Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill

Greg Smith Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 25th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right and, indeed, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton North again made it clear that in France and Germany the BDS campaign is outlawed in the way that we seek to do here. No one denies for a moment that France and Germany, under Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz, are valued partners for peace and upholders of international law.

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

On international agreements, does my right hon. Friend agree that, given that the United Kingdom is party to a series of World Trade Organisation framework agreements, such as the general procurement agreement, the UK has a duty not to discriminate in its trade practices, and that to permit public bodies to engage in antisemitic BDS activities would undermine our international agreements?

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right and I thank him for his thoughtful contribution.

I recognise the sincerity and commitment of my opposite number, the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner). Both she and her predecessor, the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), have been brave and forthright in calling out antisemitism wherever it occurs. I thank her for her work and the conversations we have had formally and informally on this issue. It is for that reason that I say, with respect, that I disagree. I understand the intent of the proposal from Labour’s Front-Bench team, but I disagree, because—as they acknowledge in their own amendment for ensuring that people cannot adopt, through an ambiguous form of words, a means of preventing people from accessing kosher or halal food—there is the potential, as lawyers have been clear, for an ambiguous form of words to be used in order, without mentioning Israel by name, to make it clear that a boycott campaign is directed against Israel. I think we all have a duty to be clear about that.

The BDS movement is clear in what it upholds: an evil campaign not just to eliminate the state of Israel but to target Palestinians who work with Israeli institutions. It has been crystal clear in recent weeks in its total failure—not just a failure, but a conscious desire not to express a shred of sympathy or regret for the loss of innocent lives. It is clear about what it wants to do to sow division. It is clear that its actions lead to, and have always led to, an increase in antisemitic attacks.

Those who speak for the Jewish community in this country have been clear as well. They respect the diversity and plurality of opinions in this House. They respect the motives, they respect the feelings, they respect the strong emotions that these issues engage. But they have also been clear that they wish this legislation to pass, they wish it to pass unamended, and they wish it to pass now. I honour them in their suffering, and it is for that reason that I urge the House to reject the amendments and to pass the Bill.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Greg Smith Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 17th October 2023 Commons Chamber

I urge all parties to do a little more thinking about how we level up areas and to ask why it is that so many people wish to visit huge amounts of private sector housing investment in places that are levelled up, while starving the rest of the country of it, when it is often the motor of the levelling up that they seek.

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

It is always a pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood), who as ever spoke with sense and clarity. I have been heavily involved with this Bill throughout its passage, not least when sitting on the Bill Committee for six months. The Bill has been materially improved as we have gone through the process. I am not saying that it is all the way there yet, but it has been materially improved along the way. I thank my hon. Friend the Minister for the time she has given me and right hon. and hon. Friends over recent days and weeks to engage on the substance of the Bill.

I start with Lords amendment 239 and the Government amendments in lieu that will remove the restrictions that have perversely persisted in the childcare system and local government for some time. I will not rehearse the arguments that were well made in the House last night in a general debate led by my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) about the supply and demand challenges in childcare, but I genuinely believe that the Government amendments in lieu will make a big difference to the provision of childcare, which presents challenges in many of our communities.

I want briefly to add my voice to the debate about Lords amendment 22 on the challenging question of virtual meetings in local government. I have said before and I maintain my position that I hate virtual meetings. I cannot stand them and would always much rather meet someone in person. However, the Bill talks much about local decision making, devolution and letting people decide, and there is overwhelming demand—the evidence from the National Association of Local Councils shows that some 90% of town and parish councils want the ability to hold virtual meetings in some way to expand the ability of people to participate—so it is beyond me why we cannot in some way permit such local decision making to take place.

[Helen Morgan]

The hon. Member is making a very good point, and I agree with him entirely. It is really important to expand the range of people who have access to becoming a local councillor. People are not paid to be a full-time councillor, so they need to be given lots of opportunities to get to meetings and participate fully. Does he agree that this is a really important point about expanding representation?

[Greg Smith]

I do agree with the fundamental principle of expanding accessibility and the ability for people to take part in local government, particularly those heroes who are completely unpaid and unremunerated for the many hours they put in to town and parish councils around the country. Like the hon. Lady, I represent an entirely rural constituency, where parishes are often quite big. To look back to my own local government days in my 20s, I was a councillor in a London borough that was smaller, at 6.1 square miles, than every parish in the 335 square miles I am lucky enough to represent today. We have to look at the distances, even within a parish, that some people have to endure to go to a planning meeting or to get their voice heard on the very local issues that their town or parish council is determining. I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to reflect on whether there is a way the Government can meet local demand for allowing, at least in part, some virtual access to local democracy.

