Rural Councils: Funding

Anne Marie Morris Excerpts

Wednesday 29th November 2023 Westminster Hall

[Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Chris Loder) for securing this very important debate. I could waste time setting out the problem that he has made very clear, but what we should be doing is focusing on the solutions. Some 21% of the population—12 million people—live in rural areas. Too often, they are ignored, forgotten and marginalised. What we really need is a proper strategy for rurality. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a Minister responsible for rurality across Government Departments?

Today, we seem to be focusing much more on the exact amount that goes to local government, instead of looking across the piece at the totality of money that goes through the funnel of local government for health, education and transport. What we need is an approach that looks at that in the round. The Government have to accept that the original plan in 2010, which effectively tried to shift the balance of funding away from central grants and towards council tax and business rates, is fundamentally flawed. The problem is that it has baked in underfunding, which has just got worse and worse each year.

A courageous Government would recognise the imbalance and do something that sounds almost impossible: cut what we give urban communities. We all know that times are tough. Asking for more for rural without cutting urban ain’t gonna work. It will be a brave but fair move, and this Government are all about fairness.

Devon is in exactly the same position as has been described for Dorset and Somerset, and the fear of a section 114 notice hovers. It paralyses action. It is not right for our communities, because their lived reality is that the life chances of children are considerably reduced. A primary school in my constituency is looking to lay off six teachers—think what that will do. It is a small school, and children in their first proper year of education are predominantly in nappies; one teacher’s full-time job is changing nappies. That cannot be right. Housing is in short supply, and it is not just the challenge from tourism and Airbnb. Even the Campaign to Protect Rural England launched a cry for help last night —a cry for more affordable housing from an unusual ally.

All the flood plans generally look at value for money in large conurbations, and rural communities get forgotten. The flood money is not ringfenced. In the last storm, one of my villages was under metres of water and there was a considerable amount of sewage. There was no money to put the damage right, and there is no money in Devon County Council to put in place a proper flood prevention plan. People in the village live not with carpets but with concrete floors. They say to me, “Anne Marie, there is absolutely no point in carpeting, because we know that when the next flood comes, we’re going to have to replace it, and it just makes the clean-up much harder.” They live on concrete, and that it is a fairly squalid condition to be living in. It is not right.

On transport, we are lucky if we even get a bus going to and from the same village on the same day. Transport is heavily underfunded, and it is yet another Government Department grant that simply is not fit for purpose.

What are we going to do about this? We need a fair deal for the countryside. I saw the Minister nod his head and say, “Actually, it is me who is looking across all these Government Departments,” in which case I very much look forward to him giving us some answers, because we cannot carry on living like this. It is not right, it is not fair and it is not moral. Why should my young constituents living in a rural constituency have worse opportunities and life outcomes, and why should the older people suffer because the social care is simply not there? It is not right, it is not acceptable and something must be done.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hoare]

Let us see.

Let me turn to some of the points that were made in the debate. Although levelling up is often portrayed in the media—and, indeed, sometimes in this place—as being something that is solely about the industrial north and midlands constituencies, it is not. There are strategies in place for coastal and for rural levelling up. As a one nation Conservative, I could support nothing other than that. We have to have policies that are of benefit to all our people, irrespective of where they live.

[James Gray in the Chair]

[Anne Marie Morris]

Will the Minister give way?

[Simon Hoare]

Will my hon. Friend forgive me for not giving way? I am really short of time and want to try to cover as much territory as I can.

Let me turn to some of the principal points. With regard to formula reform, if my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset looks at my last question from the Back Benches to our right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and at my contribution to the debate on the King’s Speech, he will recall that I made precisely that point. It is a point that he, I, most people present and others have made throughout our time here: the formula needs reform. My hunch is that we could have done it, and probably would have done it, immediately after the 2019 general election, but along came our old friend covid. As desirable as a fundamental review of the formula would be, I do not believe that trying to ask councillors and their officers, who rose magnificently to the challenge of meeting local demand during the crisis of covid, to turn bandwidth, support and attention towards thinking about solutions to formula questions would have been the right thing to do.

We need to reform the formula, as is recognised, but I suggest to my hon. Friend that now is not the right time. In this settlement, we will have to play the hand of cards we are dealt under the rubric of the formula as it currently exists. I fundamentally agree with the Opposition spokesman and others that this should never be a job of robbing Peter to pay Paul. There are acute and identified needs for service delivery due to geography and sparsity in our rural areas, but there are also acute needs in our urban areas. Deprivation is deprivation; it merely manifests itself in different quantums and different varieties in urban and rural settings.

The Opposition spokesman is absolutely right to say that we do not want some sort of bidding war or competition. Where our people are in need and have a legitimate aspiration for the delivery of quality and reliable services, they should be delivered in a cost-effective way, irrespective of where one lives. If deprivation, poverty and need are blind, so must be those who provide services and the formulas that generate the cash to be able to do so.

We know that rural services are key. We also know, as a matter of indisputable fact, that by definition their delivery costs are higher, partly, although not exclusively, due to both sparsity and geography. [Interruption.] Mr Gray, I have been directing my remarks to Mrs Latham, having not realised that the Chair had changed. My apologies, Sir, if you have taken the Chair and I have transitioned you into something that you did not wish to be.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Anne Marie Morris Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 8th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)]

Levelling up is a great ambition—definitely the right thing to be doing—and I applaud the Government for that ambition, but I do not for one minute underestimate how challenging that is. The one thing I might suggest is that there be a focus on the differing needs and the differing solutions. The solution for a rural community and the solution for an urban community are very different. I think the detail, when it is further worked out, needs to be properly rural-proofed, and probably urban-proofed, if there is such a concept.

