Oral Answers to Questions
Danny Beales Excerpts(1 week, 4 days ago)
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Alex Norris
I do not think it is any secret that I, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Housing Minister are very hard on all our partners, including the public sector, in order to make sure that they do their job. The hon. Gentleman raises a very important concern, and the Housing Minister will write to him on it.
Danny Beales (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Lab)
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Matthew Pennycook)
The Government’s plan for change includes a hugely ambitious target of building 1.5 million new homes in England in this Parliament. In the 12 months we have been in office, we have taken decisive steps to boost housing supply, including overhauling the national planning policy framework and introducing the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which will further streamline the delivery of new homes, as well as critical infrastructure.
Danny Beales
It is welcome to once again have a Government who believe in house building. I thank the Minister for his comments. When I speak to house builders, one of the issues they raise with me is the performance of the Building Safety Regulator. Shovel-ready projects that have planning permission are delayed at gateway 2, and checks that should take a matter of weeks are taking months, if not years. What is the Department doing to manage the performance of the regulator, ensure it has the resources it needs, and hold it to account, so that we get spades in the ground as soon as possible?
Matthew Pennycook
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to draw attention to the operation of the Building Safety Regulator, which, while essential to upholding building safety standards, is causing delays in handling applications for building projects, and is having an impact on new supply in London. I hope he will take comfort not only from the £2 million the Government allocated to the BSR in February, but from the targeted package of reforms we announced last month, including the establishment of a new fast-track process to reduce delays and strengthen leadership and governance.
London’s National Economic Contribution
Danny Beales Excerpts(2 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Danny Beales (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Lab)
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western. I too thank my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell) for securing this important and timely debate.
Often, when people think about London’s economy, they think about the City banker at the Bank of England or the towers at Canary Wharf, but London’s economy is so much more than that. The value of London’s economy is dynamic and diverse, and it is visible in outer as well as inner-London boroughs such as Hillingdon, which my constituency lies in.
Uxbridge and South Ruislip is central to London’s economy and our industrial landscape. We are home to major manufacturers such as Coca-Cola Europe and General Mills, which makes everyday products that hon. Members might know, such as Green Giant sweetcorn, Old El Paso and many other good—but perhaps not good for the waistline—products. They are key contributors to the UK’s food sector, which the Government are rightly elevating in their new national food strategy. We are also home to key transport and logistics businesses, with two airports—Heathrow and RAF Northolt—and major freight routes linking up the rest of the country.
We are home to key life sciences organisations and institutions. I recently had the privilege of meeting AAH Pharmaceuticals, which distributes huge amounts of pharmaceutical products just in time to local community pharmacies across the country. There is also our contribution to the defence sector, which the Government are rightly backing with increasing proportions of GDP to rebuild our armed forces. We are home to armed forces industry businesses making parts for our submarines and frigates, our RAF Northolt base, and our service personnel and other associated contractors. The care and health sector also features prominently in our borough, and provides jobs for thousands of residents. The economic case for the role of care is clear, and it is a key growth sector for our economy in London, as well as the country more broadly.
In Uxbridge and South Ruislip we are not just delivering today’s jobs, but tomorrow’s economy. I have had the privilege of meeting with Brunel University, a national leader in engineering and life sciences with a recently opened new medical college. Uxbridge college, our further education institution, has just agreed a partnership with MIT in the United States on engineering, which shows the future-facing nature of our education sector, underpinning the UK’s goal to become an innovation superpower. It is vital that we invest in further and higher education and our skills sector if we are to grow.
London’s economy contributes £500 billion annually to the UK economy. That is both central and outer London. Although we do not agree on much, I am sure the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds) would agree that industrial clusters in outer-London boroughs such as Hillingdon are important in their own right, and are exactly the sort of regional engines of growth that our industrial strategy should back. The strategy talks clearly about supporting city regions and clusters with key industries, and Uxbridge and South Ruislip, and Hillingdon more broadly, are perfectly fitted to that model.
