Oral Answers to Questions

Clive Betts Excerpts

Monday 16th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

We come to the Chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee, Mr Clive Betts.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

We look forward to seeing the Minister and the Secretary of State at the Select Committee to discuss these matters early after the recess. It seems there are some genuine improvements in the proposals, particularly, as described in paragraphs 50 and 60 of the explanatory notes, the clauses that give greater strength to local plans in looking at individual planning applications.

There are two areas where the Bill might be strengthened. The first refers back to what the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) said. Yes, developers will have to set out what they intend to build, but what sanctions will the local authority have if developers do not follow those promises? The second is about what happens if a developer does not observe conditions attached to a planning permission. That has happened with Avant Homes at Owlthorpe in my constituency—I have talked to the Minister about this—where the developer is refusing to comply with a whole range of conditions, including on wheel washers, compounds for workers and engaging with the local tenants’ association. I notice that the other day, the Daily Mail drew attention to the fact that the same developer has not met conditions in Nottinghamshire. What sanctions will the local authority have to deal with a developer in such a situation and to take into account those failures when a future planning permission is put in for?

[Stuart Andrew]

I am grateful to the Chair of the Select Committee and for the reports that fed into many of the changes we have made. He is right to raise those issues. One issue communities see far too often, and the reason why they are sometimes opposed to development, is that they do not actually get what was promised at the beginning. I am really keen that, through the Bill, we give that power back to local communities and ensure neighbourhood plans are strengthened.

Building Safety Bill

Clive Betts Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Wednesday 20th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Stuart Andrew]

I must start with a reminder of where this journey started: 72 people lost their lives in the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which was the largest loss of life in a residential fire since the second world war. All our thoughts are with those families who have lost loved ones. The Government are determined to ensure that such a tragedy never happens again.

I thank the Members of this House, noble Lords, cladding groups and industry stakeholders who have worked tirelessly on this landmark legislation. I remind Members that the Bill not only creates an improved building safety regulatory system but protects leaseholders, who have become victims in the building safety crisis. We have stuck to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State’s principles on building safety, which are that we must make industry pay to fix the problems for which it is responsible; protect leaseholders; and restore common sense to the assessment of building safety risks, thereby speeding up the fixing of the highest-risk buildings and stopping buildings being declared unsafe unnecessarily .

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

I accept that a lot of what the Minister is saying is correct—that those who are responsible should pay and leaseholders should not—but he missed out one group that has been particularly affected by Grenfell: social housing tenants. Why is the Minister not prepared to offer them the same financial support as he is giving to leaseholders?

[Stuart Andrew]

We continue to review all these matters. We are looking at and consulting on the whole of the affordable housing and social housing policy area, and we will come back to ensure that we get it right.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stuart Andrew]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her engagement, too. She raised this important point with me yesterday. Yes, absolutely, we have officials looking at that, but also, as I have said, the Building Safety Regulator will be assessing buildings such as those. If this becomes an area that needs further consideration, we will look at what measures need to be introduced.

[Mr Betts]

Will the Minister give way?

[Stuart Andrew]

I will take one more intervention and then I must progress.

[Mr Betts]

I thank the Minister for giving way. He is being very generous, but these are important and quite complicated issues. There is a general welcome for the Government’s attempts to take a more proportionate approach and for moving away, albeit over a period of time, from EWS1 forms to PAS 9980, which can cover whole blocks rather than individual properties. The two questions that the Select Committee has not had answers to are, first, whether the Government will look at making the building regulator responsible for deciding which blocks need this new assessment rather than the building owners, who might have a particular interest in saying no; and, secondly, whether he will ensure that the professional indemnity insurance scheme also applies to assessors on the PAS 9980 assessments as well as to those on the EWS1 forms?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Minister for the way he introduced the amendments, and I thank the Labour spokesman, the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook), who spoke in a non-party way about the matter. I pay tribute to those on both sides of the House who have been working on the Bill, often without proper recognition. Among them I include the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), the Chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee. Its first report on the leasehold disaster was critical to getting Government and some people outside to pay attention.

If anyone from a major media organisation is listening, I urge them to make sure that they have a housing editor who can pay attention to this issue and provide continuity. During the four or five years since Grenfell, several people have taken up the issue of the fire itself, but no one has provided the necessary continuity when it comes to television and radio programmes. Institutional memory is required if we are to understand how we got to where we are, and where we need to get to. For residential leaseholders, fair, detailed, expert housing coverage matters as much as coverage of health, economics, defence and other things. I commend to media organisations the idea of having a housing editor and a team who can help us to do our work better, because without media reflection of our efforts, we will not go as far or as fast as we ought to.

Bluntly, the thinking in the Treasury has been the cause of much of the delay. The tragic deaths at Grenfell, where over 70 people died unnecessarily, were a spur to action. For too long, however, people said, “Look at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea; this is all its fault.” Most of the blocks affected are not in Chelsea or in Conservative-controlled areas, so we all have a responsibility to accept that we got things wrong.

What was needed to get this right? It was best put by Ted Baillieu in Victoria, Australia, who said that it was necessary to find the problems, fix the problems and fund the problems, and then get after the people who are responsible. If we had done that, for the last four years many more innocent residential leaseholders would have been able to live in homes that they knew to be safe and saleable, and we would be many steps further forward.

I hope that my hon. and right hon. Friends in the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities want to make sure that no block is left unremediated—in plain English, to make sure that every block is made safe—and then go after the money, but the Treasury is blocking that.

I put this question to my hon. Friend the Minister. Who will take claims against those other than the developers—the architects, the surveyors, the component manufacturers, the people who set the building standards and the people who did building control, whether in the public or private sector—who were involved? I am not saying that they are all responsible, but some are. In any other field, lawyers would be coming forward with a class action to put them all in the dock and claim from them the costs that would otherwise fall on innocent residential leaseholders.

