Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Brandon Lewis and Tom Blenkinsop(7 years, 11 months ago)
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Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)
The Minister for Policing and the Fire Service (Brandon Lewis)
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will appreciate that it is not appropriate for us to outline our negotiations as they are ongoing. I will say, however, that, as both the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary have clearly outlined, we put security first, and the security and safety of our citizens is paramount for this Government.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Brandon Lewis and Tom Blenkinsop
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Brandon Lewis)
Fire and rescue authorities are best placed to assess and manage their services. They do that through integrated risk management planning. Thankfully, fire and rescue authorities now attend 46% fewer incidents than 10 years ago. They are certainly in the position to best allocate their resources according to local risk.
Tom Blenkinsop
The number of fire calls to Cleveland fire brigade has risen by more than 54% in the past year and the number of deliberate fires has increased by almost 60% from 1,390 in 2012-13 to more than 2,200 in 2013-14. Does the Minister agree that the Department’s cuts, with £4 million cut so far and a further £5.96 million to come, to one of the most high-risk fire authorities in England are hindering the brigade’s ability not only to respond, but to prevent fire-related incidents?
Brandon Lewis
I do not agree with that comment at all. Putting aside the fact that fire authorities were protected from cuts in the first couple of years, it is interesting that the hon. Gentleman makes that comment about Cleveland which, despite his claims, has managed to almost double its reserves over the past couple of years. Perhaps it should spend more of that money on front-line services.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Brandon Lewis and Tom Blenkinsop(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)
T7. On 8 January, I was told by the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis) in a written answer that he does not know“the net change in central Government support to individual local authorities”since May 2010.—[Official Report, 8 January 2014; Vol. 573, c. 257W.] If he does not know by how much he has decided to cut the funding for particular local authorities, how can he possibly assess whether it is beneficial or detrimental?
Brandon Lewis
The entire system of local government funding has been changed under this Government so that it is based on incentives rather than the begging bowl. Authorities that build houses will get more money and authorities that deliver economic growth will benefit from business rate retention. That is the way forward for local government—it is in control of its own destiny.
Business Rates
Debate between Brandon Lewis and Tom Blenkinsop(10 years, 11 months ago)
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Brandon Lewis
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. All businesses can be liable for corporation tax, so it affects all businesses. Unlike the Labour party, we recognise that we have to look at the picture for business as a whole, not just bits in isolation.
With such a lukewarm response from business, the Labour party is still a long way from the heady days of its prawn cocktail offensive.
Tom Blenkinsop
In her question to the Minister, the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray) effectively referred to a trickle-down form of economics, yet household savings in cash ISAs and deposits were actually down from October 2012 to 2013 by £23 billion, or £900 per household. What has happened is an absorption of capital from the bottom upwards. Those at the bottom have been used as a line of credit, not the big businesses.
Brandon Lewis
Bearing in mind that manufacturing is up, I think the hon. Gentleman misses the point that putting up corporation tax potentially hits every business that is successful. If he has worked through his economics, I assume that he would want those small businesses to be paying corporation tax because they are successful enough to become the big businesses of the future, rather than being penalised by a Labour Government. Businesses are the lifeblood of our economic recovery. This Government are cutting corporation tax to help businesses to invest and expand.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Brandon Lewis and Tom Blenkinsop(10 years, 12 months ago)
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Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)
19. What recent assessment he has made of levels of business rates for small and medium-sized businesses.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Brandon Lewis)
Thanks to this Government’s tax cuts, small business rate relief has been trebled—it was worth about £900 million in the past year—and more than a third of a million small firms also now pay no business rates bill at all.
Tom Blenkinsop
That is interesting, as business rates have risen by an average of nearly £2,000 this Parliament. A future Labour Government would give small firms and businesses a rates cut and would then freeze rates the following year. Will the Minister inform the House how much business rates are set to rise by in 2014 under this Government’s plans?
Brandon Lewis
Let me give a slight correction, because obviously business rates have only moved with inflation; there has been no real-terms increase in business rates at all under this Government. We have also trebled small business rate relief, so helping small businesses in a way that the previous Government simply did not do. As the hon. Gentleman will no doubt realise, there will be a decision on the business rates for next year in the Chancellor’s autumn statement in December.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Brandon Lewis and Tom Blenkinsop
Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)
T4. When asked about the mutualisation of Cleveland fire authority, the fire Minister told the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government on 15 May: “they are not progressing with it.”However, the latest freedom of information request to the authority was refused on the grounds of “commercial interest” and because matters are “still subject to consideration”. Who is telling the truth, and are the Government still funding this process?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Brandon Lewis)
I think the point I was making before the Select Committee was to clarify the fact that this Government will not be doing anything to allow for privatisation of the fire service, despite the claims of the hon. Gentleman’s shadow fire Minister, who is trying to scaremonger.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Brandon Lewis and Tom Blenkinsop
Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)
If a fire brigade is “spun out”, to use the Government’s terms, what procurement route could be taken to prevent tendering to the private sector within a three to nine-year window? If the Minister cannot say, why are he and the Government actively funding the process as a stepping stone from mutualisation to privatisation?
Brandon Lewis
I can only repeat what I said earlier and what I said to the hon. Gentleman in the debate on the matter in the House. We will not allow any change that allows for privatisation of the fire service. I am disappointed that the Labour party seems to be working against the mutuals and co-operatives that the Labour-led Cleveland fire authority is putting forward.