There is a growing view that London should take a back seat in investment compared with other parts of the economy, but that is a false economy. When London grows, other regions grow too. The links between regions and nations in the United Kingdom are clear in terms of jobs, tax revenues, exports and supply chains. I remember being the cabinet member for the economy and regeneration in Camden for seven years, when I was involved, to my pleasure, in the knowledge quarter developing around life sciences, tech and AI, with huge multinational businesses, spin-outs and start-ups. It was not just a story about the growth of London and King’s Cross; businesses there were connected to the Cambridge and Oxfordshire arc, and places such as Leeds and other northern cities. Growth in the knowledge quarter benefited the whole UK economy. That is true of so many of London’s economic growth clusters.
Growth in London is not automatic, and it cannot be taken for granted. It needs fostering and investment. That has not always happened effectively over the last 14 years. Issues such as energy grid constraints, particularly in west London, are holding back growth, house building and the expansion of key institutions and organisations. It is vital that we deal with grid connectivity if we are to support London’s growth. Transport investments are key to growth not just in central London, but outer London too. Freight infrastructure needs investing in and we need to support workforce mobility. I concur with my hon. Friend the Member for Brent East (Dawn Butler) when she praises the value of the Elizabeth line, and not just because I take it to work four days a week here in Parliament; it has generally transformed so many parts of our city and other growth towns along the way to Reading and Maidenhead too.
I recently visited the CLIP project, the Central line improvement programme, and it talked directly about how new trains for the Piccadilly line were being built in places such as Derbyshire. There were huge links with jobs, skills and growth through the investment that TfL is making. We need to go further and faster to keep our city moving. The Elizabeth line, particularly the Maidenhead and Reading branch which serves West Drayton, is nearing capacity due to its success. It needs extra trains quickly, and I hope the new stock that this Government have supported financially will serve the Reading and Maidenhead branch. We also need investment. It is a shame, having completed Crossrail 1, that Crossrail 2 is still just an idea and there is not a spade in the ground. Ideally, spades would have continued to move and the digging machines would have moved forward in building Crossrail 2, and we would now be planning Crossrail 3 and 4 to meet the city’s needs and unlock growth potential for the UK economy.
As hon. Members have mentioned, policing and crime is not just a safety issue; it is an economic issue too. Business growth and confidence depend on public safety and people being able to invest, open businesses and go to businesses and high streets with the confidence that they will be free from crime and disorder. Policing in London performs two roles—a local policing role, and vital central and national roles too. That was not always considered when funding was allocated. As hon. Members have mentioned, we vitally need investment in the Met to ensure that it can do both those things to the best of its ability.
Deirdre Costigan
I thank my hon. Friend, and almost constituency neighbour, for giving way. Does he agree that it is important that we have more police on the ground in London, which I believe this Government are ensuring, but also important that those police have powers —which has not happened over the last 14 years? Therefore, would my hon. Friend welcome this Government’s new Crime and Policing Bill, which will bring in respect orders and will also ensure that police can take action against shoplifters who were getting away scot-free under the last Government?
Danny Beales
I completely concur. I have recently been visiting shops, including Sainsbury’s, in my constituency, and have been told of the awful situation over the last 14 years, with theft and shoplifting skyrocketing, and people having a licence to shoplift with the £200 rule under the last Government. Staff in those shops welcomed the news when I told them about the protections for shop workers and the scrapping of the £200 rule. Lots of other measures in the Crime and Policing Bill are strongly needed and much overdue. I completely concur with that point.
Housing has also been mentioned and is vital. I welcome this Government’s record commitment and investment into housing. I believe around £11 billion of that investment will come to London; that is crucial. We have huge amounts of stalled sites, some half-built, in Hillingdon. In Uxbridge, at the St Andrew’s site, the concrete core is up, but the cranes went a number of years ago due to the Liz Truss mini-Budget chaos. A number of other sites, including at the former Master Brewer, have planning permission for hundreds of homes which could make a vital contribution to solving our housing and temporary accommodation crisis. They need bridging capital, investment, loans and investment in affordable housing. I welcome the Government’s commitment to move forward on that agenda.
