Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation
Debate between Hilary Benn and Lord Stunell(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Hilary Benn
It is very simple: the Minister and I have a different view. I think every local authority should have a local plan. To be perfectly honest, I cannot understand why a local authority would not want a local plan, given the structure of the national planning policy framework. I think that is an obligation. The Minister and I disagree. He is entitled to his view and I am entitled to mine.
Sir Andrew Stunell
Does the right hon. Gentleman acknowledge that when the NPPF was introduced, it was discovered that only about a quarter of local authorities actually had a statutory plan, despite the requirement to have one? What did the Labour Government do in 13 years to ensure that local authorities complied with what he now asserts to be vital and necessary?
Hilary Benn
With respect to the right hon. Gentleman, the coalition cannot have it both ways. The Minister says we took a top-down approach and told people what to do, but the right hon. Gentleman says the very opposite. The fact is—
Hilary Benn
The right hon. Gentleman should bear with me. The NPPF has changed things. I support its basic structure, but the changes I would make would be, first, to ensure that local authorities calculate their housing need on a similar basis and, secondly, to strengthen the brownfield policy, which, whether the right hon. Gentleman wants to argue about it or not, was weakened in the final version of the NPPF. That is the difference. I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman again, but why does he think that any local authority should not have a local plan? Does he agree with what I am arguing?
Sir Andrew Stunell
I am asking the right hon. Gentleman whether the criticism he is levelling at the coalition Government for failing to achieve what he sets out also applies to him and his Government, who failed to achieve it in 13 years. This Government believed—my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I certainly did—that it was right for local authorities to proceed at their own pace. We provided a carrot, not a stick.
Hilary Benn
No one is arguing about the pace, because the time it will take local authorities to come up with a local plan will differ. I think most of us agree—although clearly not everyone does—that every local authority ought to have a plan. If they do not, are they taking responsibility for their local community? On that, we have a different view.
We will give new powers to local authorities to create housing growth areas and new homes corporations, so that they can assemble land and work with builders—small and large—construction firms and self-builders to get more homes built.
amendment of the law
Debate between Hilary Benn and Lord Stunell(11 years, 8 months ago)
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Hilary Benn
My hon. Friend is right on the first point, although I am not entirely sure that the occupants are claiming housing benefit. We wait to be informed.
People with disabilities will be forced to move and the new home will have to be adapted all over again. Divorced dads who are trying to keep in contact with their children will be told that they have to pay the bedroom tax on the spare bedroom where they stay at the weekend, but as we know, some people will have no choice but to move. The final absurdity—the Chief Secretary should be interested in this—is that if people do move to the right sized property in the private rented sector, because of higher rents the housing benefit bill is likely to be bigger than that paid on the social home from which the family was forced out.
Hilary Benn
I will conclude now, because many other Members want to speak. I have been generous in giving way but I want to finish on this point.
Last Friday a constituent came to see me in my surgery. He is a man in his late 50s who has worked for the past 42 years, until last December when he became unwell. He currently has to live on £71 a week and has just received a council tax bill for £108.25. He is not sure how he is going to pay it and he asked me—it is quite something when someone says this to a Member of Parliament, because we had not met before—“Can I tell you that I can no longer keep the heating on in my flat because it costs me £25 a week and I do not have the money to pay it?”
The Chancellor, the Secretary of State and other Ministers are fond of telling us that we have to make really tough decisions, but I wonder how difficult it was to decide to give those on highest incomes a tax reduction at the beginning of next month, while imposing a reduction in council tax benefit and the bedroom tax on people. They are taking money from those who are poor—that is what we are talking about—and giving it to those who are rich. That is why they should scrap the cut to council tax benefit and get rid of the bedroom tax.
The Secretary of State was full of his usual bravado and occasional bluster in what he had to say, but the cold hard reality of the collision of his policies with people’s lives shows that those policies are not well thought out and are incapable of being delivered. Because of that record, we have a promise of growth that has not materialised, a promise of localism that is not what it seems, and a promise of homes that have not been built. This Chancellor, this Secretary of State, and this Budget have nothing to offer the people of Britain.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Hilary Benn and Lord Stunell
Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
I am not surprised that the Housing Minister has chosen not to answer these questions, given that the House knows he has a bit of a problem when it comes to statistics. Will the Under-Secretary explain how his right hon. Friend came to conclude that the huge decline in affordable housing starts this year—that is what the figures from his own Department show—were in his words “impressive” and “rapid and dramatic progress”?