The bulk of the Bill is about planning reform, and the lion’s share of the amendments we are considering relates to planning reform. It is a Bill that will affect every community across our entire United Kingdom, and the lens through which I look at a number of the amendments is to ask: do these amendments support, do nothing to, or hinder the so-called December compromise? That is the compromise that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State agreed with me and a number of right hon. and hon. Friends last December, not least my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) and my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely).

I shall start with Lords amendment 6 on the question of rural proofing. I absolutely and totally support locking into the Bill the concept of rural proofing, but there are a number of points I would ask the Minister to reflect on while making this particular commitment. Of course, anybody can say that they are going to “have regard to” anything at all. When I find myself in the supermarket with my children, I could have regard to their demand to put only chocolate, crisps and ice cream into the trolley. It does not mean that I am necessarily going to follow through on that, in my view, unreasonable demand. Much of the legislation we pass in this place can be judged upon, and under a legal challenge it is not unknown for the judiciary to look back at what was said at the Dispatch Box. I would therefore find it incredibly helpful if the Minister, in summing up, expanded a little on how the Government see that rural proofing. What are the defining principles of the rural proofing that the amendments in lieu of Lords amendment 6 talk about?

Inextricably linked to that has to be the content of the new national planning policy framework. It is a frustration that we are unable to see the final text of the NPPF until after the Bill achieves Royal Assent, not least because there are a lot of points that some of us fought hard for in the earlier stages of our consideration of the Bill that we were promised would be in the new NPPF and that will help to define this question of rural proofing. In particular, I was pleased to secure an amendment to the NPPF through the Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Felicity Buchan) that explicitly changes the old language around

“best and most versatile agricultural land”

to the very tightly defined and binary question of land used in food production. That is because “best and most versatile” was always a lawyers’ paradise—a subjective test that could be argued to the nth degree. Changing the wording to protections for land used in food production makes it binary: it either is or is not. That will give clarity to planning authorities up and down the land when considering applications within our rural communities. I fear that food security is playing second fiddle to energy security when we see the vast swathes of solar applications and, likewise, the level of commercial and housing planning applications on agricultural land —on land used for food production. I include in that category 3b land, which is what most of my constituency is. It still manages to produce 10-tonne-a-hectare wheat yields, to graze cattle and sheep, and to produce the food we all like to eat.

The point I am getting to is that it is incumbent on the Government to recognise within rural proofing that rural needs to remain rural. Without farming—without agriculture, without farmers—there is no rural, because it is the farmers who maintain the landscape: it is the farmers who cut the hedges and keep our countryside as beautiful as it is. If we do not have that, there will be knock-on consequences on everything else that happens in the countryside, not least on the backbone of many rural economies: tourism. If it is not beautiful and it has all become solar farms, housing or commercial warehouses, we will not have the tourism offer either. I therefore encourage the Minister, when summing up, to reassure the House that in respect of the amendments in lieu of Lords amendment 6, rural proofing really does mean keeping the rural rural.

Turning to Lords amendment 44, I have considerable concern that when so much of the December compromise was about vesting local decisions in the hands of local authorities—in the hands of local people, where I believe decisions on planning matters absolutely should be taken, whether on housing need, commercial development or developments to do with energy security—the national development management policies are explicitly listed in the Bill as having primacy over those local decision-making mechanisms. I welcome the amendment in lieu that the Government have tabled to extend consultation to some degree; my initial preference was that the full parliamentary scrutiny lock that the Lords suggested would have been the preferable measure.

I ask the Minister and the wider Government to find a way of absolutely ensuring that when we say that local decision making is paramount, we really mean it and that there are not those get-out clauses that sometimes a statutory consultation simply cannot answer. Otherwise, we will set a dangerous precedent where people put in place their local plans and neighbourhood plans and believe that they are in control, but then a national monster—in whatever form it takes—comes along and walks all over that. The people of Buckinghamshire are all too aware of that with certain infrastructure projects being built through the county right now—I never miss an opportunity to get that in, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill (Fifth sitting)

Greg Smith Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 12th September 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

The amendments were tabled by the hon. Member for Caerphilly. We are discussing the part of the Bill that got the most comment on Second Reading. It had the most written submissions and witness statements, and considerable time was spent on this issue during the evidence sessions.

The hon. Member is trying to improve the Bill, which is a dog’s breakfast, so it is sometimes difficult to come up with the requisite amendments to try to sort it out. [Interruption.] If anybody wants to make an intervention, I am more than happy to take one. We are trying to amend the Bill so that it is acceptable to everyone. May I remind everyone that a number of Conservative Members were very exercised about this part of the Bill on Second Reading? We need to spend some time on this proposal to see whether we can come up with solutions, because there are real problems with clause 3(7) remaining in the Bill.

