(1 month ago)
Commons ChamberThese are the answers to the questions. [Interruption.] No, they are the bits that I have written, actually, in regard to her questions.
Members of the party opposite are now talking to themselves and not the country. The right hon. Lady mentioned chaos and uncertainty; I really do not know how Opposition Members can say that with a straight face after the chaos and uncertainty that we have seen, with countless Housing Secretaries not knowing what was going on.
In every inner-city area—this is in answer to the question—there are increases in the targets. I remind Members that we inherited the most acute housing crisis in living memory. I say to the right hon. Lady that the green belt definition is in the consultation document, and I suggest that she read it. It also tackles the issue of “beautiful homes”, We will build homes at scale and they will be beautiful. We will protect the natural environment, and we will make sure that people have the homes that they deserve and need.
I was astonished by what the right hon. Lady said about councils and council leaders. The council leaders I have spoken to are overjoyed by the fact that the Tories were kicked out. They say to me that they have been left in a dire situation. I know that Opposition Members like to think that that is just Labour councils, but councils across the political spectrum have been left in a disastrous situation, because the party opposite did not build the homes that people need. We have a homelessness crisis in this country. People under the age of 30 cannot get homes now. It is impossible for people to get on to the housing ladder. That is the failure of the last Conservative Government, and that is what we are going to fix. That is what we are going to get on and do.
I welcome you to your place, Madam Deputy Speaker. I also welcome both the ambition and the detail in my right hon. Friend’s statement, and the commitments made in it.
I have two questions. First, if the targets are not mandatory—although, in the last Parliament, the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee said that they had to be—many councils will simply choose to ignore them, but if they are to be mandatory, will my right hon. Friend assure me that they will be based on a proper needs assessment of each local authority, and will do away with the nonsensical and arbitrary urban uplifts to which she referred in the context of London?
Secondly, may I ask a question about social housing? I was proud to be brought up in a council house, as my right hon. Friend was. Will she work closely with local authorities and look particularly at land value capture? Will she ensure that when the planning permission for a site uplifts the value of that site, the total increase in value does not go to the landowners alone, but is used to benefit the public purse and reduce the cost of building those homes?
I can confirm that we are getting rid of the urban uplift. The new method of establishing housing targets is better than the previous one, which we believed was outdated. The urban uplift figures were plucked from thin air, but we believe that our new method will give councils the stability and certainty that will enable them to plan for the homes and local services that they need. As for land value capture, there is a little bit about it in the consultation document, but there will be more in the forthcoming planning and infrastructure Bill.
(4 months, 1 week ago)
Commons ChamberWill the Minister assure us that proper energy efficiency standards will be contained in the decent homes standard? Otherwise, tenants will still be living in damp and cold homes because they will be unable to afford to heat them.
I commit to working with the Chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee, and indeed with all Members of the House, to ensure that the decent homes standard provides for decent homes of the kind that he describes.
This is the first time we have applied the decent homes standard to the private rented sector, and we have to get it right. In order to target the minority of unscrupulous landlords, in Committee we also gave stronger powers to local councils, and we strengthened rent repayment orders. That will help to ensure effective and proportionate enforcement of the new system.
Let me turn to the Government amendments that we have tabled on Report. They respond to concerns from Members, constituents, and tenant and landlord groups, ensuring security for tenants while giving confidence to good landlords and supporting the private rented market. Several Members from across the House have played a direct role in helping us to ensure that the Bill works as effectively as possible for all those who live and work in the private rented sector. I of course include in that my hon. Friends the Members for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) and for Northampton South (Andrew Lewer) for their continued engagement and constructive dialogue on the measures in the Bill.
My hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right. We have committed to making the assessment, so we will ensure that the relevant funding is in place. I have said that we have invested £1.2 million for HM Courts and Tribunals Service to deliver a new end-to-end online possession process, but I am pleased also to confirm to him today that we are investing a further £11 million this financial year to deliver a new digital system.
The Minister has tried to blame the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee for this delay by saying that we noted that there was a problem in the courts, which would need to be ready to deal with the extra work caused by the abolition of section 21. However, the Government have had five years to sort the courts out and get them working properly. Surely that has been planned for right from the last election. On the Select Committee asking for improvements to the courts, I just point out that we asked for a specialist housing court—a bit like a small claims court—that could process things more quickly. We did not ask for that in our report last year; we asked for it in 2018, and the Government rejected it.
I think I have been quite clear that it is important that we see that the courts are ready for these reforms. The Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer), is here on the Front Bench with me. He and the MOJ are working at pace to ensure that the courts are ready for the reforms we are introducing. The hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) asks about a specialist housing court. We do not believe that that is the best way to improve the court process for possession—a view shared by the judiciary who responded to our call for evidence.
Order. Before I call the next speaker, I inform the House that I will be giving priority to those Members who have amendments down, so that they can speak to them before we hear from others. I call Chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee, Clive Betts.
It is disappointing that we are having to focus primarily on the Government back-pedalling on the timetable for the abolition of section 21. The Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee looked at this a year ago and concluded unanimously that the principle of the Government’s intention was right. We had some reservations and caveats, and we raised concerns and suggested detail changes, but nevertheless we agreed on the principle. Generally speaking, there is agreement across the House that it is the right thing to do.
In the meantime, people are living in uncertainty in private rented housing. That is why we thought it was the right thing to do. That is what the measure is for: to give people greater certainty about where they will be living in a year’s time. It is not merely that; it is also so that they know, if they do not have a car, that they can get on the bus to their place of work in the morning—if the landlord evicts them and they have to move home, will they be able to get to that job in the future? It is also about children at school: will those children be able to get to the same school if they are evicted from their home and have to find a new property? That is the sort of family certainty that the abolition of section 21 will introduce. So many families are living in uncertainty—not just housing uncertainty but other uncertainty—while we await that abolition. The Minister needs to get on with it and give us some clear time commitments on when it will happen.
We have just discussed the problem of the courts. Of course, covid has affected lots of public services, but I say to the Minister that it is not a surprise. If we look at how long it was taking local authorities to get court hearings to deal with antisocial behaviour cases before covid, we see even then that those ran into months. It has been a problem in the courts for many years. That is why the Committee has suggested—it has been suggested before—a housing court system. I know that Ministers do not want it and that the Ministry of Justice does not want it, but it seemed to us a way of resolving what are often simple or quick problems. A small claims court format could do it in many cases without the need for lawyers to be introduced. I am sorry, but I have no conviction that, with several months of looking at this, several years of contemplation and plans for action, the courts will be any quicker in two or three years than they are now. The court system has delays, and they are likely to remain, so we need to look a bit beyond the existing system to resolve these problems. Obviously, Ministers have set their minds against that.
I turn to the other main problem that we highlighted on implementation: local authorities and their staff. We know that local authorities are desperately short of staff for enforcement in the private rented sector. Once section 21 goes, tenants who are currently frightened—even those living in appalling damp properties—to make complaints against their landlords, because they are concerned they would be evicted as soon as a complaint is made, will feel emboldened to make that complaint, and if their complaint is not listened to, they will be emboldened to go to their local authority and ask for help. Local authorities will get more requests for help, and they have not got the people to deal with that.
Will the Minister assure us that he is starting to talk to the Local Government Association about the new burdens that will be placed on local authorities—this is a new burden that we are imposing on them, albeit a good one—and that there is some agreement on the resource that will be needed? Resources do not produce extra staff overnight, so local authorities will need advance warning so that we have the staff in place to respond quickly.
I apologise for interrupting the hon. Gentleman. Given the important point he is making about redress for tenants and who they might go to, would he add any comment on consumer protection for unfair trading, which is one of the remedies for those who have difficulties with either the standard and quality of their property or the landlord, as well as those who have been mis-sold for a rental period?
I think the reality is that local authorities are generally short of resources right through, as the Committee’s recent report on local authority funding—again, it was unanimously agreed—showed. Because of the demands of social care on local authority budgets, other services are often cut even more than the mainstream. We have previously looked at trading standards and consumer protection, which are an important element—the hon. Member is absolutely right—and I hope that they will be factored in when we have the new burdens discussions.
There are some things that the Minister could resolve fairly quickly. He referred to the important role that the ombudsman can play in resolving disputes. There is sometimes a bit of a conflict between whether someone goes to the ombudsman or to the courts—sometimes, the ombudsman will not deal with a case if it is in the courts. It would be helpful to clarify those issues. But why does he not just decide that the housing ombudsman, who currently deals with social housing issues, will also deal with private sector housing? He should make that decision. Again, if the ombudsman is to have that responsibility, it needs to gear up by starting to recruit more staff and getting in resources to be able to do it. It is a simple decision. He has not ruled it out, but he has not ruled it in. Can we not just do it? It seems obvious. Why set up another body, which would have to start from scratch, when the ombudsman has the skills to do it? Those skills are slightly different in some cases, but why not let it get on with that, and tell it now that it will have that job to do?
I have a couple of other points. The property portal is a really welcome development. We know that when someone is trying to track down a landlord—it is often a local authority, which wants to serve a notice on them—suddenly, the ownership of the property moves, and a different member of the family becomes an owner, or a different company is set up. To know who owns the property, information will have to be given to the property portal, along with all other information about the property. That is a really important step forward, as well as making sure that the portals are digitised so that the information can be kept up to date simply.
I welcome the Minister saying that selective licensing and the property portal are not the same thing, with the property portal to be there for all properties. Selective licensing—it is in the name—will be there for some properties. When there is a review of selective licensing and the relationship with the property portal, will the proposals come back to the House for consideration at some point? I want reassurance on that. Many of us support selective licensing, which we see operating against the worst landlords and the worst properties, and we hope that there will not be a diminution of those powers and responsibilities that would weaken what it can achieve.
I can certainly commit to working with the hon. Member and his Committee when we are at the point of making a decision on where we go after such a review. I completely agree that selective licensing has its role—it is not overtaken by the property portal—but we must ensure that the two work together.
That is a helpful assurance, which I accept, and I think he has already given assurance of similar collaboration on the decent homes standard, which is appreciated.
Finally, I come specifically to some complicated amendments that I have tabled—I admit that they even confuse me on occasions—which are about the powers that social landlords have when they come to regenerate areas. The Committee has heard some pretty awful examples of poor properties in the social housing sector, and we have been critical. However, often it is not an individual property that is the problem, but properties in deck-access blocks built in the ’60s, ’70s or ’80s. The property has reached the end of its life and people do not like living there: it might have damp or other problems, such as antisocial behaviour. The management costs are high and the cost of regeneration, making it fit for purpose and bringing it up to decent homes standards, is so great that it is not worth spending the money. In some cases demolition and rebuild is needed, and in others substantial regeneration and improvement is needed, and that means the tenants have to move out.
In those cases, social landlords need to be certain that they have the power to require tenants to move, because in a block of properties of 100 residents, 95 of them will probably be terribly enthusiastic about moving out, particularly if they are going to get a new or refurbished home, but the other five might dig their heels in and try to stick it out, holding up the whole scheme. The Minister believes that social landlords have the power to do that under existing legislation. I have tabled amendment 52 and the related amendments because the National Housing Federation is concerned that social landlords think they have powers, but they do not exist where the initial tenancy with their secure tenant was set up by a nomination from a local authority. It is a complicated legal issue, but an important one.
The hon. Gentleman makes legitimate points, and I am more than happy to meet him and the National Housing Federation.
I am very pleased to follow the Chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee, on which I sit. He expressed very well the importance of the section 21 reforms, in particular to families and to renters who are so reliant on them.
My view is that the Bill does not go far enough in dealing with the fundamental challenges of the private rented sector, which is no longer a flex or transitionary tenure but the main tenure for millions of people for much, if not all, of their lives. There has been a long-term structural shift away from social renting and home ownership into an expanded private rented sector. That shift needs to be addressed by building more homes—affordable homes and for first-time buyers—and by finding a new balance that reflects the new reality for millions of people in our country.
