Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill

David Simmonds Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 3rd July 2023 Commons Chamber

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

I declare my interests as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and the co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on British Jews. I am privileged to represent a very diverse constituency with a large and established Jewish population, and indeed many people from every possible religious background. It is great to see that, on the whole, those different communities get on extremely well, but this legislation is necessary for the reasons that many Members have outlined.

As the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) said, the long-standing BDS campaign creates a situation where the state of Israel, and Jewish people here in the UK and elsewhere, are singled out for criticism and discrimination. However, like my neighbour and hon. Friend, the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), I will be voting for the legislation, having noted a number of areas in which improvement is required, which I hope we will be able to address in Committee. I will take each in turn. First, I urge Front-Bench colleagues to give serious consideration to entirely dropping clause 4(1)(b), which has raised a number of concerns among Members. In the context of local government, especially in respect of pensions committees, a significant population of councillors are decision makers for the purposes of the legislation and, as an increasing number of local authorities—especially small ones—move to the committee system, the constituency of members who would be considered decision makers for the purposes of the legislation gets larger and larger.

The hon. Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David) will probably remember the late councillor Ray Davies: everywhere you turned, you would find him protesting against something or chaining himself to railings about something else. We can imagine a situation in which a back-bench member of a local authority called to attend a pensions investment committee as a substitute member expresses the view that their preference would be to not make a particular decision because of concerns about the behaviour of a particular Government, and finds themselves in breach of the law as a result. That would seem to have a chilling effect on freedom of speech. We should ensure that those who disagree with a policy are able to express that view while still making a decision that is within the law, as outlined in clause 4(1)(a).

The second piece of important context goes to the point that was raised by the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge): we should give our local government colleagues a degree of respect for their common sense in this matter. At the Local Government Association, it was my privilege to do some work on exactly this issue, working with the Local Government Friends of Israel—a very good organisation. Through that process, we identified that, at the time, at most two or three councils had passed BDS motions. We should accord respect to our local government colleagues by removing clause 4(1)(b), recognising that, on the whole, they have been wise and sensible in exercising their powers.

The next issue is the way in which these powers are exercised in respect of contractors and subcontractors. On, for example, an investment committee or a procurement committee charged with making decisions to place contracts, elected members may not necessarily be aware of the decisions and policies of the bodies with which they are contracting. It is not unusual for a local government pension committee to have 15 to 20 investments at any one given time. Given that those private companies may themselves be under similar pressure to exercise BDS views, what is not always going to be transparent to those elected members is how those things are taking effect in practice. We need to ensure that, in bringing in what is intended to be about decision makers in public bodies, we are not losing our desired intention to ensure that BDS is not present in the public sector by ensuring that those bodies that are contracting or subcontracting are also within sight.

Again on my concern in respect of how these decisions will affect elected members in local authorities, the legislation envisages that it will apply where matters are in line with, or outside of, the policy of the Government. Paragraph 9 of the explanatory notes sets out the example of where a specific legislative provision was introduced in respect of sanctions against Russia following the invasion of Ukraine. It is my view that when this legislation passes we need to be completely clear what we mean when we talk about the policy of the Government. Do we mean as expressed in legislation? Do we mean as expressed by the Minister at the Dispatch Box? What is it that we mean when we talk about the policy of the Government? Is it a policy of different Government Departments? We need to make sure, given that it would be a breach of the law to express opposition to it, that the position from which the policy of the Government is drawn is absolutely clear.

Social Housing (Regulation) Bill [Lords]

David Simmonds Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 1st March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Pennycook]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention; I could not have put it better. We are seriously concerned that clause 22 does not have the same effect as bringing providers within the scope of the Freedom of Information Act. We think that tenants, and tenant representatives and those acting on their behalf, should be able to enjoy those rights, so that they can get information of the kind that, as he rightly says, providers regularly refuse to give to tenants.

Before turning to the Government amendments that have been tabled since the Bill left Committee, I wish to speak briefly to new clauses 7 and 8, which stand respectively in the names of my hon. Friends the Members for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) and for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh). I turn first to new clause 7, or “Georgia’s law”, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood has named it, in reference to a constituent of hers who was forced into temporary accommodation for an extended period as a result of her teenage son being threatened by gang members at their family home.

In our view, new clause 7 is a sensible and proportionate amendment that would make a real difference to a small but significant minority of tenants in England who find themselves in the exceptional circumstance—I must stress that fact—of a police referral as a result of being subject to the threat of serious violence. Its effect—the protection of existing tenancy rights in the case of a forced move linked to a threat of violence and greater co-operation between registered providers to rehouse those affected in a social home—is clearly not unduly onerous, and the Government’s argument that such a measure would cause insurmountable problems with local authority allocations policies is entirely unconvincing.

The Minister gave a guarantee in Committee that the Government would work with my hon. Friend

“to see what more can be done in this area to prevent any more cases like that of Georgia and her boys emerging.”––[Official Report, Social Housing (Regulation) Public Bill Committee, 29 November 2022; c. 66.]

It is therefore incredibly disappointing that the Government have not been willing to bring forward an amendment of their own to ensure that others do not have to experience what my hon. Friend’s constituents were forced to go through. As such, if my hon. Friend pushes her new clause 7 to a vote, we will of course support it.