Devolution is the way to go, and I thank the Government for positively considering the Devon, Torbay and Plymouth devolution deal. We have a way to go. I think my ask would be that it is a devolution of real power with the money to go with it. My frustration—and that, I know, of my councils—has often been with the strangling bureaucracy and red tape that mean the real power to change is taken away. I would love to see the end of what I see as pointless bidding processes. It is taking up so much council time, often with zero results. If we could reduce the bureaucracy and reduce all that—in some cases, unnecessary—compliance to free up officer time to do things that drive productivity, that would be a real win.

Planning reform has been long overdue, and I am very pleased to see the Government’s proposals in the Bill today. Most of them I support wholeheartedly. Of course, we want beautiful communities. Of course, we want to deal with the overdevelopment. Of course, we want to deal with the planning permissions that are not executed. I am pleased to see the push for local plans to be faster and, frankly, to have greater power and community involvement, but I share the concern that has been raised by colleagues about the national development management policies. Those should not override these plans.

The infrastructure levy should work and should be an improvement, but I share some of the concerns about that being paid at the end, not at the beginning. Is there not a compromise of potentially staged payments, so that local authorities can begin to put in place some of the infrastructure that we desperately need? I absolutely agree that those targets do more harm than good. They are too top-down and do not represent the local need. I also agree with comments about the five-year land supply concept. It simply does not work.

Housing reform is clearly not the prime focus of this legislation, but it clearly is the flipside. This is, it seems to me, a bit of a missed opportunity, and I hope that the Government and the Department will start looking at that. The issue of affordable housing is not going away. The issue I have is that, in the south-west, salaries are so low and house prices so high that a 20% discount simply does not work. We have no proper provision yet for social and community housing. It seems to me that, if we are going to look at the opportunity for tenants to buy, there has to be a mechanism to replace that sort of housing. On second homes, this is a good start, but I share some of the thoughts about needing to regulate Airbnb properly.

If I was to leave a final thought with the Minister, it would be, “Think longer term.” What do we do when we can no longer build on all the brownfield, all the land bank and all the empty properties? Where is the vision? There was a vision for sustainable villages. That needs to be dusted down. Poundbury needs to be the sort of the thing we see every day. We need properly to defend green belt, look at reviewing it, extending it and protecting, if I can put it this way, greenfield land, particularly that which is prime agricultural land, and give it some particular status so that it cannot be built on. I commend the Bill.

Levelling Up

Anne Marie Morris Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

It is a typically fair and informed question from the hon. Gentleman. What the framework does lay out is how local authorities that have fewer powers can acquire more, and how we can have a convergence towards a model, which not every part of the country will necessary want to adopt, that is closer to the level of power and autonomy that the Mayor of London exercises. We are completely open, and we have said so, to negotiating with local areas on the acquisition of further powers.

I should also say that the UK shared prosperity fund prospectus that we are publishing today makes it clear that lower-tier local authorities especially will have additional resources, through the UKSPF, to enhance their ability to serve their citizens.

[Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Ind)]

I congratulate the Secretary of State on his “Levelling Up” paper, but particularly mission 7 to level up health outcomes and wellbeing. Will he meet me to discuss levelling up health and care provision in rural areas as part of that mission, a blueprint for which was published yesterday in a report co-authored by the all-party parliamentary group on rural health and social care, which I chair, and the National Centre for Rural Health and Social Care?

[Michael Gove]

Yes, I absolutely will. The hon. Lady makes an important point. Of course improving economic productivity is at the heart of levelling up, but we also need to tackle unfair health outcomes. Within the White Paper, we have details of how we are proposing to do so, not least taking forward some of the recommendations of Henry Dimbleby’s national food strategy, which outlines how we can effectively tackle obesity—one of the greatest drivers of diabetes, which is one of the greatest drains on NHS resources.

Leaseholders and Cladding

Anne Marie Morris Excerpts

Wednesday 12th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)]

I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak in the debate. I draw hon. Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I have individuals in my constituency who have apartments and houses with cladding problems, some of which is ACM—aluminium composite material—cladding and some of which is not; I live in one that has an ACM problem, so I am close to the issue. The problem has been well articulated, and I totally agree with the comments and the explanation of the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), which were clear. In my three minutes, therefore, I will turn to some of the things that could and should be done differently. Clearly, it is about not just ACM cladding. The Government need to redefine what is covered, which must be everything that makes a building a fire risk.

The size of the pot is too small, as I can assure the Minister from personal experience. From personal experience, too, the portal is impossible to use, unless people have experts in IT and surveying in their leasehold community. The Government expect exhaustion of all other legal recourse, but that is expensive and timely, and most leaseholders have neither the pockets nor the ability. The Government ought to take over those claims so that, effectively, they give the money then take over the right to the claims against anyone they think they can make a claim against. The Government have appointed a regulator, which is brilliant, but we do not have the regulations. We are trying to comply with regulations, but we do not know what they are. They need to be expedited.

The timeline for the work to be done is far too short, which I know from personal experience. The block I am most familiar with has reached phase 2. We are required to give collateral warranties. While warranties are fairly standard, these are being given in favour of the Government, not of the leaseholders, which seems mad. Are the Government seeking to take a lien on the property? Such warranties are normally underpinned by insurance, but no insurance company will touch these with a bargepole. If the Government want this to work, they need to step in with an insurance solution. The state aid forms, which have already been referred to, are difficult and complex. That needs to be addressed. To expect every leasehold owner in every building to complete one is unrealistic.