Sadly, the original principle of the Bill, which was to create a fair and responsible new rented sector, has been undermined by the Government’s amendments. That change of position undermines not just the Bill but the very manifesto commitment on which the Conservative Government were elected in 2019.
Turning to the amendments and new clauses that stand in my name, new clause 39 would require a landlord to make a relocation payment to the tenant if the tenant is evicted within two years of the start of the tenancy, other than on exempted grounds such as antisocial or criminal behaviour. Evidence from Shelter and Generation Rent shows that unrecoverable costs—the wasted cost to the renter of an unwanted move—can be between £700 and £1,700. My new clause proposes that a payment would be made by the landlord in recognition of those unrecoverable costs to the tenant. Being evicted places a great emotional strain on tenants, who find themselves in insecure housing. It should not place them under a financial strain as well.
Amendment 257 would amend ground 12—possession due to a failure to carry out an obligation of the tenancy—in schedule 2 to the Housing Act 1988, setting out the grounds for possession. That provision will gain much greater importance following these changes, for it is the catch-all provision for evictions. The amendment is intended to address the risk of being served a notice for eviction for trivial matters, such as hanging up washing outside, displaying a poster on a wall, or a teenager putting up a poster with Blu Tack. Those are real examples written into existing tenancy agreements by letting agencies that are members of their relevant professional bodies. Amendment 257 would provide that ground 12 could be used only for material breaches, not for Blu Tack.
The Minister has written to me to say that there were landlords who wanted to make the ground 12 position mandatory. These are landlords who want to be able to serve notice and evict tenants for using Blu Tack. In my book, if you are to lose your home it should be for a serious reason, not for Blu Tack or hanging the washing outside or any other trivial thing. All the more so, because we know that the majority of evictions take place when notices are given to the tenant without court applications, let alone court repossession orders.
The Law Society has raised the issue of the scarcity of legal advice available to tenants across the country. We have heard already today that the Government have not yet produced even working drafts of what the new forms might be for the new eviction grounds. That also matters, because at the moment the court forms require the ground to be set out in the document. They do not require, for example, for that to specify whether it is in fact a discretionary or other ground for the courts. So this does impact directly on tenants’ understanding and ability to challenge their potential eviction. As such, the Government’s position, which is to allow ground 12—the Blu Tack ground—unamended, is to invite every landlord to invoke spurious and unfair reasons for evictions. This is apparently not the intent of the Bill. I am grateful to the Minister for his engagement with me on that ground. I ask him to reconsider that position and see what more can be done to ensure that ground 12 applies only in relation to serious matters. That seems much more reasonable, and fair to landlords and tenants alike.
On Government new clause 30, when I spoke to major landlords recently, they confirmed that they are not yet ready to digitise. They are not yet ready to put in place and work with the very provisions for which they have so strongly advocated. I understand that it might take some more than two years to put their own systems in place to engage with the new measures they have asked for. Meanwhile, and after all this time—nearly five years—the Government have no detailed plans about what these court changes might be. In November, in Committee, the Minister denied that this was a delaying tactic. However, since then the Ministry of Justice has published its digitisation and reform programme all the way through to 2025. There is absolutely no reference—not even an indicative reference—to this reform programme relating to repossessions. I asked the House of Commons Library for assistance, but it too has been unable to find any specific reference to the changes that may come up in the court process. So I am afraid that the truth is that new clause 30 is a delaying tactic to benefit landlords.
As has been mentioned, the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee has written to the Minister on the implementation of these measures. It has been noted by the Committee that court guidance is already in place to deal with repossession claims in a timely manner. They are contained already in civil procedure rules 55.5. Of course, the courts can always be improved—indeed, it is most welcome that there is a commitment that they should be so—but it should be noted that the Ministry of Justice’s data shows that last year the target set out for repossession has, in fact, been met. The courts’ performance in landlord repossession cases stands in marked contrast, in the recovery since covid, to many other court backlogs.
That was confirmed in written evidence to the Justice Committee. I am grateful to the Chair of the Justice Committee, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill)—he is not currently in his place—for whom I have the greatest respect. I note that in the written evidence to that Committee, the MOJ confirmed, just in September, that 95% of courts were meeting that target. I understand that the much larger number of weeks to which my hon. and learned Friend referred may relate to personal injury and other matters that were brought before the Committee, but I will discuss that with him later, given that he is not currently in the Chamber.
These are important reforms and it is important for the court processes to work in the right way, but they are working within their current targets, in marked contrast to other court backlogs. That is why new clause 30 is not necessary, and is properly considered to be a delaying tactic.
This is a Bill that the 2019 Conservative manifesto promised would benefit tenants, but it has become a Bill in which the balance too often favours the landlords, particularly if it includes new clause 30, which could indefinitely delay the abolition of section 21 no-fault evictions. That would be nothing short of a betrayal of the promise that was made in 2019, and for that reason I am unable to support the new clause.
I come at it from a different angle: we are heaping so many rules and regulations on people, and making things so difficult, they are leaving the market as a result. This was one of the pioneering policies of Thatcher, bringing in the idea of the free market in property, and ensuring that millions of people across the country could realise the social value of having a buy-to-let property on a long-term basis. The hon. Lady will not agree with me; I do not think that we agree on very much. That is okay; it is good to be able to debate the issue, especially in this Chamber.
We must be honest about this: removing fixed-term tenancies is essentially the state telling individuals what they can and cannot do with their own private properties. It is conceivable to remove section 21 while retaining fixed-term tenancies. I have said that the Conservatives have long prided ourselves on being the party of free markets, and we should keep that in mind when we vote later. We are sending completely the wrong message, with dire consequences for future levels of housing supply. We are making an enormous mistake, which will reduce long-term lets in favour of short-term lets and result in many properties being taken off the rental market. I would hate to be back here, having to repeat the figures that I gave at the start of my remarks—in 2019, there were eight people for every one property; now there are 25—and say that the number is going up and up. I fear that, as a consequence of the Bill, that will happen.
The hon. Gentleman seems to be in favour of abolishing section 21, but then giving landlords the right to bring in fixed-term tenancies, which end with a section 21 notice. If the landlord chose, therefore, section 21 would not be abolished, would it? It would be a figment of our imagination here, because in practice it would never be delivered with his proposal.
(4 months, 1 week ago)
Commons ChamberThe Select Committee welcomed the more than £2 billion provided through the building safety fund to private leaseholders with regard to remediation due to fire safety works. On the other hand, social housing providers received only £200 million, which is about 10% of the amount going to private leaseholders. How can it possibly be fair that in a block of flats a private leaseholder gets their remediation costs paid, but in the same flat next door a social housing tenant has to pay for the total cost out of their rent? That simply is not fair. Ministers have accepted the unfairness in the past. When will they do something about it?
As my constituency neighbour recognises, there is, rightly, a substantial amount of taxpayer subsidy for remediation. We are trying to ensure that that taxpayer subsidy is then clawed back from those responsible for the problems in the first place. Where there are challenges and issues with registered providers, we are very happy to talk to them. We have done that and we have made changes where necessary.
(5 months, 3 weeks ago)
Westminster HallWestminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I thank the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Sir Simon Clarke) for securing this debate. If I am perfectly honest, we have more in common that I thought we might. That gives me great hope, and I hope that we might continue to work together on the reforms about which we do agree.
The Liberal Democrats are committed to overhauling this broken top-down planning system. I supported amendments tabled to the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act that would have given councils the powers to force land bankers to build or sell. Unfortunately, they did not go through. We also supported amendments that would have given local councils the power to regulate Airbnbs, something that is so important to my St Albans constituency. I have also been running a campaign to get the Government to scrap the cap on planning fees, as my constituents are subsidising big developers, and our planning department has been left woefully underfunded. It is really disappointing that those amendments were not accepted for the levelling-up Act.
Today, I want to focus on the failed top-down approach to setting housing targets. The Liberal Democrats have an ambition to build 380,000 homes a year, but by adopting a bottom-up approach we would ensure that they were built in the right places and were the right homes. We would require councils to start by addressing their local housing need and identifying any local constraints. The approach would include ensuring that 150,000 homes each year would be truly affordable for social rent, and I am delighted that that is supported by research from the National Housing Federation, Crisis and Heriot-Watt University.
I want to interrogate recent reforms to the national planning policy framework. I intend to challenge the Minister to clarify whether the reforms her Government announced in December have in fact been incorporated into the NPPF at all. I am sure it will come as no surprise to Members or the Minister that I take a keen interest in the proposals to update the NPPF. The Minister will know that I have tabled scores of parliamentary questions, secured debates, responded to various consultations and tabled amendments to the levelling-up Act. I have been clear that the current Government policy and the NPPF itself do nothing to solve the housing crisis. What they do is incentivise developers to destroy great swathes of precious agricultural land, natural habitat and green open spaces on the metropolitan green belt.
The root of the problem is the Government’s top-down housing targets, which are based on out-of-date population data and which councils are required to meet irrespective of any local constraints. There is no clear guidance in the new NPPF at all about whether those top-down targets or preserving undeveloped green belt space for future generations should take precedence, and that is quite confusing.
Let us look at the history of this issue. In 2015, the then Minister of State for Housing and Planning took steps to address it in a written ministerial statement. On permitting development on the green belt, he said that unmet need is
“unlikely to clearly outweigh harm to the green belt and any other harm so as to establish very special circumstances.”—[Official Report, 17 December 2015; Vol. 603, c. 95WS.]
There was a very clear instruction in that statement to local planning authorities and to the planning inspector that the protection of undeveloped green belt should be given more weight than meeting housing targets.
However, that ministerial statement was made nine years ago. There have been 12 Conservative Housing Ministers since then, and unfortunately not one of them has seen fit to incorporate that statement and that principle into the NPPF. That remarkable state of affairs has meant that the Planning Inspectorate has never been able to give that statement any weight at all when deciding on planning appeals. Nor has the Planning Inspectorate had the ability to apply that principle to its examination of local plans—in fact, the planning inspector said as much in a planning appeal heard for an application in Colney Heath in my constituency that has resulted in the wrong homes being built in the wrong place. As a consequence, many councils are not able to meet the top-down housing targets without surrendering undeveloped green belt land for development.
The Minister will know that in St Albans, we unfortunately have the oldest adopted local plan in England. Two previous drafts developed under Conservative administrations were rejected by the Planning Inspectorate. Since 2019, the Liberal Democrat administration has prioritised the local plan process. It has been put under the auspices of the leader of the council, and in recent months the district council has made significant progress by completing a call for sites, producing a draft local plan and completing a regulation 18 consultation.
The Government’s top-down approach has a real impact in St Albans, and that is the situation our district council now faces. The Government’s standard method produces a top-down target of approximately 14,000 homes that need to be built within the St Albans district. The Government’s approach does not allow for any reduction in that top-down target, even though we have been given a Government-imposed strategic rail freight interchange the size of 3.5 million square metres of green belt, equivalent to 490 football pitches, which could instead have potentially accommodated between 2,500 and 3,000 homes. Following the district council’s call for sites and the regulation 18 consultation, it is thought that only around 5,000 homes can be accommodated on brownfield or grey belt sites. Around 9,000 homes will need to be built on previously undeveloped green belt.
The district council is working at pace to put a plan in place, but the combined failure of the Government to embed that written ministerial statement into the NPPF and of previous administrations in St Albans to develop a local plan now means that the council is currently unable to defend itself and its communities from inappropriate, speculative development. As a result, developers have mostly won their cases by appealing to the Planning Inspectorate.
St Albans City and District Council remains unable to prevent the wrong houses from being built in the wrong place. For example, just in the last year 2022-23, most of the housing built in our district was four, five or six-bedroom executive housing, not the three-bedroom homes that we desperately need. After months of delay, hopes were raised that an updated national planning policy framework would finally address the scandal of local plans being required to meet those centrally produced, top-down housing targets, as produced by the so-called standard method. In St Albans, our council leader took the Secretary of State’s promises at face value, saying that that if the new national planning policy framework is changed, such that the protection of underdeveloped metropolitan green belt takes precedence over top-down targets, our draft local plan will change as well. But it seems to me that the changes to the NPPF actually make the situation worse.
