European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Heidi Alexander and Robert Neill

Committee: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 15th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Heidi Alexander]

My hon. Friend has issued a very timely reminder to me. If it were possible, I would like that to happen.

[Robert Neill]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hoyle.

This is another important debate on some key issues related to retained EU law. With no disrespect to my constituency next-door neighbour, the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander), who made some powerful comments, I will concentrate specifically on those matters of retained law. As one might say in court sometimes, I adopt the arguments of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve). I was about to say that I had nothing further to add, but I will not go quite as far as that. None the less, I do entirely agree with his approach to this part of the Bill and to what we should seek to achieve in relation to retained law.

May I add a couple of other broader observations? I very much welcome the spirit of the remarks made by the Solicitor General and the other Ministers currently on the Treasury Bench. I am grateful for their constructive approach. It is a reminder that Conservative Members have far more in common than that which ever might cause us to disagree about matters on this Bill. It is also a timely reminder that our commitment to protecting social standards and protections is undiminished.

As has been rightly observed, the Conservative party has historically always been a party of social protection and social reform, from the great Christian philanthropists such as Shaftesbury through to Peel—arguably one of the greatest of all Conservative Prime Ministers—and Disraeli and up to the present day. I include a short plug for a previous Member of Parliament for a good part of the Bromley and Chislehurst constituency, the late Lord Stockton, who was, of course, the Member of Parliament for Bromley. Many of us are proud to be in that one nation progressive tradition and want to ensure that we take that forward into the future.

I now turn to amendment 356, which is in my name and is supported by my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon. I am also grateful to the hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) for adding his name to it. The amendment concerns the UK’s ability to maintain regulatory alignment in the immediate period after the UK leaves the EU, where there is EU-derived legislation that is not fully in effect on exit day. The Solicitor General was kind enough to refer to that topic when I intervened on him. I accept his intentions, but I would like to develop my view on these issues a little further.

As we already know, clause 3 will impose a strict cut-off on the law that is to be retained in that it must not only be on the books—so to speak—but must also be fully applicable and effective immediately before exit day. So far, so good; it is obviously right that Parliament should not automatically apply EU laws introduced after Brexit. It should decide whether we want to apply them, as a matter of our own sovereign judgment. There will be cases, however, where legislation is sufficiently far down the line as we leave the EU that a more flexible approach is justified. It is that limited, but important, area of cases that I will deal with.

There may be legislation that we have no problem with as a matter of policy and that businesses or other affected parties would wish to have—perhaps we were involved in its preparation when we were still a member of the EU. The European Scrutiny Committee and other parts of the House may even have had the opportunity to peruse the documents, and business and other affected parties might already be making preparations to implement and comply with that legislation. How do we deal with that? At the moment, it looks as though we would need primary legislation in those cases. That would be cumbersome for all the reasons that the Solicitor General recognised in his exchanges with the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field).

Local Government Finance Bill

Debate between Heidi Alexander and Robert Neill

Wednesday 18th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. Unfortunately, under the previous Government there was a belief that we had to create an increasingly centralised and complex system to deliver results. The party that is criticising us now brought in capping and the comprehensive area assessment, which trammelled local authorities rather than freed them. I can understand, however, why this is a sensitive topic for Opposition Members. In their 1997 election manifesto they said they would localise the business rate, and they spent 13 years not doing so. Some of the principal architects of that commitment are sitting on the Opposition Benches in today’s debate, so I can understand that they might have a bit of a guilty conscience.

[Heidi Alexander]

rose—

[Robert Neill]

I shall give way to the hon. Lady, as she may not have been here during that time—although I do not entirely exempt her from what I said.

[Heidi Alexander]

I certainly was not here when the previous Administration were in government, but I would like to give the Minister another opportunity to answer the question put to him by my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) from the Front Bench about what exactly a local authority would be doing differently under these proposals from what they are doing now. If this is about planning policy, what evidence does he have to suggest that granting permissions for extra commercial floor space results in an increased business growth take?

