Permitted Development and Shale Gas Exploration

James Heappey Excerpts

Thursday 28th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[James Heappey (Wells) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) on opening today’s debate. I agree with much of what she said. I, too, oppose fracking, for two reasons. First, it poses a threat to my constituency, and I object to it being there. Secondly, I do not see the case for it from an energy policy perspective.

There is, however, an important distinction to make, which my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) tried to introduce to the hon. Lady during her speech. We should not conflate fracking—where we get the gas from—with the role of gas in our energy system in the interim. I absolutely understand the point she made about methane leakage and the potency of methane as a greenhouse gas. Fundamentally, however, the decision over whether to go big on fracking now in the UK is an immediate decision—it is a planning decision and an energy policy decision—and there is a clear argument against it. However, if we conflate that immediacy with the more measured approach that we need to take to removing gas from our energy system, that risks diluting what is a very important debate.

Fracking has no role in our future energy mix because, as a consequence of decisions taken by the Chancellor over decommissioning costs in the North sea, there has been a resurgence in North sea oil and gas exploration. That is helpful in meeting the UK’s short-term domestic needs, meaning that the expected economic upside of fracking will no longer be realised. Add to that the rapidly decreasing cost of renewables and storage, and the exciting opportunity of embracing hydrogen, which I would far rather were the mainstay of the Government’s future gas policy, and one can start to make a compelling case for not requiring fracking, whatever the safety arguments might be. There is simply no role for it in the UK’s future energy mix, but there is an interim role for gas.

I commend to the hon. Member for Bath, and other Members, the work that I have been doing with the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) and the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) on the future of the gas grid. There is a real opportunity to introduce low-carbon gases into the natural gas mix in our gas system immediately, and to start to decarbonise, which will have a profound impact on the decarbonisation of heat. The longer-term goal is the arrival of a hydrogen based gas system that would meet the needs of decarbonising heat, and will also have an exciting role in transport and for inter-seasonal long-term energy storage.

Interestingly, the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Sir Edward Davey) mentioned carbon capture and storage. The real opportunity with hydrogen—particularly pre-combustion carbon capture and storage technologies—is that instead of CCS being something that one spends £1 billion a time on, if it is linked to the production of hydrogen and the emergence of a hydrogen economy, CCS becomes more affordable because it is part of that whole package, which is an exciting proposal.

I hope the Government can admit that what might have seemed liked a good idea five years or so ago, is no longer a good idea. The world has moved on, and we could be embracing many much more exciting opportunities if we just ditch fracking.

Oral Answers to Questions

James Heappey Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jake Berry]

This is not just about the help the Government have set out on business rates; it is also about ensuring that high streets can remain fit for the future. It is all very well for the Opposition Front-Bench team to scoff against the free market, as they did during my response earlier, but let us not forget that the people who ply their trade and work as retailers on the high street are the embodiment of all that is good about British entrepreneurship.

[James Heappey (Wells) (Con)]

Mendip District Council has made some excellent inclusions in our local plan for rejuvenating high streets in the district. Will the Minister commend the council’s work and look favourably on any bids it brings forward to help to fund the transformation of our high streets?

[Jake Berry]

I absolutely commend Mendip District Council and my hon. Friend for their work on taking forward a bid for their high street. He and his area will be aware, as will all other areas in the country, that they have until 22 March to put in an expression of interest—100% of the boroughs that receive the cash will have applied for it, so I suggest they get on with it.

Residents of Leisure Park Homes

James Heappey Excerpts

Wednesday 27th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[James Heappey (Wells) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Austin. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately) on securing this debate. The issue has arisen on a number of occasions in my constituency, and I have carried out casework on behalf of people on both sides of the equation. Before I get into that, may I use this opportunity to pay tribute to the emergency services in Somerset, who responded so well to the ceiling that collapsed at Pontins in Brean the other night? A number of people were injured. I hear that the emergency services responded with their usual professionalism and expertise, and ensured that injury and inconvenience were absolutely minimised.

Brean is a wonderful place to go for a holiday. Tens of thousands of people do so every week, all season long, and there are many more caravans and mobile homes in the wider Burnham-on-Sea area. I understand that it is second only to Skegness in the European rankings for concentrations of caravans. We are very proud of that.

