English Devolution

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Monday 16th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jim McMahon]

I thank Members in Cornwall and the leaders in Cornwall for the discussions that we have had. I know that devolution is an issue that is strongly felt, and that identity in particular is an issue that is strongly felt. We recognise that we need to strike the right balance, so the White Paper will point to a population size that is optimal in our view—in terms of economic footprint, public service alignment and reconciling public service delivery boundaries—but we recognise that in Cornwall, as in Cumbria, we might have to take a more nuanced approach. I will be clear that our view is to have established powers related to integrated settlements and devolved powers of significance. That will come with a mayor, but of course Cornwall has agreed to a level 2 deal and in the current White Paper, that would be a foundation deal as a starter for that journey.

[Dame Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

Whatever our views on the different flavours of local government, surely we in this House can all agree that good local services are delivered when there are excellent, hard-working local councillors who have been democratically elected. At the moment in counties up and down the land, county councillors are campaigning for re-election for four-year terms next May. The matter before us is an important decision for local people to make and it should be part of the discussions in the election campaign next year, so can the Minister take this opportunity to rule out any suggestion that he is cancelling any county council elections next year?

[Jim McMahon]

In all things I try to be direct, and I have been direct in saying that if those councils that come to the Government with a request for reorganisation meet the test and have a credible programme in place, the elections will likely not take place until the year after, because they will be postponed to elect the shadow authority that would replace the county and the districts. We are clear on that. To give the hon. Lady assurance, there will not be a mass cancelling of elections for the sake of it, in the hope and prayer that some councils might come forward for reorganisation. There has to be a balanced and proportionate approach, and that is what we intend to take.

Council Tax

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Thursday 14th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Unfortunately, it is not for the Opposition to answer the questions—they are in opposition.

[Dame Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

The Chancellor and the International Monetary Fund are known to favour ending council tax and replacing it with a wider property tax. The Welsh Labour Government tried to revalue all the properties in Wales for council tax purposes. Can the Government rule out doing either of those things?

[Matthew Pennycook]

I am not going to get into speculating about more fundamental reform of the council tax system. As I have in a number of my responses to this urgent question, the Government will set out their position on the thresholds, and on other matters in respect of the local government finance settlement, at the appropriate point early in the new year.

Long-term Plan for Housing

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Tuesday 19th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Lee Rowley]

I have the greatest of respect for the hon. Gentleman, but we need to have a serious conversation about this. Planning consents are down because planning applications are down, and that is due to the global economic challenges. [Interruption.] Labour’s Front-Bench team do not want to accept that there are global economic challenges. That just demonstrates why they are so unready for the government of this country. We are trying to make sure, first, that we work through the global financial challenges and, secondly, that we still build the homes. One way that we undermine the building of more homes—the kind of homes that I know the hon. Gentleman and I would both like to see—is by not taking communities with us. What we seek to do today is inject more balance into the system so that we can take more communities with us. If we can get more plans in place, it usually means that more homes are delivered in the first place.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for recognising the hard work that local communities such as Hallow, Clifton upon Teme, Kempsey and Welland have done in my largely rural constituency to develop neighbourhood plans, the strengthening of which has been announced today. None the less, those communities are being let down by the fact that our council is run by the independents and Greens, who do not have a local plan in place. Can he tell us whether the additional protections from speculative development will be immediate or retrospective? When will they take effect?

[Lee Rowley]

I am a huge fan of neighbourhood plans, as are many of my colleagues across the House. They give communities the opportunity to get involved in the planning process and to get into the detail. They also often demonstrate that having honest conversations with people about planning can take some of the challenge out of the system. We are updating the NPPF with regard to neighbourhood plans, and we are strengthening them, as my hon. Friend outlined. The NPPF is extant from the moment that it is uploaded. There are some indications at the back of the plan where policies take priority at a later date, but we are committed to putting neighbourhood planning at the centre of our planning policy, because we think that it is very successful and helpful for our communities.

Oral Answers to Questions

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Monday 4th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Member. As the Minister for Local Government has just reminded me, when Saul was on the road to Damascus he was not actually travelling on a camel.

Improving transport links with a new mass transit system for Leeds is critical to the programme that we undertaking. We are working with local authorities in Leeds; we are working with the Mayor of West Yorkshire, Tracy Brabin, and with the chief executive of Leeds City Council, Tom Riordan. Moreover, in Kirklees we are investing £65 million through round 3 of the levelling-up fund, with a new open market to provide regeneration in Huddersfield and, of course, the upgrade of the Penistone line, for which my hon. Friends the Members for Dewsbury (Mark Eastwood) and for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates) have been such brilliant advocates.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

I, too, convey to Mr Speaker a “Get well soon” message.

In addition to the amenities in Yorkshire and elsewhere in the north, there is a wonderful real ale pub called The Bell Inn at Pensax, in the north of the Malvern Hills. May I put on the record my strong endorsement of its bid to the community ownership fund?

[Michael Gove]

It sounds as if that particular inn, in the heart of Elgar country, is something behind which all of us on the Front Bench can rally. It sounds like an excellent candidate for the community ownership fund, which has seen scores of buildings taken back into public ownership by their communities for the benefit of all.

