Oral Answers to Questions

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

Monday 5th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Luke Hall]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady. I pay extreme tribute to the residents, businesses and charitable organisations in New Ferry who have worked so hard to recover and get the town back on its feet over the past three years. I know that she is meeting one of my ministerial colleagues later this week, but as a Local Government Minister I am also at her disposal to discuss this hugely important matter in her constituency.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that we need to address the inherent unfairness in the operation of the housing infrastructure fund, which allocates 80% of its budget to London and the south-east and only 20% of it to the rest of us?

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend and I have agreed on this point for some time. The housing infrastructure fund directs funding to those areas where there is the greatest affordability challenge. That is important, in some respects, but any Government who want to level up must also direct infrastructure investment for housing to other parts of the country as well. I will certainly bear that in mind as we design the successor to the housing infrastructure fund later this year.

CCRC Decision on 44 Post Office Prosecutions

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

Monday 5th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

The Prime Minister promised an independent inquiry, and that is what we have announced. We want to make sure that postmasters engage with it. The Post Office and Fujitsu have also said they will engage with it. It is now for Sir Wyn Williams to instigate the inquiry and get it under way, and he can always report back if he finds he is not getting the support he needs.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

When you have caught and removed the fox from the henhouse, it is never a good idea to put it back in there to compensate the rest of the chickens. We did exactly that with Lloyds, and I fear we are doing exactly that with the Post Office. There is no obvious means of compensation for those with criminal convictions. The jury is out on the historic shortfall scheme, and those who are employed as sub-postmasters through McColl’s or the Co-op have no direct means of compensation. Will my hon. Friend confirm that the Government are committed to making sure that every single person who was disadvantaged is fairly compensated?

[Paul Scully]

There is a separate director within Post Office Ltd who is looking specifically at the historic shortfall scheme to make sure that the rest of Post Office Ltd has the capacity to reset its relationship with postmasters, but we will of course look at Sir Wyn Williams’s findings. Postmasters who have had wrongful convictions have other methods of compensation, as I outlined in my original statement.

Town and Country Planning

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

Wednesday 30th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mike Amesbury]

I thank the Minister for finding the time for this debate in response to the prayer motions that Her Majesty’s official Opposition have laid against these regulations.

I will start by telling Members a story, one that is real and with which some across the Chamber will be familiar. It does not have a happy ending, and given the Secretary of State’s radical extension of permitted development, it is about to get a whole lot worse for many people in many of communities up and down this nation.

Over the weekend, the Minister may have read an article in The Observer about permitted development. It began by talking about the experience of a woman, Katya, who lives in a block of flats created under the existing permitted development regulations. All Katya wants, like many of us, is a place to call home, to bring up a young family and to feel secure, space for her children to play safely, somewhere to shelter during this pandemic and to be able to travel to work from, and some communal green space. Yet Katya is one of thousands of residents who are crammed into former offices and industrial units that were not built for human habitation. Some have no or few windows, some are as small as 10 square metres—the average car parking space is 11 square metres—and many are on the outskirts of towns, with few amenities such as shops and schools.

Katya is not alone. Up to 60,000 units have been built under the previous extension to permitted development, many of which are unfit for human habitation. I am certain that neither the Housing Minister nor the Secretary of State would like to find themselves or their families in them.

This debate is about three further ways in which the Government want to create poor-quality housing by bypassing the local community, local democracy and local control: by adding new units on top of flats; by allowing developers to demolish and rebuild empty buildings; and by allowing people to add multiple floors to their homes in a village, town and city near you.

Let me take Members on a visual journey up north to Leeds, where Abbey, a young professional, bought her leasehold flat only to discover that it had been cladded with flammable material. She is one of many thousands affected. She cannot sell it. It is zero-rated for a mortgage and she has to pay thousands in waking watch and insurance fees. There are also massive problems, with which the Minister and the Secretary of State are very familiar, with the EWS1—external wall survey—forms.

What is the Government’s solution? Instead of building back better, safer, healthier and greener for Katya and communities up and down our nation, the Secretary of State will go down in history not only for his unlawful planning direction in Tower Hamlets, with the Westferry affair, but as Bob the bad builder, coming to wreck a village, town and city near you.

Instead of having a relentless focus on making people like Abbey safe in a cladded building, he has rammed through a negative statutory instrument to lob an extra two storeys on blocks of flats, overnight giving some freeholders and overseas investors a multi-million pound windfall of up to £42 billion.

At the same time, this very SI has added an additional cost for leaseholders who may want to buy the freehold. No need for donors to attend the Carlton Club dinner circuit anymore and exchange chummy texts—just sneak the windfall through Parliament via an undebated instrument. What does that instrument deliver a year? Just 800 flats per year; that is 8,000 over a decade.

To make matters worse, because permitted development bypasses the planning system, we could have a ludicrous situation where high-rise buildings extended by two floors do not go through gateway 1 of the draft building safety Bill. Have the Government learned nothing just three years on from Grenfell? Oversight, regulation and rules protect lives.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mike Amesbury]

In a moment.

