Transport and Local Infrastructure

Brandon Lewis Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Housing and Planning (Brandon Lewis)]

It is my great pleasure to deliver the closing remarks in today’s debate. It is also nice to see the shadow Housing Minister in the Chamber, taking an interest. Given his absence throughout much of our deliberations on the Housing and Planning Act 2016 in the previous Session, I wondered where he had got to.

Happily, there has been no back seat for the Government’s agenda on local growth. Ministers in the Department for Communities and Local Government continue to play a prominent part in the debates that follow each Queen’s Speech, Budget and autumn statement, because local growth remains central to everything that the Government do. The right hon. Gentleman might be used to listening to Labour speeches that are full of high words and no action, but we are clearly focused on ensuring that we deliver for our country, and that is what this Gracious Speech is about.

Another thing that never changes is the shadow Housing Minister himself. He goes back to his old lines that he has used before, forgetting to mention that he was the Minister who oversaw the lowest level of house building that this country has seen since 1923, at just 88,000 homes in a year. He is rather like a fleetingly successful popstar of yesteryear—he cannot help but sing the same tune over and over again. Well, he is welcome to keep his record of boom and bust; we will stick to, and build on, our record of rescue and reform.

When the right hon. Gentleman was speaking about this country’s economic situation, it was as if he had completely forgotten the sheer mess in which the Labour Government, in which he was a Minister, left this country. We have not forgotten, however, and neither has the country. Indeed, the situation was well outlined in the letter from the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne), who explained that there was “no money left”. Under a Conservative-led Government, employment is up, inflation is down, rates are down, and wages are up. The country is on the move, and the Labour party would do well to stop doing it down and start recognising that we are moving forward. I am sure that at some stage Labour Members will come back and tell us what the spending reductions that they outlined in their manifesto would be.

We heard more original contributions to the debate from Members across the House. My hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (William Wragg) stated his desire for more neighbourhood planning and outlined his work to support that not just in his area, but with Civic Voice more generally. I have already spoken to the Campaign to Protect Rural England, the National Association of Local Councils, and the Royal Town Planning Institute about proposals in the neighbourhood planning and infrastructure Bill, which were welcomed by them all.

The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) was pleased with the innovations in the Queen’s Speech that were outlined earlier by my right hon. Friend the Transport Secretary and outlined the importance of seeing UK-wide benefit from those measures—I am glad that he now agrees that we are “Better Together”. My hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) continues to make a strong case for improvements to roads and infrastructure in his area, and I will come on to the comments made by the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) about 1 million homes in a moment.

I have worked closely with my hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Ben Howlett) to ensure that new and affordable homes are built in areas such as his, and that people have the chance to buy a home of their own. The Labour party tried to block that policy at every opportunity, but we have delivered it though the Housing and Planning Act 2016, and it can deliver new jobs. I look forward to working with hon. Friends and the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick), and I appreciate his comments about our work to improve the situation for leaseholders. My hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) outlined his views on neighbourhood plans, again reinforcing just how important they can be. We should remember that such plans deliver more homes.

The hon. Members for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) and for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) spoke about a wide range of matters that ranged from transport to health and business rates. The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) also mentioned business rates, and the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn) outlined the issues with the Humber bridge. I reassure her that we will ensure that tolls on the Humber bridge do not return to their peak under Labour—we cut them in 2012. The hon. Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) spoke about investment in the northern powerhouse, as did the hon. Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins). The northern powerhouse involves vast investment and devolution, and that has been welcomed by Labour council leaders in the north, who are working with my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (James Wharton), the Minister for the northern powerhouse.

[Barbara Keeley]

Labour Members are getting used to discourteous winding-up speeches from Ministers, but the hon. Gentleman did not have the courtesy to listen when I and other Labour Members were speaking, and he has just summarised what three people said in about six words. I spoke on behalf of 7 million carers and 2.6 million women who are affected by this Government’s changes to the state pension age, and I think that that deserves a little more than three words from the Minister. He is extending a discourtesy. This is a “so what?” Queen’s Speech from a “so what?” Government who cannot even be bothered to support it.

[Brandon Lewis]

I am slightly surprised, if not disappointed, by the hon. Lady’s slightly snipey intervention, because I have not finished mentioning what Members spoke about. If she had paid more attention when she was speaking, she would have seen that I listened to everything she said, particularly about the pensions Bill. I will ensure that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions reads her speech so that he can respond to it, and when the Bill is brought forward, he will no doubt respond to her directly. The hon. Lady can do better than that kind of intervention.

Hon. Members from across the House have outlined their views and concerns about the effect that the vote on 23 June could have on investment and about the importance of our EU membership. I agree with them that our membership is important for investment, particularly overseas investment, and the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) will agree with me that stability for investors is vital if housing is to continue to grow. Any disruption to that could be quite damaging, and if housing is damaged, our economy will be too. I think, therefore, that hon. Members have made an important point.

