Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation
Debate between Hilary Benn and Robert Neill(9 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Hilary Benn
There is indeed the web, but the right hon. Gentleman will be well aware, having studied the market, that some companies make a special effort to market properties elsewhere and do not make a similar effort to market them in this country. He surely does not agree with that. Everyone in Britain should have the same right and opportunity, and companies should not make a deliberate effort to try to sell to people from other countries before those in London have a chance to access such properties.
Robert Neill
Given that this is a completely new policy that, as far as we can see, is being made up as we go along—
Robert Neill
And it is being changed, so will the right hon. Gentleman tell us exactly what the policy is? What will the policy cost, how many bureaucrats will be needed to enforce it and what will be the impact on London as an international financial centre?
Hilary Benn
The hon. Gentleman should have listened to what I said. There is no cost. The principle is very simple, and I would have thought that it would command support right across the House. The advertising and marketing of properties should be done in the capital at the same time as it is done elsewhere, so that people in this country have the same opportunity to buy. I would have thought that he would support that policy.
Hilary Benn
No, I will not. I have answered the hon. Gentleman’s question.
There is another policy that the Government—actually, the Conservative party—have said that they will put in place if they are re-elected, which is to sell homes at 20% off. To go back to the chairman of the Conservative party, he was recently asked several times on Sky News how exactly that would be funded. He was not able to reply, but others have said that it will be done by exempting such sites, first, from the requirement to build social housing, and secondly, from the zero-carbon homes standard. I would tell the Secretary of State that the consequence will be that other people have less of a chance of getting a home they can afford, and people who move into houses built to a lower energy standard will end up paying higher bills than they otherwise would.
I have another question for Ministers. In talking about that plan, the Prime Minister said the homes
“can’t be bought by foreigners”.
I would be grateful if the Minister who responds clarified what exactly the Prime Minister meant.
Hilary Benn
The hon. Gentleman is, of course, referring to the consequences of a global recession. [Hon. Members: “Ah!”] Well, it was a global recession. The Secretary of State made specific promises about what the Government were going to do and they have comprehensively failed.
The Lyons review says to communities, “In return for taking responsibility for building the homes that you need, we will give you the powers that you need when you identify sites.” I have listened to debates in this House in which Members, particularly Government Members, have said, “We don’t understand it. We’ve identified sites, but the developers come along and say, ‘I don’t fancy building there. It’s not viable for me. I’m going to put in a planning application for that greenfield site over there.’” Up and down the country, that is happening. It is a great frustration for local authorities and citizens, because if they identify sites, the deal in return has to be that that is where the development will take place. If we are just dependent on the big house builders, we will never get to the figures that we need and it will undermine the public consent that, we all agree, is fundamental to making progress on house building.
We must say to local authorities, “Here’s a range of tools that you can use to ensure that the kind of homes you want get built in the places you have identified and go to the people who need them.” That is why the one other thing that we will do is to give local authorities a planning power to say that in housing growth areas a percentage of the new homes that are built for sale should, in the first instance, be reserved for local first-time buyers. If we do that, we will turn quite a few nimbys into yimbys, because they will realise that their son or daughter, or their neighbour’s son or daughter, will have the chance to get one of those houses.
If we are to get to the target that we have set of 200,000 homes a year by 2020—I say to Ministers that surely their experience over the past four years has taught them that we will not do it by trying to put a bit more petrol into the old house building engine and cranking it up—there has to be a fundamental change in the way the house building market works.
Let me turn to economic evolution and growth. I acknowledge what the Secretary of State has done with deals for some cities—it would be churlish not to—but there is an unanswered question: if he and the Government are so committed to devolution, why has progress been so slow, patchy and piecemeal? Manchester aside, why have such limited powers been offered to a small number of large cities. Why, as the Local Government Chronicle put it yesterday, has DCLG
“almost seemed peripheral, a bystander to the devolution debate”?
Why has Lord Kerslake, now free from the responsibilities of office, said—again in the Local Government Chronicle—that
“it was only well into its fourth year that the government woke up to the benefits of devolution”?
I suspect there is plenty more where that came from. Why has the right hon. Gentleman stepped aside while the Chancellor and Deputy Prime Minister have had a row about whether powers can be devolved and whether we need a metro mayor? Perhaps he is not actually in charge of the policy.
