Called-in Planning Decision: West Cumbria

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State is probably aware of the statement made yesterday by the Secretary-General of the United Nations that multinational corporations are making ecosystems into “playthings of profit”. The Secretary of State has prayed in aid the inspector’s report, and I accept what the inspector has said. However, the Secretary of State provides the framework for the Planning Inspectorate, so will he not now at least say that he will review the whole of our planning framework to try to protect wildlife, ecosystems and biodiversity, as well as the green belt?

[Michael Gove]

Let me set aside specifically the decision here, where the inspector’s report speaks for itself—I urge the hon. Gentleman and others to read it in full. On the broader point he makes about planning policy, we are bringing forward changes to the national planning policy framework explicitly to defend the green belt, safeguard biodiversity and introduce biodiversity net gain. Those changes that we brought forward were shared in a “Dear colleague” letter that I sent to every Member of the House of Commons. They attracted widespread support from Conservative MPs, but were denounced from the Dispatch Box yesterday by the Leader of the Opposition. I have enormous affection and respect for the hon. Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) and I am grateful for his commitment to the environment. Perhaps he could have a word with the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) and encourage him to take a greener approach towards planning and development overall.

Draft Architects Act 1997 (Amendment) Regulations 2022

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Wednesday 7th December 2022 General Committees

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Mr Robertson. I want to make a couple of points. First, I am perhaps the only Member of Parliament who worked as a manual worker for quite a number of years in the building industry. I therefore came to know architects and the architectural profession well. I will try to keep private my prejudices given those experiences, rather than sharing them with the Committee, but I have strong views about the nature of the building industry, construction, the role of architects and so on.

We have discussed the impact of the Brexit vote on a number of matters, and today it is on the architectural profession. I do not entirely share the views of the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran, who said that the good old days were before the Brexit vote, but the way in which the Government embarked on Brexit has proven a disaster.

I do not want to say that the regulations are shoddy, because that would be disrespectful to a Minister who probably was not in post when they were drafted, but they are not a brilliant piece of work. The preliminary note on the regulations says that the Secretary of State consulted the Architects Registration Board, which is the regulator for the architectural profession, and the explanatory memorandum says that the Government have not carried out an impact assessment because there is no impact from the regulations. Those two things are mistaken.

After all, we meet in the shadow of not only Brexit, but Grenfell, and many Members will probably have in their constituencies architect-designed estates that are not fit for purpose, although people have to live on them. That has been a disaster. System build construction from the ’70s, ’60s and before was all designed by architects, so any decisions on how the architectural profession is regulated and monitored and how people are admitted to the profession of architect have a public impact.

The regulations provide a new framework to allow people to access the profession. Some architects are local, but many are international and operate internationally, so let me reflect on the consequences of Brexit for architects who either trained abroad but work in our country, or trained in the UK but provide services in America or elsewhere. There is a significant implication, so it is right that the Government introduce legislation, and the regulations are based on the Professional Qualifications Act 2022.

The preamble to the note we have says that the Government consulted only the ARB, which is the regulator, but I have done some research and sought advice from the Library. There was a consultation by the Government, dated 8 June 2021, and the consultation says that the Government consulted a wide range of bodies, including UK-based architects, internationally qualified architects, schools and students. I will not read out the whole list. Why do the regulations say that the Government have spoken only to the regulator, when the consultation was much wider? I do not understand why the regulations would make such a statement.

What is not referred to is the Royal Institute of British Architects, which my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North mentioned in passing. RIBA is established by royal charter, and it plays a role, alongside the ARB, in accrediting architectural schools in the UK. It therefore helps people to gain admission to the architects register. Why has RIBA not been consulted, as apparently it has not, according to the note?

RIBA is a distinguished body that was set up by the Crown. A consultation was held by the ARB, and I note that RIBA said that it was concerned that what was being discussed by the ARB would result in

“a highly prescriptive, inflexible and expensive system, parallel to the RIBA’s internationally recognised validation programme.”

How do the Government intend to tackle the problem of there being two separate institutional frameworks that decide how people become architects and gain admission to the profession of architect? That seems to me quite an important matter.

Let me reflect on RIBA and the ARB. They are overwhelmingly white. I think I found only one person on the board who is a person of colour. There are nine members of the board of the ARB, and six of them are either architects or connected directly to the construction industry. That is the body that the regulations will empower to make decisions with respect to other jurisdictions.

