United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

David Simmonds Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sir Robert Neill]

The first point is that there have to be professional qualifications in order to recognise the people qualified. The Bill does not seem to cause any difficulty about that. I was also making the point that the carve-out on legal qualifications accepts that there are legitimate areas of difference, but there are many other areas where it is entirely legitimate for us to try to work together as a single UK market. I would have therefore thought that the Bill was balanced and proportionate in that regard. I cited services and the importance of the financial services sector, both north and south of the border, as a key example of that. I hope that after the transition period we will also continue our good links with the financial services sector in Dublin, where a number of English legal and professional firms have bases because of those links. The Bill is not malign in any of those regards.

Although the Bill does not and need not cover this, I hope as we go forward that we will see what can be done to help other parts of the broader British family that would desire access to our new internal market—for example, the Crown dependencies, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. Many of their financial sectors— their trust arrangements and their banking fund arrangements—are importantly and closely linked to the City of London and the UK. The Justice Committee has oversight of the Ministry of Justice’s work on the relationships with the Crown dependencies, and I think there is a great desire to see how we can strengthen the access between them and the UK. The aspiration for the Crown dependencies to have free and unfettered access to the UK market is something we should look to explore with them on a reciprocal basis.

That particularly and specifically applies to our British territory of Gibraltar—as you know, Ms McDonagh, I have the honour to be the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Gibraltar. It is a well expressed intention of the Gibraltar Government, supported by all parties in Gibraltar’s Parliament, to have access to, in effect, a free trade area with the United Kingdom. I hope the Minister will take that back to his colleagues in the Government, because it ought to be a no-brainer as we go forward. It causes the United Kingdom no difficulty, and it would be of considerable reassurance to the people of Gibraltar, who despite having voted overwhelmingly to remain in the European Union, none the less trumped even that and asserted their membership of the British family and the desire to remain with the United Kingdom and not to be coerced, sometimes, by their neighbours. Supporting them by making sure they have full access to the internal market ought to be a high priority, both practically and morally, for the United Kingdom Government.

Finally, there is one area that we can perhaps simplify. I am not generally in favour of simplifying or lowering food standards, and I am certainly not in favour of lowering environmental or food standards as we leave the EU or in any future free trade deal, but there is one area, ironically, where leaving the EU may give us something we can turn to our advantage, and that relates to public procurement and, in particular, local authority procurement.

As a number of hon. Members know, I served in local government for many years before I came into this House, and I was local government Minister for the first half of the coalition. One of the genuine complaints I had from councils of all political complexions was about the complexity of going through the OJEU—Official Journal of the European Union—process, where contracts over a fairly basic level had to be advertised through a pretty bureaucratic process. That had the no doubt laudable objective of ensuring that firms across the single market could access those contracts, although, in practice, doing a contract in Bromley, Merton or wherever was not likely to be attractive to a small-sized firm of builders in Poland or the Czech Republic.

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

rose—

[Sir Robert Neill]

I will certainly give way to my hon. Friend, who knows a great deal about this.

[David Simmonds]

Does my hon. Friend note, as I do, that the OJEU process in the United Kingdom resulted in less than 1% of procurement exercises yielding a bid from outside the United Kingdom?

[Sir Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend, whose experience in local government is huge and much more recent than mine, is absolutely right. That is the irony—what was a theoretical process none the less caused considerable delay and cost for local authorities seeking to carry out a range of capital works. I hope the Government will say, “Let’s seize the advantage and simplify the public procurement process.”

For a raft of reasons that have been well rehearsed and that I need not repeat, local authorities are hard pressed for cash, and we could certainly make their lives easier by enabling them to save money in the way they do their procurement. We can make it easier for them to adopt a policy of sourcing contractors locally, as they already try to do, so that they can be drivers of support for businesses in their area, without needing to parcel up contracts artificially, as was historically the case to avoid the need to go through the OJEU process. That is one area where I hope the Minister, whose own experience in local government is considerable, will talk urgently and swiftly to his colleagues in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government so that we can sit down with the local government sector and get rapid reform of local government procurement rules.

