Oral Answers to Questions

Gareth Thomas Excerpts

Monday 12th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I think that the hon. Lady misunderstands the policy—at least it certainly seems so, given the way she described it. The Government are not withdrawing support; we are making it fairer and ensuring that it is still available. The support will be loan-based, with a soft loan secured on the individual’s property. This also protects the rights of taxpayers, and I would have thought that she would be interested in doing that.

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

4. What estimate he has made of the profits derived from the Help to Buy scheme by house builders.

[The Minister for Housing (Dominic Raab)]

The Help to Buy equity loan scheme alone helped 116,000 first-time buyers to get on to the property ladder and stimulated the supply of new housing—both key aims of this Government.

[Gareth Thomas]

My constituents, some of whom have been on the wrong end of aggressive behaviour by Persimmon, are concerned to know that since Help to Buy was introduced, the biggest private house builders have increased house prices by up to 10%, with almost all of that banked as profit and much of it paid out in senior managers’ enormous bonus payments. Should not the Secretary of State and his ministerial colleagues be doing more to tame the aggressive behaviour of developers such as Persimmon, rather than subsidising them through Help to Buy?

[Dominic Raab]

It is good news that Help to Buy has helped more homes to get built. It has contributed to about 14% of new build since 2015. I personally share some of the hon. Gentleman’s concerns about executive pay, but I gently remind him that it was this Government who introduced the corporate governance reforms in August, including to make sure that there is greater transparency and greater shareholder grip over directors’ pay.

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[Mr Speaker]

It is very useful to learn about Ministers’ domestic habits, and we are grateful to the Secretary of State for providing further information on that score.

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Conservative-run Northamptonshire County Council has recently gone bust. Was that due to a lack of Government funding or local incompetence?

[Sajid Javid]

The council has not gone bust. Owing to concerns around its finances, I appointed an independent investigation weeks ago—a best-value inspection—and the inspector, Mr Max Caller, will report back later this week.

Department for Transport

Gareth Thomas Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 27th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I rise to raise two concerns. The first is about the ending of the operating grant for Transport for London, which is already beginning to have a significant impact on upgrades to the network, not least to the Jubilee line, and increases the prospect of the extension of the night tube to the Metropolitan line being much further delayed than originally planned.

Given that last time the Conservatives were fully in charge of transport in London my constituents saw a 60% increase in the cost of commuting into central London, it seems particularly unfair that, just as a Labour Mayor takes over in London, a second whammy should hit funding for Transport for London.

The bulk of my remarks will focus on a much less high profile part of the transport sector that does not see significant funding in the estimates, although it does see some funding. As the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) rightly said when he intervened on my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson), who so ably introduced this debate, the community transport sector faces a devastating impact as a result of the Government’s proposed changes.

I am lucky enough to chair the Co-operative party, which has long campaigned under its people’s bus campaign for an expansion of the not-for-profit or social enterprise bus sector. The Co-op party believes that community transport and commercial bus routes should be able to be designated as community assets and should be subject to the same protections that community assets are afforded by the Localism Act 2011.

[Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

My hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) is not alone on the Government Benches in agreeing with those points. I agree that community transport is very important, particularly to people in rural areas.

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[Gareth Thomas]

I welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s intervention. If the Minister is not willing to listen to me and to Opposition Members who share these deep worries about the impact on community transport, I hope he will listen to the right hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy). I hope the Minister will also pay further attention to the Transport Committee, which did an excellent piece of work on this sector.

Community transport is too often overlooked. It provides vital connections within urban and rural communities. Tens of thousands of people across the UK are reliant on community transport services for some of the most socially necessary journeys that have to be made. Many of the people who use community transport are among the most vulnerable in our communities, so the Government’s announcement that they were seeking to change the regulation under which the sector has been operating was met with shock, and it has placed many services under direct threat. Indeed, Enfield Community Transport has closed, partly as a result of the uncertainty arising from the Government’s announcement. I hope it is not too late for Ministers to find a way to back off from the drastic changes they are proposing.

What does community transport cover? It covers door-to-door transport, ranging from the relatively informal lift giving by volunteer car drivers to more organised schemes such as a Dial-a-Ride or Dial-a-Bus for people with disabilities and mobility difficulties. It involves community bus services and covers minibus travel for groups of people such as the elderly or others who struggle to get out and about on their own, where they are taken on shopping trips and such like. I understand that just one small group of commercial bus operators, led by one individual, which wants to cherry-pick community transport contracts provided by local authorities and the NHS, and which does not put anything back into the local area, has somehow managed to persuade Ministers that new rules are needed to interpret EU regulations affecting the drivers and licensing of community transport. I urge Ministers to rethink their support for this group of individuals and to reassert the importance of community transport.

Harrow Community Transport serves my constituents and is very worried about whether it will be able to survive if more of its drivers are required to undergo expensive and lengthy training of the sort that commercial bus and coach companies have to provide.

[Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that a letter of clarification was issued in November, which, if it holds true, will solve all the issues caused by Mr Fidler’s letter in July? The danger is that there is still a consultation, so who knows where it could end up?

