Pubs Code and the Adjudicator

Debate between Grahame Morris and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Thursday 14th April 2016 Westminster Hall

[Grahame M. Morris]

I was there, Minister, with all due respect. I thought it was a rather heated and fractious exchange. The fact that it was not anticipated does not reflect well on the Department. If the Government insist on appointing Mr Newby, I fear that, intentionally or not, they will undermine the office of the Pubs Code Adjudicator from the day that he starts work.

[Mr Jackson]

The hon. Gentleman is making a good speech. Does he agree that this debate also gives an opportunity for the Minister to clear up the confusion about whether the adjudicator has helped design the code since December? There have been mixed messages from BIS about whether he is coming in clean from May or whether he has been complicit, to use a pejorative term, in the construction of the regulatory regime. That is an important issue.

[Grahame M. Morris]

Once again—for the second time in one Parliament—I agree with the hon. Gentleman. It is a completely reasonable question, and I hope that the Minister will be able to clear it up in her response.

There seems to be no doubt that the pub companies see Mr Newby as their man. Worse still, the tenants seem to agree. More than a dozen stakeholder groups have come together under the auspices of the British Pub Confederation. Collectively and individually, in the representations that I have received, all of them see Mr Newby as not independent. I am not saying that that is correct; I am just saying that it is their perception. I worry that the Minister cannot see that the situation is untenable. If she truly wants the pubs code to work, she will need to appoint an adjudicator who can command confidence across the industry. Regrettably, I think that she should apologise to Mr Newby and rerun the recruitment process.

In conclusion, the pub and brewing industry makes an immense contribution to our local communities and our economy. I love pubs; I love the industry, and I want to see it flourish. I want community pubs to thrive and tenants and landlords to have successful businesses. The drive behind the pubs code and the role of the adjudicator is to strengthen the industry. It should be seen as a step towards addressing the decline and closure of pubs over the past 20 years. It is in the hands of the Minister to listen to the concerns expressed by hon. Members from all parties, and to take the issue forward in a positive way that addresses them all.

Housing and Planning Bill (Ninth sitting)

Debate between Grahame Morris and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Thursday 26th November 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

I fully accept that this is a controversial measure, not least for the settled community—as much in Easington as in Peterborough, I am sure. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that—perhaps by accident—the Government might be making things worse, if the outcome is that fewer temporary or permanent sites are allocated by local authorities?

[Mr Jackson]

I am just developing my comments, and I will not detain the Committee too long. But let us establish something right from the outset. The general housing needs of the population, which will reflect the social, economic and demographic profile of a particular district, borough, city, unitary or county council, are reflected in the housing plan and the decisions taken by an authority based on the evidence available from professional officers. That evidence is given to elected members so they can bring forward the county structure plan, which is now the regional spatial strategy—the local district plan. That will take into account the preponderance in favour of local authorities having to house Gypsy and Traveller families.

Were the legislation to be changed along the lines set out by the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead, it would single out a particular group, and circumscribe the autonomy of the local housing authority and its authority to make reasonable changes and accommodations for particular individuals. That would exacerbate the resentment—and sometimes anger—among the settled community, who would feel that their housing needs were being disregarded in favour of a special group. Whether we agree with that or not, that is the perception there would no doubt be.

I say to the hon. Lady that I agree that the Government would be wise to look at the issue of accommodation for Gypsies and Travellers, but let us see whether we can nuance the existing legislation, which, as I have mentioned, gives rise to the provision of emergency stopping places. If there is a proper consultation, then let us all be honest: in the London Borough of Greenwich, in Northumberland and in Durham, there will be brownfield sites, which are not in commercial or industrial use and may be near an urban centre, that could be used as emergency stopping places.

I am not convinced that local authorities have been sufficiently robust in investigating those options. Perhaps the Department for Communities and Local Government has more to do to encourage them to consult and to look at best practice. It has been a tortuous process for my city council, not least because many of the councillors in the nice leafy villages to the west of Peterborough did not want them there; they wanted them in the east of Peterborough, which I represent. I lost out and three of our emergency stopping places are now in the east of Peterborough. We have borne that burden for the good of the community, and more local authorities can learn from their neighbours in that respect.

