Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Greg Clark and Joan Ryan

Tuesday 12th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

The discussions with the steel sector are continuing and I fully expect to conclude an important and ambitious deal for this foundational industry.

[Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Lab)]

10. What recent assessment he has made of the UK’s progress towards meeting its carbon reduction targets.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Greg Clark and Joan Ryan

Monday 8th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Lab)]

T2. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Greg Clark)]

Since the beginning of January, the Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill has been enacted and given Royal Assent, the Housing and Planning Bill has passed its Third Reading, the voluntary housing association right to buy has been launched in five areas, and direct commissioning of housing has been launched.

I take this opportunity to pay tribute to the life and work of Mrs Hazel Pearson OBE, who died on Friday at the age of 92, having retired as a Middlesbrough councillor only last year at the age of 91. She was a formidable leader of Conservatives in Middlesbrough, achieved much for her town and was greatly respected by all parties and by her community over 47 years of service. She represented everything that was best in public service.

[Joan Ryan]

Enfield has the fourth highest population figure of all London boroughs. The last census said we had seen a population increase of more than 14% in one decade. That rapid population growth is well above the national average and is not reflected in an increased funding settlement. I am grateful to the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones), whom I met last month to discuss these matters. However, in the light of that meeting, and of submissions that have been made, what further measures are the Government willing to take to ensure there is a more equitable funding mechanism for boroughs in this situation?

[Greg Clark]

I understand the point the right hon. Lady makes, which is very reasonable. It is important that the funding that local government receives reflects the very latest information available in terms of the population. I have reflected on the representations that have been made in the consultation, and I will have more to say about that later.

Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Greg Clark and Joan Ryan

Monday 2nd November 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Greg Clark)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

Every Parliament that is elected has a responsibility to the future and to do all that it can to ensure that the lives of the next generation are better than those of past generations. Nowhere is that more important than in ensuring that the next generation have the homes they need. Indeed, it is not just about the next generation. The impact of much of the public policy that we debate is on the here and now or the next few years ahead. If we look around any city, town or village in Britain, it is obvious that housing endures for many decades and, in some cases, for hundreds of years. Every home that is built is much more than a pile of bricks and mortar or concrete and glass. The homes that we build shape the lives, for better or for worse, of generation after generation of people who live in them.

As Churchill said:

“We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us.”—[Official Report, 28 October 1943; Vol. 393, c. 403.]

Providing the homes that we need is a responsibility that unites us all in this House. For many years now, we have not built enough homes in this country. That is true of successive Governments and has been true for many decades. New households have been forming in Britain at a rate of about 200,000 a year, yet the last year in which we built 200,000 homes was 1988.

[Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Lab)]

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that over 4,800, or 7%, of children in Enfield live in temporary accommodation? I fear that his Bill, which damages the number of affordable homes available, will make this problem immeasurably worse.

[Greg Clark]

As I hope the right hon. Lady will recognise from my remarks, our purpose and intent in this Bill is to increase the number of homes—that is our absolute objective—so that those children have the prospect of a roof over their heads in the years to come.

I was reflecting on how it has been many years—more than a generation—since this country built the number of homes that we need. During the financial crash, house building in Britain suffered what might be called a cardiac arrest, because in the third quarter of 2008 we were fewer than 20,000 homes away from stopping building altogether—the lowest rate of peacetime house building since the 1920s. It was not just that the banks would not lend, though they would not; it was a reckoning for a decade in which we had a top-down planning system, which the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), when he was Planning Minister, was magnanimous enough to concede had few friends. When that was imposed, it built bureaucracy and resentment but not many homes. It followed a decade in which the number of affordable homes fell by nearly half a million, and in which fewer than 200 council houses a year were built in the whole of England. It was a lost decade in which the rising level of home ownership fell into reverse in 2003 for the first time since the 1960s.

Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [Lords]

Debate between Greg Clark and Joan Ryan

Wednesday 14th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

I am going to make some more progress and then take further interventions later—I think I have been generous in the interventions I have taken.

Clearly there is much to discuss, but I regret the reasoned amendment—it may be a reasoned amendment but it is not a very reasonable amendment from the hon. Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett). I am surprised by that because he is a genial chap normally. He says that the Bill does not offer meaningful devolution, but most civic leaders, of all parties, across the country recognise that this is an important Bill that gives them the ability to take powers that previously have not been made available to them. His approach is rather like St Augustine’s, in that he is saying, “Let us have more devolution, Lord, but not just now.” I hope that in the weeks ahead the conversations that will take place between the Opposition Front Benchers and their civic leaders in local government, who very much welcome these deals and powers, will moderate shadow Ministers’ views on that. I say to him and other hon. Members that it is important to proceed as consensually as we can on this, and if he has suggestions that we can reflect in our arrangements, they are as valid coming from him as from any other Member. He will find that I am open to them, as my colleagues are.

[Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Lab)]

The point is that we need good devolution and devolution that works. Let me take the Secretary of State back to the health issue because there are real concerns, expressed by the Royal College of Nursing and the NHS Confederation, about fragmenting services and the fact that devolution will not solve the significant financial crisis that our health service and social care service face. Therefore, real safeguards are needed to avoid unintended consequences and to protect the patient.

[Greg Clark]

The right hon. Lady is absolutely right about that. Far from fragmenting health services, one of the most important things that we need to do, in the interests of all our constituents, is bring together, in closer co-operation, health and social services, because where they are not well aligned and well integrated, patients—our constituents—can fall through the cracks in the system. That is what is behind the Greater Manchester proposals.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Greg Clark and Joan Ryan

Monday 29th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

I will indeed, and again I pay tribute to the work my hon. Friend did in the Department in inaugurating this transfer of powers. Housing will be of great importance in all the deals we are negotiating and expect to conclude. There is an appetite for that right across the country and I will certainly take the advice of the RTPI.

[Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Lab)]

2. What assessment he has made of trends in the level of home ownership since 2010.