Bill Esterson
Main Page: Bill Esterson (Labour - Sefton Central)
Mr Pickles
I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman, who I am sure will entertain us.
Bill Esterson
When the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) gave evidence to the Select Committee a few weeks ago, he was asked repeatedly about how the issue of the correct size of extensions in back gardens would be dealt with. He made it very clear that planning departments would rely on people to dob their neighbours in if they had exceeded the permitted size. Does the Secretary of State think that this will lead to the snoopers’ charter that his colleague suggested when he gave that evidence?
Mr Pickles
That question might have sounded like a good idea earlier this morning, but this is the wrong Bill, the wrong matter and the wrong debate in which to raise it. If the hon. Gentleman writes to me, no doubt we will do our best to help.
In an internet age, Britain must be able to compete virtually; otherwise, businesses will literally select another country at the click of a mouse. We live in a connected age, but technologies also make our society interdependent. Everyday families take for granted the “just-in-time” technologies that stock our supermarkets and drop off internet deliveries to our doors. To make them work, however, we need to build and provide the storage depots, warehouses and rail exchanges, and the supporting energy infrastructure to keep the economy moving.
The number of large-scale business and commercial applications taking over a year to determine is rising, so this Bill will allow an alternative process to decide nationally significant business and commercial projects within 12 months of the start of examination. Existing requirements to consult local communities will be retained, as will democratic checks and balances.
Hilary Benn
I say to the hon. Lady that it is not ridiculous; it is what clause 1 says. If she has not read the clause, I suggest that she does so carefully. On housing targets, the truth is that under the new arrangements the figures that local authorities will have to come up with for housing numbers in their area will not be very different from the figures produced by the regional spatial strategy, because there is still the same housing need. That is certainly the case for the authority in Leeds, because I have spoken to the chief planning officer about that.
The truth is that if hon. Members read the Bill, they will see that the Secretary of State will decide which authorities will lose the right to decide applications for themselves, he will decide what kinds of applications will come to him for decision, and he alone will take the decision in the place of local councillors. Of course, there will be no right of appeal—something the Bill also states.
I want to turn, as my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) invited me to a moment ago, to the grounds on which the Secretary of State may designate authorities. Clearly, he has made up his mind; he is just not telling us how he has done it. The clause gives him the power to do that anywhere, on any basis, for as many authorities as he likes, and there will be no check or balance from anybody else.
As for the criteria, when the Minister with responsibility for planning appeared before the Select Committee he said that speed and poor quality measured by decisions overturned by the Planning Inspectorate would be the factors that Ministers would take into account. On speed, I am genuinely puzzled. First, councils currently decide 82% of applications within eight weeks and 93% within 13 weeks. Those are the facts. The percentage of applications approved reached a 10-year high in 2011-12. Secondly, developers can already appeal to the Planning Inspectorate on grounds of non-determination in the required time under section 78(2) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. What does the Bill add to that power? Thirdly, there is a practical problem, as the planning Minister had to admit. He said that there was a wrinkle in the statistics. The data on timeliness do not take account of planning performance agreements. As hon. Members will know, that is where developers and councils jointly reach agreement to say, “Hey, this development could take a bit more time to approve. Can we agree, in effect, to set aside the time limits?” Instead of there being a simple measure, the Secretary of State will have to decide whether he thinks the reason given by an authority, when decisions are apparently slow, is good enough to justify his not taking the power away from them.
Bill Esterson
In an intervention a few minutes ago, the Secretary of State said that he would be working with the Local Government Association. Of course, the LGA has said that the barriers to growth are nothing to do with the planning system. Does my right hon. Friend intend to come on to that point—I am sure he does—and comment on the fact that it is the lack of funding that is the problem, not the planning system?
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
I am pleased to be able to follow the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris). I thank her for praising the last Labour Government for introducing the small business rate relief, and for describing it as a great success. I am sure that Members on both sides of the House will give her credit for those comments.