The Government should step in with the banks, particularly for those with existing mortgages, where the banks are saying, “We will not allow you to borrow more, even at the same rate for this work”—even though it is my security that is being affected, which is the bank’s security. It makes no sense. At the very least, we should require the banks to lend the money to those who already have mortgages, for a start. Likewise, for insurers—insurers will not insure anything to do with cladding—the Government must step in and make it clear that it cannot be a valid exception or exclusion.

There is no point charging VAT, then the Government paying it out again. VAT should be taken off. We should also remember that suppliers in this market are growing in number and that is putting prices up, which needs to be fixed.

House Building Targets

Anne Marie Morris Excerpts

Tuesday 11th June 2019 Westminster Hall

[Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered house building targets.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I am grateful to have been granted this important debate. I do not think anyone in the Chamber will disagree that we need more houses; I suspect that there will be violent agreement that we need homes and communities, not just blocks, because that will have an impact on how society develops, and we are aware of the close link between the provision of homes and the mental health of those who live in them. Given that, there is clearly a role for targets to ensure that we build more such homes, but they need to be the right targets followed by the right incentives and disincentives to ensure that we get the right behaviour.

The main house building target with which we are all familiar is the numbers target set by central Government. The National Audit Office has looked at that number and it is not entirely clear that it is valid. I am sure that the Minister will respond with exactly why that figure has been picked and whether he agrees with the NAO’s conclusions.

There is a similar challenge with the local government number, which is generally based on each 10-year census, the last of which was in 2014. There is room for some flexibility around affordability, but that is about it. In the same way, then, those local government targets also need to be properly validated, and we need evidence, so it would be appropriate for local authorities to be required to collect more information about that housing need and to look at brownfield sites and empty properties that are not being used.

Local authorities also need to be given more flexibility and enforcement power to bring uninhabitable sites into habitable use. Although, clearly, there are powers, the challenge is that most local authorities choose not to use them, because they do not have the finances or resources for a long, drawn-out process. That is not the right approach, however, and we need to consider how to make it simpler and easier for local authorities to use their powers. The real need has to be established, not just estimated.

If we are to look at the totality of the housing we need, we must also consider the challenge of land banking. Local authorities need new powers to prevent that behaviour. We could do that in a number of ways, such as by looking at the rules that allow a developer to comply with the legislation enforced at the time he purchased, not the time he develops, when it is often more stringent. One small thing would be to say, “You must comply with the rules as they are today.” We could also consider some form of compulsory notice, or, in extremis, compulsory purchase, to make sure that those plots of land are brought into supply.

The targets based largely on numbers are not enough. There are probably four areas that we need to look at, for which there are some targets and plans that are, however, not strong enough. Those four areas are affordability, environmental impact, infrastructure and community benefit. On affordability, I do not think that any hon. Member present disagrees that 80% of the market frankly does not represent anything affordable. The problem is that the link is with the market price of the house, not the average salary. I appreciate that if we make that link, there will be a huge funding gap that will have to be met from somewhere; I will come on to how I might do that in a minute.

We need new national and local targets for affordability, and we need to ensure that they cannot be diluted. Many developers, having said that they will develop x% in accordance with the local council’s rules and regulations, come back and say, “Oh dear, I cannot develop that number of affordable homes. They must all be executive homes”, and because the council is so needy of the community infrastructure levy and the new homes bonus, by and large, it caves in. That cannot be right.

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady is making a very interesting speech. On the point about whether a developer can develop the proportion of social housing units, does she agree that developers should be required to publicly produce their affordability assessments in order that we can all have a look at those figures?

[Anne Marie Morris]

That sounds to me like an excellent proposition—I agree.

With absolutely the best interests at heart, the Government have introduced very good schemes, such as Help to Buy and so on, and I believe there are more on the way, but the challenge we have is that if a local authority complies and creates enough housing stock as part of those schemes, that squeezes the amount that can be available for truly affordable housing. Where I am in Devon, that has been a huge challenge for Teignbridge District Council. Once the percentages of affordable homes are agreed, they should be pretty much immovable, except in extremis. It should not be in the gift of the developer to change that.

How are we going to pay for all of this? I think we all accept that the fundamental link between salaries and the cost of a property has been broken and needs to be fixed. We need to look at how to share more fairly the benefit and the burden of the windfall that comes, first, as a chunk taken by the owner and, secondly, as a chunk taken by the developer. How might we do that?

Owners already pay a tax, so they do have to make some contribution. In addition, they should be required to set aside a fund for infrastructure provision, which is one of the biggest challenges for any housing development. That would be important. That money should be provided up front.

At the moment, the owner getting paid generally depends on the developer getting planning permission. It should be conditional not just on that but on the delivery of the infrastructure and, potentially, the affordable housing. There has to be some way of tying the owner to a greater responsibility for delivering the homes.

What can we do with regard to the developer? The developer is generally already required to make a contribution to the infrastructure, but, by and large, it is not an up-front contribution. We need to make changes so that it is. We need to look at putting infrastructure in place before we build even one house. There will be some occasions when, for practical reasons, the houses have to be built before the roads are, but the principle is important.

We then need to ensure that the developer is held to account on developing the types of homes that the council needs. Whether an area needs flats or two-bedroom homes or three-bedroom homes, or whatever, will be in the council’s local plan, with more information in the neighbourhood plan. Often, the developer brings an argument that they cannot provide what is required—that they need to provide executive homes, because that is all they can afford to produce. That is not the right answer. The council ought to have the power to ensure that, when it grants planning permission, it is to provide the houses or flats that we actually need. There might be a question about whether a developer would then continue to develop. If that were a national policy, rule or regulation, they would continue to develop, on the assumption that they want to stay in business.