A lot of theoretical work is being done on regulatory captures. Regulators tend to be captured by the institutions that they are meant to regulate. In this case, it is clear that ARB is dominated by architects. I have looked at the work it has done over the last couple of days, and ARB is focused on developing the profession, rather than regulating it. That will inevitably be the case if members of the board are architects or people who work closely with architects. Is ARB, in its present form, an appropriate body to regulate the profession, given the mistakes that the architectural profession has made over the years? Has the Minister considered that, given that the regulations effectively empower ARB to control admission to the profession? Regulatory capture is a major problem, as almost all our regulators have been captured by the professions that they are meant to regulate.

As I say, the consultation of 8 June led to the order. In that consultation, the Government proposed two options, neither of which has been adopted in the statutory instrument before us. Was there a further round of consultation? If so, it does not seem to have been conducted publicly. If there was, will the Minister draw our attention to it and say why nobody else was consulted, other than ARB, which seems to be a flawed institution?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lee Rowley]

I will come to that question. To conclude my point on global recruitment and retention, we obviously want successful sectors, with good pipelines of people coming in and which allow people to build their careers and lives. At the same time, there has to room for individual agency and individual sector decisions, and some of the hon. Lady’s questions should probably be dealt with outside formal legislation, regulation and intervention from Government.

I turn to the question that the hon. Lady reminded me about. Ultimately, the decision in question is one for the Architects Registration Board. The board was set up in statute in 1997 for a purpose, and it will make decisions about who it wants to enter into discussions with, and how long it wants to continue those discussions for, and then it will seek to conclude them and to obtain mutual recognition as a consequence.

The hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran, who tempts me to relitigate Brexit, which I will refrain from doing, asked similar questions about the need to sign up to reciprocal arrangements with the European Union, and about ensuring that things move quickly, and I hope my answer to the hon. Member for Luton North has explained my view. I too would like a reciprocal agreement with the European Union signed, so I hope that the EU moves quickly; that would be in its interests.

The hon. Member for Hemsworth asked a series of technical questions about the consultation that was undertaken and its impacts. He asked why the preamble to the regulations states:

“In accordance with section 15 of the 2022 Act, the Secretary of State has consulted the Architects Registration Board”,

but does not reference the broader consultation. That is because section 15 of the 2022 Act requires us to consult with the relevant regulator. The preamble confirms that we have done that, so we are responding to the requirement in the 2022 Act, rather than making a broader point about consultation. As he rightly indicates, we have consulted on this matter. The consultation ran from late 2020 until early 2021. I believe that he referred to the consultation response that the Government provided on 8 June 2021. For the record, there were over 400 responses to the consultation, including from RIBA—he had concerns that it may not have been involved in the discussion. The consultation helped us to come to a set of conclusions about how we would bring forward the change and take things forward.

[Jon Trickett]

Does the Minister not accept that there is a wider public interest beyond the profession in how it is regulated, given his references to Grenfell and my points about architect-led system building, which was a disaster? Why has he failed to consult the wider public, and why did he consult only the architect profession?

[Lee Rowley]

I am not sure that I accept the premise of the question. The Government ran a consultation between 4 November 2020 and 22 July 2021. Anybody who wanted to respond to it was able to. That consultation was obviously written in a way that made it more likely that architects would respond to it, simply because architects were more likely to be interested in it, but anybody, including his constituents, could have got involved if they wished. If he had wished to do so, he would have been more than welcome.

The hon. Gentleman made a series of points about the ethnic make-up of certain boards in the ARB, which I am not going to debate here. Ultimately, the question in front of us is whether we want to open up the possibility of other countries supporting the bringing of architects to the United Kingdom, and I find some of the points made slightly random. The reason why the ARB had primacy in this discussion is not because we are supporting one group over another; it is simply because the ARB had statutory functions and was seeking to discharge them, so that we could bring forward regulations that adhere to the law and could create legislation and regulation that works in the long term. We welcome the involvement of all architects, trade bodies, membership bodies and individuals who want get involved in those consultations. That is one of the reasons why we got 400 responses back and could bring forward the proposals today. We hope that they have broad agreement; they demonstrate that the United Kingdom will make progress in this area in the coming months and years. hope the Committee will approve the regulations.