In my speech, I want to concentrate both on housing and the impact that the planning changes will have on my constituents, and on the effect of the changes on businesses—particularly small businesses—and jobs. One would have thought that a Growth and Infrastructure Bill would address both the construction of housing and the growth of business and creation of jobs, but a big question mark hangs over its impact on both. What exactly will it achieve? There is so little meat on its bones when it comes to the way in which the housing that people need will be built, the way in which business will benefit, and the way in which growth will be created. It makes no mention of the possibility that the £4 billion to be raised from the 4G licences, or indeed a repeat of the bankers bonus tax, could enable houses to be built and support the construction industry, helping to create jobs and growth.
My constituency has a great need for housing, jobs and economic growth, but that must be set against environmental constraints. The fact that the constituency contains a series of small towns and villages surrounded by green-belt land, most of it high-quality agricultural land, inhibits the local plan that is being prepared. Developers have been queuing up for many years, buying up plots in the green belt with, no doubt, the intention of building on them at the earliest opportunity.
People in my constituency need homes. Many young adults there live at home or with friends. What do they need, and what do developers want to build? Those are two very different questions. What the constituency needs are homes to buy and homes to rent, but the homes to buy must be affordable starter homes and the homes to rent must also be affordable, in either the private or the social landlord sector. There must also be “part buy and part rent” arrangements. However, affordability is simply not being offered. What developers in my constituency are offering are executive four and five-bedroom houses, and they want to build them on green-belt land because they know that they will then be able to sell them for more money.
David Wilson Homes held an exhibition in Formby, in my constituency. Its representative told the hundreds of residents who attended the exhibition that they considered an affordable home to be one priced at £300,000. That would be out of the reach of most people on average pay in London, let alone on Merseyside. It is clear that that definition of an affordable home was addressed to a group of people who do not live in my constituency, but who might come in from outside.
No wonder there is suspicion about the motives and approaches of developers, and huge resistance to building on the green space both in and outside the towns and villages in my constituency. No wonder there are public meetings attended by hundreds of people in each of the small towns and villages that I mentioned earlier. Residents have formed action groups to campaign against the plans of developers to build on green belt and on urban green space. That is not because they do not want houses; they do, but they know that it takes eight years to reach the top of the housing waiting list, and they know that people in Formby and Maghull do not earn enough to buy any of the £300,000 housing that is being made available. They also know that developers are not interested in helping them, their families or their friends who need affordable homes. Residents believe that there is nothing in it for them, and the Government intend to make matters worse rather than better by cutting the number of affordable homes.
A 500-home development by Ashworth hospital in my constituency has already been given planning permission, under the old system—before the NPPF—and without any affordable housing element. The applicant engaged a QC to demonstrate to Sefton council that the site would be economically viable only if the affordability element was dropped. Even before the NPPF was published, councils were negotiating with developers on section 106 matters, as they always have. Quite why legislation is needed is beyond me, although my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) suggested that it might be intended to fill up time because of the gaping hole in the Government’s agenda, and that may well be true. Meanwhile, my constituents have been denied the prospect of decent affordable housing, first by the Government’s economic failure and now by the centralising of planning in favour of developers at the expense of local people.
The proposal to allow developers to remove affordable housing will be music to their ears, and no doubt it will result in money in the coffers of the Tory party to say thank you. That will follow the £4 million already provided by the Conservative Property Forum. However, it is homes to rent and affordable starter homes that my constituents need. The proposed green belt development offers them nothing except more congestion on the roads and more flooding on the floodplains, because the whole constituency lies on a floodplain.
Have we not learnt yet about the impact of building on floodplains and concreting over areas where rain water currently drains away? Have we not learnt from the fact that the level of rainfall has increased over the past few years, and the fact that we have just experienced a summer featuring exceptional rain and flooding? Is it not time that the Government gave more consideration to the impact of flooding in drawing up planning policy, rather than allowing developers to do as they wish? Perhaps if this were a proper infrastructure Bill, the Government would be finding a way of replacing our antiquated drainage system.