[Robert Neill]

The hon. Lady must simply not have been listening to my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr Syms), who made the point perfectly that our proposal is a desirable and a good thing. I know it is difficult for her to get this point, but two things are involved. First, we are giving an incentive back to local authorities. Secondly, we are giving local authorities an additional tool in the box of their financial levers. I would have thought that she would have recognised that from her long experience in local government.

Localism Bill

Debate between Heidi Alexander and Robert Neill

Wednesday 18th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill]

I am grateful, Mr Speaker. I am anxious to deal with as many of the issues raised by hon. Members as possible, because this debate is time-limited, and for good reason. I hope that I have dealt, in large measure, with why it is appropriate to adopt the Government amendments, and why that is preferable to placing a veto in the hands of the boroughs, which would create a potential conflict of interest, or the earlier Opposition proposition of leaving a veto with central Government, which would be entirely contrary to the spirit of the Bill.

I will cover one final topic before I finish, if I may. Another proposal in the group, which I anticipate will be put, is amendment 351, tabled by the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander), the next-door neighbour of part of my constituency. The amendment relates to the London housing and regeneration board. It is important that the Bill transfers housing powers and responsibilities from central Government agencies, in the form of the Homes and Communities Agency, to the Mayor. That has been welcomed across the piece politically in London. It is envisaged that the London housing board will be the vehicle within which that work is carried out.

As I read it, and I will happily be corrected if I am wrong, the amendment would prescribe in statute a requirement that the GLA should have a London housing and regeneration board. I cannot go that far because although it is no doubt a sensible thing to have, certainly at the moment, and is something that works well enough with the involvement of the Mayor’s office and the boroughs, we do not think it is consistent with the spirit of localism for us to prescribe, in one particular area, the manner in which the GLA should carry out its activities. Interestingly, that again seems to be a little bit of potential centralism creeping in through the back door. I would prefer to give the Mayor and the boroughs flexibility in determining how to take those issues forward.

I hope that I have dealt with all the topics in what has perhaps been a livelier debate than might have been anticipated when we started to talk about tax clauses, which I note have not featured in the controversy at all, perhaps not surprisingly.

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to the two amendments in my name, although it feels rather strange to be doing so when we have already had much of the debate. I will speak to amendment 351, which relates to the establishment of a London housing and regeneration board, and seeks to guarantee that at least 50% of the membership of such a board would be made up of representatives from the local authority. I will also speak to amendment 352, which we have already debated at some length, and which relates to the process that has to be gone through to establish a mayoral development corporation. Under the amendment, the agreement of any council that is affected would be required before an MDC could be established. I am conscious that there is much to debate this afternoon, so I will limit my remarks.

I will move on to why I tabled the amendments. I should say at the outset that the amendments have been promoted and supported by London Councils, which, as hon. Members know, is the cross-party organisation that represents London boroughs. We can debate the localist merits of the Bill as a whole, but the provisions on London are distinctly regionalist. Whereas in other parts of the country there is the abolition of regional spatial strategies, we still have the London plan. The Bill proposes the winding up of the London Development Agency and the London part of the Homes and Communities Agency, with their powers being transferred to the London Mayor. Due to the Government’s understandable desire to ensure that the regeneration legacy of the Olympics takes effect, there are proposals in the Bill to enable the Mayor to set up a mayoral development corporation. However, as drafted, the Bill suggests that there could be an MDC anywhere in London, and not just at the Olympics site. My amendments would act as a brake on the concentrating powers that the Bill puts into the hands of the Mayor of London. They would give councils and councillors a voice, and they would give people in London the same say as people elsewhere in the country.

Amendment 352 would make it a requirement that a local authority in a proposed MDC area must agree to its establishment. If more that one local authority is affected, all must agree. The Bill as drafted gives complete power to the Mayor and the Secretary of State. Under Government amendment 213, the support of two thirds of the assembly will be needed for a proposal to move forward. That is not a sufficient assurance. There could be a situation in London in which local people are completely against the setting up of an MDC, councillors and the local authority in the area are completely against the setting up of an MDC, and the GLA constituency member is completely against the setting up of an MDC, and yet if the Mayor wants it to happen, it will happen. I ask hon. Members, what is localist about that?