The industrial strategy is clear that the UK’s prosperity depends on long-term strategic investment in the places and sectors that deliver. Uxbridge, South Ruislip and Hillingdon are among those places that are delivering in food, logistics, care, science, innovation and skills. If we want Britain to grow, we must back London—and Hillingdon—not just its banks, but its factories, freight depots, research hubs and colleges.
David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak for the official Opposition in this debate, and congratulate the hon. Member for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell) for having secured it.
Although there will always be a degree of party political difference—I am sure the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Luke Taylor) achieved some cross-party consensus when he said “heaven forbid” the idea of a Liberal Democrat Government—what came across clearly in every Member’s contribution, including from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), was the sense of valuing the success of our capital city, and understanding the contribution it makes not just to the people who live here and choose to make it their home, but to our country as a whole. That is my starting point.
In preparing for this debate we will all have been sent a lot of information from many organisations that represent different aspects of life in our capital, but is clear that the contribution of London’s economy to the rest of the country is vital. It is vital because it is the biggest income earner for our country, because it makes a huge net contribution to tax receipts, which support public services across the whole country, and because it is the one genuine world city that places the United Kingdom in an internationally competitive economic league. That is why it has such an incredibly diverse population. In my constituency alone, which is not by any means one of the most diverse in London, well over 100 first languages are spoken by local residents, yet they all have in common the essential fact of being Londoners.
As we consider the decisions that the Government will have to make, and the policies they are considering, I would like to highlight a number of points that arise partly from the views brought forward local authorities and business organisations, but also from the day-to-day concerns we hear from Londoners.
A number of Members highlighted the challenges around housing, which is an important place to start. We recognise the nature of our city: housing remains in huge demand and, as several Members highlighted, is significantly more expensive than it is in the rest of the UK. In Greater London, 300,000 new homes already have planning permission. However, we have to acknowledge that there has been a 66% reduction in new home starts in the last two years, and in the last 12 months a 92% reduction in new home starts through our housing associations, which are the main provider of social housing. There has also been a 27% rise in the last 12 months in the number of people sleeping rough on the streets of our capital city. There is, then, a rapidly accelerating challenge around housing and, overall, a collapse in London’s delivery of house building in recent years, compared with the ambitions that the Government have set out and many London boroughs have enshrined in their housing targets.
We need to ensure that the aspiration the Government set out in their Planning and Infrastructure Bill is reflected in the actions that take place in the market. The very significant loading of that additional housing funding towards the tail end not of this Parliament, but of the Parliament after means that many of those London boroughs are asking when they can expect to see the additional resources that will help them to deliver that aspiration. Decisions that have been made, for example, to further ringfence the ability of local authorities to spend homelessness funding that they already have further constrains their ability in particular to address issues around rough sleeping.
We also need to recognise that, although many have made reference to the challenges of the local government funding formula, the NHS funding formula also creates very significant variations in the levels of funding, particularly within the capital. Just as, on the whole, inner London boroughs under governing parties of all colours have enjoyed significantly better per capita levels of funding than those in outer London—reflected in widely differing levels of council tax—we know that certain parts of our London NHS are significantly better funded.
The Minister will have been in the Chamber and heard many of his colleagues talk about their hope that the new 10-year plan for the NHS will see the further development of walk-in services and urgent care centres to keep people out of A&E. The NHS, because of its funding pressures, is looking to close those services at Mount Vernon Hospital in my constituency, creating further pressure on an already hugely pressured A&E in the constituency of the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales), who will be aware of this already, as the hospital is under the same NHS trust.