Question put and agreed to.

Draft Combined Authorities (Mayoral Elections) (Amendment) Order 2022 Draft Local Authorities (Mayoral Elections) (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2022 Draft Police and Crime Commissioner Elections and Welsh Forms (Amendment) Order 2022

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Wednesday 30th November 2022 General Committees

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

I am pleased to serve under your leadership of the Committee, Mrs Murray. I rise briefly to raise a couple of points about the provisions.

These are quite ingenious ways of moving from one system of voting to another, and the details are extremely complicated to follow. However, there are helpful explanatory memorandums for each of the provisions, and I went to those to try to understand the details of the various measures that are being changed. I was particularly interested in the consultation process, which does not seem to have taken place. The explanatory memorandum to the Combined Authorities (Mayoral Elections) (Amendment) Order 2022 says that there is a statutory duty to consult under paragraph 12(4) of schedule 5B to the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009. What did the Government do? They consulted the Electoral Commission—full stop. They did no further consultation at all, and we can identify fairly easily from the explanatory memorandum why they did not. Another reason, of course, is the politics of all this, which are always interesting. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North exposed some of that.

Some of the arguments developed in the explanatory memorandum are difficult for the Government to sustain. I want to probe why, in paragraph 10.3, whoever it was who wrote the explanatory memorandum on behalf of the Government says, “Well, we had a referendum, and people decided they did not want a change from first past the post.” However, the referendum was about the alternative vote—a different kind of proportional representation from SV, which is in place for the mayoralties. Why are we applying the lessons of a referendum about one system of voting to a completely different system of voting and saying that people have expressed a view? They have not expressed a view on SV, because they were never asked.

The truth is that, as the explanatory memorandum says, no consultation took place with the public at all. The Government decided not to bother. The Conservative party used to be the party that would protect and conserve the constitution. What the Conservatives are doing here is playing around with the constitution in a number of ways. I will come to my second point in a moment, but first I ask the Minister why that paragraph is praying in aid a referendum about one voting system to argue that we do not need to consult on a completely different voting system.

My second point—I know that you will listen to me carefully, Mrs Murray, and tell me if I am out of order—is that moving from the system we have is that probably no Mayor in the country will ever be elected with more than 50% of the vote. If we look at the 2019 North of Tyne mayoral election—I will develop the point in a second to show why it is relevant to today’s proceedings—Jamie Driscoll, who is an excellent Labour Mayor, was elected on a 32% turnout. However, in the first round he received only 33% of the vote, which means that only 10% of the electorate voted for him. One would imagine that that is what will happen under first past the post: a person with executive duties, making decisions about the nature of a region, will have been elected by only one in 10 voters.

[Mark Fletcher]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jon Trickett]

Let me just make the second point, and then the hon. Gentleman can come in.

I am not looking only at Labour Mayors; Andy Street in the West Midlands received 48% of the vote on a 31% turnout, but the truth is that, of the total number of people who might have voted, only 15% voted for him—[Interruption.] Has the hon. Member for Bolsover been told by his Whip not to intervene on me?

[Mark Fletcher]

No. Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Jon Trickett]

I will give way with pleasure.

[Mark Fletcher]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way, and I apologise for not thanking the hon. Member for Nottingham North for giving way earlier. I am slightly curious about how the hon. Member for Hemsworth feels Members of Parliament hold up when it comes to their electoral share, given that we are elected by first past the post. I am also delighted to point out—this was the point the Whip, my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar, was just making—that Ben Houchen did all right.

[Jon Trickett]

I will come to precisely that point. I was the leader of a great council—Leeds City Council—for almost 10 years under Mrs Thatcher and then under John Major’s premiership. I was elected under first past the post, but we had a parliamentary system, as we do here. The Prime Minister is not elected by the people; he or she is elected by parliamentarians, and it was the same with the council. I was elected as leader of the council by the councillors, who had been elected by the public. What we have here is a presidential mode of running local regions and councils, in the sense that we have directly elected Mayors—who are not really accountable to a council or a group of councillors and who are able to make executive decisions of some significance, often spending large amounts of money—elected by only 10% of the population. That is quite an issue, and it needed to be properly debated with the public.