We had some fun in Committee. On Second Reading, my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford) talked about the prospect of a new Mayor of London—perhaps Ken Livingstone in a year’s time—choosing to establish a mayoral development corporation in Bromley. I will not repeat those comments.

Social Housing in London

Debate between Heidi Alexander and Robert Neill

Thursday 5th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill]

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point, but two things have to be recognised. The first is the acceptance in his party’s manifesto that the current model of dealing with housing benefit was not sustainable. Secondly, I will go into this in a little more detail in a moment—I hope that he will forgive me if I return to it in the order that it appears in my speech—but there remain significant numbers of houses in London that are affordable. It cannot be sustainable for people who happen to be in receipt of housing benefit who can afford houses not to have to make the sometimes difficult choices that people in work at lower wages have to make.

I will return to the detail later, because there are some useful points to make. However, it is also worth saying something else—something that I am sure the hon. Gentleman and others will reflect on. I put this as gently as I can to Opposition Members, but they are not really in a position to criticise this Government for trying to do something to deal with the housing crisis in London when they left us in such a heaven’s awful mess in the first place. We heard a grudging acceptance that things were not quite right from some Opposition Members, including one or two who served in the previous Government, but let us put things where they are: the lowest levels of house building in peacetime since 1924; social housing waiting lists at record levels; 250,000 families in social housing living in overcrowded conditions; and—this is a particularly worrying factor—only half of social tenants of working age in work.

That is the inheritance that this coalition Government are trying to pick up, and at a time when there is less money available from the public finances, because of the economic mess that the previous Government left behind. I can understand that people such as the hon. Member for Islington North, who have been consistent in their criticism, are entitled to make the points that they do. However, there are other Opposition Members who—if I may politely say so—have selective memories, and I am not prepared to brook criticism from that source.

There is some common ground between us, however, so let us look at what we need to do. The hon. Member for Edmonton (Mr Love) talked about the need to increase supply, which is obviously right. We need to increase supply right across the types of tenures that are available, because the complexity of the London housing market is such that there is no single bullet. That point is right, and I will deal with it later. We also need to look at flexibility in social housing, which includes the questions of tenure and so on. There is probably common ground there, too. We also need to accept that there is an obligation to protect the most vulnerable and disadvantaged—something that I also want to touch on.

On the first point, about supply, I am not going to rehearse the rights and wrongs of our disagreement with Labour about the targets approach to the delivery of housing. We know where the previous Government stood; Labour Members know where we stand. However, at the end of the day, there was a failure to deliver an adequate supply of housing. We are determined to take steps to address that, which is why we are seeking to incentivise housing right across the board. That is why the new homes bonus is an important factor in again giving communities a real stake in giving permissions. That will be important in dealing with the reluctance of some communities previously to accept needed development because they felt that they had no stake in it and that it had been imposed on them without having a proper say-so. That is why we propose to reform the community infrastructure levy and turn it into a localised tariff, so that—to deal with the point that the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) made—the community that receives development has a means of getting back a meaningful proportion of the planning gain arising from it.

Those are some important supply-side issues, but we are also setting aside £1 billion over the comprehensive spending review period for the new homes bonus scheme—I would politely point out to the hon. Member for Edmonton that the first £200 million, in the first year, is additional money from the Treasury. We seek to incentivise those authorities that are prepared to accept necessary and sustainable growth. We are investing a further £6.5 billion in housing, which includes more than £2 billion to make existing social homes decent and nearly £4.5 billion in new affordable housing to help to deliver up to 150,000 affordable homes. There is therefore significant investment taking place, against a background of seeking to pay down the debts that we inherited as a Government.