So without more ado, I commend the Bill, now that the little obstacle that might potentially have been in its way has, I hope, been resolved. We can now get on with the serious business of making the best of what is, to be frank, a bad job. This is not where I wanted to be, but it is in the interests of the country that we have a proper working set of rules to enhance the internal market in the United Kingdom.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Daly]

Many, many things could happen in life, but the point remains that not one Opposition Member has been able to point to one action of the Government—they have not pointed to literally anything—that would indicate that they are derogating from the highest possible standards and the standards that we enjoy at this moment in time and that we have under the European Union.

This is a good Bill and this is a positive Bill. Rather than dwelling on the legal argument, which would be somewhat going off the point in respect of where we are today and which I am tempted to do, I will say that this is a Bill to strengthen our United Kingdom, to invest moneys in every part of it, to ensure that we have free unfettered access and to ensure that all parts of the United Kingdom are within the UK internal market, as set out in the withdrawal agreement and the Northern Ireland protocol. I congratulate Ministers on this Bill as it will only do good for our fellow citizens in all parts of the United Kingdom.

[David Simmonds]

At this stage in the debate, my challenge is to try to say something original on the various different topics that we are considering. Today’s business concerns mutual recognition and non-discrimination. Having spent many happy days of my life in the Centre Borschette on the rue Froissart in Brussels, alongside very good colleagues from Scotland, Ireland, Wales, the United Kingdom and the other composite states of the European Union, debating these issues in respect of, in my case, education, while committees alongside us debated those issues around financial services, veterinary products, fish and every possible type of goods and services, it is clear that the United Kingdom has long played a key role in writing these rules.

I welcome the commitment that was alluded to by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Daly) that, at the end of the transition period and as part of the process of withdrawal, the United Kingdom’s commitment is that all those standards are written into the law of the United Kingdom, so the minimum standards that apply to us as a member of the European Union that already prohibit chlorinated chicken and hormone-fed beef will become the law of the land.

Let me try to concentrate on three points that have not been covered in sufficient detail yet. The first is the importance of the integrity of the UK single market and why this matters in the context of the trade deal that we are seeking to achieve. In 2018, the United Kingdom was fined £2.4 billion for failing to uphold its treaty obligations as a member of the EU to enforce the standards that we are committed to apply at our borders.

Having spent so much time in Brussels, I do understand that the UK is a little notorious with our friends and allies, and the risk they fear is that the United Kingdom, with our global reach in terms of our international maritime trade, will become a backdoor into the European single market for goods that do not meet the minimum standards that we need to uphold. That is a legitimate concern, especially as Brussels expects to receive significant amounts of trade tariffs on those goods that are coming into the UK single market and, potentially, with an open border on the island of Ireland, would then be re-exported. We need to respect the fact that that is a genuine concern on the part of the European Union, we need to pay the attention that Ministers have referred to to ensuring we uphold rigorous standards on our own borders, and we need to ensure that our voters and the wider public recognise the commitment that the United Kingdom single market will continue to uphold the high standards that we have in the European Union, and in future, where we seek to diverge, it will be in an upward direction, with higher standards, rather than lower.

The second issue I would like to touch on is devolution. I do have some sympathy with the concerns of Members from devolved nations about the power grab point. Many colleagues—Tony Buchanan and Stewart Maxwell from Scotland, Arnold Hatch and Jonathan Bell from Ireland and many others from across the United Kingdom, and other Members of this House, including the hon. Member for Leicester East (Claudia Webbe) and my hon. Friends the Members for Northampton South (Andrew Lewer) and for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill)—have played a role in exercising UK local and regional government powers in Brussels over the way in which we, as part of that wider single market, both regulate and choose to spend the funds that we are part of, like the European structural fund and the European social fund.