[Mr Jackson]

That is if one assumes that local authorities are not already discharging their proper statutory functions in providing appropriate housing, where they can, with registered providers to everyone who needs it in their local community. My difficulty with the hon. Lady’s amendment is that it singles out a particular group and would exacerbate community tension. I am not convinced that in practical, pragmatic terms it would deliver more housing for that group. I agree that more work needs to be done, but we need a less prescriptive, less heavy-handed approach. For that reason, I will resist the amendment.

[Grahame M. Morris]

I do not intend to detain the Committee for too long, but I want to make a couple of brief points and put a number of questions to the Minister. I am not completely at odds with the hon. Member for Peterborough, and I recognise the potential for discord and disruption among the settled community, to which I am no stranger in Easington.

I should also declare an interest in that I am an honorary member of the Showmen’s Guild. The Travellers group that we are referring to is not homogeneous, and the Showmen’s Guild, which is familiar to many of us and travels around the country establishing fairs and particular events at particular times, tends to cause many fewer problems. In fact, there are virtually no problems and it is an asset in many respects. The amendment moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead is reasonable and sensible, because the deletion of sections 225 and 226 of the Housing Act 2004, regarding the accommodation needs of Gypsies and Travellers, may create more problems through the law of unintended consequences than the Committee or the Government intend.

[Mr Jackson]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Grahame M. Morris]

I have not really started, but I will.

[Mr Jackson]

I have to say that I had not imagined that the hon. Gentleman had run away from the circus to join the Whips Office. Does he agree that the description is a catch-all because there is an entirely different cultural predisposition in terms of housing need between, say, Czech or Slovak Roma and Irish showpeople? They cannot really be lumped together, which is why they need to be considered as disparate groups on a local basis.

[Grahame M. Morris]

I do accept that it is a disparate group, but even though it is a relatively small group compared with the settled community, I have had experience of disruption and antisocial behaviour in my constituency arising from a lack of temporary Traveller sites, and I think it is beholden on the local authority to make provision. That might not be a popular view, but it is part of the solution in the long run.

I recognise the hon. Gentleman’s description of spending many hours with the police and the local authority in trying to ameliorate the impact of temporary horse fairs and so on that attract a large influx of Travellers from across the country. The problem, however, arises from a failure to provide permanent or, indeed, temporary sites, which is particularly acute during the summer months. Is the Minister concerned that the change proposed to the assessment of Gypsies’ needs will reduce the number of sites and lead to a shortage of accommodation for the Traveller community if they are assessed only as part of general housing need and not with their specific needs in mind?

Without wishing to detain the Committee further, I would appreciate it if the Minister outlined precisely what he seeks to achieve by removing the requirement for local authorities to adequately address the travelling community’s needs. Do we not risk worsening the problem of unauthorised encampments?

Housing and Planning Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Grahame Morris and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Tuesday 10th November 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Jackson]

Q 72 Far be it from me to speak for the Ministers, but are you really suggesting that registered providers operate in a hermetically sealed bubble, given that the housing benefit bill has spiralled significantly over the past 20 years? The Government surely have a fiscal responsibility to make big strategic decisions in the provision of public housing when they have a spiralling housing benefit bill.

David Orr: The housing benefit bill is spiralling primarily because the number of people who need to claim housing benefit has grown as rents have grown, and because of the number of people in work in the private rented sector who have to claim housing benefit. It is not fundamentally about the growth of rents in the social sector, but, where rents have grown in the social sector, that has been a direct consequence of Government decision making. So I can sit here and say, “It’s not our fault, guv. It’s your responsibility. It’s Government decision making.” I don’t think that is acceptable. I think that local government and the public should be able to hold housing associations to account for the rents that they charge. It has been the case in the past that when the Government were setting rents, they also said that housing benefit would cover the cost of those rents. I am afraid that the decision to set the overall benefit cap at £20,000 and £23,000 means that rents that the Government have themselves set are not now, in a significant number of cases, covered by housing benefit. So if the Government want to limit their exposure by what they do with housing benefit rules, they should withdraw from rent-setting.

[Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

Q 73 I want to go back to starter homes and the issues that you have touched on. A survey found that 6 million people— 5.84 million, in fact—earn less than the living wage. That is not a TUC figure; it is from KPMG. Some 23% of the labour force earn less than the living wage, and the numbers are going up. There are 750,000 people on zero-hours contracts. What is there in the Bill to address the housing needs of that substantial sector of people who we refer to as the working poor?