For those who are new to this, I repeat that the only people who are totally innocent—the only people who do not own a single brick in the building—are the residential leaseholders, and yet they are being left with some of the costs. If it comes to Divisions, I will vote in a non-party way to try to keep the intentions of the House of Lords going on most of the issues.

I do welcome and accept what the Minister said about extending to three years the responsibilities of the Building Safety Regulator. That makes sense, given the timescale, but what is controversial is leaving residential leaseholders with some of the costs. I draw the House’s attention to the fire at Gibson Court in Woking in 2011. Six years later, those responsible were fined more than £300,000 because their fire protection work had been clearly inadequate. In that case, part of reason for the spread of the fire was the fact that lofts went right across the buildings.

I also draw the House’s attention to the point that the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich made about the fire in 2019 at Worcester Park, where 23 other blocks had to be made safe because one block went up in smoke in 11 minutes. If a fire can spread so far in that many minutes, the idea that it could be contained within one flat is not realistic; those who are vulnerable would have no chance of getting out safely.

I hope that this Bill has the power, under secondary legislation, to extend provisions on remediation costs to buildings below 11 metres, especially for the vulnerable, although I would prefer it to go as far as the House of Lords wanted, so that leaseholders do not have to pay.

Remember that a few years back, Government appeared to be thinking that costs of £15 billion could fall on these residential leaseholders, who did not have the money. I am not talking about people who live in big, expensive, multi-million-pound apartments looking out over the Thames. I ought, by the way, to declare an interest, as I have a small flat in Worthing, which does not even look out over the sea. Six of us bought the freehold and we have had no problems with this, or even with managing agents or insurance companies. I will be buying a leasehold on another property in London in time, and I hope it will not be affected either. I put that on the record, just in case someone says that I am talking from self-interest.

I am speaking in the interest of people who are poorer than I am, who live in homes that are less valuable than mine, and who have been lumbered with all the disadvantages of being a residential leaseholder—and now with this fire safety defect issue as well.

I reinforce what other hon. Members have said about insurance. Premiums are unreasonably high; I hope that the Competition and Markets Authority and the Financial Conduct Authority will quickly produce a report, and that publicity will make insurance companies bring rates down to market rates—that is to say, rates that are justified by the risk, not by what the market can be made to pay in a crisis. I also hope that all commissions, rebates and douceurs—sweeteners—paid by brokers or insurance companies and received by managing agents or landlords are disclosed. That ought to be out in the open.

For too long, too many people have got rich on the back of residential leaseholders. There are many more things that I would like to say, but I suspect that, given the amount of interest in the subject, I ought to stop now. As well as thanking those from both sides of the House who have worked on this, I thank the National Leasehold Campaign. Without it, we would not have had Victoria Derbyshire’s interest, which has been important. I thank the cladding groups, in all their manifestations. At great expense to themselves, and having given up some of their other responsibilities, they have brought these issues to the attention of Parliament.

I also thank officials in the Department, because after a very slow start, a group of people has been brought together to support Ministers in their legitimate aim of making sure that those who are responsible pay, and those who are not responsible do not have to.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to be able to speak in this debate. I thank the Father of the House, the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), for his kind words about the Select Committee. He certainly encouraged and prodded us to do the first report on leasehold reform. It was, as he said, a first step towards what we hope will eventually be much more significant reform, which I think the Government are committed to.

Since the tragedy of Grenfell, the Select Committee has produced five reports. I am pleased that the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) is in his place, because he has been with us right the way through those reports, all of which were agreed unanimously by the Select Committee. We have repeated over and over again that leaseholders who are not responsible should not have to pay, and neither should social housing tenants; they are no more responsible, and the two should be seen together and treated equally.

I am pleased with what the Minister said today. I hope it was not just a way to get the debate over with, without pushing away too many difficult questions, and that he is still prepared to look at broadening the scope of the Government’s offer to leaseholders and to social housing landlords and tenants. If that was a genuine offer and he is keen to work on it, that is welcome.

We clearly have come quite a long way since the first offer of a £400 million package to deal with ACM cladding. That was going to solve everything, but obviously it was not, even when the Chancellor stood up and offered in his Budget the £1 billion building safety fund and said that was going to give everything the Select Committee had asked for, which it was not and did not. We have moved on since then, so it is welcome that we have now got to a better place, although it is still not quite good enough.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rushanara Ali]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, if the Government do not invest in improving social housing, there is a real risk that some of that housing could become unsafe and could create fire risks, so it is incredibly short-sighted to divert funds from investing in improving social housing? I have seen that at first hand in my own constituency and how that can create risk.

[Mr Betts]

Absolutely. It is important that the money is available to make sure that all buildings are safe, that everyone is safe in their home, whether they be a leaseholder or a social housing tenant, and that the money provided to make those buildings safe comes from the various funds the Government have identified, and is paid fairly and equally to blocks, whether they are in the private sector or the social housing sector. I hope the Government will listen to that view, which has been expressed by the NatFed and the Local Government Association, to which I am grateful for helping with my amendments today. Just to declare that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association and very proud to be so, and I think its campaign, along with the NatFed’s on this issue, is fundamentally right.

[Sir Mike Penning]

What an awful long way we have come with this Bill. On the previous Bill, the Fire Safety Bill, we were told categorically that that was not the right vehicle for the sorts of remedial help people needed in all our constituencies and that this was the Bill. To be fair to the Minister and his civil servants, there has been huge movement—huge movement—compared with where we were when there was considerable unrest on the Conservative side of the House as well as around the House. One of the reasons this Bill has been changed so much is that there was general unrest across the Floor of the House as to what the Bill was actually saying and doing. Can I pay tribute to my colleagues on this side of the House? With a majority of this size, the Government could have ignored us, but they could not because there was too much unrest on this side of the House and the campaigning went on. I want to pay tribute to my colleagues on that point.