The Secretary of State said on 19 December 2023 that the changes provide
“clearer protection for the green belt…In summary, the new NPPF will: facilitate flexibility for local authorities in relation to local housing need; clarify a local lock on any changes to green-belt boundaries…the Government are ensuring it is clear there is generally no requirement on local authorities to review or alter green-belt boundaries if this would be the only way to meet housing need.”—[Official Report, 19 December 2023; Vol. 742, c. 97-99WS.]
The Secretary of State said all of that, but I have read the new national planning policy framework and I am afraid that it says absolutely no such thing. Rather than softening the need to meet those top-down targets, the changes to the NPPF actually strengthen and reinforce the requirement of councils and their communities to meet them.
There are at least five examples that I can find. Paragraph 15 changes the requirement from “addressing” the targets to “meeting” them, which is a significant change in firming up the requirement. Paragraph 60 adds a new requirement that the overall aim of any local plan
“should be to meet as much of an area’s identified housing need as possible”.
Again, that is a significant firming up of meeting that top-down target. Paragraph 61 codifies the Government’s previous position that
“the standard method is an advisory starting-point”,
but the meaning of “advisory” is not clarified. It is widely understood in the planning sector that “advisory” does not mean that it is merely a suggestion, but it is actually a warning. It is a warning that, if that target is not met, the planning inspector will almost certainly throw out and fail any local plan that does not meet that target.
In paragraph 61, the accompanying footnote 25 restricts the circumstances that might permit deviation from the standard method to extreme examples, such as
“islands with no land bridge”.
It appears to deliberately stay silent on undeveloped green belt constraints. Paragraph 145 had, in the version that the Government put out for consultation, the strongest and clearest indication that
“Green Belt boundaries are not required to be reviewed and altered, if this would be the only means of meeting the objectively assessed need for housing over the plan period”.
Inexplicably to those who expected that revision to strengthen green belt protection, that change was scrapped altogether in the final version of the NPPF. Indeed, there is not one single statement anywhere in the NPPF—none at all—that indicates to the planning authorities or the planning inspector that more weight can or should be given to protect undeveloped green belt over top-down housing targets.
Planning professionals agree that, at best, the new NPPF brings nothing to green belt communities. It was reported that one very senior and respected planning barrister, who attended a Hertfordshire Infrastructure & Development Board meeting on 29 February, described the Government’s changes as nothing more than “window dressing”. St Albans City and District Council has proceeded with its local plan-making, in compliance with the previous version of the NPPF, in the expectation that the Government would honour their promise to give councils more power and the ability to protect parts of undeveloped green-belt land. It is clear that those promises have now been broken.
I am told that the Liberal Democrat administration has followed the advice of the Local Government Association, the Planning Advisory Service, the Planning Inspectorate, its own KC and external experts acting as critical friends. In effect, they have all told the council the same thing: “You must meet this top-down target or you are at risk of your local plan being failed.”
Without a local plan, communities in St Albans will continue to end up with our natural environment bulldozed over for inappropriate and oversized executive homes, with no way for the council to require developers to provide the three-bed family homes that our district so desperately needs. Indeed, the draft local plan that the district council has prepared has identified that more than 50% of the new homes in the area have to be three-bedroomed homes. Yet at the moment we have no way of ensuring that developers build them. There is now a limited window of opportunity for the Government to intervene and clarify whether St Albans District Council can move forward with the draft local plan that revises the top-down housing targets downwards, in recognition of local constraints.
To sum up, I have three questions for the Minister. Will the Minister confirm today whether the Government-imposed strategic rail-freight interchange, the size of 490 football pitches, which prevents the building of 2,500 to 3,000 homes, can be taken into account? Secondly, on 9 January, the Minister for Housing, Planning and Building Safety, the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley), responded to my written question on the issue of the green belt to say that the Government would consider whether updates were needed to planning practice guidance in due course. Can the Minister today confirm whether that consideration has been completed and, if not, when it will be? My third and final question is will the Government urgently provide updated guidance for local authorities and the planning inspector, making it clear that the protection of undeveloped green-belt sites—not the grey belt—can be considered an exceptional circumstance, which justifies an alternative approach to assessing housing need?
Since the new year, I have tabled 12 written questions asking for clarity on these issues. So far, not one of them has received a satisfactory response. Instead, I have been redirected back to the very statements on which I am trying to seek clarification. My constituents deserve straightforward answers on the Government’s intentions. I hope the Minister will take the opportunity to provide substantive responses today.
We now move on to the Front Benchers. For Labour, Matthew Pennycook.
(6 months ago)
Commons ChamberThe Select Committee recently produced a report on local government finance in which we said that the Government must act now if local authorities are to survive this severe crisis. What has the Secretary of State done? He has asked every local authority to produce a productivity plan. That sounds a bit like advising councils how to spend better the money they have not got. He has asked local authorities to identify
“ways to reduce wasteful spend”.
What does he think they have been doing for the last 13 years? In particular, he has asked them to identify waste on
“discredited staff equality, diversity and inclusion programmes”.
How much does he think that will save when it comes to avoiding section 114 notices?
(6 months, 1 week ago)
Commons ChamberI am grateful to the hon. Lady for outlining that issue; I know she has raised it in this place before. As she indicates, this is a complex area of law, but I am happy to talk with her separately on that matter in the coming weeks, if it is helpful.
How are we doing this? We are giving leaseholders more security over the future of their homes by increasing the standard lease extension term to 990 years, by making it cheaper and easier for leaseholders to buy their freehold, and by tackling unfair charges, exploitative practices and poor management. In doing so, we are overturning centuries of iniquity.
The Bill will also give leaseholders the control they deserve over the buildings they live in. At present, management companies are too often unaccountable to those who pay for them, meaning that they are able to charge excessive fees for poor-quality service. The Bill gives more leaseholders the opportunity to manage the buildings themselves, so that works get done properly and they have more of a say.
The Minister might anticipate the question I am going to ask, because I have asked it before. It is fine giving leaseholders easier ways to buy their freehold, until we come across companies such as Coppen Estates, which we have debated before. It just does not reply to letters. I think that we are now on our third recorded delivery letter to the company about the residents on the Flockton estate, who have just been sent enhanced bills for their ground rent charges, with no justification. They face threats if they do not comply. Where in the Bill is there any measure to make sure that Coppen Estates and the like respond properly in future or face consequences if they do not?
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. As he knows, we have debated the iniquities of Coppen Estates extensively, and I repeat that it is treating my constituents in a way that is inappropriate, in the same way that it is doing with his constituents over the border. Given that we are extending the opportunity for charges to go to tribunal, I hope that the hon. Gentleman’s constituents in Flockton will be able to go to tribunal and hold that company or other companies to account, should that be helpful.
Through the reforms, we will scrap the presumption that leaseholders must pay their freeholder’s legal costs, even when they win at tribunal, correcting another historical and unfair imbalance. Someone would not be expected to pay legal costs if they were successful in their claim in other cases, so leaseholders should not be treated any differently.
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, which is why I hope that measures such as new clause 51 go some way towards making it crystal clear that there is no way to get around this, and towards providing clarity to those who seek to buy a new property.
New clause 52 will require a statement on the front of all new leases declaring that it is a permitted lease and is not a long residential lease of a house. Should a developer make a dishonest declaration to His Majesty’s Land Registry, the homeowner may be able to exercise the redress right contained in new clause 54, which will allow them to acquire the freehold from the developer free of charge.
Under new clause 53, if a lease does not include the prescribed statements, His Majesty’s Land Registry will have the power to restrict the resale of the property until the right information and declarations have been provided.
The Minister is talking about the information on houses. Will it also apply to flats so that, before anyone buys a property, it must be explained to them that they are buying a lease and what that entails? I tabled new clause 38, which says that everyone buying a lease should be presented with a copy of the Government’s “How to Lease” document. Everyone in this situation should be given independent advice.
I am focusing on homes, and we have been emphatic and clear that the sale of leasehold homes will be precluded other than in exceptional circumstances. I am happy to talk to the hon. Gentleman both later in the debate and outside the Chamber about whether further consumer protections for those purchasing a flat may be proportionate and reasonable.
New clause 54 grants homeowners who have been mis-sold a new lease of a house the right to acquire the freehold from the landlord, as well as any superior leasehold interest in the property, for zero cost. New clauses 55 and 56 set out protections and reasonable limitations on this requirement, and new clause 57 provides for the Secretary of State to make regulations setting out further details on how redress can be obtained.
We understand that granting homeowners the right to redress alone may not be enough to prevent bad actors from attempting to breach the ban on the sale of leases on houses, which is why we are introducing a system of financial penalties where there is a breach. These penalties will start at £500 for a minor breach, rising to £30,000 for the most serious breaches. To enforce this system of fines, as set out in new clause 58, we are asking all local weights and measures authorities to play a part where they see infractions in their area. We will also set out how they need to work through new clause 60.
The chief responsibility for investigating and taking action will lie with the lead enforcement authority. Through new clause 61, the Secretary of State will have the power to appoint the right authority to fulfil this important role, while new clause 62 details the duties. By amending the Consumer Rights Act 2015, clauses 63 and 64 also vest the appropriate investigatory and enforcement powers essential for both the lead authority and local authorities to carry out the job.
It is five years since we produced the Select Committee report on leasehold reform. It came after long years of campaigning by the all-party parliamentary group on leasehold and commonhold reform, and I particularly commend the efforts of the Father of the House, the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), who has just spoken; my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders); and our good friend Jim Fitzpatrick, who is no longer in this House, but who certainly made a major contribution to that. To be fair to the Government, it is good that we have made progress on many of the items in the Select Committee report. The caveat, of course, is that we probably have not gone as far as we would have wanted or as quickly as we would have expected.
When the Committee met, I remember going into a room with about 100 leaseholders from all over the country—the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), who was in his place a few minutes ago, was there as well—and hearing horror stories of people being ripped off in the sale of leasehold homes by developers. They were told that there was no difference between a leasehold property and a freehold property. They were told that by the solicitors who worked for them, because the solicitors were recommended by the developers. That was together with the free carpets in the living room that came as a bribe—that is what it was. Leaseholders were not aware that they would have to pay £300 to get a doorbell fitted if they wanted one because they had to get permission, or £3,000 for a conservatory, or whatever fees the freeholder chose.
Leaseholders were told that they could, within a couple of years, buy the freehold at a fixed price from the same developer. The problem, of course, was that by the time a leaseholder came to inquire about purchasing the freehold, the freehold had been sold to another party. There are lots of examples of that, which is why I have an amendment—new clause 39—that I want to push to a vote, although I hope the Minister will accept it. It is a simple amendment to say that before the sale of a freehold, the right of first refusal has to go to the existing leaseholder. That right already exists for leaseholders in flats, but not for leaseholders in houses. Why is that? That really cannot be justified or even explained.
Will the Minister accept just that one simple amendment? It would give leaseholders that right, and stop freeholders —we know that this happens—who want to evade the legislation, including the improvements the Government are bringing in, passing a property around from one organisation to a subsidiary to a third party, with a view to evading the legislation, so that leaseholders never know where to go to get the relevant freeholder to agree to the sale.
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does he agree that part of the problem is that some of the freeholders are based overseas, and it is extremely difficult for leaseholders to track them down? This is an ongoing issue that I hope the Government will look into.
Absolutely. I hope the Minister will have a look at the whole issue of freeholders who will not respond. That certainly applies to many who are overseas, with whom it is very difficult to get in touch.
I will not press new clause 40 to the vote, but the purpose of it is to say to the Minister that the default answer cannot be that the leaseholder can always go to a tribunal. Most leaseholders are simply ordinary residents trying to get on with their lives, who think it ought to be fairly easy to put in a request, get a calculation done and buy their freehold. They are not ready for these organisations, with all their lawyers and surveyors, that want to evade this and try to hide away, in some cases overseas, so that they cannot be contacted.