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

I feel that I should mention that my hon. Friend is completely correct: Skegness is the proud owner of the highest concentration in Europe. While I envy my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately) for securing this debate, it is important to set it in context. The overall benefit to the economy of the industry is enormous, and the rogues are small in number, even if their effects are genuinely profound.

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[James Heappey]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He knows, as I do, that what Brean lacks in quantity as against Skegness, we make up for in quality. I know he agrees with that.

There are effectively four groups affected by the issue. The local community beyond the park are frustrated that there is additional pressure on local services and infrastructure without any due planning process having been followed. Sedgemoor District Council has had to retrospectively allow planning permission to protect the value of the asset that the residents of park homes have spent money on, but there is a lack of consultation and transparency in the planning process when that emergency measure is taken. There is also a loss of tourism revenue, because permanent residents tend not to eat out and use local attractions as much as those visiting for just a week.

The local community is disadvantaged, too. Reputable, law-abiding caravan and leisure parks in the area miss out. There is the reputational risk to the industry of all operators being tarred with the same brush, which is unfair. When this issue arose two or three years ago, Sedgemoor employed a company called Capacitygrid. I am sure it did nothing other than what it was invited to do, but its method of checking that all the tens of thousands of caravans in the Brean area were legit was to be quite harassing in how it did its business, and how it got proof of another address. The park owners had to put up with their residents being affected by that company, which had been instructed by Sedgemoor to go in and check on the scale of the problem.

The local council has to pay for enforcement out of our council taxes. It has the grumpiness that comes with the difficult planning decisions that it needs to take if it is to retrospectively approve the caravans as permanent places of residence. As the caravans are already there, there is none of the community infrastructure levy or section 106 money that would come with a more routine planning decision, so there is none of the development that comes with having secured that money during the planning process.

Most importantly, the residents are so often taken for a ride. They are overly trusting, but they see an opportunity to have a permanent home in a place where they have enjoyed holidaying their entire working life. They take that opportunity and put their life savings into it, only to find that what they have bought is effectively worthless, because there is no planning permission for that residence to be used year round. I have had it reported to me that residents struggle to access local services. They are at the mercy of unscrupulous park owners.

I agree with so much of the expertise that has been shared with us about what could be done. There is plenty of legislation that protects consumer rights, and our first instinct should be to use what is on the statute book, rather than to develop new laws. However, it is important that we address this issue. From my experience in nearly four years as the MP for Wells, I have seen enough of this problem on the coast to know that it is something that the Government should address. I very much look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.

Somerset County Council: Unitary Status

James Heappey Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mr Liddell-Grainger]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He was a county councillor, and so was fully aware of the situation—more so than any of us. I am delighted to see that my hon. Friend the Member for Wells (James Heappey), who I know had a pressing engagement, has made it here. He will recognise this point, because he wrote a devastatingly good article that follows on from what my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil has said. My hon. Friend puts forward a good case that we must look at the debt, look at our options and look at our future. I will take that first point first, if I may.

My hon. Friend is right that it was the Liberals who created the debt—not the Conservatives, but the Liberals. We are now living with that legacy, but it has to be faced. I say to my hon. Friend the Minister that it is our social services that are pulling us down. The problem we face is that we do not have enough money to take care of the neediest in our community.

The second point my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil makes, which I have made before and which I know my hon. Friend the Member for Wells agrees with, is that we should also look to our neighbours. My hon. Friend the Member for Wells wrote a good piece about looking toward BANES, and I mentioned looking toward Devon. We have no parameters—we could look at either of them—but we need democratic accountability. I say to my hon. Friend the Minister that if we are going to go through with any form of unitary, we need to have a referendum. If we need to look to the people of BANES to split up the ghastly edifice that is Avon and get our old county back, we will do that.

When Councillor Fothergill came to the House—he was very courteous; it was a very courteous meeting—I asked him directly about a referendum. He said, “I will hold negotiations or conversations with our stakeholders.” To me and to my hon. Friends the Members for Yeovil and for Wells, the stakeholders are our constituents. They are our stakeholders, not the Avon and Somerset police farce, based in Bristol, or the ambulance service, now based in Exeter, I believe, or the fire service, based wherever the heck it has got to now. We, the people of Somerset, are the stakeholders. That is who we represent.

