Grant Shapps
Main Page: Grant Shapps (Conservative - Welwyn Hatfield)(13 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)
12. What support his Department is giving to local authorities to minimise increases in council tax.
The Minister for Housing and Local Government (Grant Shapps)
The Government are making an extra £650 million per annum available over the next four years to help principal local authorities in England to freeze their council tax in 2011-12, and will take action against excessive increases. The Localism Bill provides for local referendums on excessive council tax rises in future years.
Harriett Baldwin
At a time when so many household bills are rising, will the Minister join me in sending congratulations to Wychavon district council and Malvern Hills district council, which have worked so hard to share services and to keep council tax rises down for local residents?
Grant Shapps
My hon. Friend is right. In the past week or so since the finance settlement, I have had a procession of council leaders coming to see me, usually with their chief executives, to plead that they have no money left. One came this morning, and notably brought the chief executive who is being paid £180,000. I pay tribute to those local authorities that have taken the necessary steps and are therefore able to take advantage of the council tax freeze.
Charlie Elphicke
The elderly, vulnerable and least well-off constituents of mine in Dover and Deal and I am sure across the country will welcome the Government’s efforts to freeze council tax. May we have an assurance from Ministers that we will never again return to the dark days of the past, when council tax doubled under the previous Labour Administration?
Grant Shapps
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to point out that between 1997 and last year council tax rose by 109%, so the elderly, the frail, the most vulnerable and those with fixed incomes had absolutely no defence against what was happening when the current Opposition were in government. I am very proud to say that £650 million is being made available for this important priority: a 0% rise.
Mr Turner
What can be done to stop local authorities withdrawing services, such as libraries and lavatories, and expecting town and parish councils to take them over, thereby increasing the local precept? People will not benefit from the Government’s support to protect them from council tax bills rising if the local precept rises instead.
Grant Shapps
My hon. Friend makes a valid point. Unless an authority has already merged its human resources, legal services and planning departments and cut the chief executive pay that Opposition Members are so keen to defend, there is no excuse for trying to charge more for those services, or indeed, as my hon. Friend points out, for trying to shove them off on to, perhaps, parish councils.
Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)
Since Bolsover district council has managed to hold its council tax steady for a few years, and since none of its executives get the kind of sums that have been referred to, will the Minister repay the compliment by allowing it to deal with the 108 prefabricated buildings that have been there since the end of the second world war? The council needs to replace them and pensioners need new accommodation, so will he get the show on the road?
Grant Shapps
The hon. Gentleman knows, because he has raised this issue with me before in the House, that the decent homes programme continues, and last week’s settlement, on top of the spending review, makes it very clear that £2.2 billion is available for decent homes—which, I understand, subsequent to our previous exchange in the House, his council is in line for.[Official Report, 27 January 2011, Vol. 522, c. 4MC.]
Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)
In a flight of fantasy and a moment of mental dysfunctionality, the Secretary of State and the Minister have proclaimed again and again that there is no need for front-line services to be cut if salaries are reduced, services are shared and there is greater efficiency. What will the Minister say to the Liberal Democrat-controlled Sheffield city council when, in cutting £70 million, it devastates services and decimates jobs in my city?
Grant Shapps
It is very important to get out to all local authorities across the country the message that the most vulnerable people should be protected in this spending settlement. That is an important point, because one of the principal ways in which vulnerable people are protected is through the Supporting People programme. Its budget has been pretty much kept intact. I will send out the message from the Dispatch Box now that the reduction in Supporting People is just 2.7% per annum, so there is no reason for local authorities to use that as an excuse to cut services to vulnerable people.
Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)
The Minister must accept that, far from supporting local authorities, the unprecedented cuts that his Government are inflicting will lead to diminished services, massive job losses and lower economic growth in the private sector. Will he at least concede that in the context of these massive cuts and the abolition of area-based grants, the £650 million that he is offering to freeze council tax is nothing more than a gimmick? Can he tell the House how he justifies sacrificing the country’s most deprived communities to indulge the Secretary of State’s penchant for attention-grabbing publicity stunts?
Grant Shapps
That was an interesting pre-written question, which seems to have ignored what we have established from the Dispatch Box today: that £650 million will lead to a 0% council tax rise in virtually every authority in the country. Although the hon. Gentleman says that that is of no consequence at all, I can tell him that for the pensioners in my constituency, his constituency and in those of my hon. Friends it will matter a great deal.
Mrs Linda Riordan (Halifax) (Lab/Co-op)
6. If he will assess the effect on the economy of Halifax of reductions in levels of local authority employment.
The Minister for Housing and Local Government (Grant Shapps)
The new homes bonus commences in April 2011 and will match fund the additional council tax raised for every new home that is built or brought back into use. It will continue for six years.
Jason McCartney
I thank the Minister for that reply. We all want new homes. However, Labour-run Kirklees council has just launched a local development framework-style consultation process for 28,000 new homes. Many constituents are worried that it will mean the bulldozing of beautiful countryside in the Colne and Holme valleys. How can he reassure my constituents that local people will have a democratic say in developments in their area?
Grant Shapps
The good news is that local people will, at last, be in charge of development in my hon. Friend’s constituency. Rather than targets being dictated from Westminster and our telling his constituents what should be going on, the balance will be in local hands. From April, his local authority stands to gain about £1.3 million through the new homes bonus. Local people will decide the pace and scale of growth, and the benefits that they want to derive. I trust them to do that more than I trust Ministers to do it from here.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
What plans does the Minister have for neighbourhoods such as Picton and Kensington in my constituency, where housing stock had been planned under housing market renewal, the existing stock demolished or vacated, and then the funding taken away?