We are back to the failure to consult the public. Why on earth did we not consult the public? Why on earth have we allowed a situation in which only one in 10 voters might vote for an elected Mayor, who will have executive decision-making powers of a kind that the Prime Minister does not have? Certainly, under the normal system of council governance, a council leader would not have those powers. That is quite a mistake.

In paragraph 12.3 of the explanatory memorandum, under the heading “Impact”, we find out that we can save money by moving from one system to another, but are we really going to put a price on democracy? The memorandum says that we will save £7.3 million by moving from one system to another. That cannot be a justifiable reason for changing the way we do things without consulting anybody in the country. I have major reservations about this. I remain to be convinced of the case for moving away from first past the post in parliamentary elections. Once we establish a system for setting up and electing what are effectively neo-presidential authorities, having tinkered with the British constitution, we should not change that system without at least speaking to the public. If we spoke to them, perhaps we would end up with more engagement.

My final point is not at all in the documents before us—you will probably rule me out of order, Mrs Murray. If the Government stopped this system of Mayors who simply operate with delegated powers and administrate decisions made by central Government, and if those Mayors were given real powers, we might get more engagement with the public and might not have to tinker with the electoral system.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 23rd November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

I support the amendments in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck). This debate has illustrated a central defect in the Bill, to which I will return when I address clause 1.

People going hungry is clearly a product of 10 to 12 years of austerity and deepening division in our society. Somebody needs to get a grip on this. I represent 23 ex-mining villages in the heart of England, in Yorkshire. Cornwall is a very special place, but Yorkshire is God’s own county. The county of the right hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) may have a special constitutional role, but Yorkshire has a divine role.

It is interesting that the Bill has no vision for what parish and town councils can do. Notwithstanding that, parish and town councils in my area are the ones feeding the hungry and, now, opening up warm places for elderly people and families to go to, because of the cost of energy. They are the ones doing the levelling up.

When there was a problem with people leaving their home because of covid, who arranged for people in my village to knock on doors to offer to go to the Co-op? It was the town and parish councils. They organised the churches, the voluntary sector and all the other bodies in the village. I represent 23 ex-mining villages, and it happened everywhere in my constituency. Why are we distributing power away from the centre in a top-down, uniform, homogenous way that is convenient only to the men and women in Westminster, rather than to the communities we represent, which are so different in character?

The Bill is full of constitutional changes, structural changes and processes, but it does not specify the outcomes. Part 1 refers to the mission statements that will be produced, but there is no reference in the Bill to what those mission statements will contain. However, the White Paper has a helpful indication of what the mission statements, which the Minister will eventually organise, will contain. She needs to tell the House what her intentions are in relation to the mission statements, because there is nothing in the Bill.

Clause 1 talks about the mission statements being

“laid before each House of Parliament”.

Does that mean there will be a vote? Will the mission statements be amendable? Laying them before the House might mean putting them in the Library, which is simply not acceptable. If the Bill does not allow the House to discuss the objectives we are trying to achieve, there must be proper scrutiny of the matter in the House of Commons.

The amendments in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) raise the question of outcomes, rather than process. She wants to see young people—in fact, all our people—fed. The Bill does not allow for that, because we are dealing with structures rather than outcomes. I want to illustrate this with two further points that are in the mission statements in the White Paper, but not in the Bill. They relate to bus transportation, which the Minister referred to, and another point. I will talk about them quickly, because there is not a lot of time.

My constituency is the 529th least socially mobile constituency in England. There are 533 on the list, so only four seats have less mobility than mine. What does that mean? A child born in poverty today in my constituency will almost certainly die in poverty—there is no social mobility unless we do something dramatic—and younger than children being born elsewhere. That is not acceptable.

Social mobility is about education and all sorts of other things, but there are two things I want to focus on briefly. One is transport. In a village that has no work any more—remember that the villages were built around coal mines, which have all gone—it is very difficult to find work. People have to move from one place to another, but the way in which we organise our public transport system is not helpful. I met a woman who walks in the dark for an hour from one village to another to work, and then back in the dark at night. That is not acceptable.