Councils used to build homes, and large sums are tied up in housing stock. The reason developers are not building is the shortage of funds. If we put those two together, we start to see some solutions. The Local Government Association said of the Bill that it failed to tackle
“the real barriers to growth”,
that
“Further changes to the planning system will not address the key issues stalling development”,
and that
“The Government should use this Bill to lift restrictions on local authority borrowing for housing, freeing councils to build new affordable homes and kick-start job-creating infrastructure projects.”
It also said:
“Councils have a proven track record of prudent borrowing. Their credit rating is excellent and interest rates would be low.”
According to the LGA, the Government must let British councils
“take advantage of these conditions in the same way as municipalities in competing countries, like Germany, already are.”
If the Secretary of State is serious in his offer to work with the LGA, its ideas are there on how to unlock the funds to build the housing, especially the affordable housing, that is needed not just in my constituency but up and down the country. He might also choose to consider the report of the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government following its inquiry into housing finance supply and the opportunities available not just in housing stock within local government and housing associations, but in pension funds and other public sector sources.
Developers are not building because people are not buying and the banks are not lending. Mortgage lending is still falling—it is still at a record low—but in local government there are examples of Labour councils building five times as many social homes as Tory councils with which they can be compared. So there are examples in local councils that the Government could choose to follow if they wanted to.
Without intervention, developers will want to build on the best sites, to build the most expensive houses they can and to make as much money as they can. After all, they are in business to make as much profit as they can. That is why regulation and Government intervention are so important. It is why we have a planning system. There are examples across the country of what happened when planning was not sufficiently robust, whether in commercial or residential developments. That is why we should have a planning system that ensures that developers meet the needs of the country and do not just maximise their profits.
In my constituency, we need affordable homes and the infrastructure to support the people who want to live in them. It is the role of Government at both national and local levels to ensure that developments meet the needs of local areas. That is what the Localism Act 2011 should have been about and now it has been overtaken by this Bill and all the disastrous implications of its proposals and what we are debating tonight.
The reason we have local plans that designate land for residential or commercial development is to ensure that planning is done properly and that communities are given what they need. The Bill would put the power in the hands of developers and prevent any chance of my constituents from benefiting from the housing that they need.
There is nothing in the Bill to recommend it to small businesses. Small and medium-sized enterprises have the ability to grow, to innovate and to drive economic recovery. Where is the intervention with the banks to help small businesses? Why is that not in the Bill? Where are the tax breaks, such as the VAT cuts that Labour has proposed for a number of years? Gimmicks and removing workers’ rights are no way to stimulate growth. Creating greater uncertainty among staff will do nothing to encourage people to spend money, which is needed to kick-start the economy. Business understands that and is saying that.
The Federation of Small Businesses says that its members lose thousands through poorly maintained roads. I have mentioned the problems with drainage. Where are the measures in the Bill to replace the infrastructure that business needs? If this were a proper growth and infrastructure Bill, there would be measures to deal with those issues. This is anything but a growth and infrastructure Bill and the House should oppose it.
Mr Raynsford
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question. I think he will be able to guess that Stratford-on-Avon, Kensington and Chelsea, Torbay and Ribble Valley all have Conservative-controlled authorities. I was not making a political point; I was simply observing the bizarre nature of the criteria that the Government appear to be operating in determining which authorities will have their planning powers stripped away from them and their cases referred to the Planning Inspectorate.
On the renegotiation of section 106 agreements, we again see a bizarre set of proposals that do not appear to have a sensible rationale and could have very perverse consequences. My experience—I do talk to a lot of people involved in the development of housing schemes—is that most local authorities are now being perfectly practical and pragmatic about renegotiating with developers where they believe that the affordable housing content in a section 106 agreement is genuinely a block to successful development. What local authorities are not doing is rolling over when developers come back insisting on having the entire affordable housing content stripped away. What is so crass about the Government’s action is that their clause will provide exactly the incentive to developers to say to local authorities, “We are going to get powers to overrule you, so we expect you now to roll over and not to require the affordable housing content in this scheme any longer.”
Bill Esterson
My right hon. Friend is making an incredibly important point about the effect of the change on section 106. He has vast experience, so will he explain just what the impact of this change will be, given that there is already evidence, some of which I provided in my speech, of authorities having sensible negotiations? What does he think the difference will be? What damage will be done?