What about the great counties of England? Until the Chancellor got up on Wednesday and finally adopted Labour’s policy on 100% retention of business rate income growth, which he said he would apply to Cambridge and Greater Manchester, the counties of England had frankly been ignored. The Secretary of State will be only too well aware of how angry his colleagues in the counties have been at his failure to stand up for them. It was noticeable last year that at the meeting of the County Councils Network—the great annual gathering of county councils—not a single DCLG Commons Minister could manage to clear their diaries to turn up to address what was mainly their party colleagues.
It is not a very long journey to Marlow—about an hour in the ministerial car—and I think the real reason is what happened to the Secretary of State the previous year at the 2013 conference. LocalGov.co.uk reported it thus:
“Mr Pickles received a hostile reception at the conference…During questions, the Tory leader of Leicestershire, CC Nick Rushton, asked the secretary of state: ‘Why are you always so rude to us?—
I am sure the Secretary of State remembers that well—
“It’s about time you spoke up for us in Government.’”
I sympathise with the Secretary of State because with friends like that who needs us on the Opposition Benches? It is the unfairness that makes people angry. The truth is that his Conservative colleagues in the counties know that they will get a better deal from a Labour Government than they have got from the Tory Government, and the same is true for the city regions.
Robert Neill
In what ways does the right hon. Gentleman intend to alter the operation of the formula grant to address sparsity in rural areas? How will he deal with adult social care, which it seems his Government want to nationalise and which is one of the principal cost pressures on top-tier authorities such as councils? How will that help the county council?
Hilary Benn
I will come on to that very point in just a moment if the hon. Gentleman is willing to be patient. He will have seen what Councillors Keith Wakefield and Peter Box have said about the new Leeds city region deal. Peter Box described it as “disappointing”, which I would call one of the kinder comments. What has really got up the noses of the existing combined authorities is that Labour’s offer of 100% retention of business rate income growth has been made to Manchester and Cambridge but not to the other existing combined authorities. Why is that?
For all the Government’s rhetoric about the “northern powerhouse”—now running a close second to “long-term economic plan”—the truth is that the most deprived parts of the country have faced the biggest cuts in local authority funding. Yes, Labour will change the formula because what the Government have done is unjustifiable. There is nothing empowering about taking a load away and then giving a little less back.
Local Government Finance
Debate between Hilary Benn and Robert Neill(9 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Hilary Benn
I am going to make some more progress; the hon. Gentleman has had his answer. I accept the point he has made in a number of these debates about the particular challenges facing rural areas. I want to see a fairer funding formula, and I shall address that a little later.
Ministers are in denial about the scale of the challenge that authorities face and are still claiming that the settlement is fair—this is my first and fundamental point. The Minister told the House in December that the settlement is
“fair to all parts of the country, whether north or south, urban or rural.”—[Official Report, 18 December 2014; Vol. 589, c. 1590.]
He said that again today, but let me tell him that nobody else believes it because it clearly is not true. He does not need to take my word for it; all he has to do is listen to what others have had to say about what Ministers have done. The Audit Commission has said that
“councils in the most deprived areas have seen substantially greater reductions in government funding as a share of revenue expenditure than councils in less deprived areas.”
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has said that
“cuts in spending power and budgeted spend are systematically greater in more deprived local authorities than in more affluent ones”.
The Public Accounts Committee report on the financial sustainability of local authorities said:
“local authorities with the highest spending needs have been receiving the largest reductions.”
The Chair of the PAC, my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge), said:
“These cuts have not hit all local authorities equally, with reductions ranging between 5% and 40%.
Councils with the greatest spending needs—the most deprived authorities—have been receiving the largest reductions.”
At least the former local government Minister, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), had the honesty some time ago to say:
“Those in greatest need ultimately bear the burden of paying off the debt”—[Official Report, 10 June 2010; Vol. 511, c. 450.]
Today’s Minister mentioned council tax, but the one group of people who have not benefited from any freeze in council tax are those on the very lowest incomes, who have been affected by the changes to council tax benefit. There has been no freeze for them.
Robert Neill
It is a pity that the right hon. Gentleman quoted selectively, forgetting that I said that that would be because the Labour party would ruin the economy, and only by growing the economy would the poorest benefit. He has said there would be no new money for local government were Labour to come into office, so will he help us by coming clean as to which local authorities he will then penalise so he can distribute money to his political friends and on what basis?
Hilary Benn
Once again, I do not accept the charge that this is about distributing funds to friends; it is about having a fair funding formula. I remind the hon. Gentleman that when the coalition Government took office unemployment in this country was falling and the economy was growing—[Laughter.] It is no good Government Members laughing, because the evidence, the statistics, the facts will show that that was indeed the case.