There are 24,000 people in my constituency—I raise my constituency to illustrate a broader point—without access to a car. I asked how many people use a bus or a train. Out of the whole constituency, only 3,900 people use either a bus or a train, yet there are 24,000 people without a car. The buses stop early in the evening and start later in the morning. Lloyds bank tell me that of the 650 seats in our country, people in mine rank 621st for how likely we are to use public transport, through our credit or debit cards or however we pay. That is not acceptable. Will the Minister accept that something has gone radically wrong with our public transport system that in a constituency such as mine with no social mobility at all, people are imprisoned in villages with no work and no public transport? Something drastic needs to be done about it, which is not in the Bill.

Another point that is in the White Paper but not the Bill is digital exclusion. The White Paper states that digital exclusion and social exclusion go together. Of course they do, but here is the fact. In my constituency, there is no easy way to move around without a car—using cars is not a great thing anyway for the planet—but the download speed in my village is 46 megabits per second. The average for the UK is 86. We have people running businesses in the constituency who cannot move to a job somewhere, and it is not working. I met a guy—an ex-miner—who had won this wonderful contract to provide design solutions for the New York stock exchange. Guess what? He was doing the design at work in my constituency but he had to put the computer in the back of the car and drive it home so that he could access the internet in the evening. That is not acceptable.

As for telephones, in my house I cannot use a mobile phone. What I want is a discussion not about my constituency, but about everyone who lives in left-behind or held-back communities up and down our country. The talk of levelling up in the Bill gave them hope. Everybody has clocked those words, but they have also clocked something else: the Government have not willed the means to change what has happened to so many communities, which are locked out of the so-called prosperity of our country. I feel very angry about this, and I am very disappointed with this Bill.

My final point is on local government. I was council leader in Leeds, one of the great cities of the country. We had resources to begin to make a difference, although not enough—we always needed more; council leaders will always say that—but local authorities no longer have the resources to deliver the kind of levelling-up agenda the Government say they want. We see that in every single service—buses, trains, education, feeding people who are hungry. Funding for all those areas has been cut.

There was a discussion earlier in the debate about literacy. My constituency has some of the worst educational attainment figures in the country, and school funding has been cut by 40% during this Government’s time in office. We cannot level up on peanuts or simply by changing structures; we have to will the means as well.

[Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)]

I rise to speak in support of new clause 34, which I and my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) and others have tabled in this group of amendments. It forms part of a larger package of new clauses and amendments, most of which will be debated on day two, and I will try not to trespass too much on to those other amendments.

New clause 34 would require a review to be carried out of the Secretary of State’s compulsory purchase powers. Subsection (3) highlights the particular importance of properties which have been unoccupied for a prolonged period and buildings of local public importance in our high streets which might also have been left unused. The new clause highlights the importance of bringing derelict land back into use. We all know new homes need to be provided; we need to do more to make sure that land that is derelict and unoccupied is put to use to help deliver those new homes, hence the new clause. We should use this kind of brownfield site, particularly in urban areas, as a key way to address concerns about the supply of housing, and to do so in a way that does not undermine local decision making or damage the environment, as is the case with other aspects of our planning system.

Of course care must be taken with regard to the exercise of compulsory purchase powers; it is a serious matter to remove someone’s property, even if a fair price is paid. The landowner should be given appropriate compensation, and relevant planning rules must be followed in terms of what actually gets built on these derelict sites—for example, green-belt land protection must not be compromised—but I genuinely believe there is scope for expansion of the use of compulsory purchase powers to open up more brownfield sites for new homes.

This new clause is supported by the Local Government Association, and I am grateful to it for that. I believe that there is some appetite in local government to move to a more active approach on compulsory purchase order powers. Landowners must be given a chance to remedy the problem and start using the land in a positive way, but if they fail to do so—if sites lie abandoned for years and years, for example—it seems not unreasonable for the state or local authority to step in and get some homes built there. I gather that there can be genuine problems in establishing who the owner is, and the review called for in the new clause should consider how this could be resolved, for example through insurance.

The review requested in this new clause should also consider buildings of community importance in our town centres, which may also be left unoccupied for a protracted period. Regeneration of our town centres is of course a core aim of this Government and this Bill. Again, I acknowledge that CPOs are a serious step and should only be undertaken after careful consideration and consultation, but proportionate use of such powers by local councils could be helpful in unlocking broader regeneration schemes to boost high streets.