Mr Raynsford
I fear that the consequence will be to embolden developers who simply want to ditch section 106 obligations to try to bamboozle or bludgeon local authorities, which are not confident about what will happen, into agreeing far fewer section 106 obligations, or possibly none at all. That would be very unfortunate, at a time when we all recognise that the affordable housing output is woefully inadequate and we ought to be doing everything possible to encourage more affordable housing. I fear that the whole effect of this provision will not be what the Government say it will be and that it will be the opposite: it will discourage the provision of affordable housing, which is really needed.
Finally, I wish to discuss the postponement of the business rate revaluation. That is the classic case of a piece of short-term political opportunism that could have serious, adverse, long-term consequences. Revaluations should be conducted free of political interference. They should be conducted on a regular basis, which businesses should be able to forecast. Businesses should not be nervous that the revaluation times will be changed to suit the convenience of any particular Government. We have been using a five-yearly cycle for business rates. The Ministers on the Front Bench would do well to think about the contrast with the arrangements for council tax. As there has been that unwillingness of politicians to have a regular cycle of updates—that applies to all three parties, because the Liberal Democrats went along with this Government in postponing any revaluation—we have the absurdity of council tax valuations based on notional 1991 values. What is being done by the Government risks going down that slippery path, which could well lead to a postponement, further postponement and ultimately a complete lack of confidence among the business community that there will be a proper, regular, stable and non-political basis for revaluation. This is a very dangerous move indeed.
This unfortunate Bill contains a rag-bag of ill thought out measures which certainly will not address the critical problem. It does not deserve the support of the House.
James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)
It is always a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford), who has long experience of these matters and much expertise, and with whom I often profoundly disagree. I rise to support the Second Reading of the Bill, whose measures need to be set in the context of the Government’s wider reforms of planning, local economic development and infrastructure. We must be cautious about overplaying the ambition of the Bill.
On the broader picture, we need urgently to rebalance the British economy, to stimulate house building and to build infrastructure, particularly in areas such as the west midlands and the black country, part of which I represent. As other hon. Members have pointed out, over the past two and half years this Government have made significant progress on implementing localism—through the Localism Act 2011, their reforms to the planning system, the implementation of neighbourhood planning, and the publication of the national planning policy framework, which has radically simplified the amount of planning guidance that now drives the planning system in the UK.
Local planning authorities need to be more efficient in the speed with which they process planning applications. We need authorities to be more efficient to give clarity both to developers and to communities about decisions being made about their areas. It is right, despite the overblown rhetoric of Labour Members—
Bill Esterson
The hon. Gentleman mentioned planning departments, but he must recognise that his Government have made record cuts to the funding for local government, and not least the planning departments, many of which now have a fraction of the staff they had only two years ago. That must be one of the main reasons why planning departments are struggling so much. This Bill will do nothing to solve the problem without a reversal of those cuts.
James Morris
I do not accept the hon. Gentleman’s premise. Lots of other factors are leading to inefficiency in planning departments. It is not just about the number of people; it has more to do with inefficient processes and local bureaucracy than with the points that he is making.
It is right that the Government should seek to speed up the planning system, but as I mentioned to the new planning Minister in the recent Select Committee meeting, there are concerns about the criteria that will be used to determine whether a planning authority is failing to do its job. The Minister reassured me in his response that the effect of the changes would be imposed only on a limited number of local authorities.
It is true—the Government must take this on board—that we must be clear about the criteria and that they should be developed in close conjunction with the LGA and other interested parties. If we get the criteria right, other activities in local government, peer pressure and incentives for local planning authorities might result in improved performance across the board without our having to take the measures proposed in the Bill. I hope that the LGA, working with the Government, will be able to raise the performance of planning authorities without those measures being necessary. We need to be careful to avoid central prescription and to get the criteria right.
I do not think that anybody on the Government Benches is claiming that somehow creating the perfect planning system will mean that house building or new infrastructure will increase or that we will all move on into a wonderful world of economic growth. I do not think anybody is claiming that; it is being put up as a straw man by the Opposition. We all accept that planning is not necessarily a total obstacle to growth, and it is not the only reason we have stalled development.