On council tax increases, Ministers have frequently made reference to what happened under the last Labour Government, so I have taken the trouble to look at what actually happened then. The truth is that the biggest increases in council tax between 1997 and 2010 were put in place by Conservative-controlled authorities and the smallest increases were under Labour. Indeed, 11 of the top 15 increases in council tax during that period came under Conservative-controlled authorities, two were under authorities with no overall control and one was under a Lib Dem-controlled authority. I suppose that was a coalition.
Local Audit and Accountability Bill [Lords]
Debate between Hilary Benn and Robert Neill
Hilary Benn
I do not accept the argument that the Freedom of Information Act is superfluous, because it depends on whether auditors seek the information in the first place. I think that, regardless of the action that auditors might or might not take, the public should be protected by having the right to request the information. That point was made extremely forcefully and eloquently by my noble Friend Lord Wills in the other place.
There are some other concerns. We need clarity on who will maintain the outsourced contracts when the Audit Commission finally disappears. What about certification relating to reimbursement of housing benefit claims? We welcome the movement of the national fraud initiative to the Cabinet Office, but the provisions on the purposes for which data matching can be used do not include the prevention and detection of maladministration and error, which we would like to be reflected.
That is what is in the Bill, but there is a great big hole in it. It is principally a backward-looking piece of legislation giving effect to the Secretary of State’s decision of three years ago. He has completely failed to make provision for auditing in the new world being built before our very eyes, which I think is an astonishing omission. The proposed audit arrangements simply do not provide for that changing world in which public services are managed and provided. We have shared services, community budgets, city deals and combined authorities, which are all part of a shift towards much stronger working between central and local government, yet the current and proposed audit arrangements still focus much too narrowly on institutions—the arrangements in the Bill for local government and the National Audit Office for Whitehall—rather than the work they do. Therefore, as community budgets develop, does it really make sense for different auditors to examine the use of the local government pound while the NAO examines the use of the Whitehall pound when they are being spent together? If the service is shared and common, so should the audit be. I hope that Ministers will reflect on that point.
Robust independent audit of public bodies is essential to ensuring public confidence in Government. It is up to us to ensure that we get it right, especially after the three years that have intervened, followed by a Bill that—I gently point out—took longer to gestate than a baby African elephant.
I turn now to clause 38. Let me say at the outset that one local authority publication, which the Secretary of State mentioned, is pretty clearly outside the letter and the spirit of the code—that is, East End Life, which is weekly, advertises property, and carries local news. The Labour leader in Tower Hamlets says that it is an expense that residents cannot afford. The question for the House is therefore a simple one: why has the Secretary of State not done anything about it already? Why has he not sought judicial review? It is no good his shaking his head—he could have taken action, given the fuss he is making, but he has chosen not to do so, and he gives no answer.
Robert Neill
On precisely what grounds does the right hon. Gentleman think that judicial review could take place, since non-compliance with the code has no sanction attached to it?
Hilary Benn
It would be a very important legal argument as to whether the courts would attach weight to what is a code. If the Secretary of State is that worried about East End Life, why did he not take action before coming to this House to ask for clause 38 and the extraordinary powers it contains?
The Secretary of State is asking the House to give him the right, if he feels like it, to control local council publications. We have recently had a great deal of debate about the royal charter following the Leveson report. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State is chuntering, but there is a lot more to say about this clause. The charge has been levied, quite wrongly, that politicians are trying to control what appears in the press, yet this clause really would give a politician the power to control, if he wanted to, what is written, how often, and in what way. This shows that underneath a lot of localist rhetoric, the right hon. Gentleman is nothing more than a centralist. I am astonished that Liberal Democrats appear to be happy to go along with a thoroughly illiberal proposal.
The clause would allow the Secretary of State to issue an order directing that one authority, or every authority, comply with his interpretation of one or all of the provisions of the code. I remind the House that the code covers paid advertising, leaflet campaigns, publication of free newspapers and news sheets, the maintenance of websites, the frequency of publications, the content of publications, and even display stands at party political conferences. Clause 38(1)—the first time I read this I could not really believe it—says the following—[Interruption.] I know that Government Members do not want to hear it. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman could explain why he wants to be given this power:
“The Secretary of State may give a direction to an authority whether or not the Secretary of State thinks that the authority is complying with the code to which it relates.”