Today’s debate, as was fitting to its subject matter, has ranged far and wide, from pensioners and integrated transport to intergalactic transport, but hon. Members will excuse me, I hope, if I bring us back to the Bills that my Department will be leading on in the year ahead. Having just completed work on the Housing and Planning Act 2016, in the last Session, DCLG officials, who like to stay busy, are delighted to be taking on two new Bills. The first is the neighbourhood planning and infrastructure Bill. Since 2010, the number of homes granted planning permission has increased by over 50%. In the last year, permissions have been granted for over 255,000 new homes. Net additions to the housing stock have recovered from the record lows that the right hon. Gentleman oversaw and which were achieved under the last Labour Government, while the number of first-time buyers is up by 57% since 2009, with 262,000 first-time buyers last year alone. But we must go further and faster. We want 1 million more homes this Parliament and 1 million more first-time buyers. The right hon. Gentleman might want to update his figures. Homelessness remains below its peak under the last Government. We have been clear we want to deliver 400,000 affordable homes, meaning the biggest Government-led building programme since the 1970s. More than 181,000 homes were built last year, up from the 88,000 he left us with. That is a 25% rise last year alone, which dwarves the 2% he referred to.

[Melanie Onn]

Homelessness has doubled under this Conservative Government. Is the Minister suggesting that people will go from being homeless to accessing these 400,000 so-called affordable homes?

[Brandon Lewis]

We need to work across the piece not only on building new homes but on the better care fund, social services, the No Second Night Out campaign and our extra investment in homelessness. So ultimately, yes, we will have done our job to the best of our ability when we give everybody in the country the chance to own their own home. Labour seems to want to stop people having that chance. The hon. Lady might want to think about the fact that 86% of our population want to own their own home. She might want to support their ambitions rather than doing them down.

In addition to the 1 million more homes and the 1 million first-time buyers, we want enduring, sustainable improvement to the delivery of new housing in this country. The chronic under-supply of new British homes is a failure that was decades in the making. Halfway through this turnaround decade, our changes are bearing fruit. In this Parliament and the last, we have devoted the effort required first to rescue and then to reform housing delivery. Time spent building carefully on each round of reform, learning from experience and forming the local relationships required for delivery, is time well spent.

As we saw in the previous decade, the quick and dirty debt-fuelled approach to building more houses is no solution at all. Rather, it led directly to a disaster that set Britain back by years. The purpose of the neighbourhood planning and infrastructure Bill is to empower local communities to plan and deliver the development they need where they need it. It will simplify and streamline the neighbourhood planning process and give communities confidence and certainty that their voices will be heard as soon as possible. The creation of a fully fledged neighbourhood planning system stands as one of the great reforms of this Government. The neighbourhood planning process is now under way in thousands of communities.

[Andrew Gwynne]

The Minister knows that I have an interest in neighbourhood planning because he responded to my Adjournment debate earlier this year about problems in the Haughton Green area of my constituency. What assurances can he give to the people of Haughton Green that the things they want to see happen in their community could be delivered through the Bill? For example, will there be a neighbourhood right of appeal—something the Government blocked when Labour tabled amendments on such a measure?

[Brandon Lewis]

Actually, the Labour party did not vote or even call a vote on the neighbourhood planning third-party right of appeal. The hon. Gentleman might like to check back and see how that issue played out. What we want to ensure, through the Bill, is that there is no need for a third-party right of appeal, because the community’s voice will have been heard at the beginning of the process. I think prevention is much better than cure. Having talked to organisations such as the Campaign to Protect Rural England, and to colleagues and people who have drawn up neighbourhood plans around the country, that certainly seems to be the more popular way to get things done.

[Barbara Keeley]

I was one of the shadow Ministers on the Localism Bill and we did support the community right to appeal—I know because I was there. A big issue is brewing in my constituency. There has been a lot of talk about neighbourhoods having a say, but the Secretary of State appears to have dropped support for a substantial local application. My community and my constituents are thoroughly sick of the lack of support at national level from the Secretary of State for important local green-belt issues.

[Brandon Lewis]

I am sure the hon. Lady will appreciate that I cannot comment on any particular planning application, but when it comes to support for the green belt, this Government have gone further than ever before to ensure that the green belt is properly protected. Ultimately, it is a matter for the local community, but as I said, when it comes to neighbourhood planning, she might like to have a look at what her party called votes on during the passage of the Housing and Planning Act 2016. She might like to update her knowledge on that.

To date, almost 200 neighbourhood plans have passed referendums, including a case in the last couple of weeks. We saw 18 go through in just one week—pretty much a record—with more going through week by week. Local people are now participants, not bystanders, in the planning process. That is helping to transform attitudes to development, and there is a much more positive approach to it. It turns out that when planning is done with people instead of being done to them, we create trust and see more homes given planning permission. We want to go further, and I am determined to provide the certainty and ease to neighbourhood planning that people want.