We need to make sure that not only local government, but the national health service are thinking about how they can deploy their resources in the interest of Londoners across the capital. We also need to reflect on the diversity of London’s economy. As a number of Members have mentioned, when we talk about London we tend to think of glass towers in the City inhabited by billionaire international bankers. However, 44% of the London borough of Havering is farmland, as is 23% of the London borough of Hillingdon and 35% of the London borough of Bromley. As well as attracting international capital and the cutting-edge technology industries, London also remains significant through the contribution that agriculture makes to the life of people in our capital.
Those of us in outer London, where most of those farms are located, will have heard loudly and clearly from local farmers—whose land is often not just farmland, but often a crucial part of the green belt, which maintains and supports the environment of our city—how concerned they are about the impact of measures such as the family farm tax. The family farm tax has a disproportionately large impact on London, because that farmland is of significantly higher value than equivalent sites in other parts of the country, due to its location in Greater London.
Danny Beales
I thank my constituency neighbour for giving way. Does he agree that, although the farmland and the farmers of London are deeply important, that is one crucial measure—alongside a number of others that the Opposition have not supported—that will raise billions of pounds to invest in our NHS? Hillingdon hospital now has £1.4 billion, after only getting £70 million from the last Government, to be actually built after 14 years. Is it not the case that every constituent in Hillingdon will benefit from that and every constituent in London will benefit from billions of pounds more in our NHS and in education?
David Simmonds
I am glad to hear my neighbour express his strong, vocal support for the family farms tax. I am sure his constituents at Goulds Green farm, Maygoods farm and other such places will be listening attentively to the position he takes as they reflect on the impact that will have on their businesses and the contribution they make to the local authority.
Given the wealth it generates and the contribution that it makes, London needs to have those world-class services funded correctly. The hon. Member will know, as he was a by-election candidate before becoming a Member of Parliament, that Governments of all parties, broadly speaking, have made commitments. We need to make sure those are delivered and that some of the changes made, particularly on London’s fringes, do not have a detrimental impact. I suggest to the Minister that it is worth having a consultation going across Government on what the impact of some of those decisions around the London fringes will have on the provision of NHS services in the capital.
The fact that London is not immune to those worldwide trends means that issues around crime and personal safety remain very significant, and particularly salient in their impact on our tourist industry. All of us work in this city and will be very aware that, in the good weather as the summer holidays get going, our public transport is full of people from all over the world coming to stay in London hotels, spend money in London restaurants, go shopping, and take their children to see London museums. Making sure that we live in a capital city that is safe, and where the traditional reputation of the United Kingdom as a safe reputation is maintained, is incredibly important. I pay tribute to the work that one of my local councillors, Susan Hall, the Conservative leader at the GLA, has been doing to make sure that those issues remain active and at the forefront of mayoral thinking.
We know that Mayor Khan was the only police and crime commissioner in the whole country to give back to the previous Government the money that he was given for extra police officers in the capital, because he chose not to spend it on that. That has left a deficit in our police numbers across the city. We need to ensure that our police have not just the resources but the connections with other local public services that enable them to do an effective job of cracking down on crime. That is a process of long-term change. In the past, many retailers asked for and were granted additional powers, via the Security Industry Authority, to enable their in-house staff to, for example, carry out arrests of people who are shoplifting. The cost of insuring those staff has run well above what any of those businesses contemplated. We must recognise that we are therefore facing a new policing paradigm, around shoplifting in particular.
In conclusion, although this is not just about the Minister’s Department, we need to hear from him that the Government are sighted on the value that London adds to this country. There has sometimes been a sense, particularly in the debate about the local government funding formula, that any formula that does not extract significant resources from London and redeploy them elsewhere will not find favour with this Government. I appreciate that the Minister is under pressure from colleagues across the country who want the deployment of additional resources, but a 27% rise in rough sleeping in the capital and the collapse in the delivery of social housing under this mayor is putting acute pressure on London’s local authorities. The levels of deprivation in some parts of this city are especially acute, given that London’s median income is around £10,000 a year higher than that of the rest of the United Kingdom, which means the dynamic around housing costs is particularly powerful.