I note that those issues have already been exhaustively debated, but a point that has not been aired very much in the debate is that, following the ending of the arrangements whereby we participated in those bodies, we have a range of UK Joint Committees, including ones that are there to exercise a similar scrutiny and oversight role around how that regulation is undertaken and how those funds are expended. It should be of concern to us that with an agreement already in place—I know Scotland has nominated SNP Members to the Joint Committee, with the Committee of the Regions to supervise and provide oversight of the run-out period of the European structural funds—we still need to hear a little more about how we are all committed to making those arrangements, which were committed to by Ministers on the Floor of the House, work effectively in the interests of our UK single market in future.

We are seeing many parts of our constitution—our local authorities, our regional authorities—stepping up to the plate, and our businesses being a part of that. It is very sad not to hear that debated and aired in this place, especially when in the case of structural funds there is £730 million unspent that the UK has already contributed, which will be returned to Brussels if Members across the House do not put pressure on our Front-Bench team to make sure it is spent by the end of this year.

Finally, I would like to touch on the point about legality. I am not a lawyer by background, but it is very clear to me that this debate has been something of a lawyers’ delight. We have had advice from those with eminent legal qualifications about whether things do or do not contravene international law and what triggers those decisions, and opinions given by people with immense political experience about the impact that that will have on the UK’s reputation. It strikes me, however, that what is being proposed by the Government is quite similar to what is common practice when sending our armed forces to places where there is a high degree of tension, when the rules of engagement say that people will not fire unless fired upon. What I am hearing from the Government is that these arrangements are there in the backstop so that unless the negotiations— which, as the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland indicated, are proceeding in good faith—break down irretrievably, they will not come into play, but it is a fact that, whether they are in the Bill or not, the UK would have recourse to those provisions if we needed them, and it is an appropriate precaution for the Government to take to bring those forward now.

These kinds of conflicts are not unusual. On 5 May, the German federal court handed down a judgment in respect of Germany’s signing up to the European Central Bank’s buying of bonds in order to enable a European recovery from coronavirus, and said that that was not lawful and conflicted with the domestic law of Germany. While there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the Government there, I understand that that is one of many judgments that have been handed down over the years demonstrating that there will be these conflicts between domestic and international law and that they need to be resolved not as a matter of taking down a legal textbook, but as a matter of negotiation in good faith between partners and allies. I have every confidence that that is what will be achieved.

I understand the fury and frustration of many of our colleagues who have given so much of their political lives in seeking to reach a deal. To me it is very clear that both sides are seeking to negotiate in good faith and the more that we can respect that, the better. The European Union is our largest, our most valuable, and, importantly, our most mature single market partner that we engage with. It is crucial to our economy and enormously valuable to their economy that we get a deal. I can see that behind the scenes Ministers and negotiators on all sides have been putting the mechanisms and structures in place to deliver that. I support the Government in seeking to ensure that the deal is in place for the good of the United Kingdom and our allies by the end of the year.

Rented Homes: End of Evictions Ban

David Simmonds Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

The best way to help the hon. Gentleman’s constituents—and all our constituents—out of this crisis is to get the economy back on track and people into work so that they can pay their bills and enjoy their lives again. As for the specifics of his constituents’ cases, in fact, we have not given £50 million—we have given £500 million in council tax relief for the most egregious cases and £63 million for the non-shielded food vulnerable to help them. We have protected, as I have said, 8.6 million people as a result of the other changes that we have made. I am confident that we have done the right thing, and we continue to do the right thing—for example, by adding a further £40 million to discretionary housing payments, bringing the total to £180 million, to help the sort of people he talked about in his question.

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

In my constituency, I have military families, returning from serving this country abroad, who are unable to regain access to their family homes because of the moratorium on evictions. I have neighbourhoods that are blighted because, despite the best action of local authorities to evict households that are a persistent source of antisocial behaviour, the moratorium means that those individuals are there, thumbing their noses at their neighbours and causing misery for many. May I encourage and invite the Minister to stick to his guns and ensure that we can still take robust action against those who abuse their position?

