Troubled Families Programme

Debate between John Healey and Lord Pickles

Tuesday 10th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Pickles]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend, who should know that there are 805 troubled families in his local authority. Some 99% of them have been turned around, with an expenditure of just slightly more than £2 million. Louise Casey is a remarkable woman, but this could not have been achieved by her presence and determination alone, formidable though they are. We are bringing people along and they are getting the opportunity to do something about the process. I have seen an enormous sense of leadership in different authorities right across the country, because they can now do something about the problem.

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

I welcome the announcement of the future funding for this programme, but the Secretary of State failed to answer my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) and say whether the £200 million is for 2015-16 or the full five years of the next Parliament. On current funding, the Secretary of State has been withholding from Rotherham council about £750,000 in troubled families and transformation award funding. Given the special circumstances and the challenges we face, will he now release that funding to Rotherham?

[Mr Pickles]

As far as the right hon. Gentleman’s constituency is concerned, there are two local authorities. Barnsley, with 645 troubled families, has achieved a 95% turnaround, which has cost slightly more than £2 million. Rotherham, with 730 troubled families, has achieved a 89% turnaround, which, again, has cost slightly more than £2 million. He makes a really interesting point: even in that sea of dysfunction, the work with troubled families has been very successful. I am delighted to tell the right hon. Gentleman that I have released the money. The money will go to Rotherham today.

Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council

Debate between John Healey and Lord Pickles

Wednesday 4th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

As I said when the Jay report was released, our whole town was shocked and shamed by its findings. This report is also deeply and comprehensively critical of our council and our police. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) has said, Labour accepts Louise Casey’s findings and the actions the Secretary of State now plans to take. Locally, we will all work with the commissioners to put right in full the flaws set out in this report and to put in place in full the recommendations of the Jay report to help victims and bring perpetrators to justice. The Secretary of State has made a welcome promise to play his part. Will he start by releasing £750,000 of troubled families and transformation award funding withheld from Rotherham that the council and its agencies need to help to put right the problems set out in the Casey report?

[Mr Pickles]

That, clearly, is one of the first things I will look at. If the right hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I really want to address the elephant in the room. He said that Labour would do this. I do not expect anything less. I do not regard this as political at all. I fully understand that we are in a charged political system, but this is about a failure of local government. I could point to lots of Conservative local government where this would never happen. I have to tell the House that I could point to lots of Labour local government where this would not happen. This is almost a complete parody of what local government should look like.

Local Government Finance

Debate between John Healey and Lord Pickles

Wednesday 19th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Pickles]

I will watch the council’s progress with interest and our thoughts will be with the council tax payers at the ballot.

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

Death and danger from fire do not discriminate, but the Secretary of State did in his first funding settlement by giving six southern fire authorities a rise in funding and the six metropolitan areas a deep cut. Why has he not done what he has done with the police and what MPs from all parties have urged him to do and given a flat, fair, across-the-board cut for all fire authorities in this settlement? Why is he continuing to hit the north harder than the south?

[Mr Pickles]

The mets benefit considerably from this settlement. The right hon. Gentleman is a serious Member of this House and deserves a serious answer. He will recall that the reduction in police funding was front-loaded and that that for firefighters and emergency services was back-loaded. One of the reasons why we have set up the Knight review is to arrive at that equilibrium and to offer fire authorities some help in that process.

Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between John Healey and Lord Pickles

Monday 5th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Pickles]

That is a reasonable point. My hon. Friend will know—I know he is an assiduous reader of these things—that the national planning policy framework indeed lays out a test to look at brownfield sites. In a few moments, I shall come on to a few additional measures that will make my hon. Friend even happier than he is currently.

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

May I press the Secretary of State on the point raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford)? The Bill extends to commercial and business developments the system for nationally significant infrastructure projects. The Secretary of State has just said that there will be national policy statements for reference, so is he saying that national policy statements will be prepared for commercial and business developments? Otherwise, I think he might have mis-spoken; perhaps he could make himself clear.

[Mr Pickles]

There are obviously national policy statements—full stop. In addition, we are consulting on where these should bite in. We will be looking most carefully at those authorities that have not been able to meet these targets, but there is a big distinction—[Interruption.] We are not including housing or eco-towns. We are not suddenly going to impose big developments without local people having a say. That is the difference between Government and Opposition Members.

Cutting excessive red tape is the Bill’s second theme. The Bill will enable us to implement the reforms recommended by the Government’s Penfold review, which examined the multiple, overlapping development consents that were needed for many projects on top of planning permission. While much of the review is being implemented via secondary legislation, other parts require primary legislation. The Bill removes or streamlines duplicate regimes for highways, rights of way, and town and village green registration.

Let me stress, for the avoidance of doubt, that we are maintaining the strongest protection for England’s village greens. Indeed, the national planning policy framework has created a new planning protection for valuable green open spaces. However, we will need to prevent the registration system from being misused to hinder and slow legitimate, planned development. A review conducted by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in 2009 slammed

“the existence of two parallel systems”

—village greens and planning—

“between which there is minimal communication”.