[Gareth Thomas]

If the November letter is symbolic of a Government wanting to sort out the problems in a positive way to ensure that community transport can survive and prosper, I of course welcome that. My sense is that the Transport Committee was not wholly convinced of that and of whether Ministers had yet got that fully correct. Perhaps the Committee will be able to haul the relevant Minister before it again to seek further clarification on that, or perhaps the Minister here today will be able to provide further reassurance.

Harrow Community Transport has been in operation for more than 40 years in one guise or another, and as a stand-alone charity and social enterprise since 1980. It has a fleet of 14 minibuses and wheelchair-accessible cars, carrying more than 30,000 passengers annually. It employs 12 full-time and part-time drivers, six passenger assistants, and has more than 40 volunteer drivers and a small admin team. It provides a community car service and a wayfarers’ club, which helps to provide access to places of interest for those living alone or in sheltered housing. I underline the point that those who run Harrow Community Transport, and have done so with great pride for a long time, remain profoundly disturbed by Ministers’ proposals. It is on that, in particular, that I seek clarity from the Minister today.

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[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) on securing this debate. If my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas) and I were of any assistance, it was, as usual, as her obedient servants in this matter. She made a compelling case for her own region, but I am delighted that she does not argue that we should rob Peter to pay Paul—take resources from my region, for example.

Rather than use my own words to talk about transport spending in London, I shall quote the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard), Transport Minister until last month and not, I suggest, partisan in favour of the Labour London Mayor. He said last October that spend per head was a bad indication when judging the effectiveness of transport spending:

“The calculation for London…doesn’t account for the substantial number of daily commuters and visitors, both domestically and internationally, who will be using and benefitting from the roads and public transport networks but who aren’t London residents…two in every three rail journeys start or end in London and there are eighteen times more passengers arriving into London during a typical morning peak than at Manchester, the busiest northern city. In particular, as the main international gateway into and out of the country, London will be the location for transport investments which look to serve passengers well beyond the local resident population.”

Indeed, there are severe funding problems in London, and my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West mentioned the most pressing: the withdrawal of the entirety of the operational grant—£700 million. What other capital city would that be true of? But that is only where it all begins; we now hear that the money raised from vehicle excise duty in London, some £500 million, will also be spent only on roads outside the capital from 2021.

It feels sometimes as though these decisions are spiteful rather than strategic. The current Transport Secretary is perfectly happy to overspend his budget by £300 million—including, as the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Dame Cheryl Gillan) said, £260 million on VAT for HS2. He said that we could not make adjustments to the system of penalty notices in London, which would have raised £80 million within our own resources. He also refused to allow the suburban rail service to be incorporated. That would have been more efficient and was supported by a number of Conservative MPs in the capital.

[Gareth Thomas]

Does my hon. Friend also think it is regrettable that the Department for Transport has blocked London from accessing the new national clean air fund, given the scale of problems that diesel is causing, particularly in central and outer London?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I do not want to stop the debate, but I am going to have to drop the time limit to four minutes for the next speaker. The way we are going, it will have to go down to three to get everyone in. I am bothered about that, so can Members who have already spoken bear that in mind?

Draft Community Infrastructure Levy (Amendment) Regulations 2018

Gareth Thomas Excerpts

Wednesday 24th January 2018 General Committees

[Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McDonagh. I welcome the Minister to his new role and thank him for outlining the purpose of the draft regulations. Although they are technical, they have clear implications for the money that communities will receive as a result of allowing development to proceed.

As the Minister outlined, the draft regulations are intended to provide clarification of the level of CIL to be paid after a section 73 amendment to a planning permission. They are specifically intended to clarify the rate of indexation that should be used, so that the same rate of the BCIS, or building cost information service, all-in tender price index—more on that later—is applied to the before-CIL and after-CIL calculation. These draft regulations seek to alter the calculation of CIL to be paid in cases where planning permission was granted before CIL was in place in a given area, but where CIL is in place when a subsequent amendment to a scheme is made under a section 73 permission. I add to what the Minister said that this is about the calculation applied. If that is not correct, it would be helpful to have that clarified.

Regulation 128A of the CIL regulations, which deals with this, is apparently not sufficiently clear. Paragraph 7.5 of the explanatory memorandum explains that it has been brought to the Government’s attention that there is a need for a change to that regulation, but it does not give the reasons, or the circumstances in which people had concerns about how the regulation was applied.

The draft regulations seem to state that the CIL to be paid is basically the difference between the original CIL that would have applied, had CIL been in place at the time of the original planning permission, and the new CIL rate to be applied under the section 73 amendment to the original permission. The Government are altering the regulations to ensure that same rate of indexation is used in updating the CIL level as applied to the original planning permission, so that an appropriate comparison is made. Presumably the intention is to reduce the amount of CIL that developers are required to pay. Although I understand the need for clarity, does the Minister accept that the change could have the overall effect of reducing the amount of CIL that can be levied?