What about the council? In this whole process, they do not have the relevant power or resource. By and large, they cannot say to a developer, “No, you are not providing the sort of houses we need.” They need the CIL money, they need the new homes bonus and they know that if they lose an appeal brought by a developer, they will have to pay the costs. That rule needs to be changed. Councils need to be free not to give planning permission where they feel it appropriate, without having over their heads the real burden of paying fees if they are then proved wrong.

On brownfield sites and empty properties, councils need to be given the power to enforce. That means ensuring that they are properly funded to do so and that the legislation has the teeth to make that happen. Without that, those who own brownfield sites or have vacant properties will not be willing to do much about them.

I want to touch on the environmental impact. This is a huge issue; it has had a significant impact in my constituency. There is a much fought-over development in Newton Abbot, called NA3. It is currently being reviewed by the Government, because the local authority did not make a decision in sufficient time. The developer has effectively said that they want it to be looked at in more detail, and that process is ongoing as we speak. I will not refer to the details exactly, as the matter is currently in train, but the way the system works means that no account has been taken of the real number of houses we need, nor of the real value of that particular piece of land, which offers much in environmental support and opportunity for the area as a whole.

Another example is Kingsteignton, one of the smallest towns in the country. It started out as a very small village and just got developed and developed. The character of that village has largely been destroyed and it has become a small commuter town—a dormitory suburb of Exeter. It was never developed to be a town, so there is no physical centre such as a cluster of shops that people can go to, to give a heart to that community.

There are a number of things that might be done to address these issues. I start with carbon impact, which is slightly dislocated from my previous point. There used to be carbon impact targets. As I understand it—the Minister may correct me—they were abolished in 2014 or 2015. It seems to me that everyone feels very strongly, and rightly so, that if we are to do our bit, we need to ensure that new housing is developed with the lowest carbon impact possible. That is not the case at the moment. Many constituents say to me, “Why are solar panels not mandated nowadays on new developments?” Not to mandate them on industrial developments certainly seems to me to be madness. That needs to be re-examined, and I hope that with the new focus on environmental matters, the Government will do that.

If the Government are really serious about trying to ensure that there are beneficial rather than adverse environmental impacts, they need to look at investing in and supporting investment in new technology to enable us to build new, high-quality, environmentally friendly houses and homes.

My other concern is about the green lungs. In communities that have been further built out, we have tried to retain small areas of parkland and so on, so that people feel the area is a home, and they have somewhere they can take their children and their dogs and so on. In a large conurbation like London, that is difficult, and we are where we are, but there needs to be a greater focus in planning on retaining the green lungs going forwards. I am concerned that we now seem to be continually reducing the footprint that a property has, and reducing the amount of land/garden. Mental health is also a big issue today, and greenness and space are very important to mental health. The link between planning, housing and mental health does not need me to prove it. It is already there for all to see.

The Government should be looking at a new strategy. Alongside looking to develop new towns—I know there are some already—they should be looking at new villages. I appreciate the appeal of new towns with their greater population, but our villages are one of the beautiful things about our green England, and Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Why is it that we cannot have a new villages strategy? They might be the template for environmental pilots. If the Minister in any way accepts any of that, the national policy planning framework will need to be reviewed and fundamentally overhauled.

Let me now look at the issue of infrastructure. I have talked a bit about the funding and when the money comes forward, but I am still amazed that, although there is an obligation to put in a telephone line and connect to water and electricity, there is no obligation—unless the Minister says it has changed—to put in broadband. It seems to me that planning should not be given unless the developer makes a commitment to put in broadband, by which I mean a broadband connection to BT—not because I love BT, but because it provides the physical infrastructure. In some areas where in theory there has been a commitment to provide broadband, it has been access to Virgin or one of the other suppliers. As they do not have control over the physical network and infrastructure, the reality is that the community cannot get broadband. I am hopeful that the Minister is looking at some of the challenges.

Infrastructure is not just about electricity or broadband but about having enough schools and health provision. One of the things that has continued to surprise me is that some very important consultees are not statutory consultees. One of those is health. Although the Minister’s predecessor would say to me, “But they can be consulted, and usually they are,” my response has always been, “Well, that’s true, Minister, but the reality is that if there is no statutory obligation to do it thoroughly and properly, you will probably not do it to the degree that it needs to be done.” I am certainly aware that there are many areas in my part of Devon where we do not have adequate provision for health services, which is a real issue.

Part of the infrastructure is normally funded through the council. One of the things that has been a barrier to councils is their inability to borrow against future receipts of CIL moneys or the new homes bonus. If we could change that—at one point, one of the Minister’s predecessors started looking at it—it would make a significant difference. Although the CIL and NHB moneys go to the council, there is no obligation for them to use that money in the local area where the development takes place. I appreciate that where there is a neighbourhood plan—I am certainly a great fan of them—it is a win-win for that neighbourhood, because they get an element of the money to use in their own area. Although that is a good start, I do not believe that it is adequate.

Let me now turn to the final area where I think we should have different thinking, new targets and a new approach: the community. How does the community benefit from all this? Looking back in history, the concept of planning and planning approval was introduced because it was believed that landowners had too much power to build anywhere—rightly so, because they own the land—and it was therefore thought more appropriate for there to be some control, hence the planning process.

It seems that there is a stakeholder missing from this agenda: the community. I have talked about providing homes and ensuring that we have stable and mentally healthy communities, but we will not do that unless the community is involved. I know that there is a requirement in the NPPF to look at environmental and community issues, but there are no real teeth to it. It seems that the concept of community interest is very limited and needs to be reviewed. At the moment, we generally look at the impact of any plan put forward on productivity—rightly so—but we do not look at the impact of that development on the community’s quality of life, which is important. If we are so focused on the need for healthy communities and on reducing our mental health issues, that is critical. If we are to achieve this, the NPPF will need to be changed.