I remind Members of the exchange I had with the hon. Member for Caerphilly. It looks like we have a UK Government who want all public bodies to comply with their Foreign Office policy, but this area of the Bill appears to be in defiance of that policy. Why do I say that? Only a couple of days before Second Reading, Foreign Office Ministers made the position very clear during Foreign Office questions: they viewed the occupied territories as being illegal under international law. However, it is now being suggested in the Bill that a public body will not be able to disinvest from or boycott the occupied territories or the Golan Heights. There is a contradiction there, and the Government really need to look at that. It looks as though they are changing their Foreign Office policy through a piece of domestic legislation, and that is not the appropriate place to do it.

I sympathise with what the Trades Union Congress said about this issue: the Government are getting themselves into all sorts of difficulties. For example, they will be aware that the International Criminal Court has opened an investigation into the situation in Palestine, which covers crimes that are alleged to have been committed since 2014. Under their statute, the UK Government have obligations under that investigation, and there is a real concern that they are not acting consistently to uphold international law in this regard. There are real concerns that the situation, whereby Israel has occupied the Palestinian territories and the Syrian Golan Heights for more than 50 years, is in violation of international law and, significantly, numerous UN resolutions. The UN resolutions are important; a Foreign Office Minister referred to them prior to Second Reading.

I remind the Committee that in presenting the Second Reading, the Minister and the Secretary of State made their position clear. As is stated in the Hansard reports of those debates, they said that they thought the Bill would not impact on the UK Government’s position in relation to the occupied territories and the Golan Heights. But I am afraid that my reading of the situation, which is shared by many others, is that that is exactly what it does. I will support amendments 5 and 6.

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

I draw the Committee’s attention, as I did in the evidence sessions, to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I will not take up too much of the Committee’s time, but a point needs to be made on this important amendment and to be heard time and again. It relates to why Israel should be so significantly named, as apart from any other territory or country, in the Bill. For a start, Israel is a democracy in the middle east—a quite rare democracy in that region—the democratic values of which we need to seek to uphold.

More fundamentally, we should ask ourselves what the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement is. In the written and oral evidence given to the Committee, we heard clearly not that the movement is just a little bit against Israel—it does not just have some sort of mild disagreement with Israel or the Government of the day in Israel—but that the leaders of the BDS movement explicitly talk about wanting the destruction of the state of Israel. Israel is the target of the BDS movement. Its leaders have repeatedly rejected a two-state solution, which has broad agreement across all the political parties here in the United Kingdom and in many other democracies around the world. The co-founder of the Palestinian BDS National Committee explicitly goes further, and states his opposition to Israel’s right to exist as a state of the Jewish people.

That is why we need such explicit recognition in the Bill, which I hope will go on to become an Act. It will protect our allies in Israel and stop the malign forces in the BNC membership, which includes a coalition of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine—organisations that we in the United Kingdom proscribe. That is why I will vote against the amendments and seek to see the Bill pass through the Committee unamended.

Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill (Third sitting)

Greg Smith Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 7th September 2023 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Thank you very much.

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

Before we begin, may I say for the sake of transparency—I do not think that this is a fully declarable interest—that Steven Barrett is known to me as a councillor in Buckinghamshire?

Richard Hermer: For the sake of transparency, I am a Conservative councillor in Buckinghamshire unitary authority. That will not form part of any of the evidence that I give to this Committee. I am a parish councillor in Chepping Wycombe, but that role is not party-affiliated.

[The Chair]

You are clearly a very busy man.

Richard Hermer: That is very kind of you.

Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill (First sitting)

Greg Smith Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 5th September 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

I am the parliamentary chair of Labour Friends of Israel. It is a non-pecuniary position, but I have also been to Israel with Labour Friends of Israel.

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

As per my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, I have been on a trip to Israel funded by Conservative Friends of Israel, and James Gurd is personally known to me.

[Mark Jenkinson (Workington) (Con)]

As per my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, I have been on a trip to Israel funded by Conservative Friends of Israel, and James Gurd is personally known to me.

Freehold Estate Management Fees

Greg Smith Excerpts

Thursday 13th July 2023 Westminster Hall

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. I congratulate the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) on securing this debate. It is also a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller). There is almost a temptation to leave it at just, “What he said”, but there are a number of points I wish to make.

Across the 335 square miles of my Buckingham constituency, new estates have been relentlessly built over recent years. My views on the need to build on brownfield land only and to protect agricultural land and our national food security are well known, but where houses have already been built or are being built at the moment, it is crucial that we try to rectify the mistakes of the past, and the issue of service charges and local authority adoption of those housing estates simply must be addressed.