We also support new clause 8, because while we recognise that the Government are taking steps to address the issue of unscrupulous providers of supported accommodation by means of the Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Bill, promoted by the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), we are in full agreement with my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden that the regulator should have the ability to inspect temporary accommodation. There is statutory guidance designed to ensure that existing minimum standards are met for all temporary accommodation, but we know that in practice bed and breakfasts, hotels and shared houses used by local authorities across the country to house homeless families are frequently substandard and often hazardous, because that guidance is rarely adhered to.

The truth is that with almost 100,000 households, and now more than 125,000 children, living in temporary accommodation, according to the Department’s own figures, local authorities have little leverage when it comes to deciding what standards they are willing to accept. A huge amount needs to be done to decrease the demand for temporary accommodation across the country, most of which is well outside of the scope of this Bill. But in the short term, stronger regulation and inspections could make a real difference, and in the most extreme cases they could save lives. On that basis, we support new clause 8.

Finally, I turn to the Government amendments that have been tabled in recent weeks. The bulk of them are uncontroversial and largely technical, and we support their incorporation into the Bill. I do, however, wish to touch upon Government new clause 1. Awaab Ishak’s untimely death from prolonged exposure to mould in the house his parents rented from Rochdale Boroughwide Housing should never have occurred and the fact that it did, frankly, shames our country. The coroner was right to call it a “defining moment”, but it falls to this House to ensure that it truly is. It is therefore essential that we legislate to compel landlords to act quickly to remedy hazards of the kind that ultimately killed Awaab.

The regulator’s initial findings on damp and mould in social housing, published on 2 February, estimated that up to 160,000 social homes have notable problems with it, and a further 8,000 have hazards so severe that they pose a serious and immediate risk to health. Given the scale of the problem, landlords who fail to proactively review the homes and buildings they manage or lease for hazards, who deal with tenant complaints relating to such hazards ineffectively, or who blame damp and mould on lifestyle choices and myriad other factors, rather than taking responsibility, cannot be tolerated.

Government new clause 1 is a laudable effort at amending the Bill to ensure that social housing providers are forced to investigate and deal promptly with hazards that are a danger to the health of tenants. As the Minister said, it would allow the Secretary of State, by regulation, to set timescales to which social landlords must adhere in respect of remedying hazards or be in breach of a tenancy agreement, as well as specify what kinds of action must be taken. Enforcement will, of course, depend on access to legal representation, and in many cases legal aid, Government new clause 1 nevertheless provides an enforceable right that enhances the provisions contained in the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018, introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck). We commend the Government for tabling the new clause and we support it in principle.

However, we are convinced that Government new clause 1 could be strengthened in several important respects, and to that end we have tabled amendments (a) to (f). Taken together, they would set out on the face of the Bill the location of the relevant prescribed requirements at proposed new section 10A(2); make clear the extent of their application; detail the circumstances in which any provision of a lease or any agreement relating to a lease is void; and clarify where courts may order specific performance of certain obligations. We believe those changes would improve the clarity and functionality of Government new clause 1 and thereby make it stronger, and we hope the Government will give serious consideration to accepting them.

To conclude, this is without question an important and urgently needed piece of legislation, and we are extremely pleased it will complete its passage today. Everyone has a basic right to a decent, safe, secure and affordable home, and it is our sincere hope that by overhauling the regulation of social housing by means of this Bill, we will better protect the health, safety and wellbeing of social tenants across the country. We welcome the numerous concessions that the Government have made throughout the passage of the Bill, but we believe it is not yet the most robust piece of legislation that this House can possibly deliver, the achievement of which has been our objective from the outset. We will shortly have the opportunity to amend it further so that it is, and I urge the House to come together to that end.

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

May I start by drawing the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and, in particular, my role as a vice-president of the Local Government Association? That is an important starting point for why I so strongly welcome this Bill and commend the Government team, especially for new clauses 1 and 2, which are going to be the main focus of my contribution this afternoon.

It was immensely useful, and terrifying, having served as a London local authority councillor and as an office holder in the LGA, to see the things that we learnt about the regulation of our housing market following the Grenfell disaster. Local authorities across the country will welcome the fact that this Bill begins to bring a degree of definition to the situations where regulation that perhaps in the past had been vague could apply, and a greater degree of rigour, which enables a greater degree of accountability in respect of landlords who may be falling short in their responsibilities.

I wish to flag up the fact that some issues remain to be addressed, because although the model of Ofsted as a regulatory framework is a good one, the weakness of Ofsted is that it focuses its inspections through the role of the local authority and the local authority’s powers in a diverse and complex education market are limited, just as they are in the context of a very diverse and complex housing market. I would simply say that, following the situation at Grenfell where large numbers of landlords suddenly realised that they would be required to address quite serious safety issues, we saw a number of examples around the country where private landlords with substantial blocks that were entirely occupied by tenants on social leases through the local authority essentially put those blocks into liquidation and walked away. Therefore, there was a need for a local authority in those kinds of situations to step in. How we deal with perhaps sharp business practices by landlords, who may seek, under a single brand, to register large numbers of individual properties or developments separately to try to evade—at least to some degree—the scope of regulation will be an ongoing challenge, and one that we already face in the buy-to-let market.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for the consultative way in which she has guided the Bill through the House. Having gone through the Lords and now reached Report, the Government have tabled four new clauses and a substantial number of amendments. What consideration is she giving to the consultation that will be needed on those new clauses with the organisations involved, to make sure we get the regulations right when she brings forward the secondary legislation?

