Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Debate between Graham P Jones and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

3rd reading: House of Commons & Legislative Grand Committee: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 13th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Graham Jones]

Absolutely. The new clause asks the Government to provide clarity. It is not a prescriptive. It does not say that the number should be x, y or z. It asks the Government to produce clear guidance for local authorities.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for speaking quite a bit of sense. I do not often disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), but he is wrong on a few occasions. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the key issue is the proliferation of fixed odds betting terminals and not betting shops per se? It is quite in order for local planning authorities to bring forward supplementary planning documents to address specific issues such as antisocial behaviour; it is normal in planning law.

Fixed Odds Betting Terminals

Debate between Graham P Jones and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Wednesday 8th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jackson]

It is interesting that my hon. Friend, for whom I have enormous respect—I think that he is wrong on this issue—should touch on the cumulative displacement impact on horse racing¸ football and greyhound betting.

[Graham Jones]

rose—

[Mr Jackson]

I cannot give way. The hon. Gentleman is very engaging, but I must resist his blandishments on this occasion.

I am not a devil take the hindmost, freemarket libertarian. I am a Conservative—I am a social conservative. I believe that there is a compact or bond of trust with the most vulnerable people in our society. There is a problem with problem gambling. As a Christian, I have compassion for those people who are stuck with the mindset of feeling that they have to gamble, but my concern is mostly for the children and families affected by problem gambling. We have a responsibility and a duty. We have regulatory regimes for many things in our society. I think that it would be wrong, when so much money is being made, and from some of the poorest people in society, to walk on by and say that we do not need to look at this again. Labour was catastrophically wrong on this issue. I think that this is the worst motion the Opposition have ever chosen, because they are on very weak ground.

I believe that the Minister is right to look at the precautionary principle and to demand all the up-to-date information on the B2 machines, which are very sophisticated, from the gambling companies. A code of practice is not good enough, because we are not talking about Mother Teresa; we are talking about some pretty ruthless business organisations that are protecting their interests, and some of them are preying on the most vulnerable in society. We need the information. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) that we need to base our decisions on data that can be proven and tested, not on anecdote.

Having said that, I believe that the Salvation Army has produced a great deal of data. We heard earlier about the increase in the number of problem gamblers in recent years. Some 23% of the money spent on FOBTs was spent by people with gambling problems. According to Dr Henrietta Bowden-Jones, the lead consultant at the NHS national problem gambling clinic, 50% of the clinic’s patients reported FOBTs to be particularly problematic.

In short, we are a Government committed to localism, so let us give local authorities more powers to look at use class orders, to crack down on clustering and to look at the absolute number of FOBTs, all of which I agree with. But let us have a consensus across the House, rather than vindictive, party political point scoring, because this is too important an issue for our families and communities for that.

Property Market

Debate between Graham P Jones and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Tuesday 25th January 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Turner. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Richard Harrington) on an excellent, well informed and intelligent contribution to an important debate. However, I fear I may unfortunately disagree with him on a practical and philosophical level.

Under the Labour Government the fewest houses since 1923 were built. Indeed, that Government tested to destruction the idea that centralised, top-down targets could be the way to engender growth in the provision of private sector, intermediate and social rented housing. Another issue, which has been disastrous in relation to social cohesion, is that, even the social housing that they did produce served, in a period of benign economic growth, to embed welfare dependency, to the extent that the number of people in social housing who are in paid work has shrunk every single year over the past 40 years or so. A mono-tenure culture in social housing cannot be right for the community, the economy or for our nation in general.

[Graham Jones]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Jackson]

I will not at the present time, but I might give way to the hon. Gentleman later. I fear that the problem for my hon. Friend the Member for Watford is that he is looking through the wrong end of the telescope. The integral issue is mortgage availability and the fact that mortgage providers have failed to adapt and make progress in the market in terms of providing funding and mortgages to people.