Can the Minister look at that issue? I know he is aware of it, because we share the same problem with Coppen Estates. There are others that are based overseas, but this one is based in a semi-boarded-up shopfront with a letterbox that never seems to be opened. That is the sort of company we are dealing with. They are small organisations that make a living out of charging ground rents from leaseholders, who cannot exercise their enfranchisement because of the attitude and evasion of the freeholders concerned. I hope that the Minister will have another look at that issue.
The other amendments I have tabled are about having professional qualifications and some form of regulation of property managers. The Government have legislated to say that the managers of social housing will need professional qualifications in future, but what is the difference between a manager of social housing and a property manager of leasehold blocks? In some ways, there may be greater complications in trying to manage a multitude of different leaseholders than people who have secure tenancies in a council or housing association block of flats. What is the difference?
Why will the Government not recognise that there are some good property managers who are well qualified, experienced and can be held to account, but others who are not like that? Indeed, some are put in place for that purpose: they are cheap, they do not have experience or qualifications, and they provide another way of avoiding the restrictions and rules that are rightly put on the management of property. They do not bother with proper service charge information or a proper list of charges for permission fees. I accept that the Government have tried to improve that, but in the end such improvements will only work if the individual or organisation managing the property does so in a proper way. Will the Minister look at those issues? What is the rationale? Why is there resistance to ensuring that people doing a serious and important job as property managers are qualified to do it and properly held to account through regulation?
Let me begin by declaring my interest as an adviser to the HSPG group, which among other things is a registered provider of social housing.
I rise to speak to new clause 68, which is based on a specific challenge that I have encountered in my constituency and that affects residents in more than 70 homes spread across three locations in the town of Hayle and the village of Mount Hawke. The experience of those cases exposes a potential gap in the Bill and in policy on the issue of shared ownership. The Bill deals at some length with standard leasehold agreements and the problems of extortionate ground rents, as well as with some of the issues around service charges and management companies with which we are familiar. However, in the early 2000s some agreements were put together that were technically leasehold agreements but that masqueraded as shared ownership agreements, even though those shared ownership agreements do not comply with the standards of modern shared ownership agreements.
The agreements I have encountered contain a number of defects, and I would like the Minister’s view on them. The first is that the freehold on those homes is not held by a registered provider. It was initially owned by the developer who built the sites, but it has changed hands twice. In a way that is familiar to many Members, the freehold has ended up in the hands of an offshore investment vehicle based in the British Virgin Islands, and with a company called Rockwell, which has not been easy for residents to deal with over the years.
The second major defect in the agreements is that there is no provision for staircasing or enfranchisement of the leaseholder’s share of the property. Residents typically own between 58% and 72% of their property, but their stake is fixed and cannot be extended. There is no right to extend under the agreement. The agreements are under a 990-year lease and there is no ability to extend that, although I appreciate it is a long-term lease.
The third defect is that even if residents could enfranchise and extend or staircase their ownership within the agreement, a section 106 covenant means that the properties must be sold to a local connection with a significant discount on market value. The way that has been worded in the agreement means that it is simply not worth the while of residents to increase their share, since there would be no value to the increased share that they would have.
Finally, there was something described as ground rent, although in practice a big chunk of that was effectively a rent on the shared ownership portion. The ground rent was initially around £20 per week, but that was linked to the retail price index on an escalating model. It has now got close to £2,000 per year for those residents, and it is still increasing rapidly.
All of those defects in that leasehold tenure arrangement or shared ownership arrangement—indeed, it appears to be neither one nor the other—mean that all of the properties have been judged unmortgageable by lenders, and that means the residents are trapped. They cannot sell their properties because no one can get a mortgage to buy them. These are people in my constituency who had a local connection. Typically, they are on modest incomes. These agreements and these homes were sold to them as a way to get a foot on the housing ladder, and for those residents it has transpired to be a complete nightmare.
I will say a word about planning and pay tribute to Penwith District Council, as it was then, and Cornwall Council. Planning was granted between 2004 and 2006, and the local planning authorities did their due diligence. They could see that this shared ownership model was defective, and they refused planning permission on all three sites on that basis. The Minister might ask how these homes were then built and sold under the arrangement, but I suspect he can predict the answer, which is that they were approved at appeal by the Planning Inspectorate, an agency within his own Department. The situation that my constituents face has been caused principally by a chronic failure of due diligence by the Planning Inspectorate, as is often the case with such issues.
In conclusion, my new clause 68 seeks to address a gap in the Bill and to give the Government the opportunity to atone for the mistakes of the Planning Inspectorate. It deals explicitly with shared ownership agreements and would create a statutory right to staircase ownership and put a cap on the rent of the freeholders’ portion of the home. I do not intend to press new clause 28 to a Division this evening, but I hope that the Government will consider the matter closely. I would like to meet the Minister or the Secretary of State and share with them and their officials a copy of the shared ownership agreement that my constituents are suffering under so much, with a view to seeing whether the Government might consider further changes at later stages of the Bill’s consideration to address a gap in it. Given that the Planning Inspectorate has been somewhat culpable in creating this problem for my constituents, I hope that the Government will seek to do that.
I support the general thrust of the Bill in all its attempts to deal with management charges, service charges and ground rents, but I hope that the Minister will agree to meet me to discuss some of these remaining issues.
(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberI thank the hon. Member for inviting me to celebrate the success of Labour in Plymouth, and the work that our councillors are doing, after taking back control, to show leadership to the city. Plymouth is a proud place, and the Labour party there is making a huge difference. He may want to consult those on his party’s Front Bench when it comes to the submission of audited accounts, because there is an issue to reconcile here. Only 1% of councils have submitted accounts; how do we break through that bottleneck, given that the market is not responding? The Government will have to respond to that sooner rather than later. I politely advise him, if I may, to withhold his criticism, and to wait to see what his Government’s approach will be. I suspect he may be slightly embarrassed.
The Select Committee has written a report recently on local authority audit, which is a complete mess, with only 1% of accounts done on time. This is not a party political matter, as councils right across the country are struggling with this issue. One factor is low audit fees. Another is the complication of pension fund valuations, which is holding many accounts up. The likelihood is that the only way to get through that will be to agree accounts that are qualified because it has not been possible to confirm pension fund valuations. I hope that party political points are not made about councils and the qualification of accounts.
First, I thank the Select Committee for the work that it has done in this area. Last week, we received the report “Financial distress in local authorities”, and a great deal of work has been done to understand the detail and the contributing factors. There is no doubt that the accountancy regime for pension funds is a contributory factor to the delay in some cases. We need to know that councils are financially resilient, and that the financial settlement is robust. Where there are issues, an early warning system should allow them to be picked up earlier, so that if an intervention is required, it is made at the right time and in the right way, whereas now, section 114 notices are being issued at a rate not seen for the past three decades. That cannot stand, and it is not sustainable. We look forward to the Government’s response on that.
On the wider point about cross-party agreement, I think all of us and the Local Government Association, which is cross-party, would welcome with open arms the day when party politics was taken out of local government finance, and when there was consensus on how to fund local public services. I sincerely hope that after the next election, when those on the Government Front Bench are in opposition, they join us in that call, but let us wait and see.
The Government will know, as we do, that because of the financial fragility of local councils and the lack of an early warning system, it now takes only a small shock to send town halls into financial meltdown; the resilience just is not there. The Local Government Association has done a fantastic job in leading from the front and ensuring that adequate support is supplied when needed, but it cannot be expected to lead the charge on its own, nor should it be expected to. Councils need certainty and stability. They need to have the fear and anxiety of financial bankruptcy removed, so that they can continue to deliver for local communities. Councils need to be given adequate time to plan ahead for the fiscal year. Labour would support local councils where the Government have failed.
Single-year settlements do not provide the certainty or stability needed for planning ahead. We recognise that councils need something more than that to end this disjointed approach. Labour will embed transparency in the relationship between local and national Government, and move towards multi-year funding settlements for councils that allow them to plan well ahead. We will give towns and cities the tools that they need to foster local growth and deliver better public services. Should we be privileged enough to form the Government after the next election, Labour will empower councils to get on with the job that they have been elected to do.
Finally, we will see a radical transfer of power away from Westminster and into the hands of the British people through the landmark take back control Act, but we will not wait; where we can accelerate improvement, we will. We want a new relationship between central and local government as genuine partners in power. We want to see the right powers in the right places. Our communities are resilient, and so are our councils, but we need to do far more to work, hand in hand, as true partners going forward.
Let me begin by thanking a few people. The shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon), referred to the report “Financial distress in local authorities”, which the Select Committee published last week and on which I made a statement in the House last Thursday. I want to thank the staff of the Committee and our special advisers for all the work that they did in helping to put the report together: it was much appreciated. I also want to thank the Local Government Association—I declare my interest as a vice-president—for all that it does for local government throughout the year, and for helping us and advising us on the challenges that local government is facing, not least with regard to finances.
The Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare), is sitting on the Front Bench. I want to thank him as well, not for providing enough money on this occasion—I would not go as far as that—but for being genuinely helpful and open in his willingness to be approached by Members on both sides of the House and to engage with local councils across the country. He has also been open to discussion and an exchange of views with me, in my capacity as Chair of the Select Committee, so I thank him for the way in which he has approached this matter on a personal basis.
The difficulty for councils is that they are not just dealing with what is happening this year; they are also dealing with the problem of the year upon year of austerity that we have seen since 2010. There is now a funding gap of £4 billion, which £600 million goes nowhere near filling. In fact, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said the other day that the gap was £7 billion, but either way it is a much larger sum than the £600 million that the Minister has made available. I was a little disappointed when the Minister for Housing, Planning and Building Safety, the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley) —who opened the debate—began referring to reserves again. When local government finance gets into difficulties, Ministers always resort to saying, “Councils have all this money, so why don’t they spend it?” I remember that when Lord Pickles was Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, he was berating councils back then for not spending all their reserves. I think that most of them are quite grateful for not having done so, in view of what has happened subsequently.
Some councils have simply run out of money and have issued section 114 notices, while others are wary of what is coming. They can see things getting worse rather than better because that is what has happened year on year, and, rightly, they are not rushing to spend all their reserves at once. They are being prudent to a degree, but they can see those reserves running out in two or three years’ time, even if they are not facing section 114 notices immediately. We have heard from the LGA that about 20% of councils could be facing them in the next 12 months. It may not be as many as that, and everyone hopes it is not, but it could be a significant number. In the last six years eight councils have issued section 114 notices, effectively declaring bankruptcy, whereas in the previous 18 years, none did so.
It is not only individual councils that are experiencing difficulties. The whole system is now broken. That is the evidence that we were given: the Committee did not pluck the information out of thin air. We heard from councils of every kind—county councils, district councils, metropolitan councils, unitary authorities and London councils—and the problem is now widespread across all of them. Yes, individual councils have made mistakes, some of which have caused them to get into difficulties, but as we look forward, we see that it is not only the councils that make mistakes that will get into difficulties. Many will simply run out of money, and they will have no leeway to deal with any adverse consequences because their reserves will have been run down.
In fact, for the most part, councils have done brilliantly to survive this long. Credit is due to councils and councillors throughout the country who have managed to keep themselves going, and managed to make efficiency savings on a scale of which any central Government Department would be proud. Local government has seen bigger cuts in its budgets than any other part of the public sector. The temptation for Ministers is always to pick on councils, because they can blame them from the Front Bench for the difficult choices that have been made, and do not have to claim responsibility for the cuts.
My own city of Sheffield has experienced a 30% cut in its spending power, and of course it has cut services. Libraries have closed in my constituency, there has been less funding for tendered bus services, the grass is cut less often, and the planning department has fewer resources and wants more because of the number of planning applications being submitted for the redevelopment and regeneration of the city. Those are all consequences of the spending cuts. This is about the two things coming together: the cuts to resources and the pressure from all the things that everyone talks about, including social care.
Adult social care was seen as a developing problem, and it is. Another way of looking at it is as a great benefit, because people are living longer and they are here to need the care, which is absolutely wonderful, but now children in care as a demand is rising faster even than adult social care. The Select Committee looked at children with special needs, their education and the cost of transporting them, and there are things that can be done there that are not just about more money. It is about looking at the provision of care for children and looking at councils collectively providing that. We could get costs down in that way.