Roughly translated, he wants the power to give direction to a council even though he does not think that it is not complying with the code, and nor does anyone else. We are sometimes mystified by the way his mind works, but under this Bill he will not even have to answer to himself for his own thoughts and actions.
That prompts the question why the Secretary of State has put this measure forward. He advanced two arguments, the first of which is about competition with local newspapers. I agree that local newspapers are a very important part of our democracy. Their independent reporting holds us to account, and they give us important news and information about what is happening in our area. However, many local newspapers are in real difficulties as readership declines and people get more of their news from the electronic media. Sir Merrick Cockell, the highly respected Conservative leader of the Local Government Association, says:
“We’ve simply not been shown any evidence that council publications compete unfairly with local newspapers.”
Such evidence as we do have suggests that the amount of advertising revenue taken by council publications is relatively small, especially compared with the amount of revenue contributed to local newspapers by way of statutory notices.
It is therefore very curious that, despite great play being made in the Secretary of State’s speech and in all the consultation documents of unfair competition and the loss of advertising revenue, it was reported a little while ago that he had indicated to a private meeting of Conservative councillors at the LGA conference that the requirement to place statutory notices in local newspapers is going to be phased out within a couple of years. I would be happy to give way to the right hon. Gentleman if he would like to clarify the Government’s position on the future of statutory notices. The House will have noticed that he has nothing to say. That is because on the one hand he is arguing that council magazines and the advertising revenue they take are a terrible threat, while on the other hand it seems, as reported by Conservative councillors who were at the meeting, that he is thinking of withdrawing a much larger amount of money that papers get from local councils in the form of statutory notices. The truth is that his position is utterly inconsistent.
Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
I was delighted to hear my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State finish an important piece of work to which we committed ourselves when we first came into government. I was intrigued to listen to the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), the shadow Secretary of State. It was a curate’s egg performance. I grant that there were some near rib-tickling moments—some of which were probably not intended—but it was a classic case of an Opposition searching for something to oppose. My right hon. Friend has introduced and delivered a Bill that the Government said at the very beginning of the coalition we would introduce. I am delighted that it has come to fruition.
Let me deal with the various parts of the Bill. I was fascinated to see some of the Audit Commission’s expenditure when I was part of the Opposition Front-Bench team. In the climate of the 1980s, there was an argument for considering a body such as the Audit Commission. However, two things happened: the Labour Government caused massive mission creep in the Audit Commission, and the climate changed. What caused the massive mission creep? Effectively, the Audit Commission was used as the machine for imposing a centralised performance regime on local government. That was a distinctly and fundamentally un-localist thing to do.
The situation is well described by Professor George Jones of the London School of Economics, whom many hon. Members will know—he is the biographer of Herbert Morrison. Professor Jones would not regard himself as a natural admirer and advocate of the coalition Government’s policies, but he believes in local independence. I disagree with many of the things he says, but he has described the Labour Government as taking “a fateful decision” that
“turned the Audit Commission in effect into an agent of central government…[It] marked the end of its independence, which was confirmed as further tasks required by central government were placed on the Commission: inspecting local authorities’ performance, judging and scoring them.”
Professor Jones is one of the leading independent academics. Most people would say he has a left-of-centre viewpoint—he happens not to be a member of any political party—but that significant academic is condemning the actions of a Government of whom the right hon. Member for Leeds Central was a member. It is therefore a bit rich of him to accuse the Secretary of State of back-door localism. Anyone who knows my right hon. Friend and the history will know that that is nonsense.
The Audit Commission grew beyond its remit to such an extent that it became the elephant in the room in a great deal of local government budgeting. Increasingly, time and again, local authorities—officers and members—felt themselves to be more constrained. They felt they had to play the system and adopt policies and priorities that ticked the box of Audit Commission approval. The system of reward and funding was such that they were incentivised to tick the box to meet central Government objectives rather than those of their council tax payers.
That was initially swept away when the coalition Government got rid of the iniquitous comprehensive area assessments regime, which, at that time, was a huge amount of the Audit Commission’s work. Essentially, the core audit function was left. As I recall, by that stage, the Audit Commission was about the fourth largest audit practice in the country. There was no logical reason why such a large audit practice should not operate in a commercial environment, providing that a proper statutory regime was in place to overarch it and that there was a proper regulation and performance regime, which the Bill introduces.
