Affordable Housing (Devon and Cornwall)

Debate between Derek Thomas and Neil Parish

Wednesday 27th April 2022 Westminster Hall

[Derek Thomas]

And stop the opportunities for fraud. At the end of the day, it is fraud for someone to say they have a business that they do not have. I would happily welcome that.

Today, I want to explain why the pressure on housing has intensified in recent months and years. Regrettably, that is in part an unintended consequence of Government policies. I want to pick on two of them. Government policy is effectively driving landlords out of the market. We hear landlords saying—I could use some French, but I am not going to—“We’re not going to do this anymore. We are going to flip our homes into holiday let or do something else with our property,” and they are partly supported by Government policy, such as changes to long-let allowable tax benefits. Since April 2020 —not that long ago—landlords have no longer been able to deduct any of their mortgage expenses from their rental income to reduce their tax bill. The new system means higher or additional-rate taxpayers can no longer claim tax back on their mortgage repayments. Less obviously, the new rules could force some landlords’ total income into the higher or additional-rate tax bracket, depending on their pension or other income. I do not particularly object to that if it is fair across the board, but at the moment it favours holiday lets and does not help private landlords.

[Neil Parish]

I very much welcome what my hon. Friend is saying. We need to set up a rental system that encourages people to have private, long-let properties. We have made a mistake by targeting them too much, taking away the interest rate and the ability to claim that back against the property. We want private landlords who let good quality properties on long-term rentals, so the Government should reverse some of that policy and look at ways to encourage the private sector to put up good properties for long-term lets.

[Derek Thomas]

I completely welcome and agree with that intervention. I do not believe the Treasury deliberately intended to force private landlords out of the market, but that is certainly what is happening.

Energy performance certificates are a pet subject of mine and a debate on their own. Rental properties now require an E rating, which does not sound particularly ambitious until we try it on a property that was built in the 1800s. Since April 2020, landlords can no longer let or continue to let properties covered by the MEES regulations if they have an EPC rating below E, unless they have an exemption, which is not easy to get and costs over £3,000. The landlord has to spend money on the house before they even apply for the exemption. If they are planning to let a property with an EPC rating of F or G, they need to improve the rating to stay within the law. Again, every landlord has to get an EPC rating of E.

The Government’s plan to make rented homes greener is not in itself a bad thing, although we can have a wider debate about whether an EPC is the right tool to deliver the desired outcome. It is a computer system that invariably says no, without the ability to understand or appreciate the diverse nature of the built environment. I do not object to improving homes, making them warmer and their upkeep cheaper, with less of an impact on the environment, but my concern is that landlords seem to be subject to the EPC requirements in a way that holiday lets are not, and the situation is expected to get much worse because the Government have consulted on a compulsory energy performance certificate rating of C on new tenancies by December 2025—three years from now if they pursue it—and on all rented properties by December 2028. If we think the problem is bad today, it will be disastrous for somewhere such as Cornwall, where buildings were constructed in a very different era compared with today, and I would not even say that our buildings today are that modern. We will not get properties up to EPC rating C, so they will be lost to the rental market.

Those are examples of legislation that applies to long lets, as my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) has clearly demonstrated. We are losing valuable homes that people enjoy—we have heard about tenants of 10 years—because the legislation that applies to private landlords does not necessarily apply to people who own holiday lets. I largely agree with the requirements, but I do not believe there is a level playing field. Irrespective of Government policy, we must avoid a situation where we drive private landlords out of the market. There are people who do not wish to own their own home, and there are lots of people who, because of how we manage the term “affordable”, find it difficult to get on the ladder.

I hope the Minister understands the severity of the problem for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. It is urgent. I have many constituents in a desperate situation, and we need rapid and effective intervention that provides a secure home for life, whether it is owned or rented.

Plastic Food and Drink Packaging

Debate between Derek Thomas and Neil Parish

Thursday 24th October 2019 Westminster Hall

[Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)]

I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Honiton and Tiverton—

[Neil Parish]

Tiverton and Honiton.