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I do not mean to criticise local authorities for these failures. In nearly all cases, councils are doing their best, but they are in a bind because they are under incredible pressure. Children experiencing housing instability are seeing their social relationships broken. Their academic performance is poor, their access to healthcare is limited and they are more likely to be psychologically distressed.

[David Simmonds]

The hon. Lady refers to securing children’s education during a move. I have constituents who have moved into the area, often after fleeing violence in other places, for whom that has been an issue. Does she agree that the proposed regulation of multi-academy trusts might be able to address that? At present, local authorities do not have any powers to direct an academy to take a child in order that they can sit examinations. If we restored that power to local authorities or introduced such a requirement on academies as an element of inspection, it would at least guarantee that parents who have to move could find a school in the new area at which their child could sit their GCSEs or A-levels.

[Siobhain McDonagh]

I would have no problem with changing the rules for multi-academy trusts, but I do not think that that alone would resolve the difficulty. Most schools would be loth to take a child in year 11 or year 13 because they would be in the second year of their exams and the curriculums would not match. Schools of all statuses are concerned about their performance.

The 26,000 families I described are forced to travel an estimated 400,000 miles each year to access temporary accommodation—the equivalent of going 16 times around the globe. On one day at the civic centre in my constituency, the only temporary accommodation that could be offered to families was in Telford, 170 miles away from their home borough, and that is not unique. How can someone possibly start putting their life back together when they are 170 miles away from the borough they have been living in? And that was in Merton, which does not have the same problems as other London boroughs.

Across the UK, as I said, the total temporary accommodation expenditure has reached £1.6 billion, of which three quarters was funded by housing benefit. That is not money well spent. If we moved each family out of temporary accommodation and into social rented housing, we would save £572 million a year. As the Public Accounts Committee put it, not only is temporary accommodation

“often of a poor standard”,

but it

“does not offer value for money.”

I am aware that the Government have supported the Bill promoted by the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), which would try to raise standards in exempt accommodation, but it is important to note that exempt accommodation is distinct from temporary accommodation. Exempt accommodation provides accommodation with extra support for more marginalised groups such as recent prison leavers, care leavers, those fleeing domestic violence and homeless people with substance dependence or mental health issues. Exempt accommodation is a problem of its own, with landlords exploiting the housing benefit system to profit from vulnerable people, but it should be noted that temporary accommodation is different. It represents people who are either awaiting the outcome of a homelessness application under the 1996 Act, or awaiting an offer of suitable accommodation.

I will finish by saying that, after nearly 30 years of Ofsted, we know that unless a school knows that Ofsted is coming, problems begin. A substantial proportion of outstanding schools that were not inspected for five years have recently been graded as needing improvement. Organisations—the best organisations—need to know that somebody is coming, and in a reasonable time. The same is true of councils that are meant to be ensuring that the standards and code of guidance are met. The Government clearly think that schools and children’s social services departments should be independently inspected. What is different about temporary accommodation for homeless families? The Government provide a national curriculum for schools. They do not just say, “That’s okay—I’m sure the curriculum is being followed.” They actually check to see that it is happening. We can talk about what we are going to introduce, such as different pieces of guidance for councils, but unless local authority housing departments are inspected in the same way that schools and children’s social services departments are, we can never expect the standards in temporary accommodation to be safe.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Simmonds Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Maclean]

Yes, the Government do recognise the urgency of this issue, and I thank my hon. Friend for raising it. He is right to be consistent about it, because, as we recognise, access to healthcare is one of the most important concerns—if not the most important concern —of local communities when new housing is planned. Our community infrastructure levy places much firmer requirements on local planning to engage with healthcare provision in the local community, and I would be happy to meet him to discuss this matter further.

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

21. What progress he has made on devolving power to local communities.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Dehenna Davison)]

In 2022 we signed six new devolution deals—with York and North Yorkshire, the east midlands, Norfolk, Suffolk, Cornwall, and the north-east—with £4 billion of long-term investment funding and key powers devolved to local leaders. When these deals are implemented, more than half of the English population will benefit from devolution.

[David Simmonds]

My constituents benefit from access to places such as Ruislip woods and the Pinner Memorial Park as a means of getting to green spaces in the local area. What measures does my hon. Friend have in mind to ensure that, through the access to nature target, more local authorities can use these devolution powers to create good-quality green spaces?

[Dehenna Davison]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend about the importance of access to green space. My Department has made significant funds available to local areas, including through the UK shared prosperity fund and the levelling-up parks fund, which can be used to regenerate green spaces, but I would be happy to sit down with him to discuss the matter further.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

David Simmonds Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 13th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Stella Creasy]

The “Levelling Up” White Paper set out a mission that by 2030 the number of primary school children who were achieving the expected standards in reading, writing and maths would be increased. That cannot be done without investing in early years. We already see the impact of the failure to do that, with children from disadvantaged backgrounds being 11 months behind their peers in terms of development by the time they get to primary school. Investing in early years is what bridges the gap.