We saw that when the in-house audit practice was successfully floated in the private sector. It is worth noting that, as a consequence, there has been a 40% reduction in audit fees paid by local authorities. By the time the Bill is implemented and the Audit Commission is finally abolished, there will be a 50% reduction in those bills. That has got to be a good and thoroughly localist thing. Those of us experienced in local government will remember regular complaints about the level of charging by the Audit Commission. There was also the iniquitous situation of its top-slicing, whether it did the job in-house or it was done through private sector contractors, which was clearly unjustifiable. I hope people accept that the Bill recognises a sensible reality.
I have to say with a smile that I note the cost of trying to persuade the Opposition Front Bench team to change our minds was put at £56,000. They were getting my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I cheaply at that price. On the other hand, it did not have much effect, so perhaps they were had in any event. I assume that £50,000 was for my right hon. Friend and £6,000 was for me—I am fully aware of the status of these things—but it says something of the level of unreality in the Audit Commission. In the end, that is why it had so few friends in local government and why its departure will be unlamented. Instead, we have a sensible set of checks and balances which need to be put in place, and which I think the local government sector now understands.
It is also worth saying that performance management and improvement in the sector has matured—a point made in interventions on the right hon. Member for Leeds Central. There is a great willingness to collaborate and work closely together; that is a classic case of recognising that the game has moved on.
The Bill seeks to tackle the code of practice on publicity, which is significant. I was the Minister when we introduced the code and there had been a number of egregious examples of abuse by local authorities. East End Life is of course the example most regularly cited, but I am afraid there are others.
Hilary Benn
It would certainly help consideration of the Bill on Second Reading if the hon. Gentleman listed those examples. Indeed, Baroness Hanham said that she had a list, but did not want to share it with Members in the other place. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will now tell us which local authorities are breaking the code.
Robert Neill
The right hon. Gentleman obviously knows that the only roles in Gilbert and Sullivan I could do at school were the patter songs—one does not have to sing in tune. I do “have a little list” and will come to it in but a moment.
It is significant that East End Life, run now by an independent council but initiated at a time when the council was otherwise controlled, is one case on which the right hon. Gentleman and I can agree. We agree that that is a particularly bad case, but it goes further than that. Much of East End Life was based on some of the work done by The Londoner, which was produced by the first Mayor of London. By the end of his first term of office, he was a member of the right hon. Gentleman’s party. The current Mayor of London has had no difficulty in getting his case and his arguments across to the London public, and getting information about Greater London authority services across, without the cost of The Londoner. In fairness, even when Ken Livingstone was a member of the Labour party, he supported the current mayor of Tower Hamlets—against a Labour candidate. Perhaps I should not remind the right hon. Gentleman of that.
Robert Neill
Yes, but I did not use them to attack the policies of the Opposition in party political terms. I would not have been allowed to do so under the ministerial code, and anyway they were dealt with by civil servants. I think the hon. Gentleman is also forgetting that, in all the cases I have described, local authorities that are using publicly funded publicity instruments to protest against Government cuts are using discretionary spend that they could have directed into front-line services. That is a classic example of why the Labour party is unhappy about this issue. I regret to say that it goes well beyond the egregious case of Tower Hamlets.
If local authorities want to get information across, which I accept has to happen, they might like to do as my own council, the London borough of Bromley, does. Rather than going to the expense of running its own newspaper, it puts a four-page wrapper around one of our local papers about four times a year. Those pages set out the information very attractively. They are well designed and contain professional journalistic input, and they wrap round the free-sheet that is delivered to everyone anyway. That is a cost-effective and politically proportionate way of getting genuine information across. Also, it does not offend against the code. It is nonsense that although an independent watchdog has held Tower Hamlets to be in breach of the publicity and advertising codes, there is still no legal means of doing anything about it. The Bill will rectify that anomaly.
I say with respect to the right hon. Member for Leeds Central that it is not good enough to say that we could try a judicial review.
Robert Neill
Well, we could try to resolve many things by way of a judicial review, but whether that would be a wise or proportionate use of public funds, when the outcome is highly uncertain, is questionable. Surely it would be much better to deal with the problem at source, in the way that is being proposed. The Opposition appear to have little to say on this matter, and they appear to be shedding a great many crocodile tears about this aspect of the Bill.
Growth and Infrastructure Bill
Debate between Hilary Benn and Robert Neill
Hilary Benn
The hon. Lady makes an extremely important point. I was going to raise it in a moment, but I shall raise it now. The Planning Minister told the Select Committee that the development would be limited to 50% of the garden, but the consultation document does not say that. It says 50% of the curtilage of the house. As the Royal Town Planning Institute has pointed out, the two are self-evidently not the same. I would happily give way at this moment to the Secretary of State if he could clarify a simple question. Is it 50% of the garden or 50% of the curtilage?