I would like the Minister, if possible, to say a referendum should be held. We did not hold one in West Somerset. When I had to put my views gently to the Minister last week, I said that the majority of people who took part in what can only be described as a pretty desultory consultation were against that proposal, but they were ignored. I hope that will not be the format for the future.

I say to the Minister, please do not underestimate the ability of Somerset to fight back. We have done it once, and we will do it again. The last time was the battle of Sedgemoor in 1685, which happened in my constituency, very close to the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Wells. We marched on London. This time we are coming by train, so we will not get it wrong, and I assure the Minister that we will do what we have to in order to overturn this decision. I therefore urge him to think constructively about a great county such as Somerset. We have had our traumas, but we have a team that is blue throughout, and we want to keep that.

[James Heappey (Wells) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. Does he agree that, while a referendum is certainly the way to finish this process with full public support, the problem with referendums in recent years is that people have sometimes gone into them with incomplete information at their disposal? We must insist that the county council and the districts fully resource the analysis of all possible courses of action, so that a decision can be made on our future as a county based on all facts, rather than those selectively presented to engineer the outcome the county council desires?

[Mr Liddell-Grainger]

I could not have put it better myself. My hon. Friend does a phenomenal job up on the north flank of Somerset. He is absolutely correct in what he says. We must take local opinion into account—not by saying in some waffly way, “Well, it’s quite a good idea,” but by saying, “A referendum must be held.” As I think my hon. Friend alluded to, his preference would be to go north and look toward BANES, if possible. We need to talk about that. It is no good the county council leader’s turning up in the House of Commons to try to persuade MPs of a course of action.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Rishi Sunak)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone, for what I think is the first time in my new role. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater and West Somerset (Mr Liddell-Grainger) not only on securing this important debate, but on his continued engagement on the topic of local government. I have enjoyed the discussions I have had with him in previous parliamentary Committees and debates, and I look forward to many more. It is also a pleasure to see my hon. Friends the Members for Yeovil (Mr Fysh), for Wells (James Heappey) and for Henley (John Howell) contribute to the debate, and perhaps we may have the honour of hearing from my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson) later.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater and West Somerset will have heard me say before that the Government are committed to considering locally led proposals for unitarisation and mergers between councils, where requested. He will also have heard me say that the Government are not in the business of imposing top-down solutions on local government; we wait to hear proposals delivered, developed and initiated by local government.

Only last week, as my hon. Friend mentioned, we discussed in a Delegated Legislation Committee the draft secondary legislation that, if Parliament approves and it is made, would implement the merger proposal that was submitted to the Government by two district councils in Somerset, West Somerset and Taunton Deane. Today we are considering the possibility of Somerset councils wishing to pursue further restructuring to form unitary local government in Somerset.

As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government said earlier this month, the Government believe that there is space and scope for unitary authorities, and where unitary authorities can seek to make a difference, the Government will support that. However, we want to hear from the sector itself on the benefits that can be experienced, and we will listen.

There are two unitary councils in the ceremonial county of Somerset—Bath and North East Somerset Council and North Somerset Council. It is important to put on the record that the Government have not received any proposals from the county council or any of the district councils for further unitarisation in Somerset. However, should such locally led proposals emerge, we would of course consider them.

If such proposals were to emerge, the Government have laid out previously the three specific criteria that we will use to judge them. It will be helpful to Members if I lay them out. The first criterion is that the proposal is likely to improve local government in the area, by improving service delivery, giving greater value for money, yielding cost savings, providing stronger strategic and local leadership, delivering more sustainable structures and avoiding a fragmentation of major services.

The second criterion is that the proposed structure is a credible geography consisting of one or more existing local government areas and that the population of any proposed unitary authority must be substantial.

[James Heappey]

Since the county council kicked off this conversation a couple of weeks ago, it has come to my attention that the Government have a figure in mind for what “substantial” means, in terms of the minimum size of an authority. Will the Minister offer any detail on that?

[Rishi Sunak]

My predecessors, the Secretary of State and myself have previously laid out that a unitary authority should contain at least 300,000 people or more. That figure comes from research conducted by the Department in the past. However, each proposal will be considered on its merits.