Traditionally, when someone purchased a freehold property, ongoing costs were relating to maintaining their property and paying, rightfully, council tax bills to contribute towards local public services and the maintenance of the public realm—as my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire said, the lamp posts, streets, pavements and playgrounds and ensuring that the verges are mown. It is those sorts of things. However, in recent decades, as hon. Members have said, developments have been sold as freehold but now come with often punishing service charges to cover land and facilities that are not passed to local council control and remain in private hands—sometimes that is the developer; sometimes they are sold to a third party.

The concept of a service charge is well established. Service charges were traditionally for flatted developments, which need to share the responsibility for communal spaces within and around those buildings. The properties are normally—traditionally—leasehold properties, and the concept of the service charge is closely linked to services that would never be undertaken by a public body.

To go back into history a little and give some context, the Georgian development of London squares did extend the role of the private developer. Service charges included access to those private squares, those private gardens, and some shared communal spaces in lieu of front gardens. However, a growing trend has been to sell freehold houses with freehold gardens but also with shared, communal external spaces and facilities—car parks and the like—that attract these new service charges. Unlike flats, with tightly defined communal space, or indeed those London squares, which are private and used only by adjoining residents, these recent developments have had the appearance of normal modern housing estates, with open access, and yet the communal assets are paid for by a select number of residents. We are talking about the roads, pavements, verges, play areas, balancing ponds and often, as the hon. Member for North Shropshire said, the sewerage and water supply. No one ever conceived in the past that those would be anything other than local authority managed or water company managed.

It is not obvious what is driving the cause of freeholder service charges. Is it driven by councils simply not being willing to adopt assets that they see a very high cost base in maintaining into the future—I would suggest that that is certainly part of it—or by developers keen to create a specific style or ambience that creates in its own right a unified development that just happens to be open to the general public: is it a sales pitch? Or is it driven by developers pushing to lower standards in the public realm where councils do not want to be landed with the liabilities.

Since before being elected in 2019, I have been contacted by countless residents living on such new build developments and estates. They are exasperated by the developers that have failed to complete what we would believe to be the fundamentals, the basics, of a development. I am referring to roads not completed—the final layer of tarmac not laid—footpaths yet to be laid, landscaping that has been forgotten and, in many cases, mounds of soil fenced off and awaiting redistribution.

We must ask what is causing these issues and what changes we can drive to deliver reform. Often, the problems that I just outlined have been deliberated designed to prevent transfer to another management company. They have been deliberately done to ensure that residents cannot get control themselves and that it remains in the hands of these management companies. The recent, growing concerns about freehold service charges are a result of many of those management companies being sold off to the third parties I mentioned earlier, which see the opportunity to increase charges way beyond the initial nominal amounts, further adding to the problems of freeholders, who, as hon. Members said before me, must still bear 100%—the full amount—of their council tax bill, with not even the slightest hint of a fair discount.

One could say that freeholders might expect service charges if they bought into one of the high-end, exclusive gated developments sold in some parts of the country, which aim at exclusivity and have additional features that standard council tax would never normally pay for. We are talking about things that very few in the country are able to have: private clubhouses, tennis courts, gyms, private leisure facilities, extravagant landscaping and the like. However, we are rarely talking about those developments, as section 106 and community infrastructure levy taxes developers to provide facilities to the council—facilities that are rightly used by the wider community.

That leads me to a philosophical question about the right to retain as private assets that are actually public, and that should be adopted and maintained by council tax payers—and, potentially, other taxpayers, through Government grants. We have not recently had a debate on where the line should be drawn—on encouraging new communities to take responsibility for their new assets, versus new assets being paid for by a new development, but being open to all.

Lace Hill in my constituency sits on the edge of Buckingham. It is a development of just over 700 homes. It comprises freehold houses with their own gardens, but residents must pay a service charge for playgrounds, landscaping, a balancing pond, the roads, the pavements and the verges. A casual visitor would imagine that they were regular roads, play areas, pavements and community facilities that the local council looks after, but it simply does not. The estate is also home to a primary school, a secondary school, play equipment and a multi-use games area that the whole town of Buckingham comes to enjoy, but they are wholly paid for—except for the core educational funding, clearly—by the freehold service charges placed on the residents of that relatively new estate.