This is also about looking again at education, health and care plans. There is a feeling that sometimes the more well-educated, knowledgeable and affluent parents see the benefit of demanding an almost unconstrained amount of money for certain educational provision for their children. The cost of that is going up exponentially, and those plans have to be reviewed. Of course we have to give kids with special needs the education they deserve, but perhaps we ought to look at the system that is causing such a massive increase in the costs that are now occurring.
At the other end of this is the fact that the overall budgets have been constrained as demand has gone up. What about ordinary council tax payers? They are paying 5% extra every year. For the most part, those council tax payers do not receive adult social care, do not have a kid with special needs and do not require homelessness services—another area of increasing demand—yet they are being asked to pay 5% extra. They are also seeing their libraries and bus services disappearing and their streets not being swept as often. They are saying, “But I’m paying more every year and I’m getting less.” The system cannot continue in the way it is. It is a challenge to the basis of democracy, which is that people feel they are paying for something and getting it. Here, they feel they are paying more and getting less. That is not sustainable in the long term, as I think we can all see.
Another problem with the settlement is that it is for only one year. Local government has asked repeatedly for multi-year settlements, and we got there in 2016. Covid interfered with that, but there is no reason they could not have come back since then. We were also promised fair funding in 2016. What has happened to it? This settlement is based on data that goes back to the last century. That cannot be right either, can it? It really cannot be right that we are allocating money based on how many people lived in areas so many years ago that it now makes no sense because of the demographic changes that have taken place since. These are all issues that could have been addressed. They are big challenges but they could have been met.
We have not mentioned the public health grant today. When public health went over to local government, it was pretty well funded because it was linked to NHS settlement increases. Public health is really important because it looks at prevention in our most deprived communities, but there has been a 27% real-terms cut since it went over to local government. We do not use it enough. During covid, we should have used the expertise of the directors of public health for tracking and tracing, instead of the phone banks that were set up at national level at a cost of billions of pounds. The director of public health in Sheffield, Greg Fell, has sent me information about the cuts that he is dealing with. This is a fundamental issue of equality. Public health is about helping the poorest communities disproportionately, and that is now not happening because of those cuts. Yes, there is some welcome extra money for smoking cessation and for dealing with people with alcohol problems, but it does not fill the gap that has been created by the cuts.
Perhaps the Minister could have a word with the Chancellor. He probably cannot offer us any more than the £600 million today, but perhaps he could have a look at the household support fund, which our Select Committee has just written about. In Sheffield, the fund provides 32,000 children who have free school meals during term time with vouchers to compensate in the summer holidays. Have a look at that, as local authorities cannot compensate for it in the current crisis. It would not take a lot simply to keep the fund going from March, when it comes to an end. This is the last school holiday in which kids will get the funding. It is a small issue but, if the Minister adds his voice to those of the Select Committee and many others in this House, we might be able to get a bit of movement in the Chancellor’s upcoming statement.
Things are bad, but they could get worse and probably will. The Minister said it will be for the next Parliament and, yes, it will. The Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities announced more than a year ago that he would ask a Minister to review council tax, and I understand that nothing has happened yet. Council tax has not been touched for 30 years, and we cannot explain to people moving into a new build home how their council tax is calculated. It is based on the value in 1991, before their home had not been built. We can all see that it is nonsense, so we need reform. The Minister suggested the other day, and I agree, that whoever wins the election has to make local government funding, and certainly social care funding, stick for the long term. We had cross-party agreement on pension reform, and it has stuck for the long term, so let us look at both those issues. I hope we can then move on.
Finally, what on earth are the productivity plans? Does local government not have enough work to do without having to produce another set of plans for a purpose that only the Secretary of State seems to understand? I have read that councils apparently have to stop spending on “discredited” equality, diversity and inclusion programmes. Can anyone tell me what a discredited equality, diversity and inclusion programme is? Who is going to decide? Does the Minister have a little list of criteria and tick boxes? Is he going to review all these programmes, or is it just another attempt to say that councils obviously have plenty of money if they are engaged in these sorts of programmes? They have not. In my view, councils are engaged in providing proper, decent and needed services for their communities, and there are not enough of those services because of the spending cuts. I hope that in due course we can move forward to a better time for local government. Our councils deserve it and, even more importantly, our communities deserve it too.
It is a pleasure to wind up for the Government in this debate. I will just say gently to one of my shadows, the hon. Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist), that if the situation is as bad as she and the hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon) have painted it, I am surprised that with the exception of those on the Front Bench and the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts)—I know, as a former Select Committee Chairman, that one is obliged to take part in these debates when they relate to one’s Department—we have, against all this horror, had only one Labour Back-Bench contribution. I thank and congratulate the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell)—at least there is one Labour Member who is concerned about local government and who is not obliged to come and talk about it.
What an exciting prospect we have—the nation sits agog! After 14 years of opposition, a review to look at long-term plans is what the hon. Member for Blaydon tantalisingly holds before the House and the electorate. After 14 years of opposition, one has to ask what on earth they have been doing with the time. A review to look at long-term plans! As always, the Labour party is quick to critique and slow to deliver. What a contrast to the speeches we have heard from Conservative Members.
I take the Minister back to the beginning of the debate, when the Minister for Housing, Planning and Building Safety talked about doing a long-term review of local government finance in the next Parliament. The difference, of course, is that the Government have been in power for the last 14 years and could have done something about it.
The hon. Gentleman and I have discussed this on many occasions, and I know he broadly agrees with me on this point. Local council chief executives and leaders would have come at the Department with pitchforks and flaming torches if we had dumped a 200-page consultation document on their desks at a time when they were rallying to support their communities during the covid crisis.
This year, as last year, the Government have rightly set our focus on stability, certainty and security. I believe this local government finance settlement delivers on all three.
No. If the hon. Gentleman is not here for the opening, he cannot take part in the summing up. He has tried that trick before, and it did not work then.
As we heard from the hon. Members for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan), for Sheffield South East and for Blaydon, some of these issues came through in the consultation and in the engagement: support for special educational needs; a long-term view of adult social care; and reform to the funding formula, which so many hon. and right hon. Members have referenced. A reformed funding formula would provide stability and security to our local authorities, and the best way to deliver it is through cross-party working. That is what this House owes them.
When I was asked to take on this job, I had no idea of the complexity and time required to arrive at a local government finance settlement. I thank all colleagues who came along to take part in my parliamentary engagement, which was hugely helpful. I pay tribute to my private office and to officials in the Department—long hours, huge work. I pay particular tribute, not least because her note tells me I have to, to Victoria Peace for all her hard work, as well as to Kate, Nico and others. It has truly been a team effort.
I also thank the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Prime Minister for listening to the case that the Secretary of State and I took to them on revising the formula. We said that we would listen, we did and we have acted. Those are the hallmarks of prudent, listening, caring, one-nation conservativism, and it is writ large in this local government finance settlement.
I also pay tribute, as so many others have, to the work that councillors and council officers do, day in and day out, to deliver to make the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in our society more bearable and a little better, and to create a sense of place in which people wish to live. We salute all of them. Are all of them brilliant? Of course not, but not all of us are brilliant either. But I know that, day in and day out, they focus on doing their best.
I have been called many things, but the hon. Member for Sheffield South East called me “genuinely helpful”. My hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Chris Loder) called me “the great rural tsar” and a “knight in shining armour”. And my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) called me a “warrior” for rural councils. I am grateful for those comments, and I look forward to their being carved into my headstone in due course.
Not too soon, I hope.
I could bore the House with the figures for the local authorities of each Member who has contributed, but those figures are on the public record. They are all going in a positive direction. I think we have started to make significant inroads into addressing those concerns, by turning our thinking to the common themes that have ranged through this debate. The trajectories on SEND and adult social care show no sign of abating, and we need a long-term solution. The formula does need reforming and the Government are committed to doing just that in the next Parliament.
I say to everyone that the transformation and productivity plans, which we see as a key part of the settlement, are all part of underscoring that “Agenda for Change” is a process, not an event; it has to be iterative and organic, because, as my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay mentioned, we have no money and councils have no money save that which we raise through the taxpayer. We have a duty to ensure that we deliver the biggest bang for each and every buck.
My hon. Friends the Members for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart) and for West Dorset, the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Sarah Dyke), and my hon. Friends the Members for Loughborough (Jane Hunt) and for Waveney (Peter Aldous) all made important points about how the formula review must ensure that we take into account the differentials in the demand of need in delivering services in a rural or coastal area. I do not believe that we would be right in any definition of the term to say that “need” in an urban area outranks that in a rural or coastal area, or vice versa. Need is need and our local authorities want to play their part in making a difference on that. My hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough was not the only one, but she was right to mention the need for other Departments, when they create a new burden or duty on local authorities, to take into account the budgetary impacts that those services have, and I certainly take that on board. My hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye made that point as well and I agree with all who have made it.
The hon. Member for York Central asked a specific question about the flood recovery framework and business rates. I am delighted to confirm to her that 100% business rate relief is available to business for a minimum of three months where they have been flooded and that that relief can continue to an agreed date until the business is able to be reoccupied for trading. I hope that that gives some comfort to her and to her constituents who have suffered from flooding issues in the recent time.
A lot has been done, services can continue, but the need for reform, cross-party working, blue skies thinking and significant change remains. This settlement is a generous one, with more than half a billion pounds or, I should say, “just” half a billion pounds, available for children’s services and adult social care. My hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset has long advocated for the rural services delivery grant and that is up now to its highest level, at £115 million. I know that rural councils, including that of the hon. Member for North Shropshire, will have welcomed that as a useful means of supporting their services.
We understand, applaud and appreciate the important contribution that councils make across our country, and the difference they deliver for their communities. We understand and are going to work with the sector, sector leaders, council leaders and others to ensure a bright, secure and stable future for local councils. We are providing a £600 million uplift, and, on average, a 6% to 7% increase in core spending power for most councils. This is a fantastic opportunity for councils to continue to deliver and for us to support them. I close with the point that many have made: we will deliver better for our constituents when central and local government work in partnership, matched horses pulling in the same direction, serving our communities and making a vital difference for those who need it. I commend the settlement to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That the Local Government Finance Report (England) 2024–25 (HC 318), which was laid before this House on 5 February, be approved.
Resolved,
That the Referendums Relating to Council Tax Increases (Principles) (England) Report 2024–25 (HC 319), which was laid before this House on 5 February, be approved.—(Simon Hoare.)
Resolved,
That the Referendums Relating to Council Tax Increases (Alternative Notional Amounts) (England) Report 2024–25 (HC 320), which was laid before this House on 5 February, be approved.—(Simon Hoare.)
Business of the House (Today)
Ordered,
That, notwithstanding the provisions of paragraph (14) of Standing Order No. 80A (Carry-over of bills), the Speaker shall put the Questions necessary to dispose of proceedings on the Motions in the names of:
(1) Secretary Michelle Donelan relating to the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill: Carry-over extension; and
(2) Secretary Alex Chalk relating to the Victims and Prisoners Bill: Carry-over extension not later than one and a half hours after the commencement of proceedings on the Motion for this Order; such Questions shall include the Questions on any Amendments selected by the Speaker which may then be moved; proceedings may continue, though opposed, after the moment of interruption; and Standing Order No. 41A (Deferred divisions) shall not apply.—(Penny Mordaunt.)
(7 months ago)
Commons ChamberIt is a great pleasure to make this statement on behalf of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee about its report “Financial distress in local authorities”. Let me first thank the Leader of the House for tabling the business motion that has allowed the statement to be made. Our Committee Clerk is excited about the fact that we have apparently set a procedural precedent today; I was certainly not aware of that, but I am now. Let me also thank the Backbench Business Committee for originally providing the time for the statement.