The Bill will make sure that planning conditions are imposed by planning authorities only where necessary. Let me be clear about the problem. As the Minister for Housing and Planning, I have had examples come to me of planning permissions with hundreds of conditions attached, the worst of which are those that stop any work happening at all until further details are agreed—so-called pre-commencement conditions. The worst I have heard of so far had over 800 of them.

I am aware of cases where half of the conditions attached require further agreement from the local authority. These are planning permissions that have been given the green light for building, but it can take months or even years to resolve these conditions. Many Members of all parties will have had residents affected or seen for themselves examples of sites for which permission has been granted, yet they have not been built on. It is most frustrating for a community to see that, and we need to put an end to it. We need to get people building on sites more quickly. The grief this causes is not restricted to companies who cannot get on with building because it affects communities themselves—the local communities that draw up their neighbourhood plans and go through the process of getting planning permission. They decide for themselves where they want new building to take place, and that localisation and simplification of the planning process is behind much of the successful new building since 2010.

When sites that have gained permission are drowned with pre-commencement conditions, disillusion with the entire planning system sets in. Frankly, it is toxic. We need to make sure that the power to decide where building will take place stays in the hands of local communities, which is why we need to refine the process. This is not—let me be very clear—about taking away any protections or checks; it is about stopping needless bureaucracy and time-wasting. Our intention is that many issues will be resolvable at the same time that the building is under way, making sure that any legitimate concerns are addressed without holding up production of the houses that we need.

Another key element of the Bill is the completion of our reforms to compulsory purchase. For the avoidance of confusion, this involves purchase at current, not future, use value. The Government do not propose changing the existing fundamental principle that compensation should be paid at market value in the absence of the scheme underlying the compulsory purchase. These proposals are intended to make the compulsory purchase process clearer, fairer and faster for all parties involved in it. The key point is that we are not changing anything like that.

If we want a much wider range of developers to play their part in building the homes and infrastructure we need, we must remove risk from the process of planning and land acquisition. Needless uncertainty does nothing to protect the countryside or to guarantee good design. What it does is restrict home building to the biggest players. The Bill, however, will give communities the tools that they need to diversify development, enabling both quantity and quality to be achieved in house building. It will also establish the independent National Infrastructure Commission on a statutory basis. I appreciate what was said about that by the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne. The establishment of the commission is the next step in the Government’s plan to improve UK infrastructure, and will help us to deliver our manifesto pledge to invest more than £100 billion in our infrastructure networks during the current Parliament.

The second piece of legislation, the local growth and jobs Bill, will make an equally important contribution, not least by giving communities a direct financial stake in their future growth. Most important, the Bill will deliver on our commitment to allow 100% retention of business rates by councils, and, moreover, will allow them to reduce the business tax rate. It will also enable combined authority mayors to levy a supplement on business rate bills to fund new infrastructure projects. That will require the support of the business community through the relevant local enterprise partnership, but the potential for locally led infrastructure investment is clear.

All this takes place within the broader context of localism—of growth and devolution deals throughout our country, and of the decentralisation of billions of pounds of infrastructure funds. Local communities have never had a bigger opportunity to direct their future development. Indeed, who can blame certain Opposition Members for eyeing up those opportunities? With the political undead occupying their Front Benches, a new life in our newly empowered city halls has never looked so enticing. “In the name of God, go!” is what Oliver Cromwell told a previous Parliament. What I would say to Opposition Members such as the shadow Home Secretary who have itchy feet is “Yes, go for it: there has never been a better time to be in local government, with more influence and more power to do things for your local community than ever before.”

[Mr Betts]

May I return the Minister to a point that I raised earlier? May we have this on the record? Is the building of a million new homes during the current Parliament a Government commitment?

[Brandon Lewis]

I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman was present for the first part of my speech, but I made it very clear that yes, we have an ambition to deliver a million homes during the current Parliament.

It falls to me to have the final word in today’s debate, but in years to come it will not fall to me, to the hon. Gentleman—the Chair of the Select Committee—or, indeed, to anyone else in the House. The final word on transport, infrastructure, housing and other matters that are vital to local growth will not be heard in the Chamber at all. Instead, thanks to this Conservative-led Government, key decisions will be made with communities that have been empowered to set their own course. They will be part of their own destiny. They will be designing, drafting and delivering on their own long-term economic plans, and I am proud to be part of the one nation Conservative Government who are setting them free to do so. That is why this is such an important Gracious Speech. It is delivering for our country, and I commend it to the House.

Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.—(Jackie Doyle-Price.)

Debate to be resumed on Monday 23 May.