[Derek Thomas]

I commend my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish)—Tiverton is obviously first—for securing the debate and for all he does with his Select Committee. This is such an urgent issue, and the report is timely. It contains some helpful work and recommendations, and I hope that the Government take seriously and implement them all. It is urgent that we cut plastic pollution.

I declare an interest: I am the Member for west Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, in the most beautiful constituency—that is undisputed.

[Neil Parish]

We will contest that.

[Derek Thomas]

I will not comment on Tiverton and Honiton again. I say that my constituency is the most beautiful because, apart from a short section that neighbours the constituencies of my hon. Friends the Members for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) and for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton), we are entirely surrounded by the sea. However, although ours is a beautiful, unspoiled part of the world where every Member—as well as most of the country—gladly chooses to holiday during the summer, the truth is that we do see plastic pollution.

[Derek Thomas]

I welcome that intervention, and the fact that we agree on that is brilliant. The hon. Lady is right: I always say to everyone who comes down, or who wishes to, that the sun always shines—which is true, although sometimes the rain gets in between.

[Neil Parish]

You can guarantee that, can you?

[Derek Thomas]

I can, but the clouds sometimes obscure it.

On the Isles of Scilly, where it is 12 °C and warm and beautiful, there is no hiding the fact that plastic pollution is taking its toll. I am the parliamentary species champion for the Manx shearwater, a ground-nesting bird that was in significant decline. We have been able to turn that decline around on the Isles of Scilly because we have been able to get some of those islands—they are both inhabited and uninhabited—completely clear of plastic pollution and rats. As a result, the birds are now thriving, and last year they were the fastest recovering species at risk in the UK. They nest only in two parts of the British Isles. That is an example of the immediate benefit of getting on top of this problem for wildlife.

I was shocked by something that I learned when I went on a visit to Nancledra school, which was holding an eco-fair. People took shovelfuls of sand—anyone who looked at it would have assumed that it was just ordinary sand from the beach, as it was—and poured it into water. As they did so, the plastic came to the top. Anyone who has not done that experiment should do so when they—or their member of staff—go on holiday to Cornwall. If we pour sand that looks perfectly ordinary into a bucket of water, we will find it startling how much plastic is in that water. That plastic harms our marine life, so we really must get on top of it. We will never get on top of all the minute plastic pieces that are in the sand but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton says, we can certainly stop contributing to that.

In my constituency and around the country, as we heard from the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Douglas Chapman), who is from way up north—I have not been here long enough to learn all the pronunciations—there is a huge amount of effort and will from people on the ground. Right across the Cornwall coastline, organisations continue to undertake regular beach cleans, and they are now moving inland because of all the plastic caught up in bushes and hedgerows. We will see less and less plastic there, but mainly because people are working so hard to clear it up.

Every year, I run an outdoor adventure camp, and I have done for 20-odd years. This year, we decided that we would be plastic free. I cannot tell hon. Members how difficult it was to run a camp for 100 young people and not bring on to the site unnecessary plastic packaging. Schools tell me exactly the same. Mounts Bay Academy in Penzance held a huge event to celebrate its plastic-free status, but staff kept telling me that they could not get suppliers to stop sending into the school stuff that was wrapped unnecessarily in single-use plastic. We need to address that, and I hope that the Government will do so as a result of this report.

There are a couple of things I want to commend. Penzance was the first town to become plastic free. Surfers Against Sewage was started in Cornwall 20 or 30 years ago, campaigning to clean up our beaches. We were pumping raw sewage into our beaches, but we have been able to address that and now we have blue flag beaches that are the most beautiful in the country. SAS staff have now rightly turned their attention to plastic, and they have done amazing work. They have been into Parliament—I am sure that most Members will have met them already—to make the case for bottle deposit schemes and legislation from the Government to change things. SAS also supports the industry to move away from unnecessary plastics.