The third and final criterion is that the proposal commands local support. In particular, the structure must be proposed by one or more existing councils in the area, and there must be evidence of a good deal of local support for it.

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[Rishi Sunak]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. If a local area tries to demonstrate to the Government that it has a good deal of local support from every possible sector in the local area, parish councils would clearly be a set of institutions that it would be worth considering talking to. Indeed, previous proposals that we have received have specifically engaged parish councils as part of their deliberations. The charter trustee status that I mentioned also means that ancient civic traditions can be retained in an area, regardless of the final form of the restructuring that takes place.

[James Heappey]

I am keen to understand exactly what level of support is required among local authorities. If all or most districts involved in the proposal were against it, would that be sufficient to block whatever plans might come forward?

[Rishi Sunak]

I am afraid I cannot give my hon. Friend a specific quantitative mechanism or definition that needs to be met. I re-emphasise the guidance, which states that a good deal of local support is needed. I have tried my best to elaborate on how that will be interpreted by the Secretary of State when he considers proposals in the round, along with all the other criteria that he has to balance.

I am keen to give my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater and West Somerset a minute or two to wind up the debate, so in conclusion—[Interruption.]

Local Government Funding

James Heappey Excerpts

Wednesday 28th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I will come on to discuss the pilots in a moment, but the good thing about them is that all the local authorities involved, including Suffolk, will now be able to experiment and see what they can do to help raise those local rates by having more incentives for businesses and attracting more businesses to the area. One clever way of getting more revenue is by getting more businesses into the area.

As we look at the resources of local authorities, we need to start looking at creating a whole system of local government finance that will be fit for the future. The current formula for financial allocations had served local areas well over the years, but a world of constant change, with big shifts in demographics, lifestyles and technology, demands an updated and much more responsive way of distributing funding. That is why there are questions over the fairness of the current system, which is why I was pleased to launch a formal consultation on a review of councils’ relative needs and resources in December. That closed recently and I am grateful to everyone who responded. This was not just a paper exercise; we have an unparalleled opportunity here to be really bold and ambitious; to consider, with the sector, where the most up-to-date data and evidence lead us, and to create a new system that gives councils the confidence to fully grasp the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead. We aim to introduce this new approach in 2020-21.

That is also when the latest phase of our business rates retention programme will get under way. It is a programme that gives local authorities powerful incentives to grow their local economies, and so far it has been a resounding success. Councils will keep some £2.4 billion more of their business rates next year alone; this a significant revenue stream, on top of their core settlement funding.

[James Heappey (Wells) (Con)]

The retention of business rates is indeed a huge opportunity for councils such as Somerset’s, which was so disappointed not to be part of the business rates retention trial. Will the Secretary of State reassure us that all that he has learnt from his review of the funding formulas will be applied to how business rates retention is baselined, so that county council areas with smaller economies are not disadvantaged by the retention of business rates when it is introduced in full?

[Sajid Javid]

Yes, I can give my hon. Friend that reassurance. I shall say more about how the system is going to work in a moment.

Our aim is to go further and for local authorities to retain 75% of business rates from 2020-21, as we work towards 100% retention. With that in mind, in December I announced an expansion of the 100% retention pilots that have proved so popular. More than 200 authorities came forward to bid for the new 100% business rates retention pilots that we are going to run in 2018-19. I was pleased to respond to that enthusiasm by doubling the number of initial pilots to 10, covering some 89 authorities. The 10 that we have selected, taken alongside the existing pilots, give a geographic spread to help us to see how well the system works across a broad range of areas and circumstances. The pilot areas will keep 100% of the growth in their business rates if they expand their local economies—that is double what they can keep now. There will also be opportunities for others to get involved, with a further bidding round for pilots in 2019-20, which will open in due course.

Oral Answers to Questions

James Heappey Excerpts

Monday 12th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

The hon. Lady is right to raise the importance of affordable housing and having the right mix of housing everywhere, including Bristol. We are currently working with the Mayor of the west of England and the Mayor of Bristol on a housing deal which, if it happened, would include a significant portion of affordable housing.

[James Heappey (Wells) (Con)]

Green-belt protections around Bristol and Bath are displacing housing targets beyond the green belt into Somerset. Should the councils unable to build enough houses be required to deliver transport and infrastructure plans that will service the commuting needs of new Somerset residents needing to travel through the protected green belt on their way to work?