In trying to put the community at the heart of all this, we need to look at a viable villages initiative. I have referred to the issue before. One of the challenges is that most of the large developers will not develop small villages. The small developers find it more expensive because they do not have economies of scale, and many have gone out of business. Without support from the Government, we will not change that. Unless we look specifically at how we will ensure that existing villages remain viable, so that there are still enough children to attend the schools and enough people to go and drink in the pubs, we will find that our villages die. Wherever they are in the country, that will be a loss. We need to look at how we do that, be it through simplifying the planning permission or through Government grants and support for small builders. I am sure that the Minister is better placed than I am to address that.

I have an old chestnut: engagement with the community. I have raised this with just about every Minister who preceded the current Minister, whom I shall also ask to consider it. For all the reasons I have expressed, I believe that the community should have a right of appeal in the planning process. The Minister’s predecessors have always said to me, “You can’t, because you’ll create a nimby world where anybody who doesn’t like something simply puts up their hand.” I would say no. Indeed, a piece by the National Federation of Builders that was based on an article I wrote said, “You can’t do this.” I am sure its concern was that, should we get the community involved in nimbyism, it would simply block development.

If we were to manage the process properly and say that only a town or parish council could appeal, and if appeals had to be made on planning grounds, it would minimise the room for manoeuvre and for nimbyism to creep in. I recommend to the Minister that he look at this again. The intention is not to take power away from district councils; it is to get a better, joined-up system that works for communities, councils, central Government and all of us who want more houses in the right places. We want communities, not just blocks of flats.

I thank the Minister for his patience. Owing to the actions of a number of Governments over the years, our planning system is now broken. Although I commend the Minister’s predecessors for working hard to change that—much of what went into the NPPF and the new plans was good—it remains broken. It cannot just be a numbers game, which is what we focus on now. The system must take into account some of the other issues that have been raised. We have to look at how we will link house prices to wages, and I have made some proposals on how we do that. We absolutely need to address this key issue, so that people on average wages in Devon can actually afford to buy a house in a sensible timeframe, rather than having to rely on the bank of mum and dad and/or wait until they are 40. As Maslow said in his hierarchy of needs, a home is the most important thing for human survival.

It seems to me that the community must and should have a voice. I hope that the Minister will take my suggestions, and that he will look at them and digest them. I very much hope that he will stand up and say that many of these are good ideas. Indeed, it would be even better if the Minister were able to tell me that the present Government were already looking at them. I shall now sit down and look forward to hearing the Minister’s and other contributors’ thoughts on this very thorny issue.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Anne Marie Morris]

I thank all the contributors to this debate; there are some things on which we are in violent agreement. I thank the Minister for his reply, particularly the further reply that we are all expecting to the points that we made. However, the question of validating numbers is still unanswered. I ask the Minister to look at how they can be validated because—as other hon. Members have said—sometimes, local authorities are asked to do the impossible. We all want to provide the houses, but we do not have the means to do it. I would like the Minister to focus on giving local authorities more power to do what he says they are authorised to do. Without the money, they cannot enforce and deliver the things that the Minister would like.

We still have not addressed the link between house prices and wages; I would like the Minister to look at that as a matter of urgency. He did not have a chance to respond on the environmental issues; I am pleased to hear about the new villages programme, but we need to look at need. It is not just a bottom-up issue, of “this is what we need;” it is also a top-down issue, as my hon. Friend the Member for Henley pointed out. Some communities will simply not be able to absorb that need. The Government need an overall strategy to put that together. I thank the Minister for taking that on board and I thank all Members for their contributions.

Shared Prosperity Fund

Anne Marie Morris Excerpts

Tuesday 14th May 2019 Westminster Hall

[Dan Jarvis]

I hope very much that this debate will provide an opportunity for hon. Members to make points that they have sought to make for some time. On Cornwall specifically, if the hon. Lady bears with me for no more than a few seconds, she will, I hope, be pleased with what I am about to say.

I was saying that certain areas with a specific interest in the work of the Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions were due to get an even greater proportional increase: South Yorkshire, Tees Valley and Durham, Lincolnshire, southern Scotland, parts of outer London, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, west Wales and the valleys.

[Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)]

And Devon.

[Dan Jarvis]

And Devon—I am grateful for that intervention.

Let me move back from Devon and Cornwall to South Yorkshire for just a moment. In South Yorkshire, we would have seen an increase from €117 per head to more than €500 per head. It is therefore my view that any future shared prosperity fund needs to replace the funds on the basis of what would have been received, had the referendum result been different.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dan Jarvis]

I absolutely agree, and I always try to choose my words very carefully. Not for one moment will Labour try to pit the north against the south, or different parts of the country against each other. I absolutely accept that there are different needs in the remoter regions of our United Kingdom. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to make the point that there are areas of deprivation in the south, south-west and south-east, and indeed in London, just as there are in the north. That is why it is so important that we take this opportunity to get the design of this fund right, so that every corner of the country will be best placed to benefit from it.

I was about to make the point that in 1960 the UK had the highest levels of productivity in Europe. Now, though, a French worker produces, on average, more by the end of Thursday than a worker in the UK does by the end of the week. In the UK, the gap between the richest and poorest regions is around 150%, which is almost twice as large as in France and three quarters larger than in Germany. Such gaps in wealth distribution and productivity are neither normal nor inevitable, but for some of our most deprived regions they are increasing. The consequences of public policies and investment decisions entrench the economic and social divide. If we fix that, the prize will be huge.