[Christopher Pincher]

I quite agree with my hon. Friend. Those who abuse their position make everyone’s lives intolerable. Baroness Newlove, the Victims’ Commissioner, has said that antisocial behaviour is an issue for local authorities, the responsible agencies, Government—possibly even Opposition. People are being let down by antisocial behaviour, and antisocially behaving tenants need to be dealt with by the courts. I will stick to my guns—the Government will stick to their guns—and we will do the right thing by landlords and tenants.

Housing, Communities and Local Government: Departmental Spending

David Simmonds Excerpts

Thursday 9th July 2020 Commons Chamber

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

I first need to draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a serving councillor.

I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister would agree that the story of local government throughout this covid crisis, and for the past decade, has been one of extraordinary financial resilience. A number of Members have made reference to the NHS. We should ask ourselves whether the NHS could have managed a 60% reduction in the funding that it receives from central Government and still have seen the satisfaction of its users increase, as our local authorities have done over that period. How do we get more people into politics who come from business and professional backgrounds and who represent their communities? Clearly, if we look at the cabinets—the leadership—of our local authorities, that is exactly where we find those people. I pay particular tribute to my excellent colleague, Ray Puddifoot of Hillingdon Council, who has just entered his 21st year as leader of that authority, having spent a lifetime as a highly experienced and senior chartered accountant. He is one of the many local government people who have brought stability to the finances of our councils.

I want to pick up on three issues that I invite my hon. Friend to consider and that I think this House needs to pay particular attention to. The first concerns housing and planning. We hear a good deal about the impact that our planning system has, but we need to recognise that more than half a million consented developments are as yet uncommenced. Local authorities are doing an outstanding job in ensuring that housing opportunity is moving through the system, yet, all over the country, developers are playing off different parts of the system. Perhaps it is time to consider simply abolishing the Planning Inspectorate and Secretary of State call-ins, making sure that the local authority’s decision is final so that developers know who they have to negotiate with, the decision is made, and they can get their spades and shovels in the ground to develop the houses that we need.

The second issue that I would like my hon. Friend to consider is social care, which has been touched on extensively. Many of our constituents are astounded to discover that social care accounts for about 70% of all the money that our local authorities spend. Indeed, children’s social care is the only area of council spending to have increased, on average, in the past decade, yet it is a service that touches barely one in five of our constituents. We need to make sure that we have a financial solution that opens this up to the widest possible group of people to get their support.

Finally, I would ask us to learn lessons from what we have done with delayed discharges, where we need to see that local authorities and the NHS work together. Local authorities brought about a massive improvement in delayed discharges; the NHS strolled. We know where the opportunity lies.

Draft Enterprise Act 2002 (EU Foreign Direct Investment) (Modifications) Regulations 2020

David Simmonds Excerpts

Wednesday 8th July 2020 General Committees

[Paul Scully]

Thank you for that clarification, Mrs Miller, and I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. We can debate this issue when the National Security and Investment Bill comes to Parliament.

The second change that the regulations make will allow the Secretary of State to disclose information to the European Commission or member states when the Secretary of State wishes to provide comments on FDI in a member state. As I said earlier, the Enterprise Act already allows the Secretary of State or the CMA to provide information to the Commission or member states where required because of the Community obligation.

The interventions were about further information that is not necessarily required, but I believe that in the upcoming National Security and Investment Bill we will have plenty of chances to debate the area and ensure that, with the Enterprise Act, it is solid. Although we do not believe that we should be part of a reciprocal information-sharing procedure at the end of the transition phase, we are already going that little bit further anyway. However, it will be revoked, along with the EU regulation.

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

I want to address a key issue for me: the need to have something in place to ensure certainty. That addresses the point made by the right hon. Member for North Durham. These measures envisage a seamless arrangement until such time as Parliament has implemented new measures. What I think I read in the explanatory memorandum is that the Enterprise Act ensures that the system of which we are currently a part with the European Union to manage the process is operational in UK law through the Competition and Markets Authority.

[Paul Scully]

I thank my hon. Friend. The UK and the EU will have separate jurisdictions to scrutinise mergers. The EU might look at a merger if it is relevant, but that would not stop the CMA from conducting its own investigation.