Is the Bill perfect? No, it is not going to be perfect. But do we need this Bill on the statute book in this Session? Yes, we do. That is why I will personally be supporting all the measures, and not voting for any of the amendments to send it back to the other place. I think a lot of the work can be done through secondary legislation. The Minister has indicated that. More work could be done, particularly in my opinion—I have said this on Report and Third Reading, and the Father of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), has touched on it, as have all of my colleagues here—with the insurance companies. The Father of the House cited how all the professional bodies that were responsible for building these properties—all of them—were insured, yet the insurance companies have got off scot-free.

I know that those in the Department will say—I have said this before, but let me just repeat it—that it would be very difficult to get the insurance companies to retrospectively pay for this work. That is what they said about mesothelioma, where companies had gone bust and people were dying and suffering from that horrible asbestos disease, but the Government actually brought the legislation forward so that we took a levy from the insurance companies to cover those missing employers, and we could do it with the missing companies. We could do it if we wanted to really do it, and I hope—I am going to go on and on to everyone in this House—that this can be done. Look at the way the Department for Work and Pensions did that Bill. I know a lot about it because I took it through the House, so I am slightly biased. It can be done.

I want to pause for a second, and I declare an interest as a former firefighter. I have nothing but admiration for our firefighters and emergency services who went into Grenfell, when others were quite understandably coming in the other direction. They saw things they never dreamed they would see in their careers. We do not want to see that again, but fires do recur, and our emergency services do a fantastic job. I hope that they are getting the psychiatric support for what some of those sights will have created in their lives. That will affect their lives going forward, and I have asked this question before of several Ministers.

However, the key to this Bill today is that we get it on the statute book. We can do more work through secondary legislation. I think it is absolutely imperative for our constituents that we get it on the book today, so that the other House listens to us and we get this on the statute book before the Queen’s Speech.

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[Stuart Andrew]

Once again, I thank all hon. Members for their contributions. They have raised lots of very serious points and questions and have clearly demonstrated a long-standing commitment not only to their constituents, but to this wider issue. I am grateful to right hon. and hon. Members for acknowledging that this piece of legislation is vastly different from what it was, and I apologise to the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook), for the necessity, I suppose, of the late amendments that we tabled. I hope that he agrees, however, that it is important for us to get the Bill on the statute book, and to start the process of making sure that people feel safe in their home. I was particularly struck by some of the contributions from my hon. Friends who mentioned that. I also thank all those who have been involved in campaigns; they have shown how hard-working campaigners can make a considerable contribution on a very serious issue such as this.

I will start by responding to some of the amendments that the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) tabled. I thank him and the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee for their prelegislative scrutiny of the Bill and their tireless scrutiny of the Government’s response since the fire at Grenfell Tower.

Amendment (e) to Lords amendment 184 states that no

“service charge is payable under a qualifying lease”

where the landlord is either a private registered provider of social housing or a local authority. It provides that funding to meet the costs concerned would come from the levy set out in clause 57. I reiterate the Government’s commitment to protecting leaseholders, but we will not be able to support the amendment. We are clear that those responsible for creating historical building safety defects need to pay to put them right. That principle should apply equally where the party responsible is a social housing provider or local authority. Social housing providers will not be subject to provisions that stipulate that building owners and landlords with a net worth of more than £2 million per in-scope building must pay all in-scope remediation costs. They will be required to pay in full only where they were involved in developing the building.

We are also introducing an ambitious toolkit of measures to allow those directly responsible for defective work to be pursued. Those measures include an extension to the limitation period under the Defective Premises Act 1972 to 30 years; a new course of action relating to product manufacturers; and provisions removing the protections afforded by special purpose vehicles and shell companies. We have been working closely with social housing providers to help them to understand the impact of these changes.

Amendment (f) to Lords amendment 184 provides that where

“the freeholder of a building is a local authority”,

remediation costs will be paid “in the first instance” by the developer of the building and otherwise through the levy set out in clause 57. Again, the Government will not be able to accept the amendment because developers are already expected to remediate their buildings, and as we have announced, developers have signed our pledge to commit to do that. We are also introducing the ambitious toolkit that I mentioned.

[Mr Betts]

I entirely accept that developers have promised to do what the Minister described, but what happens when developers have gone out of business and cannot do that? Where does that leave the social housing landlord?

[Stuart Andrew]

I committed earlier to continuing to work on the whole area of social housing, and I assure the hon. Gentleman that I am keen to deliver the ambitious affordable housing programme that we have announced. I do not want to see that affected in any way, so it is in my interest to ensure that we do everything we can in this area. I commit to our doing that.

[Mr Betts]

Will the Minister accept an invitation to come to the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee in due course to investigate the areas that are not currently covered?

Homes for Ukraine Scheme

Clive Betts Excerpts

Thursday 31st March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

I think the Minister is going to get asked these questions over and over again until we get some adequate answers from him.

First, it cannot be justified that councils are, quite rightly, getting £10,500 per year per refugee when refugees come over on the sponsor scheme—councils have to provide wraparound services; it is all there, it is all understood—but when refugees come under the family scheme, for the most part, apart from the housing checks, the council has to do everything to support them. Why is there no money under that scheme and yet £10,500 under the other scheme? Will the Minister explain the difference in terms of the offers that councils have to make to those refugees?