Looking at the north of England, Transport for the North’s “Northern Powerhouse Independent Economic Review” suggests that we could add £97 billion to our economy by 2025, which is over and above business-as-usual levels. Over the same period, we could add 850,000 jobs, which is also over and above business-as-usual levels. We can do that by focusing on what we are good at. In South Yorkshire, the same qualities that fired the world’s first industrial revolution now power our 21st-century advanced manufacturing and engineering story. Companies such as Rolls-Royce, Boeing and McLaren have chosen our region because we are in the vanguard of developing new materials and solutions to real-life manufacturing and engineering problems. This must be the start of our economic transformation, not the end. To go further, we must have the tools and resources.

[Anne Marie Morris]

Many valuable points have been made, but the points the hon. Gentleman is now making refer to prosperity. One of his colleagues asked earlier whether we are looking at meeting need or at driving prosperity and productivity—those two things almost conflict. My concern is about how much of this fund will be delivered through local enterprise partnerships, which will be looking competitively at growth, and how much will be delivered through local government, which will effectively be looking much more at need. Is the hon. Gentleman also concerned about ensuring that both issues are addressed? This concerns not just the areas where we will drive productivity; we need to get other areas up to at least a basic level, so that the need is at least average.

[Dan Jarvis]

The hon. Lady asks the right questions, and the point of the debate is precisely to flush out these kinds of question. That is precisely why we need to have this consultation, so that collectively we can have that debate and put in place an arrangement—a formula or criteria—that serves our country in the way that I hope we would all want it to be served.

I was making some observations about the challenges that specifically relate to poor connectivity, issues regarding skills, and productivity. Owing to devolution, and hopefully to the design of this fund, I am hugely positive about our ability at a regional and local level to address some of these challenges. Change is afoot, and there is growing recognition that the answers to these issues do not lie just in Whitehall or Westminster. The recent election of the North of Tyne Mayor—I know the Minister is quite enthusiastic about that recent election—means there are nine metro Mayors across England. They represent 20.7 million people, which is 37% of the population of England.

We are adding our voice to that of our friends and colleagues in devolved Administrations in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales in calling for greater freedoms and resources to help us do our jobs. This is a powerful voice and one that, to be fair, I believe the Government listen to. The Government have made place central to their industrial strategy, recognising that no one size fits all, that each and every part of the UK has a different set of opportunities, and that different approaches are required to develop them.

Over the coming months, many of us will be working with the Government to develop our local industrial strategies—joint agreements that set out how central Government and local government will work together to grow our economy. With the creation of powerful sub-national transport bodies such as Transport for the North, we increasingly have the capacity, capability and voice to effect real change. Taken together, these new models of governance, the growing recognition of the importance of place, and an acceptance that the status quo cannot be allowed to persist suggest a brighter future.

That brings me back to the shared prosperity fund, which has to be part of the solution. With some frustration, I say that despite many interventions in the House— through written questions and correspondence with the Department—and despite many promises that consultation would take place, we do not yet have clarity on how much funding will be available, what activities will be eligible for support or who will take the decisions about how the money is spent. We know that the new fund will be a central pillar of the Chancellor’s spending review, and that Departments will be working on the development of the fund. On that basis, we have not been sitting idly by, waiting to be asked. Indeed, I commend the work of the all-party parliamentary group on post-Brexit funding, and the analysis and contributions of colleagues in local and regional government who have been addressing these issues.

I have set out my four guiding principles on which I think the fund should be developed, which are as follows. First, the annual budget for the UK’s shared prosperity fund should be no less in real terms than both the EU and local growth funding streams it replaces. It must guarantee that regions will not be worse off because of Brexit, in the funding available for regional development beyond 2020. Moreover, that should be a baseline rather than a cap.

Secondly, there should be no competitive bidding element. Instead, an open and transparent process must be put in place that strikes a balance between targeting areas of need and rebalancing our economy, and supporting economies that have the greatest potential to grow.

Thirdly, the fund must be fully devolved to those areas that have in place robust, democratically accountable governance models, including devolved Administrations, combined authorities and mayoralties. It must be up to local areas how best to invest this money, be it on skills, helping the most vulnerable and disadvantaged, infrastructure investment, employment or support and education. Fourthly, the funding must be stretched over multiple years, beyond the vagaries of spending reviews and parliamentary cycles.

I want to take this opportunity to implore the Government to untie the hands of our local areas—to trust that we know our communities and can develop, appraise and deliver projects on time, on budget and in line with local need and opportunity. The year-by-year drip-feed of central Government funding for local economic growth has to end. The imposition of priorities and projects has to end. The competing against, rather than collaborating with, our partners for funding has to end.

The shared prosperity fund will be a litmus test for this Government on their commitment to devolution; it will be the proof of the pudding. The central question is whether we all have the courage and the conviction to let go of powers and resources that for too long have sat in Westminster and Whitehall. If we want to tackle the scourge of regional inequalities and create a country that works for all, let us be bold. Let us ensure that the shared prosperity fund does what it says on the tin: enable all our communities to share in this country’s economic growth, and prosper.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)]

In my constituency of Newton Abbot, workplace earnings are 78% of the national average; we have a higher percentage of people on carer’s allowance or disability allowance; we have three lower layer super output areas, or neighbourhoods, in the 20 most deprived areas of the country; and 40% of our jobs are part time, compared with the national average of 32.5%. How will a shared prosperity fund address all that? In Devon more broadly, productivity is 17% lower than the UK average, fewer people go on to higher education, 24%—almost 25%—of people are over 65, and 5% of people live in the most deprived wards in the country. We are disproportionately endeavouring to support small and medium-sized enterprises, farming and fishermen. It is therefore very important that support for that type of community is there for us, as it has been in the past.