Our inquiry looked into the extent of the funding gap in local authorities’ finances, and some of the main spending challenges that they face: social care, special educational needs and homelessness. The report brings attention to key issues ahead of the upcoming local government financial settlement. It makes recommendations not only for urgent action to resolve the immediate crisis, but larger reforms for the Government to consider after the next election.
Everyone recognises that the financial crisis in local authorities across England is out of control. In recent months an alarming number of them have issued section 114 notices—admissions that their spending is exceeding their income—thus effectively declaring bankruptcy. In the last six years, eight authorities have issued such notices; in the previous 18 years, none did. It is no longer the case that a small number of individual councils with particular issues are in financial distress. We are now seeing widespread financial distress across large parts of local government, and the situation is only getting worse. The Committee has heard evidence from the Local Government Association that one fifth of councils may be in financial distress within the next year.
At the heart of this crisis is a multi-billion-pound funding gap. The income available to local authorities from council tax, retained business rates and government grants has not kept pace with the increased demand for their services and the effect of inflation. As a result, the Local Government Association estimates that authorities face a funding gap of £4 billion over the next two years to maintain services at their current levels.
Witnesses have told us that the current funding system is “broken” and “not fit for purpose”. Successive Governments since 2010 have reduced the level of central Government grants awarded to local authorities by about 50%. This has been partly offset by a 20% increase in council tax, which has therefore led to an overall reduction in local authority core spending power of 26% in real terms between 2010 and 2021.
In the short term, local authorities need immediate additional funding. Our report recommends that the Government must include additional funding in the local government finance settlement for 2024-25 to fill the gap. Last week the Government announced £600 million of extra funding, and I give credit to the Minister, who has been assiduous in listening to the views of Members on this subject. However, although those measures are welcome, they are not sufficient.
Our report recognises that the Government have recently begun consultations on other methods of increasing the funds available to local authorities. We have cautiously welcomed the fact that they are considering giving authorities additional capital flexibilities to fund day-to-day costs, but we have recommended that those additional flexibilities should be considered carefully and limited to extending flexibilities over invest-to-save activity. We do not want to store up problems for future years.
Our report also recommends other ways in which the Government can improve funding for local authorities in the medium term. We have repeated the recommendation, which our Committee first made in 2021, that the Government must urgently reform council tax. This would involve undertaking a revaluation of properties and introducing additional council tax bands. Finally, we have once again called for the Government to implement the business rates reset and fair funding review, to which they committed themselves in 2016 but which they have yet to deliver, and to reintroduce multi-year settlements.
Our inquiry asked witnesses what had caused the sharp rise in council expenditures. It identified three particular areas where costs have risen significantly: adults’ and children’s social care, special educational needs, and homelessness. On adults’ social care, the increasingly complex needs of a changing population continue to drive up costs, and long-term workforce shortages and inflationary pressures have made the position worse. As the Committee recommended back in 2022, the Government need to recognise that local authorities will need several billion pounds of additional funding each year to continue to deliver and improve adult social care, and should plan a sustainable mechanism to deliver this funding that does not simply rely on increasing council tax.
On children’s social care, our inquiry found that councils are facing rising demand for residential care placements and a poorly functioning market for providing them. That has driven significant cost increases. Our report recommends an urgent comprehensive reform of the children’s social care system. As part of that, the Government should help local authorities consider greater collaboration so that between them they can deliver more children’s care services directly, instead of through private suppliers. Our inquiry also found that local authorities face significant financial pressures in providing services for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities—SEND. The number of education, health and care plans has “skyrocketed” since they were introduced in 2014, which has significantly increased demand for more expensive forms of SEND provision and home-to-school transport. Funding is provided to local authorities through the dedicated schools grant, but it is not enough to meet the demand and does not cover home-to-school transport.
The Government have already been forced to take temporary measures to prevent SEND costs from forcing a large number of councils into bankruptcy. In 2020, the Government introduced a “statutory override”, allowing local authorities to exclude any deficits on their DSG spending from their main revenue budgets. Local government faces a potential cliff edge of section 114 notices whenever the statutory override comes to an end. The question is: will the Treasury write off that extra borrowing when the time comes? Our report recommends, therefore, that in the short term the Government should provide additional funding for home-to-school transport. In the long term, there needs to be a fundamental reform of the EHCPs, based on a cross-Government review.
Finally, our report makes it clear that rising homelessness has increased costs for councils. A big cause of the increase has been the Government’s decision to freeze local housing allowance rates in April 2020, so our report welcomes the Government’s recent announcement that they will increase local housing allowance rates from April 2024. However, it also raises concerns about the Government’s decision to then re-freeze the rates in 2026. Instead, we recommend that local housing allowance should be retained at at least the 30th percentile of local market rents. In the longer term, the best solution, as the Committee has recommended repeatedly, is to build more social housing, which will always be cheaper than paying for temporary accommodation.
These problems require a long-term solution. That is why the Committee has made recommendations in this report for whichever Government are elected after the next election. The next Government, regardless of their political persuasion, must embark on a fundamental review of the systems of local authority funding and local taxation, both council tax and business rates. In doing so, they must be clear about what local authorities are for and how they can best co-ordinate with delivery of the Government’s wider objectives. We have recommended that the next Government should consider many options, which may include land value taxes and others, and wider fiscal devolution. They must also explore all options for reforming the funding and delivery of social care services, to address the underlying causes of the acute funding and delivery pressures currently faced by local authorities. It is my hope that the need we have identified for additional funding will be properly reflected in the local government financial settlement we will debate next week, and that our other recommendations will be carefully considered by this Government and whoever form the Government after the next election. I commend this report to the House.
Thank you very much for your statement, Mr Betts. I call Bob Blackman. I intend to call the Front Benchers at the end, if everybody is happy with that.
I thank the Chairman of the Select Committee for what he said. Clearly, one problem is that adult social services, children’s social services and homelessness services are all demand led, so it is very difficult for a local authority to predict the number of people involved and how much money will be required. Does he agree that what the Government and the Department need to look at now is how we can enable local authorities to have a pool of money nationally that could be used by a particular local authority when these demand-led services have dramatically increased the burden on it?
I thank the hon. Gentleman—I call him my Select Committee Friend—because he has been part of all these debates and always the Committee report was unanimous. He is absolutely right: we have to find a way of funding social care in the specific parts and for the general social care issues. Council tax simply cannot meet that burden; we cannot keep putting council tax up to cover it. That leads on to the additional challenge that most people do not receive social care and what they are seeing every year is their council tax going up but the services they do get—the libraries, parks, buses and road sweeping—being reduced. They are paying more and getting less, and that is not sustainable in the long term.
I commend my hon. Friend on his brilliant work. On local government funding, he will know that Birmingham City Council is under special measures having issued a section 114 notice, and other services have been hugely hit by the lack of funding. One reason councils have been forced into this position is that there has been a lack of funding to the reserves that keep them out of bankruptcy, so the lack of proper funding for local authorities is a real issue.
I recognise the particular problems in Birmingham. Some councils that have issued section 114 notices have specific problems; we know about the equal pay issues in Birmingham, for example. Some councils—I am referring generally—have perhaps brought those problems on themselves. However, as we say in the report, the challenge is no longer just individual councils with particular problems, but the generality of local government being under pressure, as set out by all our witnesses from the sector. In that situation, any challenging problem that comes to a council on top of a general problem can tip it over the edge.
I thank my hon. Friend for his report. Barnsley Council’s budget has seen some of the biggest cuts in the country, which makes it even more impressive that it has been given two awards for being council of the year. To date, my constituency of Barnsley East has received no levelling-up funding, although such funding is a drop in the ocean compared with the figures my hon. Friend was discussing. We are awaiting the decision on our final bid, which was made to the cultural fund. Does the Chair of the Select Committee know when that might be announced? I note the Minister is in his place and I hope he will look on the Elsecar Heritage Centre bid favourably.
If it was in my gift, of course I would give Barnsley the money it is asking for today, but unfortunately it is not. In another report, the Committee was fairly critical of the individual pots for levelling up, which are not joined up together. It is unsatisfactory that some councils can get bits of money from all these pots, while others get nothing at all. To address those problems, we have suggested a move towards single pots for local authorities, reflecting their needs and giving greater discretion and freedom to decide on spending at a local level. We are quite a long way off that at this stage. In principle, the Government recognise that is the way to travel, but they have not got a road map about how we are going to get there.
I thank my hon. Friend for all his work on this important report. It is a privilege to serve on the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee under his chairship. He does not need me to tell him that, like many local authorities, Nottingham City Council is in a perilous financial position. Our council’s spending power has been cut by a huge 28% compared with 2010, despite high levels of deprivation in our city. This is considerably higher than the average, still devastating, reduction of 19% among councils. How important does he believe it is to make the local government funding system fairer?
I completely agree that it should be made fairer. The only caveat I would add is that one authority’s system of fair funding is another authority’s unfair funding, which is always a challenge. Everyone accepts that the funding system must be brought up to date. The current funding system has data in it that goes back to the last century, which is not a reasonable way to allocate money in the current age, so yes, it needs to be revised.
On the funding cuts and the council tax increases, the biggest funding cuts have tended to be made to those councils that used to receive the most grant, which tend to be the poorer councils. The council tax increases have disadvantaged councils with a low council tax base, which tend to be those councils who received the biggest cuts. We have not gone into that in detail in this report, but I know we have had evidence to that effect in the past.
I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for this important report, which makes sobering reading for Members across the House. Does he agree that the reason his measures are so necessary in Leeds is that Government funding to Leeds City Council has been cut by the Conservative Government by £2.5 billion since 2010? That has left Leeds City Council, an excellent Labour-run council, with a shortfall of £65 million for the 2024-25 financial year. The £2.5 billion of cuts to Government funding since 2010 equate to about £75 million per ward, leaving the council struggling to deliver essential services for some of the most vulnerable people in our city. Is that not why everyone here, regardless of their political party, needs to support the measures set out in this report?
I thank my hon. Friend for his question. We clearly set out that the problem is due to a cut in funding. That is the result of a reduction in the central Government grant, with council tax increases only partly, but not wholly, replacing the funds. That issue needs addressing if we want councils to continue not only performing social care functions, but doing everything else that our communities rely on. We need fundamental reform; that is what we are calling for in the longer term. That is a challenge for any Government—I look at both Front Benches here—because if we reform local finance, some people will have to pay more and some will have to pay less. I always say that those people who pay more never forget about it and continue to blame the Government for years to come. Those who pay less will thank the Government and then forget about it next year. There is always a challenge when it comes to spreading the tax take around differently. But we will have to do it differently, because these council services—not just social care, but the parks, the buses, the libraries, the roads, the environmental services, the planning, and the economic development, which has almost fallen off the scale in some councils—are really important.
The reality is that 14 years of ideological austerity cuts have left many authorities on the brink of bankruptcy. From 2015 to now, Bradford Council has had £100 million-worth of cuts, which has left our services decimated and our communities devastated and deprived of much-needed services. I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for his report. I particularly welcome the call for much-needed and immediate funding for local authorities. Does he agree that the much-needed funding must be given, and if it is not given, any blame for section 144 notices should lie directly and squarely at the door of this Government?
I thank my hon. Friend for his question. The report says that not every section 144 notice can be blamed on the Government. There will be circumstances in which councils get themselves into difficulty, but what we have said is that there are general problems coming down for councils, which have been created by a shortage of funding. We did make reference to Bradford. Bradford’s problem is the young age of its population—the number of children. Children services are run by trustees appointed by the Secretary of State for Education. That body has demanded from the council an amount equivalent to about 50% of its council budget. We could get the ridiculous situation in which the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities sends in commissioners to run services to try to find the money to pay the trustees who are appointed by the Secretary of State for Education. That does not seem a great way for local government to operate.
I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for what I think is a very important report. I also thank the Committee members who have spent a significant amount of time getting under the skin of the issue. First, does he agree that, ahead of the scheduled finance settlement next Wednesday, the Government need to finally take responsibility for the financial crisis in local government? Secondly, does he share my concern that the breakdown in local government audit is contributing to the removal of the early warning system?