Grant Shapps
The housing market renewal programme was responsible for demolishing a large number of homes—so many that there are fewer affordable homes after the 13 years of the previous Government than there were when they got into power in 1997. There was something wrong with that programme and there is now an enormous funding problem. It will be for the local community and local authority to get together with the local enterprise partnership and pull together the various funding streams, which will include the new homes bonus because those homes are no longer there. When they are rebuilt, the local authority can benefit. I extend an offer to meet the hon. Lady to discuss the circumstances of the housing market renewal.
George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)
Rural villages in my constituency and across Britain have seen a policy of decline by neglect over the past 13 years, and people there are excited by the proposals for local housing in the Localism Bill. Can the Minister provide some reassurance that when small pockets of housing around a village are approved, some of the bonus will come back into the local community?
Grant Shapps
My hon. Friend will be reassured to hear that under the community right to build, which is one of the proposals in the Bill, local communities will be able to vote for additional homes, for example in a village that is trying to keep the post office and the local school alive. They will be able to do so without so much of the bureaucracy that there has been, and without the regional development agency telling them that their village is not where it wants homes to be built. It will happen on a local neighbourhood scale, so communities will be very much in control. They will own the housing trust that builds the homes and will be able to ensure that those homes stay in local use for as long as they like.
Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)
I need to draw the House’s attention to an entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests for my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford). To avoid any misunderstanding, I add that he is my partner.
It is eight months since the Minister entered office and asked us to judge him on his record of delivering housing. What has happened since then? Planning permissions have fallen off a cliff, we have the worst record of house building since 1923 and now 21 Tory council leaders in the south-east say that the new homes bonus will not deliver the homes that are needed. Does he agree with them, and what is his time scale for reconsidering the level of the bonus if it does not work, as they fear?
Grant Shapps
I am grateful to the shadow Minister for pointing out that I have now been in the post for eight months, because that happens to be exactly the time for which my four predecessors, including the current shadow Secretary of State, stayed in office.
House building had fallen to 1923 levels under the previous Government, with their top-down planning and regional spatial strategies. I am confident that the fact that we have scrapped that structure and introduced the new homes bonus, which, as we have heard today, is about to start paying out significant sums, will reverse the fall in house building and affordable house building that we so tragically saw under the previous Government.
Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)
13. What assessment he has made of the potential implications of the provisions of the Localism Bill for planning policy guidance and statements.
Mr David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)
T10. We heard earlier that the levels of house building in the last year of the last Labour Government were the lowest since 1924, which is a disgrace. How will the Minister reverse that trend and ensure that house building increases adequately to meet the demand, particularly for social and affordable housing?
The Minister for Housing and Local Government (Grant Shapps)
My hon. Friend is absolutely right: that low record of house building was a disgrace. We need to do a range of different things, starting with the new homes bonus, followed by ensuring that there is affordable rent, that affordable homes are built, and that the planning system is liberated. There are also many measures in the Localism Bill, which we are debating later today. A whole raft of things needs to be done to get the situation fully under control. We look forward to the Opposition’s support for making that happen.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
A theme of Ministers’ answers has been the differential between the grants of different local authorities, with poorer authorities getting more than prosperous authorities. Is it a higher priority for Ministers to equalise those grants or to get rid of the inequality that has given rise to higher grants going to poorer areas?
Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)
Staffordshire Moorlands district council has entered into an arrangement with neighbouring High Peak borough council to share management services. Does the Secretary of State agree that innovations like these can help save taxpayers money while protecting front-line services?
Grant Shapps
I congratulate my hon. Friend’s local authority. Sharing services is surely the way forward. Nowadays there is no real excuse for having separate management teams, separate chief executives and expensive, well-paid officers to fill every position. Sharing can prevent the cuts from falling on the most vulnerable and needy members of society, and I congratulate my hon. Friend’s local authority on doing exactly that.
Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)
Given that today is the last day for representations to be made in the formal consultation on the grant settlement for local authorities, will the Minister assure me that he will take seriously the representations from Stoke-on-Trent and its Members of Parliament during our welcome meeting with him last week? We cannot afford these cuts.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
Authorities such as Manchester city council, run by Labour, are publicising front-line job cuts while retaining their Twitter tsars. Meanwhile, other local authorities, such as Leicestershire county council and North West Leicestershire district council, are being diligent. They have cut their management, protected front-line services, and kept council tax low. Is it right for such diligent local authorities to be punished in the next spending round because of the profligacy of councils run by the Labour party?
Grant Shapps
My hon. Friend is right. It is for local authorities to work out where to make their savings. I should add for the record that it is not clear whether the Twitter tsar was eventually employed, although the post was certainly advertised. I should also point out that when authorities talk of job reductions, we do not know whether they are including positions that were already vacant.
Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)
Last year the Prime Minister asked local authorities not to do the easy thing by cutting the budgets of voluntary bodies, but week after week representatives of such organisations come to my surgery and tell me that their budgets have been slashed and that they cannot continue to do their work. Does the Secretary of State share my concern about Nottinghamshire county council’s failure to heed the Prime Minister’s advice?