We know that our early years sector is in crisis. Since 2019, 500 non-domestic early years childcare settings have closed, 300 in the last year alone. Some 65% of those closures took place this summer. In total, there are 5,500 fewer providers of early years services than there were just a few years ago, and 95% of those providers say that it is the current levels of funding and investment that are driving them out. Crucially, that is happening most in the areas that need that provision most: 15% of closures are happening in deprived areas.

I really hope that the Minister will listen to the case I make today, because it should be a no-brainer. It is not just about seeing children as part of our future and it being worth investing in them as infrastructure. Some 64,000 more women of working age are out of work today than were last year, and 35,000 of them say that caring commitments stop them going to work. I tabled amendment 2, because our economy cannot afford not to realise that childcare is infrastructure. We must realise that making sure people have the right roads and resources to get to work must include ensuring that their children can be cared for.

A report by the Centre for Progressive Policy shows that if women had access to adequate childcare they could increase their earnings from £7.6 billion to £10.9 billion. What would that mean for the Exchequer, which should be here supporting this amendment? The Women’s Budget Group estimates that 1.7 million women are prevented from taking on work for childcare reasons. That costs the economy £28 billion a year. Amendment 2 and unlocking resources for childcare would be a win-win for our economy and for our communities. It would be an investment that would save us money. It is also right that developers should play their part.

Comparing Ofsted and Office for National Statistics data shows that since 2014 the rate of population growth outstrips the growth of the childcare sector in 116 out of 149 local authorities, including 15 of the 20 areas with the highest population growth. The National Childbirth Trust now tells parents to put their not yet born children on the list for childcare providers, because there are not any and getting one is almost impossible.

I see the problem first hand in my local community. The brilliant Walthamstow Toy Library is about to be yet again kicked out of its building because developers want to turn it into flats. Those developers looked completely blank at the idea that they would invest in providing a space for that service because it has such an impact on our local community. That is happening across the country: vital resources that help parents get to work and to develop our children are not getting the funding that they need. The Minister could change that if she would just make it explicit that the provision is not about educational settings. The list that she has now covers nurseries that are attached to schools, but what we are talking about is any form of childcare and revolutionising the funding that is available.

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

The hon. Lady has done an excellent job in highlighting this issue in the context of the debate, but I have some sympathy with the Government’s position on this. Does she recognise that the Department for Education guidance on this matter in November 2019—and it is a DFE matter, not a DLUHC matter—explicitly states that early years and childcare is something that local authorities can use in seeking a section 106 contribution from a developer? It is already in the regulations, which I was not aware of when I put my name to her amendment. Does she also acknowledge that, while we are all sympathetic to her point about maintaining affordable childcare, developer contributions are as a rule capital only for the provision of buildings and facilities, and may not be used for the ongoing support of day-to-day services?

[Stella Creasy]

The hon. Member heard the words of the Minister, who called childcare a non-infrastructure item. He will know of examples, as we all do, of councils building in payments for police community support officers or ongoing maintenance as part of a development. If he is right that developers could do this, why oppose writing it into the Bill to put it beyond doubt and make sure that developers and councils know they can do it?

Passing amendment 2 is about saying the words that my party’s Front-Bench spokesperson said and, frankly, the hon. Member’s did not: “Childcare is infrastructure. The mums listening right now who feel invisible do matter. The services that would help them get back to work do matter. Parents are as important to us as potholes.”

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[Greg Smith]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell). I served on the Bill Committee too. While many Members will think of politics in 2022 for other reasons, for me it will forever be the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill year. Given the size of the amendment paper in front of us, and the scale of issues that Members have, it is vital to get this Bill right to shape all our communities. Fundamentally, the Bill—or certainly its planning clauses—is about competing demands on land use. Until yesterday, I had my own amendment on the amendment paper on food security, but when I look through some of the amendments —new clause 73, new clause 101, new clause 123—many still speak to the importance of ensuring that we get the balance right when it comes to the competing demands for land.

I represent a rural and farming community of 335 square miles of rural north Buckinghamshire, where 90% of the landmass of the constituency is agricultural land. We are seeing solar farm applications coming about time and again and massive growth in house building and commercial property, but we have to think about food security, because if all this land is taken away for energy, housing and industrial units, there will not be any land left on which to grow food.

I am grateful to the Minister and all her predecessors over the past six months for engaging on this matter and for coming up with a proposal. It is why I was happy to withdraw my own amendments to ensure that the new NPPF for the first time ever explicitly referenced food security as a material concern within the planning process. I fear that is where the new clauses I mentioned a moment ago do not go far enough, because they just talk about the green belt, as opposed to open countryside and land used for food production.

For the last few moments of my speech, I will speak to amendment 2 and urge the Minister, when she replies to the debate, to perhaps clear up some of the earlier confusion, because I see no reason whatever why the infrastructure levy cannot be used to fund childcare and childcare facilities. If we are building housing estates and family homes—two, three, four, five-bed properties—funnily enough, not every child from the families who occupy those homes will be of school age. There will be a crying need for childcare and early years provision. Clearly the buildings that are not attached to schools will be an important part of that. I am not saying that the state should take over all childcare, but some ability—

[David Simmonds]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Greg Smith]

I would be delighted to.

[David Simmonds]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, if we reference the 2019 Department for Education guidance that covers his point, it is completely explicit that early years is within the remit of section 106? Perhaps it would helpful if the Minister could be clear, as he asked, that the legislation owned by other Departments remains in place under this Bill.