Hilary Benn
Gladly, but the House will have noticed that the Secretary of State, who is responsible for this, cannot answer or is unwilling to answer a very simple question in the House today.
Robert Neill
Will the right hon. Gentleman answer this very simple question? Given his new-found concern for back gardens, will he explain why his Government persisted in regarding back gardens as brownfield development, resisted attempts to reclassify them and permitted more building on back gardens, which was reversed by this Government?
Hilary Benn
I make no apology for having a brownfield-first policy when we were in government. One of the reasons why more and more development is going to be seen on greenfield sites is that in revising the national planning policy framework, the Government have weakened the extremely sensible brownfield-first policy.
There was a hurried consultation on permitted development rights. Reference has already been made to the fact that although the consultation closed on 24 December last, anyone who looked this morning on the Communities and Local Government website to remind themselves of what the Government’s response was, given the great hoo-hah that there has been and the many views expressed, would have found this simple statement:
“We are analysing your responses. Visit this page again soon to download the outcome to this public feedback.”
I find it extraordinary. Given the extent of the concern and the discussions that have been taking place at the last minute with colleagues on the Government Benches who are immensely concerned about the matter, how is it that all these months after the closing date for the consultation, the Government have not even been able to publish what people said and to respond to it?
I am not surprised that the Government have not been keen to do that because of the extent of the concern expressed. Two arguments have been made. The first was that the Government’s proposal would boost economic recovery. That view is not shared by those who should know. When the Planning Minister was asked by the BBC what would be the economic impact of the measure, he replied, “I don’t know.” The truth is that nobody knows. The Select Committee was not persuaded by the economic argument. It said that the case that the Government had put was
“so tentative, broad-brush and qualified as to provide little assurance that the financial benefits suggested will be achieved.”
Even Anglian Home Improvements, who know a lot about building conservatories, said that the proposals would on their own
“achieve little if anything in terms of securing economic growth”.
If the Government wanted to boost the construction sector and the building of conservatories, they could do a lot worse than to reduce the rate of VAT on home improvements to 5%, as the National Federation of Builders has suggested.
The second argument and the substantive one is that it should be made much easier for people to be able to extend their homes. The Secretary of State knows, as we have heard in this debate, that about 90% of those planning applications for extensions beyond the existing permitted development rights are approved. That shows that the planning system is working to allow these extensions, but what it also shows is that the planning system works to weed out the 10% of applications that are not acceptable. The right hon. Gentleman wants those 10% to be able to go ahead, come what may. That is the consequence of what he is proposing.
Local Government Finance (England)
Debate between Hilary Benn and Robert Neill(11 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Hilary Benn
The hon. Gentleman clearly has not been listening to what I have said since taking up this post. I have said in this Chamber before that, were a Labour Government now in office, of course there would be cuts to local government, but they would not go as far or as fast as the ones the Government are making and they would not, as I will point out, be allocated to local authorities in such a fundamentally unfair way.
The truth is that the Secretary of State continues to lose in his battles with the Treasury, assuming, of course, that he tried to fight for local government in the first place. The truth, even if Ministers refuse to admit it, is that local councils are now facing—this is why the word “modest” causes such anger—the largest cuts in their funding in the political lifetime of every single Member sitting in the Chamber.
Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
Does the right hon. Gentleman stand by the £52 billion of cuts for 2014-15 that appeared in his Government’s Treasury pre-Budget report in 2009? If not, what cuts would he make, and where?
Hilary Benn
I do indeed stand by the statement my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling), when Chancellor of the Exchequer, placed before the House and the country. I remind the hon. Gentleman that when he and his colleagues came into government the economy was growing—[Interruption.] It was. There is no good shouting about it. The signal achievement of the Chancellor over the past three years has been to put the British economy flat on its back, which is why we are in such difficulty.
The consequences of what is going on are these: first, local government is having to deal with cuts that are unfairly distributed; secondly, residents are having to come face to face with the consequences of those cuts; and, thirdly, the changes to council tax benefit are being made even worse by the effects of the overall cuts to council budgets. I want to address each of those in turn.
The Local Government Association says that
“funding for local government is projected to fall by 3.9% in 2013-14 and a further 8.5% in 2014-15. This means that the grant to local government will fall by 33% in real terms over the current spending review period.”