[Sajid Javid]

We want to help all councils meet their local housing need, and that includes helping with their plans as they develop them, but also giving them more options other than looking at the green belt, as we did in the recent draft plan that was published earlier this month, and helping with infrastructure, which means the £5 billion housing infrastructure fund.

Parking (Code of Practice) Bill

James Heappey Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 2nd February 2018 Commons Chamber

[James Heappey (Wells) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend share my concern that the acronym PCN is very confusing for people in relation to parking? It is used as a penalty charge notice when issued by civil authorities, but as a parking charge notice when issued by private companies. The terms are very similar, but very different sets of rule and regulations govern those two separate types of penalty.

[Sir Greg Knight]

I agree. When we are dealing with private land, such notices should be called private parking notices. The code of practice, if the Bill goes ahead, should contain requirements about what is in the parking notice so that it cannot mimic a police ticket or a court document, and cannot use unnecessary threatening language. My hon. Friend makes a good point.

The case has been drawn to my attention of 69-year-old Angela. Her car was ticketed for £70 for exceeding the time permitted in a supermarket car park. Angela is 5 feet tall, and the small signs were mounted so high up that initially she did not even see them. When she returned to discover the ticket, she looked for signage and eventually saw a sign. It was secured, if that is the word, with pieces of baler twine. Even after staring at it to try to read it, she could not read the wording as the text was so small and too far away.

In another part of the country, a pensioner mis-keyed her number plate into an automatic machine when paying for her parking, getting one digit wrong. On returning to her car, she discovered that the innocent mistake had resulted in a ticket. On appeal, she was able to point out that it was an honest mistake and, indeed, that no other car on the DVLA database had that registration number, but the parking company still demanded payment.

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[James Heappey (Wells) (Con)]

I am aware that the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) is poised to introduce his Bill, which addresses an important issue. Also the Minister, to whom I shall shortly be acting as Parliamentary Private Secretary, will be cross with me if I give her cause to have to reduce her no doubt excellent speech by too much. There may even be some colleagues who are in a rush to get home because their own parking ticket expires soon.

As we have heard from colleagues across the House, this is a very good Bill, which I am pleased to support. However, a number of concerns have been raised by other Members that I also want to underline. The fact that private parking companies use the PCN abbreviation as “parking charge notice”—compared with the “penalty charge notice” issued by the police and civil authorities—is wilfully misleading and should be stopped. We should also look at the way in which private parking companies are allowed to design the waterproof wrappers for tickets, the tickets themselves and the language on them. There is a clear attempt to make these tickets look like they have come from the civil authorities or from the police.

In my experience and the experience of many of my constituents, signage in private car parks is inconsistent. At best, that could be down to poor maintenance or a mistake. At worst, it could be argued that the poor signage is again a deliberate act to confuse or deceive.

Another development that I have found unhelpful is car parks where people can park only with an app. Some of these apps are absolutely excellent. It is not the case that people can park in car parks on the Great Western Railway network only by using the APCOA app, although that app is very good; many Members will have had experience of using it. That is not so in other car parks, one of which belongs to a very fine hotel in Bristol that insisted that people used an app to pay for their parking.

Some years earlier, when the company was in a very different guise, I had used an online parking facility with that company and given over my car details. I could no longer remember any of the log-in details, and it turned out that there was no facility for me to reset my membership or to be able to access the app. However, because I had entered the car park, I would be charged, and if I was unable to pay through the app, then I would have to accept the ticket and appeal it. The fact that the company could do that was quite extraordinary, especially as I had entered the car park and incurred the charge before any of this became clear to me. That could have been a unique and extraordinary happening experienced by almost nobody else, but it does perhaps indicate how unregulated and unreasonable the private parking industry can sometimes be.

What underlines all the things we have heard today better than anything else is that in all our experience when dealing with casework, we have heard time and again that when these private parking companies are challenged, they capitulate almost immediately. Very rarely do they stand their ground, and that indicates exactly how thin the ice they are skating on is. I agree with colleagues across the House who have said that access to DVLA data is, very clearly, a privilege for companies that behave correctly and should not be allowed for those who repeatedly behave very badly indeed. I have great pleasure in supporting the Bill.