Those are supply-side issues that we are seeking to deal with, but the other key issue to the supply side is getting the economy right. Ultimately, confidence has to be restored to the markets, so that people start lending and builders can build once more. Getting the economy right—on which the Opposition have not been exactly supportive of the Government so far—is key, too.

[Heidi Alexander]

The Minister is talking about supply-side interventions. Can he explain why the Government have insisted on the new homes bonus gimmick, rather than putting that money directly into capital subsidy for building new affordable homes?

[Robert Neill]

It is not a gimmick; it is a holistic solution. With respect, the hon. Lady is making exactly the error that Labour Members sometimes make, which is to pluck out social and affordable housing policy and to treat it as though it were separate from the rest of the housing market. Everything is interlinked, however, and the key objective is to increase supply across the board. An increase in supply will lead to greater mobility of people, which will free up accommodation in the often hard-pressed social rented sector.

I want to turn to the changes to flexibility in rents and market rents. Those proposals have been made because affordable rent is a less grant-dependent system than previous models. Criticism has been made about the grant, but we have had to reflect the fact that money is limited because of the mess we inherited. We have moved to a model that we think is proportionate and less grant intensive, in order to make better use of the money. This also recognises the reality that we need to encourage housing associations. I am sorry that there has been a degree of criticism of housing associations. They vary; in my experience as a London MP, I have found that some are very good, and others less so. It is wrong, however, to denigrate the whole sector, just as it would be wrong to denigrate the whole private landlord sector. Lest I forget, let me place on record the fact that my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests refers to a single property from which I receive some income.

If we are to generate income for reinvestment in new affordable housing, there has to be an income flow into the housing associations. As a result of the mess that we inherited, that cannot be entirely dependent on Government grant, so it is necessary to get that money from somewhere else. That is why we believe that an affordable rent model will lead to more houses being built, and more households being able to access the benefits of what is still a sub-market rent.

We are all concerned about the specific situation in London, which is why we are devolving the Homes and Communities Agency’s powers to the Mayor. The Mayor has raised issues about the way in which he intends to operate these functions in London, and we will look at the flexibility of that. We will also look at the responses of various associations, and the Minister for Housing and Local Government will respond to those in due course. That is why I will not go into that matter further at this stage.

It is important to recognise that the housing policy spend in London is significant, and that the Mayor has already established a good track record in this area. He is on track to deliver 50,000 affordable homes by the Olympics, but he has been up front and said that, because of the economic situation, that might have slipped by a year. However, he preferred to be honest and say that it had slipped a year because of external economic factors, compared with the previous Mayor, who set a 50% target that was not met in any of the eight years that he was in office. The best he achieved was 34%, so Mayor Johnson is much more on track than his predecessor. He has also recognised that we will need transitional arrangements to deal with the issues arising from the change to an affordable rent model in the sector.

The reform of tenure was recognised before the election by the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), in one of the periods when she was off the Front Bench, as an issue that needed to be tackled. In that context, existing tenants will be protected. It seems perfectly reasonable to say that, if we are to encourage a more flexible supply of tenure, people who go into a new tenancy should do so in the knowledge that, if circumstances change, it will be appropriate to review that provision.

[Heidi Alexander]

rose—

[Robert Neill]

I will finish this point, then I need to make way for the hon. Member for Islington North.

Some of the more alarmist comments about churn in a city that has a great deal of population churn anyway are unjustified.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Heidi Alexander and Robert Neill

Thursday 25th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill]

The Government inherited the FiReControl contract from the previous Government. As I have indicated to the House already, we have concerns about the contractor’s persistent delays in delivery. In consequence, on 8 November, we placed the contractor in material breach, which requires a response within 20 working days.

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

In October, the Secretary of State told the House that it was outrageous for me to suggest that the money announced in the comprehensive spending review for elderly care would be wiped out by overall cuts to local government. Will he tell me what he disagrees with in the London Councils’ estimate that overall funding, in relation to the personal social services budget, will decrease by £885 million, or including inflation, £1.8 billion?