Since 2014, in Devon we have had 29,000 new homes and 28,000 new business accommodation sites, £183,000 has been invested in infrastructure for broadband, and 2,000 new start-ups and 5,000 new training places have been established. However, we need clarity about how each individual area will get its share of the “cake” and what the criteria will be. We must ensure that there is an appropriate balance between dealing with competition to increase productivity, and accepting that some areas will never reach the Government target. We need to address their need to get them to the base starting point.

We need to be clear. Are we delivering through the LEPs and their industrial strategy? The LEPs certainly think we are, but my concern with that is that it is very competitive, and I cannot see that it will focus on needs. Or is it going to go through local government? That is not my understanding at the moment, but I think that at least some of it should. Clarity would be very much appreciated.

Devon has EU transition status, and we have 11 neighbourhoods in the 25% most deprived areas of the country. My concern is that if we start measuring productivity in those areas, we are measuring economic contribution divided by the number of individuals, rather than the number of workers. That means that we will always do worse. It is crucial that we look at the productivity question differently in rural and coastal areas. My ask for the Minister is that there should be a ring-fenced pot for rural and coastal communities so that, when we focus on the need of SMEs, we look at farmers and fishing. In particular, we should look at raising education and skill levels, because without that we can never get pay up, and investment in infrastructure, which at the moment is well below the national average. The requirement is always for match funding. It is a nice idea, but it does not work in a poor area.

Economic Growth: South-west

Anne Marie Morris Excerpts

Tuesday 5th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Sir Gary Streeter]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I do celebrate that tremendous project and success story. He is right that it is something for the entire region, not just for the county of Somerset, and we are pleased to be supporting it.

All of what I have said so far is about the things that are going well in our region. What we have welcomed from the Government in the past 12 months or so includes some of the things that were mentioned in the Budget. The transforming cities fund is hopefully of great benefit to Plymouth, and perhaps the Minister will say something about the timescales for decisions on that. The freezing of cider duty was well received by the apple producers of Somerset and, indeed, throughout the region. We have seen the improvements to the Dawlish seawall get under way in the past few months, and I will come on to talk about the major announcement that we anticipate. We welcome the new Great Western Railway trains, which are having a gradual impact on our crucial Penzance to Paddington link—a very pleasant travel experience. We welcome the £10 million for fisheries innovation, to help local fishers.

In January 2019, planning permission for the north Devon link road was given, and I pay tribute to the persistence of my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Peter Heaton-Jones). When he started talking about the link road, we all thought, “That can never happen. There is no money in the jam jar for that. He is just off on ‘a frolic of his own’, as Lord Denning once said”. Well, his frolic is bearing fruit, and well done to him for being such an incredible campaigner for his constituents.

We welcome and celebrate the major work to tackle flooding at Cowley, east of Exeter. We all remember the red sausage, or the balloon, that was in evidence some two or three years ago. That should now be a thing of the past, thanks to Network Rail’s investment.

We welcome the Government’s industrial strategy and the fact that our local enterprise partnerships are working hard with officials from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to develop a local industrial strategy, looking especially at productivity, which I know will be music to the Minister’s ears.

Finally, we must not forget our farmers. We have excellent farmers throughout the region and they welcome the fact that the Government are listening to them and helping to shape our UK-wide agriculture policy post Brexit. I have said two words that I know some of my friends will be very, very pleased to hear.

What do we now need from the Government? I will focus on that for a few minutes, and I will then conclude and let others have a say. We await, of course, the major Dawlish announcement. Today is the fifth anniversary of those extraordinary images of the railway line waving in mid-air and everything beneath being washed away by the winds and waves of that winter’s storms. I will never forget the journey we have been on since then, via Downing Street, the Peninsula Rail Task Force, the 20-year plan and the negotiating with Government. Of course such things take time but, even though the announcement will, I hope, come next week, and even though I think it will be a good and fully funded one that we will all welcome, for me, it has taken at least 12 months too long. The region has become impatient. It will be fine, provided we get what we are looking for, and perhaps the Minister can say something about that.

[Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)]

Although we look forward with anxious trepidation, but hopeful expectation, to what might happen next week, does my hon. Friend at least feel encouraged by yesterday’s announcement that there is now an application for planning for the work that will happen along the Dawlish station wall? That is something very concrete that we can celebrate.

[Sir Gary Streeter]

Yes, I completely agree with my hon. Friend. It was good to see that announcement. It could perhaps have been better dovetailed in with the Government’s announcement, so that we had one and not two. Perhaps that was because of a planning time cycle—I am not sure. I hope that by the end of next week, we will have received all the news we have been waiting and fighting for for five long years. We cannot allow our region to be cut off from the rest of the country just because of adverse weather conditions.

Department for Transport

Anne Marie Morris Excerpts

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

[Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)]

I guess that there is at least one thing on which the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) and I would agree: the need for more investment in the south-west. There is no question about that. However, unlike him, I am absolutely convinced that we will get exactly what the Secretary of State promised. He promised—he put it in writing—that he would give us information on what he will do about Dawlish and that he would set out in full his response to the Peninsula Rail Task Force. I am confident that we will get that.

I also do not agree that Dawlish is not the No. 1 priority. If the hon. Gentleman is as keen as I am for the south-west to stay on the map, he should remember that if the rocks fall at Teignmouth, the whole of the south-west will be cut off. That is not acceptable. It is therefore—why should it not be?—the No. 1 priority for the Department. As we have to wait till tomorrow to hear about that, today I would like to concentrate on the same subject as other hon. Members: community transport.