We need to ensure that this city can continue, from its thriving economy, to contribute 22%—although the figures are debated, and it depends which lobby group you ask, it is between a fifth and a quarter—of our country’s GDP, or around £12 billion net, after public expenditure, to the wider Exchequer of the United Kingdom. That is £64,000 a year GDP per capita against a UK average of £37,000 a year. That economic competitiveness is living proof of the effectiveness of trickle-down economics. We know that, from the international billionaire who decides to build a new business headquarters in the city, to the trades, the workers who deliver it and maintain it, everybody benefits from the success of London. This is, and must remain, a city where people from all over the world and all over our country want to come to live and work, to study, to make a home or to raise a family. As this debate has showed, we all recognise the stake that we have; for all of us, as Members of Parliament, London is not just a place where some of us choose to live, but the place where all of us spend our working lives.
Local Government Finances: London
Danny Beales Excerpts(3 months, 4 weeks ago)
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Danny Beales (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Lab)
Last, but not least. It is a pleasure—less of a pleasure now, but it was a pleasure—to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I echo the points my colleagues have made about the unprecedented financial pressures on London councils. While we need to tackle temporary accommodation, the SEND crisis and much more—that is as true in Hillingdon as in any other borough—we also need to ensure the very best financial governance for local authorities.
Unfortunately, in Hillingdon, on top of those long-term pressures, we have seen short-termism and poor governance. A salami-slice approach to budgeting—taking off an extra per cent each year—and the failure to transform services and build the financial base of the council long term have all come home to roost, with the council now in financial crisis. We have seen that if we do not invest in new homes, we get temporary accommodation pressures. If we do not invest in early years and youth services, and close them instead, we get more pressures later in the education system. That is what has happened in Hillingdon.
We have the lowest reserves among our nearest neighbours. The Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy reported that we ran them down from £62 million in 2021 to £20 million in 2025.
Dan Tomlinson
In Barnet, we have around 85 care homes. Inner London boroughs such as Camden and Islington have around 20, yet the grant that inner London boroughs receive is around £3 million, whereas Barnet council and other outer London boroughs only get around £2 million. Does my hon. Friend think that that injustice in the funding formula is also causing issues for councils such as the one in the area he represents?
Danny Beales
I do—we have to consider the costs that outer London boroughs face, as well as London more generally. As has been said excellently by my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Mr Bailey), London is special; it is different, and it faces extra costs and pressures. That is the case right across London.
This very year, Hillingdon’s own financial officer wrote a damning cover report to the council’s budget, making it clear that the road is fast running out. They pointed to governance issues within the council and an inability to meet its own, less ambitious savings targets in previous years, compared with the projected future targets. My constituents have paid the price for that mismanagement—they are paying substantially more every single year, with fees and charges going up exponentially, and getting fewer services as a result.
I welcome the calls for extra long-term financial support for local government, which is much needed; however, we have to ensure as a Government that when we agree that extra long-term financial settlement, which hopefully we will, governance improvements are in place. This money should not be used to fix the cracks in the short term again, but should be used to fundamentally transform services, including the SEND system, the housing system, the social care system and many others. In some authorities, when times were slightly easier than they are today, that did not happen.
To sum up and echo my colleagues’ points, London councils are on their knees financially. As a Government, it is vital that we intervene, because local government is key—it is everyone’s front door to government and their community. We need to invest and we need long-term reform of services, including our education and housing systems, to provide the mixed, successful and financially sustainable communities we all want to see.
David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve once again under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I add my congratulations to the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Mr Bailey) on securing, with cross-party support, a very wide-ranging debate. My starting point, having served 12 years as a London councillor under the last Labour Government and then 12 years as a London councillor under the previous coalition and Conservative Government, is that he should be careful what he wishes for when he has a debate on this subject.