I take this opportunity to make a broader point about our local high streets and the crucial role that they play in our communities. We all know that they have faced so much adversity over recent years. The big shift to online retail has reduced footfall and made it harder and harder to sustain viable businesses in our town centres. Covid, of course, intensified that trend. That is why I very much welcome the huge programme of grants and support that were delivered by the Government during the pandemic for local businesses in high streets, especially for hospitality.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jon Trickett]

rose—

[James Grundy]

I will give way happily.

[Jon Trickett]

Why would someone not speak up for local communities against a Government making mistaken decisions? Why on earth should that be a bad thing?

[James Grundy]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. The issue is that it does not matter what the actual circumstances are. Regardless of the facts on the ground, Mayors are incentivised by the nature of their role to stand up and say, “I am fighting for my area.” It encourages them to concoct fights with central Government, regardless of the issue. Then we end up with this position where there is constant strife between central Government and regional Mayors.

The problem with regional Mayors—a number of colleagues including my right hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) have made excellent points on this—is that it creates one single figure representing in some cases millions of people. A huge amount of power is vested in that individual, and that is deeply unhealthy.

We have heard the arguments for a sense of conformity across local government. I fear that that approach replicates the errors of the 1973 local government reforms, which created ever-larger local authorities. I remember—it was before I was born—that the campaign against it was, “Don’t vote for Mr R. E. Mote”, because the feeling was that the decision-making process was being removed ever further away from small communities to large, more remote places. As I am sure the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) knows, because we share a borough, the people of Leigh in the 1970s campaigned hard to avoid being merged into the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan, and we lost, much to our immense regret. Other communities, such as Warrington, that campaigned successfully to stay out of Greater Manchester are much happier in Cheshire. I know that the good people of Bury successfully campaigned to stay out of the much larger Rochdale borough that was proposed. I fear that we are replicating the errors of the 1973 local government reforms on a county level or, indeed, a multi-county level with these regional Mayors.

I am sure you know, Mr Deputy Speaker, that there is not universal approval for the idea that everywhere should have Mayors. I spoke on “Sunday Politics North West” a number of months ago, and there was cross-party agreement that Lancashire—your home county, where your fine constituency of Ribble Valley lies—wanted a combined local authority, not a Mayor, and I fully support that. It had universal cross-party approval. My understanding is that other areas, such as Cheshire, are basically not entirely on board with the idea of a Mayor covering the entire county.

We have heard about Cornwall, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth made a compelling case. The only bit I did not agree with was where he said that Cornwall was a special case. I agreed with every word he said except that, because I believe that every part of England that does not want a mayoral devolution settlement should not be forced to have one. Furthermore, I also agree with Opposition Members who said that the best sort of levelling-up deal and funding should not be tied to having a Mayor. That is an obnoxious provision with which I profoundly disagree. I am afraid that on that particular issue, the Government will not have my support. I place my grave reservations about that measure on record.

In broad terms, I think the Bill is superb. A number of improvements have been made during its progress, and as I have said before, I thank Members who have come forward with amendments, and I thank the Minister for her response on how they will address that. As I have said, I have grave concerns about the path of devolution that we are taking as a Government and those issues need to be addressed. One size fits all will not work across the whole of England. We have to address the serious issues at the heart of trying to hammer square pegs into round holes.

The Minister referred to the Greater Manchester trailblazer devolution deal, just as the Chancellor did in the autumn statement, but I would appreciate it if she conveyed to the Secretary of State that I, and other Greater Manchester MPs, would very much like to be briefed on that. While the Government may have spoken to the Mayor of Greater Manchester, I am afraid that consultation on the issue with Greater Manchester colleagues has not been forthcoming—I see the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Wigan, nodding. I assume that, like me, she has received very little consultation, or none.

Over the past few years, there has been an unfortunate tendency for Governments and Departments to seem far happier speaking to regional Mayors than to Members of this House. Members of the House should firmly resist the idea of being turned into powerless cyphers. In my view, a Mayor is a part of local government. They should have a lesser role in the governance of this nation than we do as Members of Parliament. To dilute the powers of Members of this House is fundamentally wrong.

After all, the vast majority of Mayors, other than in London, where there is a full Assembly, have scant accountability mechanisms—there is no Greater Manchester Assembly or Merseyside Assembly. Vesting such powers in individuals who negotiate directly with Government Departments, with scant input from Members of Parliament whose areas those mayoral authorities covers, is an unsustainable position. I understand that that is not the fault of the Minister, but I hope she will stress very firmly to the Secretary of State that the issue needs to be addressed, and addressed quickly.