Secondly, the Local Government Association told the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee yesterday that 144 Ukrainian refugees have presented as homeless so far. They have come under a variety of schemes, with some under the sponsorship scheme, some through Ireland and other routes and some through the family scheme—that is because family members do not have to provide accommodation. The whole reason for the sponsorship scheme is that councils do not have enough affordable, readily available homes to house people. The choice is therefore to put these refugees into temporary accommodation—hotels—or to match them up with the generous offers that sponsors want to make in those communities. Yesterday, the Prime Minister accepted that councils should have access to the database of sponsors so that they can be responsible for matching up refugees or homeless people with sponsors who want to house them. Can the Government just get on with it?

[Eddie Hughes]

We are getting on with it. When the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) took the earlier urgent question, he explained how we are ramping up the process and ensuring that it is working as efficiently as possible. On the difference between the two schemes, people are completely at liberty to apply through the Homes for Ukraine scheme instead. I think we understand that people in the UK who are having a family member coming to live with them will provide services such as help with learning English, so some support that might otherwise be provided by a council will be given by a family. I think that is the natural way. However, as I said, it is not an either/or option; people can choose to apply through the Homes for Ukraine scheme. I fully accept that there is a challenge with regard to housing, and that is why it is tremendous that 200,000 people have decided to open up their homes.

Ukraine Sponsorship Scheme

Clive Betts Excerpts

Monday 14th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Select Committee on Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

I think that it is accepted in principle there will be general support for a scheme that allows individuals to welcome refugees into their homes. In terms of detail, the Secretary of State accepted that there would be a cost to local authorities, which will be key to making this work, as I am sure he accepts. Has he agreed with the Local Government Association—I declare my interest as a vice-president of the LGA—the costs that local authorities will get to cover education and other wraparound support services? Will those costs apply to people who come over on the community sponsorship scheme and to those on the family scheme? What about individuals who come here as family members but then cannot be accommodated in their family’s home because of the number of refugees involved? What are we going to do to accommodate those people? How is that accommodation going to be provided? What is the plan for that?

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the Chair of the Select Committee for his questions. The amount of money we are giving to local government is based on the Afghan resettlement scheme, so the amount that will be given to local authorities for early years, primary and secondary education matches exactly. Indeed, the overall local authority tariff—I hate to use the word “tariff” when we are talking about human beings—will be exactly the same. We are building on arrangements that we have with the LGA, and I have been in touch with James Jamieson, the leader of the LGA, as well as individual council leaders, to outline the level of support. Obviously, we will keep things under review to ensure that local government has what it needs.

On the second point, about people who come under the family scheme, there has always been a balance between speed and the comprehensiveness of an offer. The family scheme was introduced because we knew that it could be the speediest possible scheme, but the hon. Gentleman’s question points to a particular challenge that we have. We still have around 14,000 Afghan refugees in hotel accommodation, and we still have significant pressure on local authority accommodation and on housing overall. As we look to meet humanitarian needs, we need to be as flexible as possible, and we will be saying more about how we can mobilise other resources at the disposal of the state, local government or the private sector in order to provide additional accommodation of the kind that he mentions.

Oral Answers to Questions

Clive Betts Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

The Government’s White Paper is rightly ambitious. I think there will be general support for that ambition across the House, and rightly so, because we have some of the most unequal economies and societies among any developed countries. Is the Secretary of State not slightly concerned, however, that the tools he has at his disposal to address this are actually a small number of separate spending pots, completely disjointed and unconnected, and distributed according to a completely inappropriate bidding process? Does the Secretary of State not really want to see a review of total Government spending, of where it is spent in the country, and then the allocation and more control over that to local councils and local mayors so that it can be spent in the interests of local communities?

[Michael Gove]

I do.

Non-commissioned Exempt Accommodation

Clive Betts Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Housing (Stuart Andrew)]

It is a pleasure to take part in this important debate in my new role. I sincerely and genuinely thank all hon. Members on both sides of the House for their frankly powerful contributions.

I know the Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes), takes this issue very seriously, as hon. Members on both sides of the House have fairly commented. I have seen how passionate he is about this in just the few days that I have been in the Department, and I will do everything I can to support him in his work to tackle this issue.

It is abundantly clear that the problems affecting the supported accommodation sector are having a very real and serious impact on hundreds, if not thousands, of vulnerable individuals in many parts of the country. That, in turn, has knock-on implications for the housing benefit bill, but there is a human cost, too.

Several hon. Members rightly raised the criminality and antisocial behaviour in their constituencies that stems from people not receiving adequate support and the accommodation that they not only need but deserve. The Government and I are unequivocal in stating that everyone in our society deserves to live somewhere decent, safe and secure, which is why my hon. Friend said in his opening remarks that we have been working relentlessly to crack down on rogue accommodation providers who are exploiting exemptions that were designed to benefit the most vulnerable. Importantly, we have also been working hard to support the high-quality supported housing providers who deliver life-changing services to those who need them most.

Many of this afternoon’s contributions struck a chord with me, and it was particularly important to hear from my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Julie Marson), who rightly said that this is not just an issue for cities because, as other hon. Members said, it will start spreading out to the rest of the country. She was also right to praise the good providers, as it is important that we recognise there are excellent providers out there and that we give them that support.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Daly) talked about the Government’s £12 billion affordable homes programme, and it is right that we build beautiful homes for people, including council homes. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) has been passionate about this subject, and we could just feel from her speech that she has done a tremendous amount of work on it. I know that she will be rightly keeping us at pace on the issues. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) spoke movingly, from a very personal perspective, about the experiences of her own family; those contributions are incredibly valuable for us to hear, as we realise that this is about real people.

First, I would like to take the opportunity to clarify some of the issues raised about the exempt accommodation sector as a whole, because there is a problem with some but by no means all exempt accommodation. The term “supported exempt” is used to define accommodation for housing benefit purposes and covers a wide range of accommodation provided by different providers. So although the term “exempt accommodation” is increasingly synonymous with housing that is of poor quality and poor value for money, we need to be clear that this issue does not apply to all supported exempt providers. More specifically, they should not be tarred with the same brush as the rogue landlords that I, along with many other hon. Members, want out of this system.