We can already see a pattern beginning to reassert itself in the finances of our local authorities in London and in local government generally. What sound like significant increases are announced, but while one hand gives, the other takes away. Extra funding that has been announced, for the most part comprises maximum possible rises in council tax, very large increases in business rates, and an assumption that local authorities will raise the maximum possible fees and charges from their residents, which is then deducted from any central Government support. We can see the imposition of that in decisions large and small. On the smaller side, we have had representations from London Councils about the impact of ringfenced grant funding to tackle homelessness, which reduces the freedom and flexibility of local authorities in the capital to deploy those resources to keep people off the streets. On a much more macro scale, we have the national insurance contributions rise, which, after additional Government support, leaves local authorities in England over £1 billion net worse off than before the Budget was announced.
Many of us will have served through many years when there were announcements, such as significant rises in the single regeneration budget, and the establishment of the dedicated schools grant under the last Labour Government. However, as Members who experienced those announcements will know, that approach of starting with a standard spending assessment and then damping any increase that it could give rise to, especially impacting on outer London boroughs with a very significant level of social need, has had a significant long-term impact. If there is an apology to be made from the Opposition about our approach to finances in local government, it is that we did not go as far as we would have wished to, as set out by my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch and Upminster (Julia Lopez), in redressing some of those imbalances.
The very first council meeting I attended as a member of the public was the last one at which a Labour council ever set a budget in Hillingdon. An 18% council tax rise hit local residents, and the council made £40 million—then around 10% of its budget—in unspecified savings. Let us not succumb to any fiction that somehow we are entering a gilded age for the local authorities of our capital city. And of course, it comes at a time when we know that the pressures on local authorities are rising sharply. According to the charity St Mungo’s, there has been a 29% increase in rough sleeping in the capital compared with the equivalent period under the last Conservative Government. A huge impact on our economy—not just the business rate rises, but the loss of confidence and the lack of investment.
Many Members have spoken eloquently about the pressures around homelessness—the shortage of housing. We have all been ambitious about that, but it is very striking if we look simply at the numbers. The serving Mayor, Sir Sadiq, was set a target by the last Government of around 100,000 new affordable homes. He set himself a target of 52,000—around half what central Government said he should be able to deliver. He actually delivered 35,000 new affordable homes. In total, in equivalent periods, the current Mayor has delivered 65,000 affordable homes, compared with 90,000 under his Conservative predecessor.
Although we all share the ambition, we need the shared starting point as well, of recognising the challenges, including the impact of damping and the inner/outer London inequality. Those things have existed in our funding formula for a very long time, and they are part of a complex set of interactions that arise from not just the current Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, but the Department for Education, the Department of Health and Social Care, the Department for Transport and the Home Office. Many, many London local authorities are supporting significant numbers of asylum seekers. Hillingdon has the highest number of asylum seekers per capita of any local authority in the whole country—a cost not currently funded at all by central Government, but contributing very significantly to the numbers of people needing to be housed and children to be cared for. That complex picture needs to be taken into account when we debate this issue.
I have some asks and some requests to put to the Minister. Like others, I thank London Councils for its excellent work to consider not just the big picture of the quantum of financing, but the things that could be done, such as removing some of the ringfences that the Government have imposed on how those resources are deployed. The first ask is that, as the Government proceed with their processes on devolution, we look at a true shared decision-making arrangement. There is a risk that the devolution settlement will leave London as the only major devolved area with no formal agreement between the Mayor and the boroughs on shared decision making. We see much of that tension around housing.
I ask the Government once again to look at a process around fairer funding, which has been worked on in the past, to begin to address the inequality of funding between inner and outer London. We know the origins of that lie in assumptions that are made about deprivation, but it manifests in almost every area of local government finance in London.