I have covered everything I want to say. Overall, the core of this legislation is extremely sound. I commend the work of the Minister and her colleagues, as well that of colleagues who worked on the Bill before she took up her role. The tension between devolution and localism has come up today and, unless it is addressed, it will continue to come up as we discuss other pieces of legislation. The thing about devolution is that everything tends to get devolved after time and as MPs we get asked about everything. If we become shut out of the discussion and the process, that will present problems, regardless of party and across the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dehenna Davison]

The hon. Member must have read my mind, because hers is next on my list of points to address. I am grateful for her passionate contribution on adult literacy. We all agree in this House that education is vital to levelling up, but the Bill is designed to provide a framework for the formation of missions rather than to set out the missions themselves. She will have seen in the White Paper some of the missions that we have published, which refer to educational attainment. I also point her to the Government’s work in other areas, such as funding courses for adults who do not have a level 2 English or maths qualification so that they can get those skills.

The hon. Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) raised several issues relating to social mobility. I was most struck by his point about inter-village transport; I face that issue in my constituency, so I can very much relate to it. Some of the devolution deals that we have negotiated and are looking to negotiate will mean more transport powers being conveyed to local areas and Mayors. That provides an opportunity for a rethink of how local transport is operated. As we spread more devolution deals around the country, that opportunity will be brought to more local areas. The hon. Member’s point has been heard loud and clear.

[Jon Trickett]

The Minister is making an interesting speech. I hope in due course she will come to the question that I raised about powers for parish and town councils.

[Dehenna Davison]

I had not planned to do so, because of the breadth of contributions that we have had today, but I am happy to write to the hon. Member on that point after the debate.

The hon. Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) spoke to amendments 71 and 72. She is incredibly passionate about this important matter, as she has demonstrated not only today but in Committee and in other contributions. I go back to the point that I made to the hon. Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood): the Bill is designed to set out not the missions themselves, but the framework for them to exist. That is why we will not enshrine any particular missions in the Bill. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for South Shields and I had the same debate in Committee; I see her shaking her head, but I do not think that she is surprised by my response.

Let me very briefly address a point that the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris), and the SNP spokesperson, the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson), made about the levelling-up missions. They spoke about removing the ability to amend the methodology and the matrices. I am concerned about that, not because it is some kind of cynical aim, as has been suggested, but because data will be incredibly important in assessing our success in addressing the levelling-up missions. As we get new data sources, new datasets and new ways of presenting the data, it is important that we have the flexibility to access and use the data to its maximum potential. That is why I do not agree with amendment 14.

Levelling-up Agenda in the North

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Monday 13th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is a powerful advocate for his constituency and his area. Does he accept that the whole of the north is in a similar position and that the whole of this younger generation faces a bleak future, as has been indicated by the commission, while they watch the growth of wealth to exponential levels in the City of London and elsewhere? Does he agree that only a massive change—perhaps a wealth tax—to redistribute money to the north is the way forward?

[Ian Lavery]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention and of course I would agree with those sentiments. I would certainly agree to use some form of wealth tax, which would benefit people in this country.

The commission said that

“three regions—Yorkshire and the Humber, the North East and the West Midlands—have no social mobility hotspots at all.”

In line with what my hon. Friend has just said, that means that a child born in poverty in somewhere like the Wansbeck constituency, which is the sixth worst area for social mobility in England, will very likely live and die in poverty, through no fault of their own.

Greensill Capital

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Tuesday 13th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

I started off by talking about how the market works when there is transparency and openness, and lobbying comes within that. We should always review what is and is not there. The lobbying register should be working, and we need to make sure that that continues to work, but we always should be able to review lobbying activities to make sure that they are, as the hon. Gentleman says, transparent.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

Is the central fact not that there was communication between a former Prime Minister and Ministers about his private interests? Will the Minister confirm that that is a breach of the long-standing British value that high office is not a grubby route through to great riches in the afterlife? Will he indicate that he could take immediate action while we wait for this inquiry, which sounds like a whitewash to me, to remove the impression that powerful wealth dominates public institutions? He could stop the revolving door between Ministers and the private sector. He could stop immediately all forms of lobbying within Westminster and Whitehall. Finally, he could stop the process of outsourcing to Tory chums.