Several hon. Members have highlighted examples from their constituencies of accommodation providers gaming the system, claiming for services that they never provide and then walking away with exorbitant amounts of money. Although we know that only a minority of supported housing landlords are behaving in that way, there is clearly evidence that some accommodation providers are exploiting housing benefit rules for their own financial gain. Obviously, that amounts to an egregious abuse of the supported exempt accommodation system, and we have been taking concerted action to stop it. As we heard, the Government have invested more than £5 million in support, which has gone to places such as Birmingham, Blackburn with Darwen, Blackpool, Bristol and Hull, areas that we know have experienced acute difficulties with the local exempt accommodation sector. This funding has been used to crack down on rogue providers, while trialling new and innovative approaches to improve quality and value for money across the board.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

I apologise for not having been here for the whole debate, as I have been speaking at a conference on private renting this afternoon. The Minister has just said that we know that only a minority of providers are operating in this unacceptable way. Given that the system is unregulated and the Government do not collect the information, how does he know that it is only a small minority doing this?

[Stuart Andrew]

I suppose the point I am trying to make is that an awful lot of people out there are doing an enormous amount of work, and although it is important that we highlight where the rogue landlords are, we must not tar everybody with the same brush. There is a danger that schemes could be tarred with being known as inappropriate when we know that some of them, as the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley said, have turned people’s lives around. I want to see more of that, I really do. I want to see people who are coming out of prison being able to get back into the workplace. I want to see people who have been victims of domestic abuse living in safe accommodation and feeling confident in their lives again. So it is important that we tackle the issue but we do not tar everybody with the same brush.

The other thing I wanted to say was that we are awaiting the final report from the independent evaluators, who are working very hard. I say to the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook) that they are working with urgency and at pace so that we can get that fully reviewed as quickly as possible.

Local Government Finance (England)

Clive Betts Excerpts

Wednesday 9th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

Again, the hon. Gentleman—my apologies, the right hon. Gentleman, and quite right too —makes three important points. On looked-after children, the whole position that we have had to take over the past 10 years on children in social care has been driven by a variety of factors that mean that we deal with the challenges of looked-after children and children at risk of abuse and neglect in a more intense fashion. That is why Josh MacAlister’s review of children in social care is so important and I hope that when it is published the right hon. Gentleman will welcome it.

On adult social care, the right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that there is a greater degree of pressure, not just because we have an ageing population, although I note his important point about life expectancy in County Durham, but because we have more people moving into adulthood who, thanks to advances in medical care, also require social care. That is why in this settlement local authorities can make use of more than £1 billion of additional resource specifically for social care. On top of that funding, as was outlined in the presentation of the White Paper earlier today by my hon. Friend the Minister for Health, £162 million in adult social care reform funding is also being allocated to help local authorities.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

I could recognise the valuable approach the coalition Government took under the then Secretary of State in removing ringfences, but we can contrast that with the number of pots that are being created that local authorities have to bid into, which seems like ringfencing by another name. The Secretary of State mentioned Councillor Jamieson, the chair of the LGA, who said at the Select Committee that we cannot sort out local government finance until we sort out social care funding. The LGA is looking for a big solution and it is disappointed that the levy highlighted as solving the problem actually gives no mainstream money to local councils to deliver important social care services.

[Michael Gove]

The Chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee makes two very important points. First, there is the tension, which always exists, between ensuring that we devolve as much funding as possible and simplify the funding landscape. There is also the need from time to time to respond to specific challenges. The one relates to the other, because local government, as he made rightly clear in his second point, wants additional funding for adult social care made available to it, and worries, for well-rehearsed reasons, that much of the additional funding will be devoted to the NHS’s immediate needs rather than long-term reform. I believe that the White Paper introduced earlier today on the integration of adult social care between the NHS and local government to an even greater degree will help address those issues. However, I recognise that they are serious ones and that the House will want to examine both the White Paper and any legislation that we introduce in due course.

I am conscious that many Members across the House will want to use the debate both to praise those in local government and to make specific cases for future funding reform. However, the settlement that we have secured marks a real recognition of the importance of local government and the Government’s determination to ensure that we strengthen its hand in dealing with the social ills that our country faces. That is why I commend the increase in the local government finance settlement to the House.

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[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State is right: the settlement this year is better than in some previous years. The core spending power is up by 7.4%, though I think his definition of inflation is somewhat different from mine. The scrutiny unit of the House of Commons told me that the Bank of England’s inflation rate is 5.4%, so that does not give quite such a big increase in the real-terms rise in core spending as the Secretary of State indicated. But it has to be set against the background that since 2010, local government has had the biggest cuts of any part of the public sector.

The Secretary of State was explaining how the coalition Government had to respond to a financial crisis; but there were choices in the way that response was made. One of the choices was to single out local government for those spending cuts. Perhaps the suspicion was that it was easier to pass the responsibility on to others to decide which bits of the public sector were to be cut—libraries, parks or bus services, or whatever else local authorities had to resort to in order to reduce their expenditure.

It is also, I think, uncontested that the poorest parts of our country had the biggest cuts. That is a reality with the Government grant. The Secretary of State made the point—he produced the figures—that the poorest areas have done slightly better this year. I accept that: I think the figures show it, but it is slightly better on top of substantially worse situations for the previous 10 years, and they are having to recover from that. I will return to the issue of levelling up later.

For my own city of Sheffield, the grant cut has meant that £3 billion-worth of grant in real terms has been lost since 2010. That is an awful lot of money when thinking about what could have been done with that in terms of levelling up. Yes, the situation has been better since 2015. Government figures show that spending power has gone up by 2.1% in real terms. Actually, per head, though, it has fallen by 2.2%. So even since 2015, real spending power per head has fallen across the country.