[Mr Jackson]

As a Christian, I hope that sinners will repent and that the retail banking sector will lend. I think, however, that the issues are much more integral and institutionalised, as my argument will make clear. I welcome the new homes bonus, although I am slightly concerned about its top-slicing element from year three, which could have an impact on the propensity of local authorities to develop its potential—remember that the scheme is about developing housing appropriate for a particular area.

The situation reminds me of the emperor’s new clothes—no one quite knows on what evidential basis we are to decide how many houses are needed. Is it the 2004 Barker report? Is it the misguided views of the then Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Prescott sustainable communities plan of 2003? We need to step back and carry out a full analysis of the demographic and social change. The hon. Member for Hyndburn (Graham Jones) has made the point—quite astutely, though in a roundabout way—that this should not just be about the south-east and the east of England and London, but that we should spread our country’s wealth through the housing market throughout the UK. In fairness, we are looking at mechanisms such as the regional growth fund, sustainable transport funding and, of course, high-speed rail, which seeks to bridge the gap between the overheating of the south-east and other parts of the country—the north-east, the north-west and Yorkshire and Humberside. We need to have a much more existential approach to why we think we need more houses.

It is also important to think in terms of the operational capacity of planning departments. One would struggle to find many people who would admit that their local authority’s planning department is completely fit for purpose. The huge bureaucracy and time lags drive local and bigger businesses and developers mad, because there is not a high degree of accountability in this often technical area for local councillors and residents and, in particular, for business. That causes an enormous and inordinate delay to the development of projects.

[Graham Jones]

Will the hon. Gentleman accept that it is the responsibility of local authorities to fund planning departments and that local councillors have decided that they are a low priority—ditto building control? Will he also accept that the previous Government introduced planning legislation that allowed local authorities to determine what they did and how they did it in their area, but that, because local authorities chose not to resource planning departments, it was left to top-down Government guidance and advice?

[Mr Jackson]

I do not agree with that comment at all. What happened under the previous Labour Government was that central Government decided that councillors were not qualified to decide how much residential development should take place in their area or to co-operate on infrastructure projects. That is something we have made changes to through the Localism Bill, which received its Second Reading last week. In many respects, the previous Government undermined the autonomy and authority of local councillors and planning departments, specifically by adopting a completely crazy top-down and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Watford said earlier, Stalinist approach to the regional spatial strategy. Of course, that did not work. It would have been great if it had actually worked, but—

[Graham Jones]

Will my hon. Friend give way on that point?

[Mr Jackson]

I will not at the present time, but he is always my hon. Friend, especially if he wishes to cross the Floor.

Other operational issues stray into the area of regeneration. It is very difficult to put together a residential and commercial package for brownfield sites because of some of the institutional issues at which the Government need to look. One issue is that of European Commission procurement laws. If there is one thing guaranteed to scare planners off, it is the idea that it will take months and months to put together a package and that they must put the work involved—consultancy and other issues—out to European Commission procurement rules. As I said, that can cause massive delay in bringing forward good projects—for example, shopping centres with associated housing.

The other issue, which was touched on by my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson), is that of empty properties. I remain to be convinced that empty dwelling management orders were the right way to go about dealing with the matter. We really need to tackle the issue of empty properties. If we are going to develop on marginal sites—green belt sites and others—we should be able to satisfy ourselves that we have exhausted every other possibility of developing on brownfield sites. We also need to consider the whole area of brownfield remediation. That is an issue for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Treasury and the Department for Communities and Local Government.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South West (Paul Uppal) made a very astute point about real estate investment trusts. That is a matter the Leader of the House was very keen to take forward when he was Housing Minister in 1996. Some pretty arcane legal and financial rules in the Treasury mean that it has not been possible to develop such a consumer friendly way of accessing private sector capital in the private rented sector. At the moment, such an approach is confined to the student market in university towns. However, we need to have a bigger philosophical debate on whether—I know it is heresy for any Conservative to say this—we have perhaps reached the limit of owner-occupation. If we consider comparative studies in Canada, Germany, Italy and France, people are happy to live in and pay rent for high-quality residential accommodation. We have not exhausted the possibilities of that here.