Take the hypothetical example of a development given planning permission in 2015, before CIL was in place, and given permission for a section 73 amendment in 2016, after CIL had been introduced locally. The calculation applied is for CIL for the complete new development, which we will call B, minus the hypothetical CIL for the previously permitted development, which we will call A. If the BCIS all-in tender price index is increased from 2015 to 2016, the previously calculated figure for CIL using the index figure from 2015 for A, and the figure from 2016 for B, would be larger than the calculation as proposed by this instrument, which would use the index figure from 2016 for both the A and B calculations. The difference between them would be smaller, reducing the amount of CIL to be charged. I am really pleased that one of the officials is nodding; it is assuring me that I have this right.

Even if the indexation figure was lower from B than A, it still amounts to a reduction in the amount of money that can be levied under the new formula in this instrument. In fact, the BCIS figures show—I have the graph with me—that this has consistently gone up over the last number of years, but even if it did not, it is still using the same rate for both calculations, and that still reduces the amount that can be applied in CIL.

Has the Minister’s office run through any models of possible scenarios to calculate how big an effect this change might have on CIL revenues locally? I am sure that the Minister is aware that CIL is extremely important for local infrastructure, schools and roads, to support development. Endless tweaks to CIL over the last five or six years have often reduced its effectiveness in delivering resources to local authorities and their communities.

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend asks a very pertinent question. In my constituency, Persimmon, which must be one of the worst developers in Britain, is treating my constituents with almost complete contempt. Those constituents are particularly worried about the lack of resources going to the local council from Persimmon to tackle the big problems with local infrastructure that will result from extra people using the roads and needing schools and hospitals.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend makes a really pertinent point. We have to bear in mind, when we think about CIL and changes to it, the impact not only on developers but on local communities, and the overall money available to support necessary infrastructure. We need to make sure that where possible, developers pay what they should under CIL. My question to the Minister is whether the impact of the change is being kept under review.

I also want to ask the Minister whether local authorities have to pay for access to the BCIS data. If so, is that a sensible use of public money? It was not clear to me whether that information was readily available to them in the calculation of CIL and the rates that now have to be applied, or whether they had to pay for it like anyone else.

It is not our intention to divide the Committee on this statutory instrument. However, I would like to hear the Minister’s response to my queries, for further reassurance.

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[Gareth Thomas]

I want to ask the Minister a simple question. Is he going soft on developers? I ask that in the context—as my intervention on my hon. Friend on the Front Bench indicated—of the deep concern in my constituency about a development on the former Kodak site, where Persimmon has been leading the development of a large number of houses. Having put in a planning application some time ago, which secured the support of the local council, and which local residents had broadly come to terms with, Persimmon has taken the opportunity effectively to bully the council into agreeing to higher density on the site and is not treating local residents, whose property its site borders, with anything like the respect one would have hoped for from a major company. Residents are worried that there are not sufficient tools available to the Government and, crucially, to local councils, to hold big developers such as Persimmon to account.

I use the example of the situation I am having to deal with in my constituency, where Persimmon, backed up by lawyers, is saying to local residents that they are going to have to move their boundary fences to accommodate larger gardens for the new homes that Persimmon wants to build. Persimmon appears also to have exploited the Government’s lending guarantee scheme of late to force people to buy a leasehold on some properties, only not to offer a leasehold in other ways.

Will the Minister assure the Committee that this is not him going soft on developers and that he will ensure that bad developers, as Persimmon clearly is in this particular case in my constituency, can be brought to book by local councils? Will he show some sympathy to my constituents who face this terrible situation?

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[Dominic Raab]

I thank the hon. Gentleman. I am not familiar with all the facts of the case. If he would like to write to me, I am happy to address them. I was simply making the point about the primary legislation. There ought to be cross-party support for an important mechanism to provide targeted investment where homes are needed.

The hon. Member for Harrow East—

[Gareth Thomas]

West.

[Dominic Raab]

I apologise—the hon. Member for Harrow West raised a local case. There are two points. Of course, I sympathise with the kind of situation he described in his constituency. We are absolutely not going soft on developers, although, frankly, I am not really sure I buy into that whole hard-soft idea. We want a smooth, streamlined approach with maximum legal certainty so that we can provide the homes we need, and with respect for local democracy in our local communities, while ensuring that we get the targeted investment to support the infrastructure that goes with housing. That is how we carry constituencies with us, whether it is his, mine or any other across the country, as we go through that vital national mission of building the homes we need.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gareth Thomas Excerpts

Monday 22nd January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

My right hon. Friend has considerable experience, both as a Minister and as a long-standing Member. We will certainly look into all such matters because we are absolutely committed to using every lever that we possibly can to increase home building in this country for the next generation.

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

One of the best ways to provide more affordable homes to rent in rural and, indeed, urban areas is through the provision of more co-operative housing. What further co-operative housing initiatives are the Minister and his Department thinking of pursuing?

[Dominic Raab]

The hon. Gentleman is right, and a lot of social housing is of a co-operative nature. It particularly depends on any given community’s specific needs, which are often for the local authorities to help to identify. Local authorities in rural areas need to focus on the particular needs of their communities. For example, some areas have rural exception sites, which provide long-term protection for affordable homes in rural areas.