Westferry Printworks Development

David Simmonds Excerpts

Wednesday 24th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Steve Reed]

I would like to make a little progress, because an awful lot of Members—not just in the Chamber, but elsewhere—would like to contribute to the debate.

The Secretary of State admitted last week that he was fully aware that his decision helped Mr Desmond avoid these charges. Why was it so important that this decision was rushed through on 14 January rather than, say, a day later or a week later? He has given no compelling reason for that, so suspicion arises that he was trying to do favours for a Conservative party donor.

The Secretary of State’s own advisers from his Department believed the scheme was viable with the higher level of affordable housing, so on what specific grounds did he overrule professionals with relevant experience that far outweighs his own? Without a credible answer, the suspicion arises once again that the Secretary of State was bending over backwards to do favours for his billionaire dinner date.

Barely two weeks after the Secretary of State forced the scheme through, in the teeth of opposition from his own advisers and the local council, the beneficiary, Mr Desmond, made a donation to the Conservative party— what an astonishing coincidence! The Secretary of State can see, as we all can, how that looks: cash for favours—mates’ rates on taxes for Tories that everyone else has to pay in full. Do this Government really believe that taxes are just for the little people? No one will believe a word they say on levelling up until the Secretary of State levels with the British people over why he helped a billionaire dodge millions of pounds in tax after they enjoyed dinner together at an exclusive Conservative party fundraising event.

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

Has the hon. Gentleman considered that the urgency partly arose from the fact that the period for determination of the application had expired in November 2018? The opportunity of these valuable homes had already been waiting more than a year for a decision in the hands of Labour Tower Hamlets Council.

[Steve Reed]

The issue in question is not that the Secretary of State called the planning decision in; it is what he did after he had called it in—[Interruption.] The Secretary of State will have a chance to respond. It is what happened when he took the determination, not the fact that he was taking it.

Local Government Responsibilities: Public Services

David Simmonds Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Luke Hall]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: the community spirit that we see throughout the country, with people rallying to support friends, neighbours, vulnerable people and loved ones, is absolutely inspirational. I have seen it in south Gloucestershire and my hon. Friend has seen it in Hastings and Rye, and I know it is happening all around the country. I will touch on that later in my remarks.

We have given councils the flexibilities that I outlined to ensure that they are not required to divert staff from their urgent tasks, allowing them to get on with the priorities that we are setting out.

I also wish to talk about social care and the measures that we are taking with regard to that key priority area that the Secretary of State has outlined. We know that social care, especially for the elderly and disabled, will be at the forefront of our response to coronavirus. The Government will ensure that whatever our social care system and national health service needs, it will get. As I mentioned, we have already set aside £5 billion to support our NHS and public services. We also published on 13 March guidance on adult social care for care homes, home care providers and supported living providers. The guidance sets out how to maintain the delivery of care in the event of an outbreak of widespread transmission of coronavirus and what to do if care workers or individuals being cared for have symptoms of coronavirus.

As part of that essential contingency social care planning, we and local areas are also considering how best to harness the many people who are so keen to help as volunteers to alleviate the pressure on social care workers and the system. It is going to be critical that local authorities work very closely with the care sector to ensure that providers build on the existing plans and protocols that are in place to respond to the challenge. We are also confident that local authorities will work with the national health service in their areas and regions to make sure that people are cared for in the most appropriate setting. The health and social care workforce is under increasing pressure, and volunteers will be an invaluable resource for local areas to draw on in the event of emergencies. We will say more about this in the coming hours and days.

I am confident that all Members will support the Government’s efforts to make sure we have the best possible use of the fantastic skills and willingness to help of our citizens in responding to this crisis.

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

I completely agree with what the Minister said about the reliance we will place on professionals and volunteers. One of the concerns that has been raised with me by my local authority is that many of those professionals are in the process of qualifying and they will be asked to see examinations that they expected to take—qualification processes—deferred, so that they can spend their valuable time now focusing on those who are most in need. Can the Minister provide some assurance to those professionals that the understandable interruption to their professional qualifications will not in any way disadvantage them in the progress they would otherwise have made, so that they can get on with that vital job today, knowing that they will be able to return to their studies, qualifications and professional development in due course, without inappropriate interruption?