Worse than that, Lace Hill faces the very issues that I described: there has been a failure by the developer to finish a lot of the features, not least the balancing pond. The area is very close to the Great Ouse river, which regularly floods; that brings a whole new dimension to the debate, which I will not go into now. That failure means that residents are unable to take control of the issue in the way that they should be able to. Also, the management company has sold and resold itself—and sold itself to itself in a different guise—which has led to mass confusion among residents about who they are paying the service charges to, and whom they can hold accountable for services that, for the most part, they have not actually had. I could give countless other examples, but I will not take up the time of the House by doing so; I will just briefly mention another particularly egregious example of this in my constituency: the Kingsbrook development, which sits just to the east of Aylesbury.

It is very hard to distinguish what counts as a facility that new homeowners may consider it worth paying more than the standard council tax for, because it is over and above the standard communal facility. However, from the way that homes are sold, it would appear that developers and the conveyancing profession have not been open and up front about the risks of some new estates being owned by third parties, and the service charge that would be made. That needs to be drawn more rigorously to the attention of home buyers, so that they are fully aware of what they are entering into, and of the risks of additional costs, increasing in perpetuity. In some circumstances, it would be reasonable for a development to wish to hold some assets privately, as they are over and above what is required by the national planning policy framework—maybe private sports facilities, such as the ones that I mentioned; or a concierge for security, key holding and parcel delivery. However, I suggest that those would be few and far between in the real world.

Some developers set up a residents’ management company, of which freeholders are members, so that they can have a say in the scale and quality of communal works needed or desired, and can influence the service charge fee, but in my experience, and from research in my constituency, that is all too rare. Sadly, freeholders have few controls if the developer retains the management, or sells it to a third party. It appears to too many developers that they can sell the management company as an investment, for it to be run by an uninterested third party. Ironically, as my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire mentioned, though leaseholders have access to the first-tier tribunal, the right of freeholders to challenge the reasonableness of the service charge is still not defined in law.

I come on to some of the recent debates, and the delays in solving the problems over the past six years. The Government and the Minister are aware of the issue, and I am grateful for the time that she has taken to talk privately to concerned colleagues. The July 2017 consultation paper, “Tackling unfair practices in the leasehold market”, highlighted the discrepancies and issues for freeholders in section 6, but that is some years ago. The Government rightly announced their intention to legislate in this area. In October 2018, they published a further consultation, and the Government response to it was published in June 2019, but we are still waiting for the legislation; they had committed to equal rights for freeholders and the right to manage for freeholders.

I believe that my hon. Friend the Minister wants to move forward, but there is impatience in the country, and impatience and frustration among my constituents and those of other right hon. and hon. Members. People living in freehold properties are caught up in service charges. We need to move much faster. It is imperative that the issue be resolved.

To summarise my main asks of the Minister, first, freeholders must have the same right as leaseholders to challenge service charge fees. Secondly, freeholders should have the same rights as leaseholders to set up resident management companies. Thirdly, and more fundamentally, should traditional housing estates have service charges? Should they not be better designed and integrated into existing settlements, with ongoing maintenance of communal playgrounds, roads, parks, verges and so on being at council tax payers’ expense? There should almost be a requirement for councils to adopt new developments. Fourthly, we should ensure better management of critical infrastructure, such as access roads and surface water drainage. They should be designed to meet the standards of the local flood authority, be constructed and warranted by the developer, and in time become part of the public drainage system, to ensure that they are managed in perpetuity. Fifthly, in order to avoid there being site-wide service charges, a limited number of properties should be allowed to share responsibility for some areas, such as shared driveways and off-street parking areas.

To conclude, it is simply an absurdity that the majority of developments granted planning permission in the public domain are not automatically adopted by local authorities. Ultimately, we could solve all the problems by making that a requirement.

Oral Answers to Questions

Greg Smith Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Secretary of State, I do not want to do this every time we have questions. We get to topicals, and because the question is asked you feel it is a free-for-all. It is not your questions; it is Back-Benchers’ questions. Please, let us get everybody in, and let us start with Greg Smith, who wants to ask a good question.

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Whole communities have been up in arms after perverse decisions by the Planning Inspectorate, most recently on a site between Askett and Meadle and another between Twyford and Poundon. What steps is my right hon. Friend taking to reform the Planning Inspectorate to stop it walking all over local wishes?

[Michael Gove]

The new national planning policy framework ensures that the Planning Inspectorate will work with, not against, local communities. The Planning Inspectorate also has a wonderful new chief executive officer—an official from my Department who helped to deliver the homes for Ukraine programme and understands what communities need and want.

Brownfield Development and Green Belt

Greg Smith Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2023 Westminster Hall

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Fovargue. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) on securing an incredibly important debate, as the other place continues its deliberations over the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill. I worked alongside my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) and my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) on many amendments. We will start to see some big wins in protecting the countryside from development on green belt, open countryside and greenfield sites, which will push the Government much more towards their stated aim of brownfield development.