[Greg Smith]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and agree entirely that those regulations make it clear. It is a shame that the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), is not in her place, because she was a councillor with me in 2006 in Hammersmith and Fulham, where I, then charged with the community safety brief, used section 106 money in part to fund additional police officers in the town centres of that borough. There is precedent out there that we can use funds such as the predecessor to the infrastructure levy, to fund some level of revenue services. That is why I urge the Minister, when she sums up, to acknowledge that we can do that and be true localists, so that communities that determine that childcare provision is important are enabled to make those deals as part of their infrastructure levies.

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[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

As ever, I will contribute to the debate from a highlands perspective. I hope that all hon. Members will one day visit my constituency and see Caithness and Sutherland. If visitors drive across Caithness in a north-westerly direction on a road called the Causewaymire, they will see abandoned houses to left and right. That is because for far too long depopulation was the curse of the highlands, and that is why we have so many people with highland surnames in Canada, in the Carolinas and in Virginia.

The advent of the nuclear facility in Dounreay halted and reversed that depopulation in the 1950s. The Labour Government in the 1960s established the Highlands and Islands Development Board, which in turn led to the fabrication of oil facilities at several yards in the highlands. That, too, helped to halt and reverse depopulation in the highlands, and it is why I got married and had children myself—I worked in one of those yards at the time.

My point is a fundamental one: we talk about the definition of infrastructure and, in my mind, it is about quality employment. If we do not have quality employment for the young generation for the future, the finest housing plan, however we put it together, will be undermined. It is no accident that, after Dounreay came to be, we saw house building on a very large scale in Caithness, around Wick and Thurso. When the yards at Nigg and Kishorn in Ross and Cromarty opened, we saw large-scale housing developments—private housing and social housing—in my home town of Tain, in Alness and in the village of Balintore. Without that part of infrastructure called employment, it ain’t going to work, folks, I am afraid.

That is why I go on quite a lot in this place about space launch in Caithness and, in particular, Sutherland—because it is about jobs. This is an unashamed sales pitch, Mr Deputy Speaker; I hope you will forgive me. I hope that His Majesty’s Government and the Scottish Government will look favourably on the bid to establish a green freeport on the Cromarty Firth. I must register my disappointment that there are no Members of the party that is running the Scottish Government here with us today, because I would have liked them to hear that message loud and clear.

[David Simmonds]

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests: I am an unpaid vice-president of the Local Government Association. I place on the record my thanks to the Conservative Environment Network and the Royal Town Planning Institute for their assistance in formulating a number of the amendments that I tabled or signed.

I also thank the Government for the interest that they have shown in the issues highlighted in my amendments on wildbelt. There is a strong sense across parties that, in the way we approach regeneration, we must take account of the needs of wildlife as well as the need to provide green space around our towns and cities. Especially in areas where large-scale housing development may take place, it is incredibly important for local authorities and developers to identify sites that contribute to biodiversity.

I welcome the progress that we have made in respect of the greater degree of rigour around the planning process. It is clear that many local authorities face challenges in recruiting sufficient professional staff and in ensuring that, from both the developer perspective and a governmental perspective, we have the necessary strategy and oversight in place to ensure that our objectives are delivered.

I will focus on three areas that are especially important. We have heard a great deal about childcare, and I have made a number of interventions on the issue. Let me clarify that the reason I signed amendment 2 is that I am pretty clear that the guidance from the Department for Education—that is one of a number of a number of Departments that own guidance that is used in the planning process, another being the Home Office, which permits PCSOs and police services to be funded through section 106 agreements; those are owned by DLUHC as the Department responsible for local government but bring in other legislation—already allows for childcare to be considered. However, I would welcome confirmation from the Dispatch Box. I think the Minister noted that in her opening speech, but it would be helpful to have clarity.

Let me add my appreciation of the Government’s move on housing targets. The local authorities that serve my constituency have consistently delivered more housing than the targets that have come from any part of central Government or, indeed, the Mayor of London. It is clear that effective local leadership and a sense of ambition, particularly around regeneration, can deliver the homes that we need in this country.

Finally, let me place in the Government’s mind an issue that is very much on those of my constituents: the impact of ultra low emission zones. As we consider the impact of increased traffic on areas, I hope that, in due course, the Government will be minded to accept amendments that require the consent of the local authorities affected before such policies are introduced.

[John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)]

There is much to like and admire in this Bill. Mention has already been made of street votes, and I want to put on the record my thanks to the Government for including them, as that has been a personal crusade of mine and many others outside the House. I am delighted that street votes are firmly and squarely in the Bill.

I am also delighted to see design codes. We have heard about the importance of beauty and of local democracy, local input and local vernacular styles; design codes are an essential way of delivering that and it is very welcome to see them in the Bill.

I also echo the comments of a number of colleagues about what had been new clause 21, which I also signed, and which the Government have responded to positively in dealing with the tyranny of housing targets. The result is to everybody’s credit and very welcome.

However, there is a “but” at the end of that sentence, and it is to do with the concern that a number of Members, including the former Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke), mentioned about supply: our ability to build enough homes in future. Successive Governments of all political stripes have failed to deliver nearly enough homes over decades in this country, and I worry that this Bill fails to fix that fundamental underlying issue of inadequate supply. Street votes will help, but they will not be enough on their own, which is why I tabled new clause 88, and my thanks to the colleagues who have signed it already or spoken in support of it in this debate.