[Luke Hall]

My hon. Friend makes a very important and sensible point, and I will make sure that that is given some further thought. I thank him for raising it in the debate today.

One of the questions the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South raised was about PPE, and she was right to do so. We need to make sure that the care sector has the PPE that it needs. I would like to update the House that free distribution of fluid-repellent facemasks from the pandemic flu stock will start today, with every care home and every care provider receiving at least 300 facemasks that will be distributed through the usual channels. It will take seven days to distribute the full amount, but it is a good start to make sure that people have the PPE that they need. We are of course also thinking about beyond next week, and we are working rapidly with the wholesalers to ensure the longer-term supply of all the aspects of PPE, including gloves, aprons, face masks and hand sanitiser, which the hon. Lady also raised.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ben Everitt]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. The job of local government is on the frontline. Any job of a public servant such as ourselves, or councillors or council officers, is to look after the most vulnerable in society. If we do not do that, we are not a society.

Speaking of the most vulnerable, in Milton Keynes, we have a persistent problem of homelessness, which possibly provides one of the best examples of partnerships between local government and the voluntary sector. I have been very fortunate to visit many charities in Milton Keynes since being elected to represent Milton Keynes North. We have a winter night shelter, the YMCA, the Salvation Army and, of course, the Bus Shelter, which is run by volunteers, with a full-time on-site manager. It takes street homeless people off the streets. They get a bed for the night in Robbie Williams’ old tour bus, which seats, I think, 18, but it normally holds eight clients. It was wonderful to meet the clients, to see how they access the service and how the service helps them get their lives back on track and into work. Milton Keynes has received over £2 million of central Government funding for homelessness and rough sleeping since Christmas, which is incredibly welcome, because this is a critical time to support those who are on the street. That is a good example of how the voluntary sector, charity sector and local government can come together to solve a problem.

[David Simmonds]

Does my hon. Friend agree that that is a clear illustration of why we need to have the maximum possible flexibility for local authorities in deploying these resources at a local level? Those examples of creativity and innovation are replicated by local authorities across the country, but local circumstances vary enormously. Does he agree that we must encourage the Minister to take the view that the more flexibility and less bureaucracy there is for local authorities in using that money effectively at a local level, the more value we will extract from it in delivering for our residents?

[Ben Everitt]

Again, I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. I am sure that the Minister for Local Government, who is sitting on the Treasury Bench listening avidly to the pleas of councillors for more flexibility in the way that local government spend their finances, will heed that call.

Knife crime is a new problem for Milton Keynes, and it is incredibly worrying, but it is another example of where the public sector can work in partnership with communities and the voluntary sector. The police are on the frontline of knife crime, and I am pleased that they have extra money, officers, kit and powers, all of which are focused in Milton Keynes on solving the issue of knife crime. The extra money is incredibly welcome, and I will come back to that. There will be an extra 187 officers for Thames Valley, of which 36 will be in Milton Keynes. In terms of the extra kit, it really helps when the police know that they have a Taser to use.

There are also extra powers for the police. Parents say—again, this relates to the intersection between the public sector and the community—that, when the police use section 60 powers, it gives them confidence to know that an area is being policed. It also has a deterrent effect for young people who might think about going out with a knife.

It is through the extra money that there is an intersection with the public sector. Diversionary activities through boxing clubs, interventions in schools or projects such as the knife angel are incredibly good for bringing communities together. There is a demand management issue. There is also a data challenge, to enable the public sector, voluntary sector and charity sector to work together on a data-led response to a situation.