I will start by trying to define what we are talking about. It is not just the green belt. That is a technical term. The green belt is vital to many constituencies, but in mine, we have very little technical green belt. What we have is 335 square miles of open countryside. Ninety per cent of the land in the constituency that I am fortunate enough to represent in this place is agricultural.

I echo the points made by the hon. Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet when I say that it is important to remember when we debate these matters that there is a point to the countryside. It is not just there to be pretty and beautiful, although it is both of those things. It is not just there for people to enjoy for leisure: to walk, camp and do all of the things we enjoy the countryside for. It has specific purposes. First, obviously, to produce the food and drink that we all enjoy eating and drinking. It is part of the vital backbone to our national economy. It is also important to things such as water management, allowing drainage to run, rivers to flow and chalk streams to be vibrant and active. The more we build over open countryside, green belt and agricultural land, the greater the risk there is to those things.

I will give a couple of examples from my own constituency. When the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill was in Committee, I used the village of Ickford as an example when speaking to some of the amendments on flooding. The village is small and close to the Oxfordshire border with Buckinghamshire. Deanfield Homes has almost finished building nearly 90 homes on a site there —a site that has always been known to flood. It is on the flood plain of the River Thame.

Throughout the planning process, every excuse under the sun was accepted. Every clever scheme that was introduced for clever drainage solutions, or whatever it might be, was proposed and ultimately accepted by the Planning Inspectorate. Of course there are no surprises in the fact that that land continues to flood to this day, to the extent that the developers have even raised the level at which they are building the houses, with the fancy graphics used on the marketing materials even showing enormous slopes in the back gardens to allow water to run off, which of course goes into the existing and older properties in that village.

Only this week, I heard from a concerned constituent in the village of Haddenham, which has seen considerable development over recent decades, who reported a development at the back of their house on The Clays, off Churchway. The drainage pond that was put in as the developers started to dig foundations has been way above its natural level for some time. The amount of concrete that is going into those foundations is forcing the water towards their cul-de-sac, which is surrounded by walls made out of a cob unique to Buckinghamshire called wychert that, if it gets wet, quickly falls down.

We therefore have to ensure that we encourage the development of the houses and commercial properties that we need on brownfield and regeneration sites; I very much appreciate the soundbite that my right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills came up with, namely “the regeneration generation”. It is important that we are cautious about the impact that development on the countryside has on flooding.

The big issue, of course, is food security. The more we build over our countryside—our farmland and prime agricultural land—the lower our self-sufficiency in food will drop. We are already down to about 60%. Of course we will never hit 100%, because there are lots of things that we like to eat and drink that cannot be grown in this country. Nevertheless, the more we build over our agricultural land, the more reliance we will have on imports, which is crazy.

I was pleased when, off the back of an amendment that I tabled to the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, the Government and the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities agreed to put into the consultation on the new NPPF a reference that food production can be “considered” in the planning process for the first time. That is important and I urge the Minister to ensure that that change makes it through to the final NPPF. More than that, however, I urge her to ensure that planning authorities up and down the land are given a clear instruction that that is now available to them and they can use it.

A big flaw in the current NPPF—the previous NPPF, if we can call it that—is that the best and most versatile agricultural land was often walked all over and ignored by planning authorities and indeed the Planning Inspectorate. It would therefore be much appreciated by my constituents if the Minister could give some assurances in her response about the pressure that the Government will apply to planning authorities and the Planning Inspectorate on the provisions that will hopefully, in the not-too-distant future, be in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act and the new NPPF.

My last point is about consistency within the Planning Inspectorate, because if we are to achieve the ambition of the homes, commercial properties and solar panels that we need being on brownfield sites, or on rooftops in the latter case, rather than across our fields, we will need consistency in the planning process. I have a perverse case that has come to light regarding land—open countryside —that was always believed to be protected as a buffer zone next to the town of Princes Risborough in my constituency. Despite two previous decisions by the Planning Inspectorate saying that the land should be protected, a third planning inspector has now granted retrospective permission to a number of plots that have been developed on the site, so the residents of the hamlet of Ascot and the nearby hamlet of Meadle are up in arms. We need consistency from the Planning Inspectorate when it considers such matters and—if it can be achieved through the Minister’s good offices—we need that clarity to be pushed down, not only to planning authorities but to the Planning Inspectorate.

The facts speak for themselves. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills, the hon. Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) and others have mentioned, the plots are out there on brownfield land. The CPRE’s data is pretty clear: there is space for 1.2 million homes. The Government’s manifesto talked of an ambition to build 300,000 houses, whereas brownfield development can deliver 1.2 million without touching a blade of grass on the green belt—precious agricultural land, open countryside, nature reserves and so much more. I urge the Government to be bold in their ambition to move towards brownfield development.