It is not possible, by any measure, to call that scale of reduction modest. The LGA goes on to say:
“Modelling work from the local government association shows a funding gap of £16.5 billion by 2019-20, if reductions in support continue on current trends.”
It is not modest; it is massive, and it is about time that Ministers started to recognise the truth of what they are doing.
If denial was not bad enough, the language that Ministers have used about those who are serving in local government has been, frankly, extraordinary and offensive. According to The Daily Telegraph, the Conservative council leaders of Derbyshire, Essex, Buckinghamshire, Wiltshire, Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, Kent and East and West Sussex wrote to the Prime Minister last month to complain about the Ministers on the Government Front Bench. They referred to “patronising language” and said that the nature and tone of constant criticisms of councillors’ work by Conservative Ministers is “most worrying”. They also highlighted
“ill-informed…criticism and sometimes highly inaccurate personal attacks.”
They—remember that these are Tory council leaders—concluded by saying:
“We believe it is essential to bring to your attention our concerns regarding some government policy affecting local government, the rhetoric that accompanies it and the effect it is having on our people.”
It is no good Ministers asking local government to take on an enormous challenge—which it is doing—if at the same time the people they expect to step up and respond are criticised, patronised and belittled.
Perhaps the Minister will explain why allowing councillors to save for a pension has, in his words,
“a corrosive influence on…independent thought”—[Official Report, 19 December 2012; Vol. 555, c. 105WS.]
Let us stop and think about that statement. If being able to save for a pension has a corrosive influence on independent thought, what hope is there for all of us in this House? That is an insult to councillors and it shows a fundamental lack of respect for people who are working really hard to cope in difficult circumstances.
Growth and Infrastructure Bill
Debate between Hilary Benn and Robert Neill
Hilary Benn
No, they said it was the lack of clarity from the UK Government.
Thirdly, the reason we have been one of only two G20 countries in a double-dip recession is not the planning system but the Government’s failed economic policies. The Secretary of State is in a very uncomfortable position today as his whole argument, which is that the Bill will give us growth, has been undercut by the Prime Minister. Let me remind the House of what the Prime Minister said in the summer:
“If you could legislate your way to growth, obviously we would. The truth is you can’t.”
That is what the Prime Minister said.
Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
Against that background, will the right hon. Gentleman explain why under the Government of whom he was a member the UK fell from fourth to 89th in the global rankings for the burden of Government regulation? How would he put that right if he were in our place?
Hilary Benn
I do not know which survey the hon. Gentleman means, but as he knows, we did a great deal.
Robert Neill
I mean the World Economic Forum’s global competitiveness report—those reports run from 1997 through to 2012-13. I can show it to him if he would like to see it.
Hilary Benn
As the hon. Gentleman has a wee bit more time on his hands these days, I would very gladly read a copy of that report. He knows that the previous Government did a number of things to boost the economy and economic development, and he must acknowledge that when the coalition Government took over, the economy was growing. The Chancellor’s spectacular achievement has been to put that growth into reverse.
This is a flawed and incoherent Bill that shows why the Prime Minister was right to say that it is not possible to legislate for growth. It is no wonder that Sir Merrick Cockell, the Conservative leader of the LGA, described it as a missed opportunity. The only thing that will grow as a result of the Bill will be the power of the Secretary of State, who is mentioned 144 times in just 45 pages—that is going some.
Now, why is that? The truth that the right hon. Gentleman would not utter is that the Bill marks the death of his commitment to localism—the localism that he used to proclaim with such passion and sincerity. It is actually a Bill that says, “You know what? You can’t trust local people to take the right decisions, so we’ll take the decisions.” It was noticeable that clause 1 was the bit of the Bill that he was most reluctant to talk about. It is extraordinary. Ministers have tried to dress it up today—the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), who has responsibility for planning, did so when he appeared before the Communities and Local Government Committee—as a minor change that will be used sparingly in a few authorities, apparently, he said, for a maximum of one year. But the Bill says none of those things. Nowhere does it say that. The Government are making this up as they go along. What the Bill does say is that the right hon. Gentleman would take for himself the power to decide on planning applications and cut local communities right out of the process for as long as he likes.
Hilary Benn
I certainly will come on to that point, but those conversations with the LGA will be jolly interesting. The Secretary of State is apparently going to say, “Can we sit down and talk about the criteria? By the way, whatever they are, they have to include Hackney, because I have just told the House of Commons that Hackney is the worst of the lot.” He has fettered his own discretion and will regret that answer.