It added that, in the view of the Government of the day,

“this seems to be problematic”.

The problem lay with the last Government’s Commons Act 2006. Labour DEFRA Ministers told Parliament in 2009 that there would be a consultation to streamline the confusing regime and that the results would be published in 2010, but nothing happened. I wonder why. Perhaps the former Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), will take the opportunity this afternoon to apologise to the House for his tardiness.

We are also reforming special parliamentary procedure to remove a duplicate consent regime, introduced as a result of the poor drafting of the Bill that became the Planning Act 2008. As the Ways and Means Committee in this House and the Chairman of Committees in the other place have stated,

“since the 2008 Act did not amend the 1945 Act, we now have a statutory framework which is internally contradictory.”

The Bill removes that overlap, while retaining parliamentary safeguards for land with genuinely “special” historic and parliamentary protection, such as National Trust and common land.

The Bill also cuts red tape by allowing the renegotiation of economically unrealistic section 106 agreements. These measures go hand in hand with changes to secondary legislation on which we have consulted. In our sights particularly are affordable housing requirements that were negotiated at the height of Labour’s unsustainable housing boom. Now that the Brown bubble has burst, bringing us back to reality with a bump, we recognise that 75,000 homes, with planning permission, are lying unbuilt.

Local Government Finance Bill

Debate between John Healey and Lord Pickles

Tuesday 10th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Pickles]

My hon. Friend raises an important point about the very nature of business rates. There is a high degree of buoyancy within the system and there can be sudden movements, particularly where firms move out and following claims for revaluation, which is why we have built into the system adjustments to iron out those things. We have suggested to local authorities— but it will be entirely a matter for them—that they pool their resources in order to get over those fluctuations.

I shall move from the incentive effect to another aspect of the Bill: the introduction of tax increment finance. This was recommended in the 2006 Barker report and promised in the 2009 pre-Budget report but never delivered by Labour. For the first time, councils will have the ability to borrow safely and sustainably against the anticipated increase in business rates. That will give them a new means by which to fund infrastructure, attract investors and secure jobs for local people.

We are determined that the transition to the new system should be effective, fair and workable. Over the summer, we consulted widely, and we heard loud and clear that small firms, charities and voluntary groups, which play such an important role in local life, should not face adverse changes to their bills. Local firms can rest assured that this is not a means of increasing their bills by stealth; rather it is a measure to help local businesses. The Bill also proposes a replacement for council tax benefit.

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way on the point about tax increment financing schemes, of which I have been a strong supporter from the outset. Will he confirm that the area and rate take in the TIFs area will be ring-fenced and protected from levies and any reset? Without that confirmation, there will not be the confidence and certainty about the revenue stream necessary to allow the borrowing to take place for the up-front investment.

[Mr Pickles]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point. He will know, because he has taken an interest, that we are offering two types of TIF. TIF 1 will be subject to the levy and the top-up, but TIF 2 would not be subject to either, so it would be possible to borrow over a longer period than the reset.

[John Healey]

rose—

[Mr Pickles]

Before the right hon. Gentleman responds, I would like to add something else. I can see that we are going to have one of these really interesting discussions—we might even get on to hereditaments in a little while. Because TIF 2 would affect the levy pot, as well as the level of public borrowing, we will clearly need a degree of Treasury co-operation, but authorities can proceed with TIF 1 straight away.

[John Healey]

I wish the Secretary of State good luck in seeking that Treasury co-operation. He will understand that the time horizon for TIFs stretches beyond one decade, and sometimes beyond two. He said that TIF 2 would be ring-fenced and protected from the levy; can he also say whether it will be ring-fenced and protected from any reset?

[Mr Pickles]

The whole point about TIF 2 is that it goes beyond a reset. That is why there needs to be a degree of co-operation from Treasury colleagues. The period for TIF 1, of course, is potentially 10 years. We will encourage local authorities to work together on TIFs and pool their resources—I think I recall the right hon. Gentleman speaking about this some time ago—which will be enormously liberating for them.

The Bill also sets out a replacement for council tax benefit, which is essential in supporting those who, through no fault of their own, struggle to pay their council tax bills. However, rather than having a national, one-size-fits-all scheme, designed and directed by Whitehall, we propose that councils themselves should set up council tax support at the local level. We will give them the flexibility to design schemes that reflect local priorities. Tailor-made approaches will also be essential to making the 10% saving, which is an important component of the plan for reducing the deficit inherited from Labour. Some councils are already considering how they might exercise the new powers and discretions. Westminster city council, for example, is looking into the idea of social contracts, such as linking council tax benefit with obeying the law, actively seeking employment and undertaking voluntary work. That is fundamentally no different from councils such as Manchester and Newham, which are seeking to prioritise individuals in work for council house waiting lists, ending the “something for nothing” culture while providing a safety net for the vulnerable. I believe that benefits should provide the right incentive to get people back to work and to reward social responsibility.