[Margaret Greenwood]

The hon. Member has made the case very clearly. Does he agree that we need a much more positive way to talk about brownfield development? Wirral Council’s plans for the Wirral, which is a peninsula, involve the development of the east side of the borough, which has brownfield sites with fantastic views of the Liverpool city skyline. Brownfield sites can be incredibly exciting urban developments that people will want to live in, but we need the political drive to make sure that they happen. The design of many brownfield sites can be very attractive for people.

[Greg Smith]

I fundamentally agree with that proposition. Lots of brownfield sites offer spectacular views—whether of a skyline or out towards the countryside. The big challenge is political ambition, but we also need recognition within the tax system through the infrastructure levy to ensure that prospective developers do not look at a brownfield site and a comparator in the green belt or open countryside and say, “It is far cheaper for us to develop the countryside.” If we had a sliding scale to make it cost-neutral to the developer, so that they paid far less in the infrastructure levy or another form of taxation to develop a brownfield site, that would be a quick political win to get us to the brownfield development that I think all right hon. and hon. Members who have spoken in the debate want to see.

[Yvonne Fovargue (in the Chair)]

I remind hon. Members that I want to start the wind-ups at 14.38.

Capital Projects: Spending Decisions

Greg Smith Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Lee Rowley]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely incorrect to say that the levelling-up agenda is unravelling. Just last month we announced several billion pounds of additional capital spending on levelling-up projects bid for in round 2. As for caring about levelling up, communities up and down the land are getting the opportunity to transform their area, and to make good on promises that were not delivered under successive Governments for many decades. We in this place should celebrate that, rather than focusing on what is being focused on now. I gently say to him that if in Scotland, as in Derbyshire and elsewhere in the country, a number of areas have not been successful in getting funds that were on offer, are being provided and will be spent, I very much encourage those areas to apply when round 3 of the levelling-up fund opens in the coming months.

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

As a great lady once reminded us, there is no such thing as public money, only taxpayers’ money. Does my hon. Friend agree that we Conservative Members should never apologise for applying the most stringent checks and balances, so that every penny spent is spent wisely?

[Lee Rowley]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We are seeking to transform areas, including mine, that were ignored for far too long, but are doing so in a way that works for the Government and for taxpayers, so that their hard-earned money is spent in the right place, at the right time, to the right effect.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Greg Smith Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Tuesday 13th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

I am grateful for my right hon. Friend’s intervention, because I know he has done significant work on this issue. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs announced future funding from fines handed out to polluting water companies being invested in schemes for the benefit of our natural environment. I know he did a lot of work on that issue.

On the infrastructure levy, water and waste water networks are covered by the broad definition of infrastructure, so the answer to my right hon. Friend’s question on that issue is yes. On statutory consultees, the Secretary of State can make changes to the list of statutory consultees through secondary legislation, and we will consult on whether to make water companies statutory consultees, and if so, how best to do that.

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

Before the last intervention the Minister mentioned improving communities. I am grateful for the time she has spent with me in the last few weeks discussing this Bill, but will she give some clarity on amendment 2, on including childcare provision within the infrastructure definitions? Conversations with her outside this place indicate that she feels it would be included, but can she give me and the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), in whose name the amendment stands, the reassurance that childcare provision would be included?

[Lucy Frazer]

My hon. Friend is a strong advocate for his area; I have dealt with him in a number of Departments, and he stands up for his community on every issue. I am grateful for the work he has done to make sure the Bill overall comes out in a good place, and I know he has also spoken to my colleagues on a number of issues.

On the amendment on childcare, I should emphasise that there is a list of what constitutes infrastructure for the infrastructure levy, and it is a non-exhaustive list, so it will be possible for other items to be included. It is drafted purposefully to give local authorities wide powers to apply the levy to infrastructure that is important and needed in their local area. It contains illustrative examples of what might be included as infrastructure, but in any event the levy will be able to be spent on childcare facilities such as nurseries and pre-schools, as these fall under the definition of

“schools and other educational facilities”

already included in the list.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rachael Maskell]

I rise to speak to new clauses 104 to 109 and amendments 93, 95 and 96, which were tabled in my name. New clause 107 was tabled in my name and that of Members across the House, including my new hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Samantha Dixon). I thank the Government for listening in Committee and introducing new clause 119, but it is simply not enough and time is not on our side. New clause 107 would address the very challenges that communities such as mine face. I feel very emotional about this because I deal with cases day after day in which I see people turfed out of their home and turfed out of our city because people come in, extract that housing and extract wealth for their own profit and gain when people simply do not have anywhere to live. The Government’s new clause 119 will not resolve that issue.