--- Later in debate ---

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

I am sad to report to the House that, having spent 22 years as a member of a local authority and having been elected as a Member of Parliament, I have gone down in the index of public trust. When it comes to politicians and Members of Parliament, we are fortunate that we still sit above lawyers and estate agents, but local government is very much trusted by the people of this country. That is why what the Minister and the Government have done, not only in their approach to the coronavirus outbreak but to the bigger strategic challenge of how we properly resource our local services for the coming years, is very important.

One of the long-standing frustrations of my time in local government is that Parliament—it has the opportunity to be incredibly strategic on behalf of our country and to think about what it wants to achieve for the nation in many of these big-picture issues, such as housing, healthcare, social care and education—has sometimes been drawn into detailed debates about very specific issues, when we would achieve so much more by allowing our locally elected colleagues to demonstrate the leadership that they are demonstrating in response to this crisis. They need to have those resources to accept from this House the challenge to deliver against those ambitions and then to be left to get on with it.

Local resilience forums, which the Minister referred to on a number of occasions in his speech, are to me a very good example of exactly that kind of leadership. My experience as a councillor is in the London Borough of Hillingdon, although my constituency straddles two London local authorities. Going back to 2001, with 9/11 we suddenly had to deal with thousands of stranded travellers who had no means of getting back to their homes. They needed to be found somewhere to stay, to be fed and, in many cases, to be provided with medical care, communications and support. We saw local organisations––not just the local authority, but schools and the military––rallying around, co-ordinated by the local authority, to provide that crucial support.

In the decade since, we have had to deal with significant outbreaks of very serious illnesses, including severe acute respiratory syndrome, middle east respiratory syndrome, H5N1 and swine flu, from which a young girl in my local area sadly passed away. The local authority then had to step in to manage those communications, in order to reassure that community and make sure that the support was in place so that a school or community that was grieving could deal with the situation. It is impossible to do that directly from this House, which is why the Government have rightly taken the view that they will look at the strategic question of providing an appropriate level of resources and then enable those people in their local communities to route that money directly to where it makes the most difference.

My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt) referred to the provision of a bus to make emergency accommodation available for homeless people. Many of us have local authorities that have contracts with local voluntary organisations, for example, the YMCA, as in the case of my local authority, to provide that kind of emergency accommodation. In other parts of the country, such accommodation may be provided directly by the local authority itself. It is crucial, therefore, that the theme that runs throughout all this is the ability of local authorities and local resilience forums to deploy the money that is rightly coming from this Government in the most flexible way possible to meet those local challenges.

Lessons could be learned on that, and I am cognisant of what Opposition Members have said about the challenges associated with special educational needs and disabilities, and the educational provision for people in that situation. It is clear that the more local flexibility there is, the easier it is for those communities to rise to the challenge of meeting the needs of those individuals. The more we seek to control that from the centre, the less satisfied many of our residents and voters will be with the outcomes they are seeing. Given the amazing range of provision that we see—I am cognisant of the remarks about what was happening on youth services—we have fantastic voluntary organisations, which are providing brilliant opportunities to young people. A decade or two ago, their lives would perhaps have been lived in a youth club, but they are now being lived online, on a smartphone, where they talk to their friends in the privacy of their bedrooms. So something different is required in the modern world, and that is another example of where the leadership of local authorities, which know their communities, can deploy those resources, albeit more limited than they might have been historically, in the most effective way.

I wish to make a couple of specific observations about particular strengths of the Government’s response. The first relates to the announcements that have been made to support nurseries and early years providers. I should declare an interest: as a parent of two young children, I am a user of my local council-run nursery. There are many people, some employed in our public services and others who are going about their daily business who are dependent on the existence of those services to ensure that they can live their lives. Such services provide an opportunity for their children and the children who may not come from prosperous backgrounds to gain the best possible start in life. So I am pleased with the commitment that the Government have given to ensure that, even if children are having to step back from those places because of the immediate prevailing situation, funding will still find its way, and so when this moment of emergency passes families can find that those services and the opportunities for the youngest children are still there. That is an extremely wise move, and the more we can send that message to proprietors and managers of nurseries and parents whose children use them, the better.