[Paul Scully]

What I can do is explain the difference between an output and an outcome. An output means that any number of meetings, any number of requests— unless you block the number, any Minister will receive those texts. An outcome is what actually happens as a result, and I was absolutely clear that the Chancellor rejected what was put forward by Greensill and rejected what was put forward by David Cameron.

Towns Fund

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Thursday 4th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab) [V]]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I look forward to this technology of the clock counting me down.

This is an important debate. Britain’s lop-sided economy has left many of our towns, in recent decades, feeling abandoned as we both centralise and deindustrialise our economy. Of course, we cannot halt economic progress, but we should never turn our backs on those held-back communities in the towns. We clearly need state intervention, but on a massive scale—a new Marshall plan. The towns fund simply does not hack it. Towns have been left behind by gigantic global capital flows driven by a new and even more remote phase of capitalism and by a political elite operating in the interests of capitalism, rather than of those communities.

I represent small towns and villages that at one time were at the very heart of the mighty Yorkshire coalfield. They helped create our wealth, heated our homes and powered our industries, but now too often they feel abandoned, especially as covid begins to impact more heavily on those same towns. We owe those communities a huge duty of solidarity. Large areas in my constituency—those great Yorkshire villages and towns such as Featherstone, Hemsworth, South Elmsall, Upton, South Kirkby, and the list goes on—are among the most deprived communities in the country, but not a penny has come to us from the towns fund.

Let us be honest, the financial allocation is inadequate, and much of it is anyway recycled from other spending programmes. Deprived communities are forced to compete against each other for a share of a fund that in any case is unfairly distributed. More than half the towns that get the money from the towns fund are not even in the most deprived category, and quite a lot of them just happen to be in areas of political interest to the governing party.

The distribution of financial resources and the location of economic growth are dictated largely by the whims of financial markets, leaving so many towns left behind, and then there is the apparently grubby gerrymandering of the fund itself, as I see it. It does not have to be like that. We do have the power to change things. Don’t say it can’t be done: look at how the last Labour Government used their power to intervene in the collapsing banking market. First, however, we would need to replace that part of the British establishment that serves the interests of big money rather than seeking to be its master. With a radical Government on their side and adequate funding, Britain’s towns can once again become the cradles of economic growth, cultural creativity and social justice.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Monday 16th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

I am always happy to consider my hon. Friend’s suggestions. He will know that the affordable homes definition in the national planning policy framework includes:

“Housing for sale or rent, for those whose needs are not met by the market”

and the assumption is that that is at 80% of average cost. Of course, we also have a social rent option that local authorities can leverage, and we have certainly allowed local authorities greater ease in developing their own social homes. I also point him to our first homes programme, which provides discounts of at least 30% on homes in perpetuity so that people can realise the dream of their own home.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

What assessment he has made of the adequacy of support given to local authorities in areas with high covid-19 infection rates.

[The Minister for Regional Growth and Local Government (Luke Hall)]

Councils’ self-reported figures suggest that local authorities spent an additional £3.6 billion through September as a result of covid. Since the start of the pandemic, we have provided over £7.2 billion directly to councils and are now providing new funding for national restrictions. I hope the hon. Gentleman will also welcome the additional funding of over £40 million that Wakefield Council has received to support its community so far this year.

[Jon Trickett [V]]

Austerity impacted most on the poorer communities right across the north and elsewhere. In Wakefield alone we have lost almost £50 million from local care services, schools, youth support and child services, not to mention the wage freezes for key workers. The impact of covid in damaging community resilience is apparent to all. Is it not time for the Minister to show that he has learned lessons by restoring funding to those communities in difficulty from the cuts and finally giving a rise to the key workers who have done so much to keep our country going?

[Luke Hall]

I am surprised to hear the hon. Gentleman speak like that about local authority when he supported and voted for the local government finance settlement this year. As I said, since the start of the pandemic we have provided £7.2 billion in funding. Wakefield has received £31 million across four tranches of unring-fenced funding, the last including deprivation, population and cost driver indicators, too. It has also received £2 million for test and trace, £7 million from the infection control fund and more than £40 million in additional grants. As the hon. Gentleman failed to do so, may I use this opportunity again to recognise the incredible work of councils, who have been dynamic and energetic in responding to an incredibly difficult period?