My new clause 107 would enable local authorities to take the path that is right for them. If we are talking about levelling up and devolution, I struggle to understand why the Government need another consultation on this issue. They have already had a consultation, to which 4,000 people responded. It is clear to me that another consultation would delay action. In fact, the Secretary of State has said that the consultation would last until the summer. If that is the case, we will see another 6,409 homes flipped over into short-term holiday lets. A community such as mine cannot take any more. We already have 2,118 short-term holiday lets. We know where they are because they are advertised on websites, and we know the problems that they cause.

My new clause would enable local authorities to make the determinations that are necessary to license a scheme and control what is happening in housing development. I cannot see why any hon. Members would not support more powers for their local authority to take control of a local situation that no national solution will be able to resolve. Through that à la carte approach, local authorities could advance the means that they need to address the specifics of what is happening across rural, coastal and urban communities. Short-term lets have clearly taken hold in places across the world, especially in Europe, and particular measures have been put in to bring control to that market.

My new clause would enable local authorities to create control zones to determine that there should be no further growth in short-term holiday lets, to ensure that a licence was in place or to limit the number of such lets in an area. It would not restrain any local authority. An authority might want to grow its short-term holiday let environment, who knows? The new clause would certainly enable those people who are overridden by short-term holiday lets to get back control and make sure that housing went to the very people who needed it. Unfortunately, the Government have not supported that approach and want to talk further about it.

I am going to try another tack. I have tried a private Member’s Bill, spent six months in Committee, talked to seven different Ministers and sat through 27 Committee sittings. It feels like I have given six months of my life solidly to this. Would the Minister consider York to be a pilot for a licensing scheme so that we can put in the measures that will make a difference to my community and my constituents can at last have a house to live in?

[Greg Smith]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell). I served on the Bill Committee too. While many Members will think of politics in 2022 for other reasons, for me it will forever be the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill year. Given the size of the amendment paper in front of us, and the scale of issues that Members have, it is vital to get this Bill right to shape all our communities. Fundamentally, the Bill—or certainly its planning clauses—is about competing demands on land use. Until yesterday, I had my own amendment on the amendment paper on food security, but when I look through some of the amendments —new clause 73, new clause 101, new clause 123—many still speak to the importance of ensuring that we get the balance right when it comes to the competing demands for land.

I represent a rural and farming community of 335 square miles of rural north Buckinghamshire, where 90% of the landmass of the constituency is agricultural land. We are seeing solar farm applications coming about time and again and massive growth in house building and commercial property, but we have to think about food security, because if all this land is taken away for energy, housing and industrial units, there will not be any land left on which to grow food.

I am grateful to the Minister and all her predecessors over the past six months for engaging on this matter and for coming up with a proposal. It is why I was happy to withdraw my own amendments to ensure that the new NPPF for the first time ever explicitly referenced food security as a material concern within the planning process. I fear that is where the new clauses I mentioned a moment ago do not go far enough, because they just talk about the green belt, as opposed to open countryside and land used for food production.

For the last few moments of my speech, I will speak to amendment 2 and urge the Minister, when she replies to the debate, to perhaps clear up some of the earlier confusion, because I see no reason whatever why the infrastructure levy cannot be used to fund childcare and childcare facilities. If we are building housing estates and family homes—two, three, four, five-bed properties—funnily enough, not every child from the families who occupy those homes will be of school age. There will be a crying need for childcare and early years provision. Clearly the buildings that are not attached to schools will be an important part of that. I am not saying that the state should take over all childcare, but some ability—

[David Simmonds]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Greg Smith]

I would be delighted to.

[David Simmonds]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, if we reference the 2019 Department for Education guidance that covers his point, it is completely explicit that early years is within the remit of section 106? Perhaps it would helpful if the Minister could be clear, as he asked, that the legislation owned by other Departments remains in place under this Bill.

[Greg Smith]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and agree entirely that those regulations make it clear. It is a shame that the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), is not in her place, because she was a councillor with me in 2006 in Hammersmith and Fulham, where I, then charged with the community safety brief, used section 106 money in part to fund additional police officers in the town centres of that borough. There is precedent out there that we can use funds such as the predecessor to the infrastructure levy, to fund some level of revenue services. That is why I urge the Minister, when she sums up, to acknowledge that we can do that and be true localists, so that communities that determine that childcare provision is important are enabled to make those deals as part of their infrastructure levies.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Margaret Greenwood is the last Member with four minutes, and then we will move to a three-minute limit.