Some significant themes have continued this year that we ought to reflect on for the longer term. The Secretary of State has been talking about the longer term; I think it is right that we should view these settlements in a longer-term context for the future. First, council tax in my own city of Sheffield was 41% of council spending in 2010; it is now 59%. That is a really significant switch of where the money comes from. Spending on social care is now two thirds, as opposed to about half. Again, that is a switch in what the money is spent on. My real concern is that although councils have properly responded—not just in Sheffield, but all over the country —to the pressures in social care and given it a priority, for very obvious reasons, it means that all the other day-to-day essential services that councils provide have been cut even more. Many libraries across the country are shut; the services in parks have been reduced; cuts have been made to bus services right across the country—we have heard Conservative Members complaining about those; money has been cut from road safety schemes; and cuts have been made in terms of the availability of public health inspectors to go into food shops. One issue I know the Secretary of State is really concerned about is planning departments, where a significant cut has been made to resources. There is a real democratic issue here: most people do not receive services from social care, but the public do, as a whole, look at their street cleaning, parks, libraries, buses and other important services, and they are paying more council tax—I have just described the extra money that comes from council tax—and getting less for it. There is a real challenge to our whole democratic system if we allow that to continue. I think the Secretary of State probably recognises that and we need to address it.

In the face of that, councils have done remarkably well. They have probably produced more efficiency savings than the rest of Government put together; if the rest of Government worked as well as councils have done, we would all be in a much better place. Most councils, like Sheffield’s, have used reserves very prudently; they are only able to get through the social services crisis we are in because of the reserves we have. Great credit must go to council officers and councils across the country, particularly to those in my city of Sheffield. Councils have also done a remarkable job during covid, be it on food parcels for the elderly and people who are shielding, on working with the health service jointly to deliver effective services, or through directors of public health doing test and trace far more efficiently and effectively than that the national system, at far less cost. We can be proud of what local government has done in those circumstances.

There were one or two disappointments about the settlements, but to put it slightly more positively I will call them “challenges for the future”. First, this is a single-year settlement. Local councils want multi-year settlements; we can all agree on the reasons why, and that is important. Secondly, on fair funding, it cannot be right that we have a settlement here based on 2014 data, with some of it going back to 2000. I accept the challenge; one person’s fair funding is another person’s unfair funding. That is going to be an interesting challenge for the Secretary of State, but I would say that levelling up has to be part of a fair funding review. It cannot be about individual bits of money; levelling up has to be about mainstream core funding and getting the distribution of that right to reflect the need for levelling up.

We have to get a new source of funding for social care. We have to get money from a levy or whatever source to come in. I welcome the attempt to integrate health and social care. I do not think it should be brought into one giant service; getting local councils and the health service to work together is right. They have done brilliantly well in Sheffield during the pandemic, with the clinical commissioning group, the director of public health and the director of social care working together. One of my worries is that in the reforms to the health system we do away with that place-based approach that a CCG gives. I welcome the letter that the Secretary of State has just sent and the offer to meet officials. It is really important that that place-based delivery of services—councils and the health service working together at a local level—is maintained. I hope that that is absolutely seen through.

The other two issues are still waiting to be done: business rates reform; and protection for the high street as part of that, with some sort of digital sales tax. When are we going to get it? Everyone seems to think that we ought to have one, but we have not actually got one. I mentioned the level of council tax now—the amount out of the totality of council spending. Council tax is regressive. If we look at the amount people pay compared with the value of their houses as they go up, we see that it is completely disproportionate. So we need a council tax review reform as well as a business rates reform if we are going to deal with this for the future.

Finally, I come to one regret. I look at the public health grant, where there is a 2.8% increase—if inflation is 5.4%, that means a reduction in real terms. The public health service has done a brilliant job, and I give credit to Greg Fell and his team for what they have done in Sheffield, but covid has shown us the health inequalities in our communities that need addressing. Is that cut not therefore a complete mistake at a time when we need more prevention and more attempts to reduce those inequalities?

In Sheffield, if I get on a bus in the west end of the city and go to the east end, life expectancy changes by 10 years. That simply cannot be right. Our public health director and his staff in that service, working with the health service, are key to addressing those problems. It is disappointing that their reward for all the work they did during the pandemic is to see a real-terms cut in their spending.

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[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

We have just heard it in a debate on the police grant, and we have heard it in this debate with the Secretary of State: the Government are treating 2019 like year zero. Anything that happened before then was nothing to do with them. He is increasingly trying to push the narrative that decisions around funding, local government, policing, fire or anything have somehow happened by accident. They have not: they have happened because of deliberate political decisions that, in some cases, the Secretary of State—who I think has been in the Government since 2010—has taken.

My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) said that the most savage cuts have been made to local government, with a 56.3% cut in the past decade. The Cameron-Osborne approach was to cut the central Government funding to councils from central taxation and push it on to local council tax payers, thereby deflecting the blame when local councillors and council officials had to take some very tough decisions. We have had the galling situation over the past 10 years in County Durham of Conservative councillors standing up and blaming the Labour council for raising the council tax, when they know the real reason is that the formula being used has shifted the way local government is funded in this country from central to local taxation.

In County Durham’s case, that means that the county council’s budget has been cut by £232 million a year—40% of the council’s budget. The hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) referred to Lord Pickles, and in the early days, we were told, “Don’t worry about this; it can all be sorted out if councils get more efficient”—that if they had fewer pot plants in council offices, as I think was said at one stage, or stopped serving tea and coffee at meetings, or sacked all their chief officers, somehow that would fill the gap. Well, that is absolute nonsense.