Despite all that effort, herein lies the problem: there is still no let-up in the use of unnecessary plastic packaging. Supermarkets continue to use it for no good reason. If there is a good reason, I would be delighted if someone—perhaps the Minister—could correct me. I am an old-fashioned person of faith, and I believe that we are provided with what we need. Fruit and veg are provided with their own natural wrappers and protections. Why do our supermarkets choose to shrink-wrap cucumbers—or swedes or turnips, depending on the part of the country—and other fruit and veg? It is completely unnecessary, and it amazes me that we continue to do that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Derek Thomas]

I will not criticise my own Government, but I learned home economics in school, which taught me what cauliflowers and so on look like when picked from the ground. There is a joke around in Cornwall about children thinking that bottles of milk are literally collected from nests, rather than that milk comes from cows. However, the point has been properly made that we need to get to a place where people understand—or have the opportunity to learn, if they choose to—how food is produced, and how they can use it in a much more natural way. I will not say much more on that.

I come back to the intervention about shrink-wrapped cucumber. I accept the points that have been made, and that we can use alternatives to keep cucumbers fresh, but we cannot use the same argument for tinned vegetables. Baked beans, which are already wrapped in tins, are wrapped again in plastic. I cannot see the need for that. Some producers find that cardboard is a useful alternative. I think that the supermarkets and food packagers need to be leaned on by the Government to get rid of unnecessary single-use plastic. I do not think that there is any excuse for using it. I do not want to pick on Mr Kipling, who was a favourite of mine when I was younger, but he likes to wrap his cakes and biscuits in far too many wrappers. It would be great for people to take action about the lack of movement, not only from the Government but from some of the companies that continue to use unnecessary plastic.

The hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife—I am sorry; I am really not familiar with his constituency—made a good point about the enthusiasm of local people. There is enormous enthusiasm and determination among the people I meet to cut plastic where possible, so I have three, or possibly four, simple asks.

First, what I hear from people is that when they buy biodegradable or compostable products, they want to know what that actually means. If we buy biodegradable nappies, as I did, how long does a nappy sit in our compost heap before it disappears? I put the nappies in my compost heap—and then I had to put them in the bin about four years later. We need to be really clear with people and have a proper legal definition of what biodegradable actually means. How long should we expect something to take to rot down? What is compostable?

[Neil Parish]

That is what we found in the inquiry. Compostable plastic has to reach 60°C; it has to be industrially composted. That will work, but not in someone’s garden. That is why the material has to be collected separately. Somehow or other that has to be explained to the public, because at the moment they are rather confused about the whole matter.

World Health: 25-Year Environment Plan

Debate between Derek Thomas and Neil Parish

Tuesday 9th April 2019 Westminster Hall

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for bringing this debate to Westminster Hall. Trees are not only good for capturing carbon and converting it to oxygen and generally good for the landscape; by planting them on banks, and using them as flood mitigation systems, they can do good for air quality and reduce the chances of flooding in the future.

[Derek Thomas]

That is all part of the agenda on climate change and caring for our environment, so that we can all enjoy it. I am glad that schoolchildren who care about our planet can take action by planting trees and clearing our beaches and seas of the plastics that threaten to suffocate the health of our oceans.

Local Government Finance

Debate between Derek Thomas and Neil Parish

Wednesday 22nd February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Marie Rimmer). I echo the praise from my right hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) for councillors and the amazing work that they do. I particularly want to pay credit to the parish councillors who are working so hard to cover the gaps left by Cornwall Council, in my neck of the woods, as it retreats from delivering services in our rural areas. The parish councillors are doing jobs that they never expected to be doing, but they are doing fantastically. We need to do what we can do to support them.

I am really looking forward to the review of funding allocation for local government, but I want to refer particularly to the Council of the Isles of Scilly and the pressure that it is under. I am privileged, as a Member of Parliament, to represent a constituency with off islands. The Isles of Scilly had their own unitary authority long before everyone else followed suit. The islands are home to 2,200 people and are an incredible and unique environment.