Cleveland Fire Authority
Debate between Brandon Lewis and Tom Blenkinsop
Brandon Lewis
I will give way first to the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald).
Brandon Lewis
I shall now give way to the hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland.
Tom Blenkinsop
I am not going to respond to personal digs, but I will say that I met the Minister’s predecessor on more than one occasion about concerns relating to the CIC. Opposition Members were concerned about that and wanted to be constantly fed information so they could know what was happening and disseminate information to their constituents. However, in recent months we have certainly not had that from this Department.
I will read to the Minister a quote from the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government reported on 20 March in The Northern Echo:
“If that means we cannot move on mutualisation, we will not move on mutualisation—if that means privatisation of the fire service. Have I left any room for manoeuvre?”
Would the Minister like to comment on that?
Brandon Lewis
Yes, that is absolutely the position, which is why I said that the hon. Gentleman is somewhat behind the times. We have made our position very clear, and in the six months or so that I have been involved in this issue, he has not approached me on it. I was also slightly surprised today when I spoke to the Labour chairman of the fire authority to learn that he had not been approached by the hon. Gentleman about tonight’s debate. I spoke to the chairman today to pay him the courtesy of confirming our position and what I would be saying.
It is disappointing that Her Majesty’s Opposition have not, on the whole, been supportive of mutualisation in the fire and rescue service. It is all very well Opposition Members making comments such as those that the hon. Gentleman just made, but the reality is that they have not been supportive whereas this Government are looking to do what we can to help mutuals move forward.
The Labour party has been distorting our support for fire and rescue authorities that are considering mutualisation by painting it as privatisation. As the hon. Gentleman himself eloquently outlined, we have made our position very clear: if this allows for privatisation, we simply will not let it happen. Mutualisation transcends the old binary distinction between in-house and privatised public services. Cleveland’s own local authority chairman, who is a Labour councillor, has described these claims as “scaremongering”. There has been an orchestrated campaign of misinformation in the media, which has wrongly played on peoples’ fears, and I want to correct that today. For the Labour party to start a campaign to stop something that was never happening in the first place is an achievement even for it. My aim is to support fire and rescue authorities in delivering excellent services to their communities, and I will do all in my power to help them do that.
Tom Blenkinsop
I genuinely hope the Minister will take this opportunity to stop the strategy of stonewalling, as a result of which we have received no answers to freedom of information requests or questions in this House, and answer the final question in my speech: will he guarantee that there is no route via mutualisation that will allow for privatisation, as outlined by the chief fire officer to us at a recent meeting? I ask that as the Conservative party is currently in the throes of anger over Europe and is enthralled by European competition law that allows privatisation of a public sector service.
Brandon Lewis
The hon. Gentleman can try to spin this whichever way he wants, but he has already eloquently outlined our position. He quoted the Secretary of State and I was present when he said that if there is no way of mutualising without opening the door to privatisation, we will not do it. Cleveland will not be able to go down the road of becoming a mutual with the help of the Government unless we can find a way of doing it that does not open the door to privatisation. That is why I made the point about the Labour party campaigning on a route we were never going down in the first place.
Brandon Lewis
My hon. Friend makes a good point. Yes, of course we will.
Let me be very clear about this. Cleveland, a Labour authority with a Labour fire authority chairman, has come to the Government wanting to mutualise. We have said that we will work with the authority if we can find a way for it to do that, should it need the Government to take action to allow it. We will not do that unless we are confident that there is a way to do it that does not open the door to privatisation. That position has not changed since the beginning and it remains unchanged. Cleveland expressed an interest in exploring mutualisation to deliver services. Let us remember that under the 2004 Act, introduced by the Labour Government, many fire services can already be provided through private procurement and through mutuals or other bodies, if they wish it.
The wider sector has shown an interest in having the flexibility to do things differently, and authorities across the country are looking at how they can innovate. In such a scenario the authority would, however, retain its responsibilities in statute for delivering the important public service that fire authorities deliver. A mutual would generally be free from the restrictions of the public sector and be able to design services in a way that better meets the needs of their local communities, harnessing the energies and expertise of the front-line staff who are the real experts in the services that they deliver. Benefits can flow back to the community in terms of a better designed service, delivering it more efficiently and giving new opportunities for community engagement and involvement.
Cleveland identified some barriers that were preventing it from taking this step, and as the Government it is right that we should look into whether we can help to consider this innovative delivery option. We have undertaken an initial consultation with key partners to understand the issues at hand. Following that, we approached the Chair of the Regulatory Reform Committee to consider whether it would be appropriate to make any changes to existing legislation. In my view, raising this issue on behalf of the fire and rescue authorities was essential to inform our understanding of the potential barriers, challenges and benefits to the fire sector. To avoid the topic completely would have been wrong. Just because a question is new and different does not mean that we should be afraid to ask it.
Let me be clear: the No. 1 priority of every fire and rescue authority is, and always will be, preventing fires and saving lives, and this Government will continue to support them in this essential life-saving role.
Brandon Lewis
I am going to make some more progress given the time.
The key point is that we have listened to the responses and, following feedback, we have made it abundantly clear that despite the claims of the Labour party, we are not, as the hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland clearly outlined in the quote by the Secretary of State, selling off the sector. My aim remains to support fire and rescue authorities in exploring new and innovative ways of providing their services, and we are reviewing the options to enable such models without opening up the delivery of key fire and rescue services to outside parties.