Clearly we are at the rough end of the EU hearing and Court judgment that have required the Government to interpret sections 19 and 22 permits in a very different way. The reality is, as others have said, that community transport simply cannot sustain itself without revenue from grants, other income and local government contracts, so the flexing of the interpretation that allows committee groups to flourish and continue is crucial. Most will not or cannot afford to revise their procedure to take account of the regulatory progress and, frankly, the trustees are not prepared to take the increasing risk. Can we blame them? After all, they are volunteers. At the end of the day, who will foot the bill? It will be the taxpayer, because the county council—in my case Devon County Council—will have to foot the bill for the extra cost to fill the gap.

The Government’s consultation is under way, and that is welcome, but the process needs to involve careful consideration of how to deal with the problem. I have a letter dated 8 February from the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), who is dealing with this, and he sets out that exemptions should of course apply to these community groups. He said that an exemption applied when there was no alternative contractor, if the alternative contractor confirmed that they did not regard the community group as a competitor, if the activity was occasional, or if the service was free. With respect to my hon. Friend the Minister, that is not really going to work for Devon, as it does not begin to take account of some of our challenges.

Although a fund of £250,000 for licensing is welcome, it does not help us, because the overall bill will be huge, and that would be a small drop in the ocean. That is aside from the risk that would have to be taken on. As for exemptions for short journeys, Devon is one of the largest and most widespread counties in the country, so there is no such thing as a short distance.

We use our community transport for school contracts and a number of social outings, so I need a better answer from the Government for Dawlish Community Transport, Newton Abbott Community Transport, and Volunteering in Health Teignmouth. At the moment, my county council is acting as if the current interpretation under the recent case law is the way we are going to make progress. That means that the risk is being held in the hands of not the county council, but the voluntary groups. These are volunteers in desperate need; there has to be another way of doing this.

Local Government Finance

Anne Marie Morris Excerpts

Wednesday 7th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)]

What we get in our local government grant is key to delivering the standard of living that all our constituents want. I thank the Minister, because we have been fortunate in Devon, where core spending has gone up 3.3% to £537.8 million. We have an additional social care grant of £2.2 million and a rural services delivery grant of £7.5 million, although the business rates pilot money of £10 million has perhaps been the most valuable to us, as it has doubled what we might otherwise have received. Hon. Members might be expecting me to say, “Thank you—that’s enough.” And I do thank the Minister. But, in a sense, the case has largely been made by my Shropshire colleagues: even that money is not enough, because we have a shire county with an ageing population and infrastructure challenges. I will not repeat the valuable case that has already been made.

This debate is not just about how much money authorities receive, it is also about how it is spent. I have a real concern that some of the money sent to local authorities by the Government will not actually be spent on what the Government imagine. That happened with the last chunk of additional money for social care funding. My local authority is—forgive me—strapped for cash, so it decided to reduce what it was going to spend itself, and instead included the extra chunk that came from the Government. The bottom line is that it was not actually social care providers, and particularly care homes, that saw the benefit. That does not seem right.

There is no oversight of the commissioning of social care or, indeed, of many other commissioning functions of local government, so the level of service provided is a postcode lottery. My constituency has some really good private providers, but they do not take any patients or inmates from the public sector because they simply do not offer sufficient rates. Nursing care homes in my constituency—the ones actually provide nursing care—have largely gone because they simply cannot be paid enough to provide support. It is those nursing care homes that we need, almost more than the standard care homes. I would suggest that the Government think not just about how much is spent, but how we supervise and have some oversight of how local authorities spend that money.

Children’s services are in an equally dire position. The department is overspent in Devon and the weighting has been inadequate, yet to try to save even more money, the council is looking not at outsourcing, which is what it did before, but at bringing in-house its provision of public health services for children. I am concerned that what the Government are doing, while well intended, is not delivering the right result.

In education, I certainly welcome the increase, and indeed the new funding formula, but it is not delivering what we need. Yes, it is more, but for the same reasons of sparsity, it is not enough. As a result of the formula, some schools will actually be worse off now than they were before the formula was introduced. The formula is opaque and unfair, and it is not designed to re-address the situation when, hopefully, the good times roll again. I urge the Minister, working with the Department for Education, to look again at how we can make the funding formula really fair.

My real concern, however, is special educational needs. Devon has one of the most critical situations in this regard. Much of the provision is out of area and consequently very expensive. We need a hub, which requires initial capital investment from Government. Something that has rather surprised and horrified me is that when any child is what we used to call statemented—that is, needing support, usually about £10,000, which is about what is needed to pay for a teaching assistant—the local council gives the school only £2,000 and the school is expected to find the difference. The school is not a business; it is there to provide a public service. That does not seem right, but I am sure that the Department could fix it if it wanted to.

Mental health provision is also inadequate—we know that; there are no surprises. We welcome the offer of a person specifically focused on mental health within schools. However, this must about providing an additional person, not just trying to retrain somebody who is already fully employed.

The funding settlement for education does not cover costs such as salary increases, pension increases or the apprentice levy, nor the extra cost of children having to be supported up to the age of 26—well, they are not children any more. It seems to me that there is still a lot more work to be done.

The Government and the Department have made a good start. I believe that their intention is in the right place, and the financial support offered is welcome, but they absolutely have to address the underlying unfairness and challenges for rural areas, which are not understood in any formula that I have seen in any of the spending areas. It is critical to get this right before—if the Government have what they want—the system whereby all funding is generated locally is put in place. If we do not understand the need in rural areas, we will never be able to ensure that whatever we do locally is going to meet that need.