I thank my hon. Friend for that question. Yes, it certainly is doing so. I have just produced a report about local government audit. There is a real problem there. If accounts have not been audited for three years, as in most cases, but probably longer in other cases, how on earth do we know what is happening in local council finances? Certainly, getting local audit on an even keel by the end of this year is very important, but where accounts are qualified, as they will be, councils should not be blamed for that; it is the problem of the local audit system, and we really must sort that out.
On behalf of the Government, I thank the Chair of the Select Committee and all his colleagues on it for the work that they do in general, and for the report in particular. I will obviously study it with great care, and respond in the usual way. He made a number of points. I think we can all agree that certainty and security for the local government sector are important, and I concur with his view that there is clear merit in multi-year settlements. I also agree that whoever is standing at the Dispatch Box in the role of local government Minister after the next general election—I pray to God that it will be me, and I hope that my prayers will be answered—reforms will always be difficult and complex. I would be interested to know whether the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) sees any merit in establishing some cross-party working and blue-sky thinking on the issue, in order hopefully to land something that can deliver certainty and security for five, 10, 15 or 20 years ahead, to give comfort to local government leaders, section 151 officers and others.
While I might not completely agree with the Minister’s prayers, I agree that if we are to sort this out for the long term, particularly social care funding, we need a system that has general support. The Committee has called for that in the past. What we did on pensions reform a few years ago, cross party, has stuck, so there is merit in that suggestion. Whether we can achieve it, I do not know, but we ought to try.
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. This morning, my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) asked the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what owners of XL bully dogs who have missed the registration deadline for genuine reasons can do to ensure that they keep in line with guidance. A constituent who missed the deadline contacted my office today. They were unable to get their dog neutered in time for genuine reasons. The advice of the Secretary of State was to register as soon as possible; however, the Government’s website says that the service is now closed. I seek your advice on how things can be corrected, and the website can be reopened, if that was the intention of the Secretary of State, so that dog owners who want to do the right thing and register their pet can do so.
(7 months ago)
Commons ChamberI beg to move,
That the draft Electoral Commission Strategy and Policy Statement, which was laid before this House on 14 December 2023, be approved.
It is a pleasure to be able to present this important strategy and policy statement for parliamentary consideration this afternoon. We may disagree on many points, but one point on which I hope we can agree is that there are plenty of issues in our political life to raise the blood pressure. Let me say respectfully to the House that this strategy and policy statement is not one of them, for reasons that I shall set out.
The Electoral Commission Strategy and Policy Statement was laid before Parliament on 14 December 2023 for approval by resolution of both Houses within a 40-day period in accordance with section 4C(9)(a) of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. Let me start by asserting clearly and unequivocally a concern which I know many right hon. and hon. Members have had, and which I wish to nail from the outset. This statement, this strategy, in no way undermines or challenges the robust, legislatively underpinned independence of the Electoral Commission. The commission plays an important part in our national life. It has a key and important role, and the House and, I believe, the country recognise that.
The statement gives the Government no new teeth or power. How, if and when the commission faces into the guidance is up to it and the scrutiny of Mr Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission, whose role is exercised on behalf of the House. The commission, as is set out in the 2000 Act, only has a “duty to have regard”. We are not saying—not least because we cannot, and do not wish to—that the commission “will” or “must”. We create no new duty to report to the Government, only a duty for the Speaker’s Committee to maintain its relations with the commission. The commission will continue to report only to Parliament, as it has done since its creation in 2000. The statement—I want to make this very clear, because this is a twin approach of independence—does not politicise Mr Speaker’s Committee or the Office of the Speaker in respect of its commission functions.
I have been listening to what the Minister is saying with a bit of disbelief. If the commission will not have to take any notice of the statement or act on it, but need only have regard to it, what is it here for? If “having regard to” means “taking seriously and doing something about”, that applies both to the commission and to Mr Speaker’s Committee, which has to oversee the commission and its work. Does that not compromise the neutrality and independence of Mr Speaker as well as the Electoral Commission? This is a very serious matter.
If that were true, it would be a serious matter, but I must say to the hon. Gentleman—for whom I have huge respect, and who chairs the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee with much distinction—that I do not see it that way, and neither do the Government. However, he takes me from my explanation of what the statement is not, to explaining why we are approving it. That is the nub of this issue. We see—I see—the role of this Government and of any party that has the honour to be in government in the United Kingdom as that of a pro tem custodian of our democracy. That is why we have election law, and why I am the elections Minister. Democracy is, as we discussed last week in the Holocaust Memorial Day debate, a fragile flower under huge pressure.
We believe that the statement is timely, not least because of the raft of changes that have flown through and been delivered by statutory instrument from the recent Elections Act 2022. We are also hugely cognisant of the threats to the robustness and resilience of our democracy presented by overseas interference, fake news, deepfakes, and artificial intelligence. The solemn role of pro tem custodian, and holding the flame of democracy while we serve in government, are important.
If the right hon. Gentleman will be a little patient, he will have his question answered. He asks his question in his way and, in the words of Frank Sinatra, I shall answer it in mine.
The first paragraph rehearses this key point:
“The Electoral Commission is the independent regulatory body responsible for giving guidance and support to Electoral Registration Officers and Returning Officers in undertaking electoral registration and conducting elections and recall petitions effectively and in accordance with the law.”
Anybody disagree with that? No. Paragraph 2 states:
“The Chair of the Commission has the responsibility in law for acting as the Chief Counting Officer at national referendums in the UK…and the staff of the Commission support the Chair in that role, when it is required, to work through local electoral authorities to deliver such events.”
The delivery of smooth and seamless referenda is not, I would suggest, a revolutionary power grab by His Majesty’s Government.
Paragraph 3 states:
“The government believes the Electoral Commission has an important role to play in maintaining the integrity of our elections and public confidence in that integrity.”
I do not think that point will get the Division bells ringing. In answer to the question from the Chair of the Select Committee, paragraph 3 continues:
“The duty to have regard does not require the Commission to give lesser priority to, or to ignore, any of its other statutory duties. The Electoral Commissioners and the Commission’s executive leadership will remain responsible for determining the Commission’s strategy, priorities, how it should discharge its duties (including day-to-day operations) and the allocation of its resources, as agreed by the relevant parliaments. It will be for the Commission to determine how to factor the Statement into its decision-making processes and corporate documents such as the Five-Year Plan.”
Paragraph 4 states:
“One of the government’s policy priorities is ensuring our democracy is secure, fair, modern and transparent.”
One could easily transpose the word “government” for “Parliament” there. Who will argue with ensuring that our democracy is secure? Who will argue that our democracy should not be fair, modern, or transparent? Paragraph 4 goes on to say that it is a priority to ensure
“that those who are entitled to vote should always be able to exercise that right freely, securely and in an informed way;…that fraud, intimidation and interference have no place in our democracy;…that we are the stewards of our shared democratic heritage which we keep up to date for our age.”
That is my custodian point again.
Paragraph 5 states:
“One of the leading government objectives is tackling electoral fraud”.
Anyone in this House in favour of electoral fraud? I did not think so—and rightly so. Paragraph 5 goes on to state that the commission should
“support continued effective delivery of voter identification by raising public awareness about the requirement to show an approved form of photographic identification before taking part in UK parliamentary elections, local elections in England and elections in Northern Ireland”.
It has done that in Northern Ireland for the last 20 years or so. This issue was raised in close questioning from the Lords Constitution Committee just the other month. The important role of the Government, the commission and other agencies in raising the profile and public awareness of voter identification was a matter that we discussed at some length.
I am listening to the Minister reading out a list of the things that the commission is obliged to do by law anyway, so why he has to restate them in this paper, I do not know. The clear advice to the Committee and to the Speaker’s Committee was that if certain items were identified as priorities for the commission, other things would per se be of lesser priority. For example, overseas voter registration is a priority, but the registration of voters in this country, where 8 million people are not on the register, is not listed as a priority. This skews the work of the Electoral Commission, whether the Minister likes it or not.
The hon. Gentleman was obviously so busy trying to find his rebuttal point that he did not listen to my answer to the first question. I set out clearly that the duty to “have regard” does not require the commission to give lesser priority to, or ignore, any of its other statutory duties. The electoral commissioners and the commission’s executive leadership will remain responsible for determining the commission’s strategy and priorities, and how it should discharge its duties. The statement in no way undermines, countermands or double-guesses any work of the commission.
The paper goes on to talk about tackling electoral fraud, which I know we would all wish to do. Crucially, it also talks about the role of the commission in working with returning officers and others to ensure the maximum opportunity for those with disabilities to take part in the ballot on the day and in polling stations. Nobody in this place, or the other place, would think that was not a noble aim.
I rise to make a short contribution to the debate. I welcome the work that has been done on the policy statement. Having read the examination undertaken by the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission and the report by the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee, I am glad the Government have responded to elements of the critique. I also acknowledge the incredibly important role that Mr Speaker and his Committee play in the existing governance of the Electoral Commission— I want to make sure that is on the record, because they do their job well.
For me, and I suspect other colleagues who supported the Elections Act 2022—the source of today’s instrument— there are a couple of additional arguments that should be put alongside what the Minister has said. First, it is reasonable to have a strategy and policy statement. Other regulators, such as Ofcom and Ofgem, have one. Secondly, this debate is an opportunity for the whole Chamber to engage in the Electoral Commission’s work. I rather wish that the Chamber was even fuller. Be that as it may, this is rightly an opportunity for more right hon. and hon. Members, other than those who sit on the Speaker’s Committee or on the Select Committee, to take part.
Does the hon. Lady not accept that comparing this with other regulators is profoundly confusing? They are different. Regulating the water industry, with the Government quite rightly having a view about how our water purity, sewerage and so on should be controlled, is completely different from the Government interfering in how an independent Electoral Commission should carry out its operations.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for making that point. Let me say in a respectful tone of voice that I am glad to see the depth of work that he has done on this, but I hope that he recognises that there are many of us on the Conservative Benches who have also spent very many years focusing on this area. My answer to him would be that there are partial similarities and there are partial differences. I think that he is wrong and that some of his colleagues are unwise to throw quite so many accusations in such a tone today. In part, there are good reasons why it is reasonable to set out in one place the Government’s priorities, which, as the statement sets out, are adjacent and relevant to matters to do with the regulators. That is what today’s document does. He is right that that is somewhat different from the more detailed work that is done by the regulators of water and electricity and so on. He is also right, of course, to point to the essential independence of the Electoral Commission. I am glad that he has done so, because it gives me the opportunity to add my emphasis to that as well.
There is nothing to be concerned about from this statement in respect of the independence of the commission. We have heard those assurances from the Minister today. It is extremely important that he has set that out, and I am glad that he has done so, and I add my voice to the essential nature of that. But I want briefly to go back to the need for wider participation in the work of the Electoral Commission. We are able to spend, periodically, a few minutes of question time on the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission, and good work is done through that mechanism, but it is perhaps somewhat indirect. It is important for the whole Chamber to be able to look at the important issues that sit behind our constitution and our electoral system.
I wish to move on to the contents of the strategy and policy statement. I am working in particular from the points that we see in paragraph 19, where it is emphasised that this regulator needs to work together with others to discharge its duties. I want to emphasise that in the context of the demands being made on regulators this year with regard to artificial intelligence. Members will be very well aware of that from the White Paper on regulating artificial intelligence, which was set out last year, and on which we are shortly to have an update from a different Department.
The key point is this: it is the world’s biggest election year. Billions of citizens will be going to the ballot box, including here. These elections will be the first to happen since the significant advances in AI. There are legitimate concerns, anxieties and, indeed, evidence from our security services, for us to ask whether this technology will be used for fabrication, for manipulation and to affect the integrity of elections. It goes without saying that the integrity of elections matters, so that people’s free choice achieves what they intend.