The second thing I wish to refer to is the distribution of personal protective equipment. Because of my personal connections with the national health service and from what I hear as a local councillor, I know that there is, understandably, a high degree of anxiety among many of those staff who, unlike us in this Chamber, will be sent out to people who are known to be suffering from the coronavirus in order to provide direct, hands-on personal care. They are worried about whether they will be able to access the quality and standard of equipment that will be necessary to keep them safe. The announcement by the Minister that the distribution from national stocks of those products to those frontline workers is going to be absolutely crucial once again in providing that degree of reassurance.

That is not reassurance to those in the markets who are wondering which moves to make when they are trading their shares, and it is not reassurance to the international community; it is reassurance to people who are absolutely at the frontline of responding in a very direct and very human way to this crisis. Again, the more we can get out the message the better that, as well as a sum that is so mind-bogglingly large—over £300 billion—that it is hard to grasp, this House is thinking about the basics of face masks and gloves and aprons that people need to make sure that they are safe when they are doing an essential job, to bring this country together and to keep our people safe.

[Matt Western]

On that point, does the hon. Gentleman agree that it would be useful to understand from Government just how they are ramping up the production and supply of PPE, or ventilators or testing kits, so we understand where the base was and where we might be in two weeks’ time?

[David Simmonds]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. I have been very much reassured by what I have heard from Ministers over a number of days about the initiatives that are taking place to ensure that ventilators, for example, and other equipment are available. One of the things I am particularly aware of because of my local government experience and knowledge of what local resilience forums do is that there are long-standing plans in place, backed up by stockpiles of various different types of equipment that may be required. It is welcome that the Minister has been very clear today that, based on need and local requirements, the distribution of that is going to begin, particularly for the volunteer groups that many colleagues have referred to, with people who are not familiar with some of the challenges and risks that may be involved in treating patients with serious illnesses; the knowledge that they can access good quality personal protective equipment supplied through central Government and by their local authority, is going to be absolutely crucial.

In conclusion, I would simply like to make the following point. We have seen examples up and down the land of local authorities consistently on a cross-party basis—I can think of examples from the response of Manchester to the Arena bombing to those of local authorities across the country to the refugee crisis in Europe—where our local government colleagues have demonstrated very capably that they will rise to any challenge which this House sets. It is most welcome that Ministers have been clear that they will provide the financial resources that are central to the delivery of that, and I trust that all hon. Members will be providing a similar degree of cross-party moral support to our colleagues in local government that at this time of national challenge, we need to work together and rise to it together.

Building Safety

David Simmonds Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I will take up the issue the hon. Lady raises with respect to rights of access so that I can give her the best possible advice there. With respect to cost, the position today, as it has been throughout, is that this remediation work is the responsibility of building owners. As I have already said now on a number of occasions, I am aware of the fact that clearly there are some leaseholders who will struggle to raise the necessary funds. We have precedents for this: we see, for example, homeowners who purchased their property through right to buy and who may then be presented with significant costs, perhaps by a council or a housing association. Measures have been put in place to help them through that process so that that is not a bar to doing the essential works that now need to be done. That is exactly the conversation I will now be having with the Treasury to see whether we can put in place some sensible proposals to help people in that situation.

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

As someone who, in a past life, chaired a local authority housing committee responsible for these matters, may I welcome my right hon. Friend’s announcement of the new regulator? I ask my right hon. Friend to update us on the discussions that he has been having with local authority leaders on both how to use the information in their possession to identify buildings and structures at risk in their area, and how the learning from that might help the new regulator to bring some clarity to the often confusing area of building control.

[Robert Jenrick]

We have been working closely with local authorities ever since the Grenfell tragedy. We have supported them with advice and funding so that they can draw up lists and provide data on buildings over 18 metres—we have provided them with £4 million for that—and we should be in a position to publish that data in March, which is the deadline that we set local authorities. We have also created the protection board, which is designed to take that work to another level—bringing together the fire and rescue services, the Home Office and my Department with local authorities to assess, on a priority basis, the fire safety of those buildings that have not yet been assessed.