New clause 88 seeks to deal with the problem of under-supply by saying that anybody who owns a home in a town, city or urban area can redevelop it as of right, provided they follow the local design code, which the local council will by then have passed. That will lead to a dramatic increase in the amount of supply. On average, our towns and cities are about two storeys tall, so if the local design code effectively allows a townhouse revolution, which is what most of them will be, that will double the amount of home space available in our towns and cities in one go.

Budget Resolutions

David Simmonds Excerpts

Monday 1st November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Steve Reed]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. One of the things that the Government have done over the last 11 years is dramatically increase levels of poverty across the country. They have not been levelling the country up at all, and now they are trying to cover up their track record since they came into Government back in 2010.

To make the situation worse, the Government’s plans to change the local government funding formula—what they call, in an Orwellian way, “the fair funding formula”—will divide communities even further. Analysis by the Local Government Association found that millions of pounds would be redirected away from poorer towns in the north of England to wealthier southern shires, and that 37 of the Conservative MPs newly elected in 2019 would see millions of pounds cut from their towns, including Workington, Sedgefield, Stoke-on-Trent, Redcar, West Bromwich, Bishop Auckland, Grimsby and Leigh. That is not levelling up Britain; it is pulling Britain apart.

Whether it is work, families or communities, this Conservative Government have made our country more unequal. They have ushered in an age of insecurity, where public services have been decimated, wages have fallen in real terms, jobs are more precarious than ever before, our high streets are struggling to survive, and British people are forced to pay the highest housing costs in Europe for some of the worst quality housing. These levels of inequality are not just morally wrong; they make our country weaker. We all pay the price of inequality, with higher levels of crime, family breakdown and mental ill health, and we pay the price a second time by denying people the opportunity to reach their full potential for themselves, their families and their communities. Levelling up must mean opening up opportunity, not closing it down in the way that this Government have done for the last 11 years.

The Secretary of State will find that he cannot fix regional inequalities because the biggest obstacle in his way is his own party’s marriage to an economic model that is based on crony contracts and waste, and that starves whole regions of capital investment. We need new institutions in our regions—such as regional banks to direct investment where it is needed most—if we want the economy to work in the interests of working people in every part of the country.

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman makes some interesting debating points, but will he share with the House his view why, despite this bad news that he has shared with us, the Conservatives remain overwhelmingly the largest party in local government and made significant gains in the recent local elections, especially in areas that traditionally favoured the Labour party?

[Steve Reed]

Given the Government’s announcement of their intentions to level up the country, the interesting thing will be whether those people feel that they have been levelled up at the next general election and the next set of local elections. That is the only test of what this Government are announcing that will really matter.

The Conservatives have broken the link between work and reward with a decade of stagnant wages and a tax raid on working people; they have undermined families by pushing half a million more children into poverty and refusing to invest properly in kids’ catch-up; they have ripped the fabric out of our communities instead of harnessing the innovation, creativity and compassion that they have to offer; and they have weakened our country with an economic model that has deepened the divides between regions and within communities. That is the polar opposite of levelling up.

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[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

I start by drawing the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a serving councillor and vice-president of the Local Government Association. To be a Conservative in politics is about our willingness to take collective responsibility for making difficult and sometimes very tough decisions about money for the benefit that brings our communities and our people in the long term. The difficult decision was made that we would raise taxes to balance the books. My constituents in Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner are now beginning to ask how we are going to demonstrate we are spending that money in the right way—in a way that makes the difference in the policy areas we are concerned about.

In the limited time available, I will focus my attention on two aspects of a Budget that had many very welcome announcements within it: child poverty and the resettlement of refugees into the United Kingdom following commitments made by our Government after the collapse of the civil Government in Afghanistan. At a roundtable organised by the Local Government Association earlier today, which was attended by the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle), we heard welcome feedback from local government leaders that the finance made available, underpinned by this Budget, will be sufficient to ensure we can fulfil the Government’s commitment to resettle 20,000 people into the United Kingdom, in addition to around 15,000 arriving among those who supported the allied efforts at stabilisation and maintaining the civil Government in Afghanistan. That demonstrates clearly that, while we are still waiting for the guidance about who exactly will benefit—there are logistical challenges ahead—the money is being put in place to ensure that local communities accepting those refugee families will, as was the case with the Syrian scheme, know that they do so without bearing additional cost to council tax payers, because the Government are properly funding the costs.

We have heard a great deal about child poverty in this debate from all parts of the Chamber, including some helpful and clear comments from my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates). Family hubs, additional investment in youth services and the holiday activities and food programme are all a big step forward in how we approach the issue. Those of us who have been around programmes such as Sure Start for many years will know that, while it was well liked and often well received by people who accessed those programmes, the evidence simply was not there that Sure Start was resolving the issues in communities that it was set up to do. There was the same issue in the United States, where Sure Start originated. It demonstrated the same problem. We need to recognise, for example, that the challenges a child and their family may face do not simply stop at the age of five. We need a new policy solution to these problems, and family hubs in particular are a significant step in the right direction.

In conclusion, there is an old saying that all politics is local. Those in the House who have been or continue to serve as local councillors will be aware of the challenges we face in local government. It was said by the former Prime Minister, David Cameron, that local government was

“the most efficient part of the public sector.”