David Orr: There is little in the Bill that addresses that group specifically. The only real new housing or tenure product that it contains is the starter home initiative. As a component of a much wider, mixed-tenure, mixed-priced series of developments, starter homes have a role to play, but a comprehensive transfer away from social rent or shared ownership towards starter homes would be a mistake. They have a role to play as part of a broad pattern of provision, but not instead of the other things we are doing.

East Coast Main Line Franchise

Debate between Grahame Morris and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Thursday 20th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jackson]

No, I want to make some progress, but I will give way later to the hon. Gentleman, whom I know has a special interest in the subject.

The Labour Government accepted that public service provision by this train operating company was always going to be a short-term expedient because of a special set of circumstances on the east coast main line. As the Minister has said, in order to leverage key, private sector capital, it is important that we have a new, long-term private partner to innovate and drive up standards on the east coast main line.

It is all very well for Lord Adonis to have a road-to-Damascus conversion. Obviously, being in opposition concentrates one’s mind, but when he was a Minister he spoke out strongly for private sector provision on this particular line. I challenge the Labour party: is its policy now wholesale renationalisation of the railways, or is that just for the east coast main line? I know that the hon. Member for Blyth Valley (Mr Campbell) would definitely give me a clear answer, but I am not sure that he and the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) would have a meeting of minds on the issue.

[Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is being generous in giving way. Although he is ridiculing us on the Labour Benches for supporting the concept of public ownership, most of the travelling public—70% of them—and even those of them who vote Conservative, support the idea of renationalising the railway industry.

[Mr Jackson]

If it is such a popular idea, why has the hon. Gentleman’s party not put it in its manifesto? Why in 13 years did it not repeal the Railways Act 1993 and go back to the good old days of British Rail, which did not get us to our destination very often or on time?

Identity Documents Bill

Debate between Grahame Morris and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Wednesday 15th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jackson]

The substantive general point, which the hon. Gentleman does not want to concede, is that what is happening is a direct result of a new Government who with their coalition partner have a mandate to take a decision that has fiscal ramifications through new legislation. My point is that the precedent has been set in the past for new legislation having financial ramifications; it will inevitably affect some groups of taxpayers and voters, but the Government will not see fit to compensate them in a particular way, even on a modest scale.

Of course it is regrettable that some of the constituents of the hon. Member for Bolton West will be in a difficult position as a result of the decisions made, but I come back to the point that the two parties that form this Government won 60% of the vote on an unequivocal commitment to abolish identity cards, whereas the party that was unequivocally in favour of them comprehensively lost the election on 6 May. Although only a modest amount of money is involved, the amendment is inappropriate, particularly during a time of less than benign financial circumstances when we need to reduce the deficit.

[Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to contribute to the debate.

Labour Members fully understand that repealing the Identity Cards Act 2006 and scrapping ID cards was a manifesto pledge of both the Conservative and the Liberal Democrat parties and that they are fulfilling a pledge to the electorate on this issue. In fact, I think this is one of the few actions taken by the coalition Government that can claim at least some sort of mandate from the public. I add, however, that Labour was elected in 2005 with a manifesto pledge that stated:

“We will introduce ID cards, including biometric data like fingerprints, backed up by a national register and rolling out initially on a voluntary basis as people renew their passports.”

That was the manifesto basis on which the decisions were made.

The current Government have taken the scheme in its infancy and killed it off before it has even had a chance to prove itself—in terms of finance, security, issues of identity theft, protection and, indeed, popularity, or any other measure of its worth. As we learned in Committee, the Government have their arguments, but in my view their reasons for revoking ID cards are weak, mean and, most important of all, costly to the taxpayer. In Committee, the Minister for Immigration stated that he was committed to abolishing identity cards

“because it was—and, until the Bill is enacted, is—an expensive and misguided scheme.”––[Official Report, Identity Documents Public Bill Committee, 1 July 2010; c. 43.]

That assertion is, I contend, completely wrong and misguided. The ID card scheme will become more expensive as soon as the Bill is enacted because the expenditure has already been incurred in setting up the scheme—on infrastructure, computer software and so forth. Furthermore, recovering that money relies on allowing the ID card scheme to continue. Conservative Members should remember that the expenditure was incurred subsequent to a manifesto commitment by the previous Labour Government.

I do not want to dwell on the motives behind the Bill, and I suspect that the motives of Liberal Democrats are completely different from those of Conservative supporters. It is clear, however, that Conservative Members base their opposition to the ID card proposals on a false premise.