Another issue that affects counties like County Durham is that we now have an inbuilt mechanism that deliberately moves money from the poor areas with the highest need, to more affluent areas. That is no accident, but the result of a political choice. I take as an example County Durham, where 58% of our properties are in council tax band A, so if we raised the council tax by 1% we would raise £3.8 million. There are a couple of higher-band properties in my constituency—there is at least one castle, which may well be in the higher tax bracket—but there are very few higher band properties across County Durham. That should be compared that with Wokingham in Surrey, where only 2.8% of properties are in band A, so if it raises council tax by 1% it generates £8.9 million. Add to that the fact that we are not just moving that money to areas of lower need, but are ensuring that the poorest people in County Durham, or Knowsley or any other deprived community, pay the most, because we all know that council tax is a very aggressive form of taxation.

That is continuing. We again have a one-year settlement, and councils are now having to work out what they will do in coming years. The Policing Minister told us earlier that when it came to the fairer funding review on police funding, the train had left the station. He gave no indication of when it would arrive. Unless we tackle this issue, councils such as County Durham will always be at a disadvantage

As my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East said, there is a lot of press and PR. The Government work on the basis of slogans, gimmicks and spin, and the latest one is levelling up. I might be one of the few people who have actually read the entire levelling-up White Paper, including the annex.

[Mr Betts]

Sad.

[Mr Jones]

Yes, I am, and the hon. Member for Redcar (Jacob Young) called me an anorak, so possibly I am both.

The White Paper’s analysis is not bad in that it raises the issue that we should be tackling, but it offers no solution to enable us to do that. I really enjoyed the undergraduate thesis on the Venetian city state and how Babylon was built, but again it did not reach any conclusions. Nevertheless, we have a Government who talk in terms of levelling up. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East is right: you cannot have levelling up if you exclude the way in which local government is financed.

The other sad thing is that the Government’s approach has mainly been around capital projects. I think it is because the Prime Minister has a fixation—he has a fixation on quite a few things—on projects where you can see that something is being built. No doubt a Minister or local Conservative Member of Parliament can unveil a plaque and say, “This is what we have achieved.” As my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Sir George Howarth) said, if it was a fair process, fine.

I used to have a saying, when I was in local government, that any idiot can spend capital, which they can. The more difficult thing is to get the revenue streams into the future. Like my right hon. Friend, distantly I used to understand local government finance, but no doubt my knowledge is a bit out of date. What I do recognise is that we can spend as much capital on projects as we like, but what is needed is the revenue funding to go alongside it for the day-to-day needs of our local communities.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley covered the bidding process very well, but the point is that, if it were a fair process, then fine, but it is not. Quite clearly, it is a pork barrel approach to the doling out of money to certain Conservative seats. Let me give an example in County Durham. Which constituency has either got new towns funding or levelling-up funding? The answer is Bishop Auckland.

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[Neil O'Brien]

I assure my hon. Friend that we will expedite that.

Let me turn to the thoughtful comments made by the Chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee, the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts)—the spending power of Sheffield will go up by 7.6% under this settlement. He noted, to use his phrase, that the settlement was better than in some years, which may be faint praise, but we will take it. He raised the very important long-term issue about the relevance of upward pressure on social care caused by an ageing society, and one in which we do a better job of caring for the sick and disabled. As a party, we have taken difficult decisions to adequately fund that and the NHS, and difficult decisions on tax. We are also taking steps, as we set out in the House earlier, to promote the integration of health and social care, because we all know that is one of the crucial things we can do to make that sustainable in the longer term.

[Mr Betts]

I mentioned the letter from the Secretary of State offering a meeting with officials. Perhaps it could be a meeting with Ministers, and perhaps I could be allowed to bring someone from the CCG and someone from the city council, who are doing great work together, to explain what they really want to see to marry up this place-based approach to health with local government.

[Neil O’Brien]

Absolutely, and the hon. Gentleman anticipates the point I was about to make.

Of course, deepening devolution is one way of driving the integration agenda to save money and produce better services. The hon. Gentleman referred to the important health and life expectancy gaps, and the White Paper sets out the steps that the Department of Health and Social Care will take through its health inequalities strategy and its new tobacco strategy.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) noted the importance of keeping taxes down, and I strongly agree. That is why the settlement keeps the increase to 2%, with 1% for social care—far lower than the double-digit increases we saw in many years under the Labour party.

I will reply at length to the right hon. Member for Knowsley (Sir George Howarth). This morning I relayed all the points raised in the important debate on funding in Merseyside to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, and we talked it through. I completely agree about the need for a multi-year settlement. We had to have one-year settlements because of the turbulence around covid, but we aim to have a multi-year settlement. Yes, it will take account of the need for levelling up and of inflation.

I am pleased the right hon. Gentleman mentioned Shakespeare North, as I was previously involved in its central Government funding. It is a brilliant project, and he rightly paid tribute to some of the individuals who are helping to make it happen.

The right hon. Gentleman also made some important points about the levelling-up fund. Seventy-five per cent. of the money has so far gone to top-priority areas, and only 6% has gone to bottom-priority areas. It is highly skewed towards the poorest areas and, in the first round, £20 million went to Liverpool, next door to Knowsley, and £37 million went to the Liverpool city region as a whole. It is not correct that there is a political process. There is competition, and there are arguments for having non-competitive funding, which is why there will also be an allocation through the UK shared prosperity fund. There are arguments for competition to get good bids, but we must not traduce civil servants who score the bids and allocate the money.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) will see spending power in his constituency go up by 6.2%.

Levelling Up

Clive Betts Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for an advance copy of the White Paper, although I have to admit that I have not quite read it all yet.