Every pound spent by a local authority buys the taxpayer more value than any other part of the Government system. By investing appropriately in services that are delivered locally in this Budget, we are demonstrating confidence that our councillors—Conservatives are the largest party in local government—and local authorities with their knowledge of their communities will do the job for us in ensuring that our communities get the help and support they need.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Simmonds Excerpts

Monday 25th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

T4. Given the excellent track record of councils, including the London Borough of Hillingdon, on delivering infrastructure improvements in a variety of local services, including homes, sports centres, libraries and schools, what role does my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State envisage councils playing in ensuring that our green investment projects are fulfilled locally?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Eddie Hughes)]

Local authorities are vital delivery partners for the Government’s grant-funding initiatives to decarbonise homes. I am sure that my hon. Friend will have been delighted to hear that the heat and buildings strategy, which was published last week, committed further funding to those initiatives, with £950 million for the home upgrade grant and £800 million for the social housing decarbonisation fund between 2022 and 2025. The strategy also committed to investing £1.4 billion in our public sector decarbonisation scheme to reduce emissions from public buildings.

Building Safety Bill

David Simmonds Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 21st July 2021 Commons Chamber

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con) [V]]

I very much welcome this Bill, which is an extremely important step towards ending the anxiety that has particularly affected very large numbers of private leaseholders of modest means. I welcome, in particular, the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon) about the challenge posed by subsidiary companies.

Let me turn to a couple of other points that are important to make in the context of the passage of this Bill. Local authorities, on the whole, have moved extremely swiftly to remediate any risks that they could through measures such as waking watches and physical changes to buildings. On the whole, the public sector has been very responsible in its role as a landlord and in ensuring that the finance was there so that the work that was needed could be done. The private sector has been a much more mixed picture. Some developers deserve praise for taking responsibility, even if it was not their fault and they had acted in good faith, for putting right problems that posed risks to leaseholders, but clearly others have chosen to walk away by putting businesses into liquidation.

While Government cannot know the risks that are posed by the inside and the outside of every building and structure in the country, I urge Ministers to be as clear as possible, particularly with the finance and the property industries, about what the requirements are to fulfil the expectations of this Bill. The situation that some of my constituents faced with EWS1 forms, for example, was a result in many ways of a lack of clarity and understandable caution on the part of that industry in going for the belt-and braces option, even though it was not required in the vast majority of transactions that were undertaken, which had the double effect of gumming up the system and ensuring that people who really needed the work to be done could not find appropriately qualified professionals to do it. So can I urge that we are really clear about what is required and also what is not required?

I would also ask Ministers to consider the representations from councils such as my own in Hillingdon and Harrow, which have in many cases outstanding local authority building control departments, so that we can ensure that the recommendations for practical change outlined in the Bill to ensure that building control work is done to the highest possible standard learn from the best practice already there in the market. We must make sure that those things only government can do are done correctly and appropriately by government, and also that those at the sharp end like local authorities have the powers they need. But, overall, this is a big positive step in the right direction.

Planning System Reforms: Wild Belt Designation

David Simmonds Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd June 2021 Westminster Hall

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con) [V]]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Cummins. I particularly welcome the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho) in her introduction, and the comments made by my hon. Friends the Members for South Cambridgeshire (Anthony Browne) and for Bosworth (Dr Evans) in setting out the impacts on their constituencies, which mirror those in my constituency.

The London suburbs are an area where we serve the needs of a capital city, but they are also a very popular area for people who are looking to access nature. They often enjoy some planning protection as green belt, which for many years—sometimes many centuries—has been vital as the lungs of the city and as part of the agricultural infrastructure that maintains the life of the city. In Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner alone, we have the beautiful Colne valley, Ruislip woods—oaks that formed the roof of Westminster Hall—and Ickenham marshes, all of which are successful examples of where the local authority and local voluntary groups have undertaken rewilding efforts. That has benefited native species such as stag beetles, various kinds of river fish and red kites, which are now quite common across the area, having been on the verge of extinction not so many years ago.

Despite the impact that we see from projects such as HS2, it is clear that the planning process offers a real opportunity to protect and enhance the wildlife in areas that may be green belt but that certainly surround our towns and suburbs. I can give examples of where local authorities serving my constituency have required everything from bat tunnels to newt ponds as part of planning developments, in order to ensure that wildlife enjoys the protection that the local community expects.

However, as we go into the debate about what type of approach we want to take as part of levelling up, we need to be more strategic about supporting, preserving, developing and improving our green spaces and the part that plays in everything from climate emissions to animal welfare in our country. That is where the concept of a wild belt offers a huge advantage, and it is certainly one that I encourage Ministers to take forward. It is ancillary to the benefits that we see from the green belt, but with a specific focus not just on places that look beautiful and are easy to enjoy, but on places that can provide vital parts of our ecosystem for wildlife; places that may often be found at the margins of our towns and cities, but which are so incredibly important for nature. We must ensure that we support the biodiversity of our country for the future. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey for securing the debate, and I hope the Government will give the issue very serious consideration.

Local Government Finance (England)

David Simmonds Excerpts

Wednesday 10th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con) [V]]

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, particularly my roles as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and as a serving councillor.