Andrew Stunell
It is certainly rapid and dramatic progress if someone inherits a situation in which they are going backwards. We are going forwards, and the Homes and Communities Agency housing delivery programme is on track and, in fact, in completion terms, ahead of its corporate plan. There is a cyclical financial profile, but the sector has risen to the challenge to deliver, and 146 providers will deliver 80,000 new homes for affordable rent and affordable home ownership, using Government funding of just under £1.8 billion. This means that we will be able to deliver even more homes for every pound of subsidy from the taxpayer.
Hilary Benn
I am not surprised that the Minister is unable to answer the question, but the House should be keen to assist his right hon. Friend the Housing Minister in his difficulty. He has already had to be put straight by the UK Statistics Authority, and I suggest that he seeks the help of the Education Secretary and offers to take one of the new mathematics O-levels. I have a question: “If 49,363 affordable houses were started last year and only 15,698 affordable houses were started this year, should Grant describe this as: a) ‘a massive increase’; or b) ‘a 68% decline’? Please show your detailed workings.” Does the Under-Secretary not understand that every time his right hon. Friend does that, it is not just affordable house building that declines, but his credibility? When is the Secretary of State going to get a grip?
Andrew Stunell
The right hon. Gentleman prays in aid the UK Statistics Authority, so if I may I shall very briefly quote this:
“Official estimates of net change are available for social rented dwellings, but not for the wider stock of ‘affordable’ housing beyond this category. They show an overall reduction of 421,000 in the stock of homes rented from local authorities and housing associations over the period 1997 to 2010.”
That seems to me a horrific indictment of Opposition Front Benchers, and what Government Members are doing is repairing some of that damage.
Local Government Finance Bill
Debate between Hilary Benn and Lord Stunell
Andrew Stunell
The hon. Lady is well aware that there are such things as negligence and avoidance of reality. We are all aware of such cases. I see quite a few examples in the House from time to time.
New clause 10 inserts into the Bill powers allowing Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to supply information for prescribed purposes relating to council tax to billing authorities in England and Wales and to local authorities in Scotland, and provides for offences relating to the misuse of that information. It is the matching part of the preceding clause, the one that gives local authorities the power to ask bodies for information. This clause allows HMRC to supply that information.
Data sharing will be an important way of maximising convenience and reducing complexity for claimants, while also helping to reduce administrative costs. It will reduce the need for individuals to have to provide the same information repeatedly to different public bodies and produce evidence about their situation to those bodies. Section 131 of the Welfare Reform Act 2012 provides for the sharing of information relating to social security benefits and welfare services with a qualifying person for prescribed purposes relating to welfare services or council tax. The two new clauses, together with that provision, will enable data held by the Department for Work and Pensions in relation to current benefits and, in future, to universal credit, to be provided to English and Welsh billing authorities and Scottish local authorities for the administration of local council tax reduction schemes.
Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
I understand the point that the Minister is making about requiring organisations such as DWP to offer information relating to individuals, but section 14A(1)(b) refers to
“powers to require a person to enter into arrangements under which access is permitted to the person’s electronic records.”
I find it hard to see that that is to do with the Department for Work and Pensions. Can the hon. Gentleman assure the House that this does not relate to individual council tax payers and any electronic records that they have—for example, held on personal computers?
Andrew Stunell
I may wish to return to the right hon. Gentleman’s point later in the debate, if the opportunity arises. My understanding is that there is nothing in the provision that in any way takes the powers of public bodies beyond what they are currently able to do in pursuit of council tax benefit and alleged fraud and misuse of council tax benefit. As I understand it, these powers are absolutely parallel to the existing provisions. I am sure that I will have an opportunity to return to that point later in the debate if I have in any way misguided the House.
New clause 10 inserts paragraphs 15A and 15B into schedule 2 to the Local Government Finance Act 1992. Paragraph 15A(1) and (2) will allow Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to supply information held for the purposes of its functions to billing authorities in England, as well as to a person authorised to exercise any of an authority’s functions on its behalf.
Andrew Stunell
It would be interesting to hear the right hon. Gentleman tell the House how many of those 2,000 people received an income tax rebate as a result of the decisions taken by this Government. Indeed, I suspect that many of them will have been taken out of income tax altogether.
Andrew Stunell
At least the right hon. Gentleman acknowledges that we are giving with one hand. It is right for local authorities and local communities to take account of the circumstances they face, and I hope that the council in Rotherham will do precisely that.