We still see relatively very large amounts of grant going into inner-London local authorities with low-level council tax, which are also often the ones that are most able to raise revenue in other ways. If we compare parking revenue accounts, for example, London borough of Bexley raises £6 million a year and Hillingdon raises £3.8 million a year, all of which can contribute, to a limited extent, to things such as environmental and road improvements. The London borough of Westminster raises £70 million a year—a net contribution of over £40 million just for environmental projects alone. The capacity of local authorities in London to raise revenue is hugely variable, and not just about the costs imposed by the demographics. We need to make sure that we take that fully into account.
I know that the Minister has been asked for this before on the Floor of the House, so I want to ask him to reconsider the position around national insurance contributions. We have just had an emergency Budget, and have been through a period of six months where it has become clear that the sums do not add up, but its impact—driving up the cost of children’s and adult’s social care, as well as every other part of public service in the capital—has been absolutely enormous. We have had representations from every single London borough about the impact of that. There were promises made that that would be mitigated, and we need to see them fulfilled.
Let me finish with an important point. It seems to me that all Members here, on a cross-party basis, have done their best to speak up from east to west, from inner to outer, for the interests of residents in the capital. We know that those challenges will be significant. I say gently to my neighbour, the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales), the rises in charges are 5%, not exponential.
Danny Beales
Does the hon. Gentleman welcome the significant uplift in public health funding from this Government? Or the fact that there is a third more homelessness funding, a significant and additional uplift in local government funding and millions more to be spent on potholes, one of the biggest levels in London? I could go on. That is a significant increase compared with what happened under the last Government, of which he was part. At the same time, our council is increasing council tax for many people, introducing a garden tax and making significant increases in fees and charges, as well as cutting council tax support to many. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that is an acceptable record?
David Simmonds
I think I will probably avoid descending too much into parochial politics, but it is important to recognise that I will have to pay the garden tax—I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman will—because I live in the London borough of Hillingdon.
All our local authorities are facing elements of those challenges, and are addressing them as best they can. London local authorities have demonstrated probably the greatest financial resilience of any group of local authorities in the country. We have seen a considerable increase in balances held by local authorities across the capital, but that masks significant variations. In particular, significant financial pressures are being created in outer London, partly because of the significant numbers of unfunded costs around things such as asylum and the long-term impact of the very rapid rise in rough sleeping. Set that alongside the fact that the long-standing structural underfunding leaves them less able to deal with the impact of a massive increase in national insurance contributions and the devastating impact of the Budget on the local economy and its ability to pay those taxes, all of which support local services. Let us take all those things into account, and come out of this with a new funding settlement for London. I ask the Minister to give us an undertaking that this will not be one of those settlements where a Government simply give with one hand and take with the other.
Oral Answers to Questions
Danny Beales Excerpts(8 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Matthew Pennycook
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that question, which is as helpful as ever. I always look at the experience of other nations on planning reform. I recently met the Housing Minister from the devolved Northern Ireland Assembly, and I will happily contact him about this specific point to see what lessons we can learn.
Danny Beales (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Rushanara Ali)
We regularly discuss a wide range of topics with ministerial colleagues, including the important matter of tackling poverty, and we also have the ministerial child poverty taskforce. The lack of furniture and other goods is an issue for many people in our country and it contributes to poor outcomes. We are absolutely committed to tackling poverty and inequality, and the household support fund for local authorities, administered by the Department for Work and Pensions, provides considerable support towards that.
Danny Beales
I welcome that response. Eight per cent of families in this country are in deep furniture poverty. I have seen at first hand the impact of that: people are unable to have a hot meal without a microwave or a cooker and are unable to have a decent night’s sleep without a bed—they sleep on the floor with a mattress or a duvet. Will my hon. Friend meet me and the End Furniture Poverty campaign to discuss what more we can do as a Government locally and nationally to tackle this issue?
Rushanara Ali
My hon. Friend makes important points about the impact of the lack of these essential items through poverty, and I am happy to meet him and the End Furniture Poverty campaign.