be an important contribution to that process.

Tenant Fees Bill

Alex Chalk Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 21st May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Lewer (Northampton South) (Con)]

Although it is true that some renters pay many hundreds of pounds in fees to letting agents, I want to point out that the solution proposed by the Government may merely shift the cost of the burden, not to landlords and lettings agents, but back to tenants in a different way. Banning letting agency fees means that the money will have to come from somewhere else, at least as far as legitimate services from respectable letting agents are concerned. Landlords may well be forced to, or at least will, increase rents across the tenancy to cover the costs anyway.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that however appropriate this legislation is—and it is appropriate—it is at least in part because of the unscrupulous actions of some letting agents, and not all letting agents should be tarred with the same brush? CGT Lettings and Morgan Associates in my constituency do a good job by their tenants and can be expected to continue to do so.

[Andrew Lewer]

I entirely agree.

These new rules are quite complex and there will be a bureaucratic cost to councils, letting agents, landlords and therefore tenants. The rules trigger the new burdens doctrine, and I hope that this will be accounted for in the legislation. I still think that a simple rule allowing letting agents to impose a maximum fee of 100% or 150% of monthly rent might have solved this more straightforwardly, as long as there were additional safeguards for those receiving housing-related benefits and others.

As I said last week on housing and, before that, on the energy price cap, I am a critical friend and a supporter, rather than a member, of this Conservative Government. Although I accept the need to intervene at times to ensure that fairness is maintained in the market, we also have a strong commitment to providing more houses and making people’s lives easier. The focus needs to be the key objective of having new homes in which the private rented sector will have a role, rather than just the “ban and regulate” type of legislation. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) has just said, let us remember that there are hard-working people in the sector. We should not draft legislation purely to punish those who behave unscrupulously at the expense of the far more numerous examples in the former category.

I would like to acknowledge the work of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, on which I sit. Over the past few months, it has held evidence sessions with stakeholders and done significant work to improve this Bill so as to avoid more costly and inefficient enforcement. Indeed, that work has been sufficient, notwithstanding my reservations, to secure my support in the Lobby, because there is a problem to be tackled, even if this proposal has some Jim Hacker in it as well as some King Solomon.

Street Homelessness

Alex Chalk Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2018 Westminster Hall

[Adam Holloway]

Yes. As I said at the beginning of my speech, this debate is about street homelessness, and I totally accept that there is a much bigger and much less visible problem of people sofa surfing. Indeed, tomorrow morning I will be seeing an asylum seeker without recourse to public funds who is in exactly the position that the hon. Gentleman is suggesting.

Going on to the reasons for rough sleeping in 1991 and now, the demographic of the people I met on the streets recently is clearly different, because of the foreign nationals, but the reasons for people being there are as sad and complicated as they always were. Once again, I met that seemingly intractable group—the mentally ill, the drug addicted and, in particular, people suffering from mental health issues. Of the what one might describe as “genuinely” street homeless, the overriding majority had some sort of mental health issue, which is compounded by living on the streets and by drug or alcohol addiction.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is being very generous with his time. At the last count in Cheltenham, there were nine rough sleepers, often with complex needs relating to substance misuse or poor mental health, as he indicated. Does he agree that, in those circumstances, there can be no substitute for qualified expert and intensive support, such as that provided by P3 in Cheltenham, and that we should continue to fund that generously?

[Adam Holloway]

I do not know P3, but I am sure that it does great work. I agree with my hon. Friend, and I will come on to that point. How we deal with the mentally ill and the drug addicted, how quickly they have access to support, and how the money goes to the teams on the ground is a very important part.

Some of the street homeless I spoke to were ex-soldiers. One guy had separated from his German wife, whom he had met during our time in the Rhine. She had taken the children back there, and he had been living in a forest in Germany for four months. He had come back to London before trying to head back down to the west country.

There are also ex-offenders, some of whom leave prison with £46 in their pocket, although I did not meet any of them. I am sure that there are also those who lost their homes as a result of benefits sanctions, financial problems or the breakdown of relationships, although despite speaking to many dozens of homeless people, I did not come across any of them. But, of course, there are many of them, and there will be many more in the sofa-surfer sector, which we discussed.

The most common theme was mental illness of some kind. If hon. Members have walked along the road to Victoria station, they will have seen all the people zombified out of their heads on this horrible synthetic cannabis, Spice. I spent a night sleeping there, round the back of the “goods in” entrance to McDonalds. I was looking for a suitable place to sleep, and I found a guy sitting on his own. I wandered up to him and had a bit of chat. He was an alcoholic and was quite lonely, and he was quite nervous of all the Spice guys in the area. He said that I could bed down next to him, which I did. He was 30, from the north of England and quite anxious for company. As we lay there in our sleeping bags—him drinking beer—he told me that he had a flat outside London; in fact, he showed me the keys. But he said that when he is in the flat, he just sits there, getting wasted, and sees nobody. I found it terribly sad that he was so lonely that he preferred to be out on the street. That guy illustrates the complexity of rough sleeping and why the problem persists, even when money is being poured into the system and huge numbers of different services exist.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alex Chalk Excerpts

Monday 12th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

The last official survey in Cheltenham found nine homeless people, each of whom is a living rebuke to us to do more. Will the Secretary of State join me in thanking all the staff at the P3 charity who are ensuring that the £1 million social impact bond provided by central Government is being used to provide one-to-one support?

[Sajid Javid]

Yes, I commend the P3 charity for its work. I know that my hon. Friend has taken a lot of interest in this. The Government have helped to fund some eight social impact bonds to help with rough sleeping, including the one in Cheltenham, and they are making a huge difference.

Department for Transport

Alex Chalk Excerpts

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

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

I want to say a few words about the urgent need to support community transport providers. Those fantastic organisations do vital work to reduce loneliness and isolation, yet through no fault of their own they are fearful for the future. Community Connexions in my constituency is a charity with more than 30 years’ experience, and it provides a community transport service throughout Gloucestershire and beyond. It does so with the help of more than 50 local volunteers using accessible minibuses and their own vehicles. These are public-spirited individuals motivated by nothing more than a desire to give back to society. The impact the organisation is making is remarkable. For example, in 2016, more than 5,000 passengers were taken to health appointments and more than 13,000 passenger trips were taken to day centres. That was all done with care and compassion, with volunteers in some cases going literally the extra mile. By operating a number of community routes, it is doing work that the private sector is not interested in running. To give one example, it plugs a gap left by the market in the route from Cheltenham to the butterfly garden, a project providing education, therapy and recreation for people with disabilities.

I am of course aware that the Department for Transport is facing a legal challenge arising from the direct effect of EU regulations; it seems that the Bus and Coach Association is hell-bent on taking the maximum advantage through legal pressure and insists that there should be a level playing field, and what is not to like about a level playing field? But there is an important distinction here: community providers are not-for-profit, so any surplus they manage to gain through a contract is used to extend the reach of charitable community transport and therefore the scope for doing more good. So it is of course right that the Government respond to this legal challenge, but I hope they will do so in a way that is proportionate and does not fatally undermine the ability of community transport providers to continue as a going concern. I invite the Government to scrutinise with some care the suggestion that somehow community providers operate to a lower safety standard. I respectfully suggest that the evidence is not made out on that.

In short, I urge the Government: first, to move promptly to end the paralysis and uncertainty that is afflicting the community transport sector; secondly, to act generously on funding to assist community transport providers in obtaining further permits for licences or additional training, as required; and, thirdly, to keep firmly in mind when addressing this the enormous social dividend and return to society that results from the work these organisations do. The Government must recognise that losing community transport providers would be a tragedy for some of the most deprived in our society.