Levelling-up Fund Round 2

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

The answer to that point is absolutely not. The hon. Member forgot to mention that Scotland got £177 million—[Interruption.] The total is £349 million across both funds. The Opposition are making points about party politics, so I would like to point out that 45% of investment across both rounds has been allocated to areas held by Opposition parties.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

Culture, drama and theatre are very much among the UK’s great soft power assets. West Worcestershire is in the heart of the midlands, which is why I am thrilled that Malvern Theatres has been awarded nearly £20 million to level up drama opportunities across that part of the west midlands. I say to colleagues who were not successful this time around that we were not successful last time. We took on board the feedback and improved the bid, and now we have been successful. Keep on asking, is what I say to the other bids.

Planning for the Future

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Tuesday 15th December 2020 Westminster Hall

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

Thank you, Sir Charles. I add my congratulations to the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) on securing this debate. I congratulate the Minister because, since he has been Housing Minister, we have achieved the magic target of 250,000 homes a year in this country.

On behalf of West Worcestershire, let me say that we are keen and positive on home building. We have been delivering at the pace of nearly 2,000 homes a year, and that has been generally very good for the area. However, while there is a lot to welcome in the “Planning for the Future White Paper”, there are also elements I would like to see the Government put more emphasis on in terms of local areas.

First, it has been mentioned before, but I want to put on record that the algorithm does not make any sense to me at all. It has ended up with something that is completely undeliverable for the Malvern Hills area, where we have floodplain and hills, and where we simply do not have the sites to deliver the numbers calculated by this algorithm.

However, the Minister starts from a very strong base. He has the 250,000 homes a year being delivered. Through his “Planning for the Future” consultation, he needs to make some incremental and more localist changes. I think a lot of colleagues this afternoon will mention similar things, along the lines of putting more emphasis on the small builder. I know that is in the White Paper, but it would be lovely to see it come out as part of the change in the direction of travel.

There should also be more emphasis on neighbourhood planning. If we ask communities to find sites for housing, we will be surprised how much more we find. In Malvern Hills, I have never been able to understand why some villages are categorised as not being able to have any development whatever because it is described as unsustainable. Many of my 78 parishes cannot build a single house. If we made things more granular, more incremental and more small scale and we worked with our neighbourhoods to develop them, we would end up producing those additional houses—that incremental development over and above the already significant numbers that are being delivered.

I want to feed in a point about the bottlenecks that builders tell me they find in local authorities in terms of highways engineers being able to do highways studies quickly enough. There are physically not necessarily going to be enough qualified people in this country to produce the studies required. Has the Minister thought about taking steps to ensure that that is addressed or simplified in some way?

I do not need to take up too much time, because I have made the point about smaller being better. Let us put more emphasis on the ability of smaller communities to add a little bit. Let us not hand a developer’s charter to these very large housing sites that only big developers can deliver. Let us unblock some of the issues that stop existing planning permissions being built out, through things such as ensuring that there is a good quality of highways engineers who can complete the studies. Let us move from the strong foundation that we currently have in house building by making some incremental changes that favour the little guy.

Planning and House Building

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Thursday 8th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

I want to note something for the record, which colleagues have also seen: there is not a single Liberal Democrat MP in the Chamber. I mention that because between 2006 and 2010, West Worcestershire was a Liberal Democrat target seat. I remember campaigning vehemently against Gordon Brown’s top-down, Stalinist imposition of a regional spatial strategy on the midlands. I have a horrible feeling of déjà vu when I look at the way in which the algorithm has been approached. It seems incredibly top down.

I am proud of the fact that, under Conservative and Conservative-led Governments, we have increased house building in our country. We have managed to get it from lows under Gordon Brown to heights of nearly 250,000 units a year. I fully sign up and aspire to delivering 300,000 units a year by the end of this Parliament and to providing 1 million new homes. We are the party of home ownership and what we have done in the last decade should be sung from the rooftops.

We have delivered the dream of home ownership to so many people through incentives and bottom-up reforms. For example, I want the neighbourhood planning strategy to become stronger and have a statutory footing in the reforms that the Minister proposes. I also want the bottom-up involvement of local communities in determining their housing need to be greatly strengthened. The new homes bonus was a powerful way of showing communities the value of welcoming new building in their areas.

Let us have bottom-up reforms and Conservative principles of economic incentives for home building. Let us move away from the Gordon Brown approach and the top-down imposition of Stalinist housing targets, and let us get a new algorithm and abandon completely the one that we have.

Oral Answers to Questions

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman, and I congratulate him on his attempt to guide the Chancellor in his forthcoming Budget. We certainly need to make sure that proper remediation takes place in existing housing, and that is something I and my colleagues are looking at.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his appointment to this absolutely crucial role. Does he agree that one of the best ways to prevent carbon emissions is to make sure that the ancient woodland we have in this country is protected when new homes are allocated? Would he support the Save Tiddesley Wood campaign outside Pershore, which wants to make sure that new homes are not built too close to it?

[Christopher Pincher]

We have a manifesto commitment to more tree-lined streets. I would point my hon. Friend to the new Environment Bill, which will be coming forward. However, she is quite right: we do need to have green spaces and to maintain our ancient woodland. We all want to live in a nice and beautiful environment, and that is certainly something a Conservative party in government will hope to achieve.