As other hon. Members have pointed out, developers are sitting on banks of permissions that they have held for some time, and legitimate concerns about the commercial viability of those permissions are preventing them from taking the necessary action to move forward with projects that would benefit the community. It is therefore right for the Bill to seek to modify section 106 schemes and to give freedom for renegotiation when it is clear that such schemes are stalled because they are preventing developers from moving forward with viable commercial schemes. It is right, but we should not see that measure as a panacea or in isolation from the other policies the Government are pursuing, as we must, to stimulate house building and development, to provide guarantees or to explore other options. For example, the hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) spoke about the need to consider other ways to stimulate and get other private capital into the housing market. There are other things we need to do, and the modification of section 106 agreements is not a panacea, but it is right that we consider commercial viability—it is an important issue that the Government need to address.
The Bill contains provisions on infrastructure, and I think we all accept that in this country we have been very bad historically at getting large infrastructure developed quickly. We urgently need to upgrade our energy and transport infrastructure to meet the challenges of a modern economy and a globalised world. The Bill contains some important simplification measures, on which there would probably be cross-party agreement, to remove overlapping consents, and we must do that to free up the planning system. The principle behind our approach to infrastructure development should be that we need a streamlined system so that we can develop the vital infrastructure we need within years, not decades. The measures that tidy up confused complementary consents will contribute to that.
The Bill introduces important simplification and deregulation of the planning system. Taken with other Government measures, it will make a significant contribution to the Government’s broader objectives, which we are pursuing through a number of Bills and other measures, of rebalancing the economy away from London and the south-east and promoting development in the regions—including the west midlands and the north-west, which have lagged behind for too many years. We must do all we can to free up the system so that we can upgrade our transport and energy infrastructure quickly and so that we have a streamlined system for dealing with major infrastructure projects that gives a clear line of sight for the future.
We must address the clogged-up nature of the planning system, and the Government have already done that through our reforms. We must ensure that if planning authorities are not performing properly, they can reach the right performance levels. We must also ensure that we get timely decisions. That, combined with other measures, will help to ensure that we build more homes, which we desperately need in this country. The Bill, along with other recent announcements and the Government’s general direction of travel, will make a significant contribution to achieving those objectives.
Michael Fallon
I have already made it absolutely clear that as we have simplified the planning guidance, we are, of course, also responsible, as are local councils, for the efficient delivery of planning applications. I repeat that good, efficient councils have nothing to fear from the Bill.
Let us examine the previous Government’s record: in 13 years, they passed 15 planning Acts; six years after their main planning Act of 2004, fewer than 60 out of 335 planning authorities actually had the core strategies they were supposed to have; and after 13 years of top-down housing targets, they ended up with the lowest number of new homes built in any peacetime year since the 1920s. And who can forget the shambles of the eco-towns? Ten were promised, only three turned out to be viable without public subsidy, amazingly only one was assessed as environmentally friendly and, of course, none of the 10 was actually built. That is Labour in a nutshell: nought out of 10 for delivery. They give the builders of the Potemkin village a good name. So there we have the Labour record: planning authorities with no plans; development agreements commissioned but not actually signed; affordable housing commitments demanded but not actually built; eco-towns promised but none—not one—actually delivered. The Labour party is defending a record of failure and supporting a position of stagnation.
Bill Esterson
The Minister has mentioned the efficiency of councils twice now. Councils need certainty and so do businesses if we are to see growth and success in our economy. Will he define what he means by an efficient local council, using either a number of councils or a percentage?
Michael Fallon
The Secretary of State made it clear, and I repeat it, that we will consult on the definition of a poorly performing council. We will set out the criteria and I hope the hon. Gentleman will respond to that consultation.
Let me be very clear about the contrast that faces the House tonight. The Labour party is defending a record of failure and the status quo of stagnation, whereas this Government and this party want to see growth in all parts of our country. We are determined to open up opportunity for sustainable development, not just in the most efficient local authorities but in every single council area.