The council is a stand-alone, single-tier unitary authority. Unlike other local authorities, it has no means of devolving powers to local parishes. The council’s responsibilities are extensive. I am visiting the islands this Friday and Saturday, and it is no exaggeration to say that almost everything I see, touch or use while I am there will be the council’s responsibility. It is in charge of public safety; it operates the airport on St Mary’s; it runs Park House care home, which is the only residential care home on the islands; and it maintains the islands’ swimming pool and other leisure facilities. It is the only local authority in England and Wales that also acts as a water authority, providing water to some 1,070 homes on St Mary’s and Bryher, as well as the sewerage infrastructure across St Mary’s. That is a huge undertaking, and the council is the first in England and Wales to do so. Unfortunately, the fact that it owns next to no public assets that can be used to raise council revenue makes fulfilling those responsibilities more difficult. In fact, most of the land on the islands is owned by the duchy, so house building is a particular challenge.

In the local government financial settlement, the Isles of Scilly’s proposed allocation fails to take into account fully the uniqueness of this unitary authority. The provisional new homes bonus has been reduced by £22,200. The new adult social care support grant allocation is only £12,700—a reduction of nearly £10,000. The proposed improved better care fund allocation is zero. In the light of the fact that residents on Scilly have high needs but a very low council tax base, this funding decision does not appear to be fair or to recognise the specific needs of this remote island community.

The allocation for the rural services delivery grant is still zero, despite the assurances given by civil servants in 2016—the Secretary of State will be pleased to know that this was before his time—that they would look closely at that issue. There is no more rural an area than the Isles of Scilly, yet it gets no rural services delivery grant whatever.

During my visit to Scilly this weekend, I will discuss the challenges it faces in transport, adult social care, housing and marine safety. Ever since I was elected in 2015, I have been working with the council and Ministers—they have been keen to help and support us—to ease some of the pressures, particularly the pressure on council finances. This task has been made more difficult by the fact that the current funding allocation does not reflect the specific challenges and costs faced by Scilly. Right now, there is a real risk to the social and leisure amenities on the islands, and there are fears—I have had a number of emails just this week—that the care home will no longer be able to stay open. That is partly to do with funds, but it is also to do with the difficulties of attracting the staff needed, because of a lack of housing and an inability to build more.

Members of the Council of the Isles of Scilly are of course working hard to identify how to save money and become much leaner. Over the years, the council has worked extremely hard to become much leaner and more efficient, and it has probably become as lean as it possibly can, yet the pressure is on for it to make further savings, remain viable and ensure that it delivers a sustainable future for the islands. As such, the current funding proposal places increased pressure on a small council with huge responsibilities, threatens essential public services and leaves an undeniable need for reconsideration. As I say, a review of council funding is certainly needed for the Isles of Scilly.

I want to move on to the mainland part of my constituency and to business rates. The truth is that many businesses in Cornwall are small, and many in my constituency are being taken out of business rates altogether. That is hugely welcome, and the Government have achieved a fantastic piece of work. However, I have the rather peculiar situation that independent stores in the town of St Ives, which accounts for only about 8,000 people out my whole constituency, will have business rates increases sometimes of 62% or even of well over 100% this April. In fact, across the independent businesses in the town of St Ives, the average increase is 24%, which is particularly difficult.

I listened to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury talk about the prosperity of St Ives on Radio 4 at the weekend, but the reality is that while big businesses there certainly are prosperous—they can cope with difficult times, particularly during the winter months when there is just nobody around—independent businesses, which rely on doing their business for a few months in the summer, are required to pay business rates all year round however successful or unsuccessful they are.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

There are definitely winners and losers from the business rates review, but many farm tourism businesses—farm cottages, riding stables and others—are being given a much greater value and their rates are going up 60%, 70% or 80%. That is just too much for those businesses, and we need the Government to help them in some way.

[Derek Thomas]

I welcome that intervention, and that is absolutely the case.

In total, 32 independent businesses have contacted me just from the town of St Ives alone. One business will see its business rate rise from £2,000 to £3,000 a week, but this small high street business already faces considerable charges from operating in that town. Some businesses are saying that there is no way that they will remain viable or can continue.

I want to raise something that would never have been the intention of a Conservative Government. In Penzance, all the supermarkets will see a drop in business rates of about 15%, but business rates for high street businesses are going up by 10%. I cannot believe that that was ever the intention of a Conservative Government, and I very much want that unintended consequence of the review to be reversed. I think that I have said all I need to say.