The argument that this proposal is like the regime for failing schools falls at the first hurdle. We can judge whether a failing school is improving, because it will still be treating the children, but if we take responsibility for planning applications away from local councils and decide them centrally, we will have no way of knowing whether the planning authority is improving because it will not be taking any decisions. That is nonsense. And as for quality, I say to the Secretary of State and the Minister with responsibility for planning that there can be no real measure of it, because it is a matter of opinion and local democratic accountability, which is why we have had local decision making on planning applications for 60 years.
Robert Neill
Where was the local democratic accountability in the regional spatial strategies?
Hilary Benn
I accept the hon. Gentleman’s argument. The regional spatial strategies meant that local authorities had a responsibility to build houses. He has to acknowledge, however, that the regime before us, which I recognise he played an important part in setting up, will produce exactly the same numbers. That is because the same number of people will need to be housed and there will be the same increase in population. They are two different ways of doing it. However, it is the Secretary of State who has made great play of localism but who is now turning it on its head.
If the Secretary of State is thinking of using as his proxy the speed and percentage of planning applications overturned, people should, as I have indicated, go away very quickly and see where their local authorities are in the league table. To add insult to injury, however—this is pretty bad—he is taking the power to require local authorities to do all the work in connection with applications, even though they will not be taking the decisions and even though the Planning Inspectorate will be paid the fees. That is what he is doing in the Bill.
These are the same planning officers in whom the Secretary of State, in effect, had no confidence to start with—that is why he chose to designate authorities. It is therefore crystal clear what the clause is about: it is about his saying, in respect of councils whose decisions he does not like or which he thinks are being too tardy, that it is the elected council members whom he does not trust. That makes the purpose of the clause plain. He is saying, “I want this power because I think I’m in a better place to take decisions than the local communities themselves.” That is why the clause is so objectionable.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Hilary Benn and Robert Neill
Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
Given the great public interest in the national planning policy framework, we would all like to know which construction and property companies the Secretary of State and Communities and Local Government Ministers have met in the past few months, especially as the Electoral Commission revealed that firms in the sector gave just over £500,000 to the Conservative party between July and December last year. The public unfortunately cannot find out that information because no details of meetings between CLG Ministers and others have been published since June 2011. May I ask the Secretary of State, who is responsible for publication, why that is?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Robert Neill)
All matters will be published in due course. My right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), the Minister responsible for planning and decentralisation, made clear the persons who are members of the practitioners group and with whom we openly consulted. Nothing is hidden, and I am sorry that the right hon. Gentleman chooses to bark up such a completely fictitious tree.
Hilary Benn
That will not really do, and I am sorry that the Secretary of State has once again ducked answering a question, because he is very keen to lecture people on transparency but, it seems, not so keen on it himself. The Housing Minister promised the House a month ago that the information was about to appear, but as of midday today—nine months on from the previous disclosure—there was still no sign of it on the Department’s website, even though the ministerial code clearly states that such information must be published “at least quarterly”. When is the Secretary of State going to start practising what he preaches, especially on something as important as the future of our towns and countryside?
Robert Neill
I have consulted my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, and information on the matter will be published very shortly. I point out that this Department was the first to publish online all spend over £500, so our record bears comparison with anyone’s.
Local Government Finance
Debate between Hilary Benn and Robert Neill(12 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Robert Neill)
May I point out that the right hon. Gentleman was a member of the Cabinet that had capping, whereby the Secretary of State used to set the maximum council tax each year without even asking anyone?
Hilary Benn
Indeed, with the powers having been put in place by the previous Conservative Government and having remained in place when we were in government. I was merely pointing out to the Minister the inconsistency in the Secretary of State’s argument: he says he is a great localiser but on bins and on referendums it appears that he knows better than everyone else.
Hilary Benn
I have been very generous in giving way and I have given way to the hon. Gentleman once already, so I am going to conclude to allow others to speak.
On the question of how the 3.5% is calculated, however, after the exchange we have just heard, I would say that I think councils would welcome absolute clarity about what kind of increase would trigger a referendum, not least because of the costs that would result.
In conclusion, the settlement needs to be seen for what it is. The Minister referred to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and, as he might have read, last month it talked to a number of senior council officials about the impact that reductions in local authority budgets will have on the most deprived communities. The BBC reported what one officer, who, incidentally, works for a Conservative-controlled authority, said, and I want to quote him. He said, very simply:
“This is the most unfair and unjust settlement I have ever seen”.
I agree. It is unfair to councils and unfair to local residents, and that is why we will vote against this motion.