The Government have asked regulators across their fields to set out how they will work with artificial intelligence. Clearly, the Electoral Commission is one of those regulators—and somewhat in the hotseat in this regard. It is my view that, in respect of the grand concerns and anxieties, the Electoral Commission and connected enforcement agencies could helpfully set out the preparation that they have done and give reassurance publicly about their readiness for elections this year. With reference to the substance of today’s statement, I ask the Minister what discussions he has had with the Electoral Commission on its work with other regulators, for example as per paragraphs 19 and 20 of the statement, which talk about keeping up to date with the realities of campaigning activities—I think that is a good tone to take there. I also ask the Minister in what way he expects to keep the statement itself and future iterations of the statements updated in regards to technology and national security considerations where those might be relevant.
I agree with the Minister that we here are stewards of our democracy. I have been in his particular position before. I set out the approach that we ought always to strive for our elections to be secure, fair, modern, accessible and transparent. I also agree that this is some of the most important work that we can do. None the less, I conclude by saying gently that it is a legitimate function of Government to address themselves to these principles. That is what we need the Government and Parliament to do, because we are the custodians of law as well as of those principles. We did that with the Elections Act, and we did it prior to that with the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. We have also done it before then and since then, and we will continue to do so.
It is a legitimate function of Government to enact changes and updates to electoral law when they are asked to do so, perhaps through a manifesto commitment in a democratic process. We do that through Parliament, so it is good, as I have said, that we have this wider opportunity for Parliament to be able to engage in the work of the Electoral Commission while crucially respecting its design and independence, and I am glad that we are getting that chance to do so today.
I am speaking today as Chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee and a member of the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission. I also declare my interest as vice-president of the Local Government Association.
When the Minister was given responsibility for local government finance, he no doubt thought that he had got the hospital pass, which some Ministers get from time to time when they have a very challenging brief and a very difficult situation to face. Then he realised that that hospital pass was coming down the road straight away, and that he was going to have to try to justify this statement today. He did a good job of telling us what the current responsibilities are of the Electoral Commission; what he did not do was give us one example of something that the commission is not doing right at present which they will be made to do right and better by this statement. What are the problems that need addressing, and if the motion passes in this House, what will be different tomorrow from today? He did not give one example of that. That is why in the end both the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee and the Speaker’s Committee said that, at worst, this statement process compromises the independence of the Electoral Commission—the commission believes that as well—and at best, it is simply unnecessary and will contribute nothing whatsoever.
I say to the Minister—and he has made this point—that democracy is of course very precious and it is the responsibility of all of us to protect it. The Electoral Commission is a very important part of that process in its oversight of elections and the electoral processes in this country, so it must be seen to be independent—not just independent in practice but perceived to be independent. Despite what the Minister said in the very detailed way he addressed the statement, the perception is that the Government are trying to do something to influence the Electoral Commission. If they are not, what is the point of this? If they have no intention of influencing the Electoral Commission, we should just let it get on with the current situation and be accountable to Mr Speaker’s Committee—that is surely where we ought to be.
The Speaker’s Committee and the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee had very helpful advice from senior and authoritative officers in this House who concluded in reporting to our Committees that the statement would constitute interference with the commission’s operational independence. That is what we were advised; we were advised that no cogent explanation had been put forward for why the statement was needed. We have not heard one today either; the Minister did the best job he could, but it was not a coherent and cogent explanation. Further, we were told that it was hard to see how this statement would help the commission in its work.
The statement says that the commission should have regard to the way in which it operates, and gives it certain priorities. If among the commission’s many responsibilities some have to be a priority, others must be of a lower priority—that is pretty self-evident as a conclusion.
Those other things are less important. Either that directs the commission to concentrate its resources on the things that the Government think are important, or the commission will just ignore it and walk away; either way, we do not know what we are here for. Either we are here to interfere with the work of the commission, direct it and give it priorities, or we are simply here to say to the commission, “There are some things that the Government think are rather nice, but go away and ignore them because they don’t really matter. That’s not your statutory responsibility.”
Ultimately, the commission has statutory responsibilities. We were advised on the Committee that some of the wording in the statement differs from the wording in law, so the commission could be caught between following the law and following the guidance. It would end up in court, with lawyers making a lot of money from the conflicts—lawyers always make money where there is confusion in wording. The Government ought to be careful about what they are asking us to do.
Reference was made to other regulators. Other regulators are essentially agents of Government: for example, Ofwat exists to carry out Government policy about how our water should be kept clean. The Electoral Commission is not an agent of Government. It is therefore very different from the other regulators—the agents—that the right hon. Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith) and Ministers have referred to.
It goes back to the question that I put to the Minister. If other regulators fail to abide by the direction given by Government, they are removed. We have not heard what the consequences will be from the Government of not abiding by the range of “shoulds” within the statement.
I wonder whether it is worse than that. Regulators should be removed if they are found to be incompetent. Given the state of the water industry with Ofwat and the Environment Agency, the Government probably ought to be stepping in and removing those regulators, but they are not.
I politely ask the Chair of the Select Committee where in my remarks opening the debate I talked about other regulatory bodies and tried to rank them pari passu with the Electoral Commission. I will tell him where I did it: I did not.
The Minister’s right hon. friend the Member for Norwich North raised it, and she was the Minister who took the Bill through Parliament, so it is worth taking seriously what she had to say.
The Minister did not tell us what problems the statement is meant to address. It would be helpful if he did so. [Interruption.]
I am trying to be helpful. Read Hansard. I have answered the hon. Gentleman’s question three times. If he neither understands nor can hear the answer, that is not my fault.
The Minister is clearly trying to be helpful but not succeeding.
In the end, it comes back to the point that the Electoral Commission’s priorities do not have to be the Government’s priorities, and the Government have no right to direct the commission in its work. Again I ask: what problem is the motion designed to address? If the Minister cannot articulate what the problem is and how the statement will change the behaviour of the Electoral Commission, frankly every Member of this House is busy and has lots of things to do. Have we just wasted 90 minutes of our time, because in two years we will come back and find that today’s motion had no impact? I rather hope that that is the case, because the other scenario would be that the Government are interfering in the Electoral Commission’s work, which is the worse of the two ways of looking at this.
First, I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions this afternoon. To address the last part of the speech made by the hon. Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler), I have been very grateful to colleagues on the Opposition Benches who have said some rather nice and kind words about me personally. I will not press to a Division the question of whether I deserve those nice and kind words—I am not sure how my side of the House would vote.
I say this in all seriousness: I hope the House knows me well enough to know that if I thought the intentions that sit behind this statement, the Elections Act, or any of the statutory instruments that have flowed from that Act were what hon. Members have asserted they were, I would have tendered my resignation to the Prime Minister. As a democrat—as somebody who has stood in elections, who has lost and won elections, and who has served in this place, if only for eight and a half years—I can say that there is nothing malign or mission-creep in anything that we are discussing today. I am not expecting that sentiment to change the votes of Opposition Members, but I say it sincerely. A number of Members have asked where the statement came from. Its genesis is, of course, to be found in sections 4A to 4E of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, inserted by the Elections Act 2022—that is where it comes from.
I will try to address some of the comments that have been made. My shadow, the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi), said that there was a political agenda; there is not. We paid full regard to the submissions of consultees, and we took a different view from them. That is perfectly fine. It does not undermine the system, nor is it a dangerous politicisation of the commission.
I believe my right hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith), a distinguished former elections Minister, was right when she referred to this as a reasonable vehicle. She asked about my discussions with the commission. I have had a very useful meeting with its senior team, at which we discussed a range of issues and how we can work together to support and buttress our democracy. Those conversations will continue. The statement is iterative and organic, and it can of course be refreshed to reflect issues and challenges as they arise in the field of AI, overseas involvement and so on. The House will notice that I use the word “as”—as they arise—not “if”.
My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady)—I call him an hon. Friend because he is a friend—asked: where is the parliamentary sovereignty? When the Division bell rings, that is the exercise of Parliament’s sovereignty, and he will vote accordingly.
The hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), in an rather confusing way, said he thought the statement was wrong because it did not mandate the commission or tell it what to do, and then went on in almost the same breath to say how frightful it would be if the statement could do that. I am afraid the hon. Gentleman is proving to be, on this issue and on this issue alone, a little bit of a pushmi-pullyu, because the independence of the commission is absolutely safe and sacrosanct.
Let me read back into the record from the statement that the
“duty to have regard does not require the Commission to give lesser priority to, or to ignore, any of its other statutory duties. The Electoral Commissioners and the Commission’s executive leadership will remain responsible for determining the Commission’s strategy, priorities, how it should discharge its duties”,
and so on and so forth, within its five-year plan. The commission will not be reporting to me, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, No. 10 or the Cabinet Office. It will continue to report to Parliament through Mr Speaker’s Committee, using the functions it has.
I hope the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, but I will not, because the House has a lot of business today. Let me address the points that have been raised by others, because I want to give due attention to the points they have made.
The hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith) really should have a word with her own Front Benchers about overseas voters. Let me quote from her hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall on the statutory instrument we took upstairs on Wednesday 6 December 2023, when, from the Labour Front Bench, she told the Committee:
“We do not oppose the principle of overseas voting and giving citizens who still have a strong connection to the UK a voice in our elections, and that includes people who still have a strong connection to our local services and communities”.—[Official Report, Eighth Delegated Legislation Committee, 6 December 2023; c. 6.]
So the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood is entirely out of step with her hon. Friend on the Front Bench.
I heard the hon. Lady very clearly say that in principle she was opposed to overseas voters. If I misheard her, then I apologise, but that was certainly the thrust of the remarks she made.
The hon. Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) describes the statement as a political agenda. Is improving disabled access having a political agenda? If so, or if that is the charge, I am going to plead guilty. Is cracking down on electoral fraud? If that is the charge, clap me in irons. Is ensuring that the rules of registration and the importance of voter ID are promoted? If so, take me off to the Tower. I plead guilty as charged.
The point, as I have consistently said, is to augment and buttress the work of the commission, and to give some reference tools in Parliament’s assessment. I also want to take issue with the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood—again, I hope I heard her correctly—who prayed in aid the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, as if it was an ancient symbol of our democratic function that we have repealed. It sat for five years as a way of giving confidence to the markets that a coalition of two parties could deliver the clean-up strategy for what her party had left behind in 2010. So its repeal was not a dismantling of some great, permanent piece of our democratic architecture.
The hon. Member for Brent Central seemed to refer to this as a vendetta against the commission. Let me just invite her—[Interruption.] She referred to it as a vendetta—I wrote the word down. The record will say that she thought that Mr Johnson, as Prime Minister, was waging a vendetta against the commission because the commission had said something with which he disagreed; that was the word the hon. Lady used and I will play it back to her advisedly. I took a contemporaneous note of the word as she used it. Let me just invite her to consider that if we wished to wage a war against the commission, we could neuter it, fetter it, force it to report to us and we could abolish it, but we haven’t and we won’t. Why won’t we, why aren’t we? It is because we know that the commission is important, we respect its work, and we honour, cherish and guard its independence. We believe that this statement and the previous legislation that this House has put through will augment the accountability of the commission to Parliament and, in so doing, serve this as its sole and only purpose: to build on Parliament’s and the public’s confidence in its work. The commission was and is independent, and it will continue to be independent. I commend this motion to the House.
Question put.
(7 months, 1 week ago)
Commons ChamberI call the Chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee.
One of the better aspects of devolution so far, which might actually work, is the trailblazer projects that have been rolled out in the west midlands and Greater Manchester. One of the key elements of those projects is having a single pot of money. I have repeatedly asked whether it is the intention to roll devolution deals out to the other combined authorities, and I have been assured that it is. Why, then, in the first iteration of what a new devolution deal might look like, have South Yorkshire, Merseyside and West Yorkshire been told that a single pot of money will not be included in the devolution deal? Why are the Government backtracking on the commitment to give those areas a full devolution deal, not a devolution-minus deal?
We have invited the combined authority areas that the hon. Gentleman mentions to progress to level 4 devolution, which as he rightly says does not come with a single settlement. It is something that we are still considering, and when we see it in action in the west midlands and Greater Manchester we will be able to assess its value for money and whether it is delivering for people there. I assure him that this is not devolution-minus; we are giving devolution-plus to communities the length and breadth of the country.