I have listened intently to the remarks that have been made during the debate, and I think we need to reflect on the fact that local government finance has been on a journey over many decades, as Governments of all parties have sought reform and efficiency with varying results. My first ever council tax fixing meeting saw the last Labour administration in the London Borough of Hillingdon proposing a 14.8% council tax rise—not untypical under the Labour regime in the late 1990s—with £60 million of unspecified efficiency savings, in a budget described at the time as legal only for the duration of the meeting at which it was set. Labour Members do need to reflect, when commenting on this, that they are past masters of the art of putting up local taxes. In that case, it was very much as Labour funnelled money to northern authorities, rather than ensuring an equitable distribution of funding, which the revised funding formula that the Government have brought forward seeks to achieve.

The big challenges remain, and in particular I would highlight the differential impact and the differential benefit that we see from council tax rises. If we look at London alone, there are 33 authorities with essentially the same set of responsibilities, governed by statute, to the residents. However, because of the different proportions of budgets that are raised by council tax, the amount that the maximum possible social care precept, if applied, would raise in one of those authorities is, at one end, an additional 0.2% of resource and, at the highest end, an additional 1.8%. That is because we see a variation between the around 90% and the around 10% of funding being reached through the council tax, with the rest coming from other sources. So it is very clear, and I very much agree with the remarks that have been made during the debate, that council tax is not a long-term and sustainable solution to the challenge of social care funding.

It is also clear that the solutions are likely to be local. One of the key lessons I have seen in the course of the covid pandemic—and this is true throughout the world—is that strong local services have been crucial in saving lives and mitigating the impact on communities. The UK will do well, for the purposes of its future resilience, to emulate places that have highly autonomous, devolved local authorities that have made good decisions over many decades, meaning that they were in a good position to support their residents when a crisis of this nature hit. So we need to be thinking as a Parliament, in my view, about which are those things that we most effectively do at the centre and which are those things that we need to finance but we believe are most effectively done locally.

I would particularly like to associate myself with the remarks of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in opening this debate. It is clear that councils have done a remarkable job in supporting residents, and perhaps almost uniquely across the public sector, have been exceptionally efficient and effective in knowing their communities and ensuring that the resources, whether from central Government or locally raised, have got to the sharp end.

As we consider the local government finance position today, we need to reflect on a decade that began with a council tax freeze grant—councils being encouraged with extra resources to freeze council tax and have no rise at all—to a position where 85% of the extra resources that become available as a result of these initiatives will be financed through rises in council tax. We need to ensure that these local authorities, which have a very strong and very clear democratic mandate—for the most part led by exactly the sort of people all our communities want to see more of in politics, and by people who are more trusted than we are as Members of Parliament to make decisions in the local interest—have genuine autonomy and control over those things for which they are responsible and are properly resourced for doing those things that we in this House have decided we will require them to do. That is clear from the feedback that I have had from across London. I draw Members’ attention to the London Councils finance report, which highlighted that the grant for covid costs provided by the Department is likely to meet those costs pretty much in full, and that was very much welcomed. That also reflects the efficiency of local authorities and their ability to get the money to the sharp end.

Although it is absolutely right that the Government have made additional resources available, they have capitalised on local authorities’ knowledge of their communities and their ability to find people who may be reluctant to have a vaccination, identify communities that they need to get into because they need extra support and help, and redeploy staff from libraries and all sorts of different services to do the door-knocking for test, track and trace. Those are the people who have unequivocally stepped up to the plate and gone beyond what is required during this crisis.

As we go beyond this one-year settlement, welcome as many of its provisions are, we need to ensure that we properly reflect on how we sustain those services for the future. We must move away from the annual wrangling between Government and local government; each needs a much more settled view of what the other’s role is and of how we will finance it for the long term. The settlement that is to be voted on today is most definitely an important step in the right direction, and I very much welcome it, but it is clear that we need to find a different way of formulating that relationship for the long-term future and the good of our communities.

Holocaust Memorial Day 2021

David Simmonds Excerpts

Thursday 28th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con) [V]]

My constituency is home to a long-standing Jewish community, and I regularly meet constituents whose lives have been personally deeply affected by the events that we remember today, including many who fled persecution and found sanctuary here in the UK.

We have heard many examples during this debate of where our country has been, or has tried to be, the light against genocide and oppression, wherever it has occurred in the world. I pay particular tribute to members of our armed forces, who have often been the last defence of those at risk, and all too often the first on the scene to provide succour when atrocities occurred, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart).

My constituents would be the first to remind me that this debate is about future action as well as remembrance. The UK is the leading country in Europe for the resettlement of child refugees and continues to play an honourable role in efforts to bring peace and stability to the wider world. As we remember the victims of the holocaust and of genocide throughout history, it is also an opportunity to consider that, as well as seeking to bring the light of freedom to places where there is none, our country remains a beacon of light to those who are fleeing oppression.

The new global resettlement scheme is an opportunity to restate our commitment to the United Kingdom being a place of refuge. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Duncan Baker) mentioned, Hansard records little consideration of issues of oppression and the risk of genocide in the run-up to the holocaust. At a time when we know that, across the world, there is great instability and great risk to life and peace, let us all ensure, following this debate today, that we have a genuinely humanitarian approach as we consider the policies that we will need in the future at a time when we are saying collectively, “Never again”.