When the Select Committee has looked at this issue in the past, we have agreed that local councils have to be key to delivering a levelling-up agenda, and that means a devolution framework, with all councils getting real new powers and real new resources to deliver. When I looked at page 140, I saw the words “devolution framework”, and I was encouraged. Will the Secretary of State confirm, however, that in that list of powers, there is not a single new power? All the powers in there are already available to at least some local authorities, and all this framework does is enable more local authorities to have those powers. What is certainly not set out is a list of new resources that will be available to enable the spread of existing powers to more local authorities to be delivered in practice. Will he confirm those two things?

Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill [Lords]

Clive Betts Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Monday 24th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mike Amesbury]

A feudal system of kings and barons needs to be kicked into touch. It is unjust and it is unfair. I am sure the right hon. Member will make an informed decision when it comes to the Division Lobby, but I know whose side I am on.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

The Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee looked at the leasehold issues in some detail and produced a report that led to the Competition and Markets Authority conducting its investigation. We looked at the issue of property rights and took advice and evidence from leading property lawyers, who said that where there is a general public interest, it is perfectly reasonable under the European convention on human rights to go down the road being suggested, and that even for existing properties, the ground rent system and other leasehold issues could be changed to reflect the fact that currently they are simply unfair.

[Mike Amesbury]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention and all the work he and the Select Committee have done to move the matter forward. Together with the Select Committee and many others, I certainly want to see this system kicked into history.

I reaffirm that campaigners have waited long enough for change, and we should not keep them waiting any longer. A former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), referred to the Bill as the “appetiser” before “the main course”. Again, I affirm that what we need is an all-you-can-eat buffet of reform here and now.

Amendment 1, tabled by the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne), would prevent some retirement properties from being bound by the legislation. Unfortunately, we are not able to support the amendment. In fact, in Committee I tabled an amendment that would have done quite the opposite. Those who buy retirement properties should have been able to benefit from this new legislation and be put on par with everybody else. Justice is justice. The right hon. Member has certainly been consistent, but consistently wrong on this matter.

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[Andy Carter]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. The greatest challenge that my constituents face is that they cannot find the people who did the work—the lawyers no longer exist as a company body. My constituents are working to try to find some recompense, and I hope that the situation will be resolved by the CMA.

Will the Minister consider what actions his Department can take to tackle the problem faced by residents on Steinbeck Grange in Warrington and elsewhere who are locked into leaseholds and did not expect to be in this situation? I hope he will look very carefully at what the CMA says. I know that he has been working with the CMA to try to find solutions, and I hope that he will continue to do that, so that a satisfactory outcome can be found. Having met residents and constituents on Friday evening, I know that the impact that this has had on their lives cannot be overestimated. They have been living through a genuine nightmare, having bought what they thought was their dream home. I urge the Minister to think about the impact that this has had on those individuals.

It is time not only for us to protect those who will be looking to buy a new home in the future, but to secure justice for those who have been mis-sold properties in the past and are still paying a heavy price through unreasonable management fees and escalating ground rents. I am pleased to support the Government’s efforts, but I urge them to go further.

[Mr Betts]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I welcome the steps that the Government have already taken but encourage them to go that little bit further.

Thinking back to the Select Committee inquiry in, I think, 2018, I remember that we invited not just formal witnesses—I have mentioned certain very distinguished lawyers who advised us—but many leaseholders from up and down the country. Up to 100 people came to events. There were a number of roundtables at which they met individual members of the Committee and told us about their experiences.

All the issues that the hon. Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter) has just raised were in our report, including mis-selling and how lawyers told people, “It’s just the same as freehold, really. It isn’t any different: you own your own house and, by the way, there’s an incentive to go with us on this leasehold arrangement. Here are the presents we’ll give you, the garden we’ll do up for you and the new carpets we’ll provide.” What solicitors were doing was scandalous, and we identified that in our report.

The simple message we had from everyone present was, “Everyone’s talking about changing the system for the future, but we’ve got problems here and now.” I understand why the Bill goes only so far on future ground rents and future arrangements, because it is more challenging and complicated to unwind existing legal arrangements than it is to describe what should happen in new arrangements, but I say to the Minister that the people in these leasehold homes who are experiencing all the problems that have already been explained, including in our report, think that that is unfair. They think that people in the future will be protected but that they will not and that Ministers, having raised the issue, should take it one step further and bring in the same rules for them. It is almost as simple as that. They cannot understand why, as they see it, they are being left behind and, so far, ignored on not just ground rents but a range of issues including the mis-selling of the service charge and all the other scandals that the Select Committee unearthed in its inquiry.

Oral Answers to Questions

Clive Betts Excerpts

Monday 24th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My right hon. Friend is right. He represents, I think, the largest, and certainly the second-most attractive constituency in Scotland, which covers three excellent local authority areas. There are excellent local councillors in all of them but, essentially because they lack the economies of scale, we need to work with those local authorities to ensure that, from Lockerbie to Moffat, the communities that deserve investment secure it.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

I am sure the Secretary of State will agree that the success of levelling up will depend in large part on how much money is available and how it is distributed. I do not know whether he has had a chance to look at the recent research by Teesside University, which shows that over the past seven years the amount of money coming through EU funding and the local growth fund has been £2.1 billion a year, while the amount for the next few years from the shared prosperity and levelling-up funds is projected to be only £1.5 billion a year—a significant cut. In addition, the cuts in his own Department’s funding have hit the poorest local authorities the hardest, so when he produces his levelling-up White Paper, will he produce a comprehensive list of spending per head by region for each Department and show how the policies he is advocating will change those funding levels for the benefit of the poorest areas, which have suffered most in the past 10 years?

[Michael Gove]

I would gently contest the argument that the poorest areas have suffered most in the past 10 years, but the Chairman of the Select Committee makes an important point about transparency in the allocation of funding, and I look forward to working with him to ensure just that.