In the spirit of cross-party co-operation, I happily quote the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), who strongly advised the Prime Minister to get a “better housing adviser”. I find it difficult to disagree. Permitted development has been disastrous for our towns and cities since its introduction by the coalition Government in 2013 and things are about to get a whole lot worse. That is not me saying that—it comes from the Government’s own advisers. In fact, on the day that the Secretary of State laid two of the three statutory instruments that we have prayed against, his own commission’s review of permitted development was published—and it was damning.

The review found that only 22% of permitted development dwellings met the Government’s own space standards, fewer than 4% have access to a private amenity space and a vast majority have only single-aspect windows. These are not beautiful homes—in the words of another Government commission report—these are the slums of now, the slums of the future.

The Royal Institute of British Architects president, Alan Jones, put it like this:

“The arrogance and lack of understanding is breathtaking.”

It is not just RIBA that think the extensions to permitted development are a bad idea; they are opposed by the Royal Town Planning Institute, the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, the Chartered Institute of Building, the Chartered Institute of Housing, the Town and Country Planning Association and many more. Aside from some developers looking to make a quick buck out of shoddy housing, who supports these pieces of legislation?

With a slight nod to the fact that windows for people in flats might be a step forward, all three SIs allow councils to challenge developers if there is inadequate lighting provision.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I am surprised at the hon. Gentleman’s tone. He and I got on very well as co-members of the Select Committee, and he will know from his experience on that Committee that the problems with Grenfell, which he lays at the Government’s door, were decades old in the building regulations system. This is not something he can lay at the door of this Government—there were decades of failure. The issue in relation to the £40 million Westferry windfall for the developer is factually incorrect; there would simply have been a reduction in the amount of affordable housing on that development. On the space standards, as the hon. Gentleman will be aware, today the Government set out clearly that space standards will be included in future permitted development rights.

[Mike Amesbury]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. In terms of Grenfell, I referred to the draft building safety Bill and gateway 1. Certainly in terms of planning permitted development, there is an issue there—it is an issue that we will undoubtedly discuss beyond the debate today. With regard to the concession to the rebels, and the fact that we have laid the motions today, of course we welcome baby steps forward—finally, there is a concession that actually people deserve space as well as windows. That is a step forward, undoubtedly, but major problems remain with permitted development.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

The hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) made some very fair points on space standards that we looked at in the Select Committee when I was a member. She will be aware that the Government have brought forward these new proposals to make sure that there are space standards in permitted developments. That is why I support the proposals in principle, although there are one or two points of detail that I would like to raise.

The hon. Lady painted one side of the picture, but I have seen many developments in my constituency and just outside it that are conversions of redundant office buildings that are not being used any more into perfectly adequate, nice apartment blocks for young first-time buyers. Clearly there is a lot of merit behind permitted development, which has delivered 60,000 homes in the past few years in terms of additional stock. That is partly how this Government have doubled housing delivery since the lows of 2009. There is a lot to commend in the Government’s action on this.

Statutory Instrument No. 755 seems to say that any two-storey property, pretty much anywhere in the country —there is no geographic restriction, as I understand it—be it a three-bed semi in Thirsk, Malton, Harrogate or wherever else, can have two more storeys put on top of it as long as it is no more than 3.5 metres higher than the neighbouring property. I worry about the street scene in that situation. It is the same for terraced houses as well. It may be appropriate in some parts of London where it would not impact adversely on the local street scene, but I wonder whether it would be appropriate in some parts of the country. I urge Ministers to consider whether more controls should be put in place in relation to certain parts of the country where that would not be appropriate.

Similarly, paragraph AB.2 allows a commercial property such as a takeaway or shop of two storeys to have two more storeys put on top of it, with, again, the 3.5 metre height restriction. Again, that could impact the street scene in certain parts of our towns, cities and suburbs. Another point is that lot of these kinds of properties are owned in self-invested personal pensions. They are commercial properties. Ministers will be aware, as I have raised this on a number of occasions, that residential property, even a rented property, cannot be put as a separate dwelling on top of a commercial property if it is owned in a personal pension and held in a pension wrapper, which is restricting supply in many towns and cities. We should change that to allow it to be the case as long as the properties were delivered for social rent at half market value to encourage development of such properties on their upper floors. If I look down the streets in Thirsk, I will see lots of instances where this is the case. This is a real opportunity to deliver more housing above shops in our city centres.

On the other planning reforms that are being brought forward, I very much support the zoning element. I do worry about some of the underlying assumptions, though, which are driving the high number of properties in certain locations with low affordability, and therefore expensive house prices. I am not convinced that simply building lots of houses in expensive areas is going to lower prices to the degree that Ministers obviously want.

Non-Domestic Rating (Lists) (No. 2) Bill

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Programme motion & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Wednesday 30th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I understand the reasons why we have postponed revaluations on a number of occasions since 2010. Does that not illustrate the changing nature of the commercial world and the need to move to a different system that is more responsive to the realities of trading on our high streets?

[Luke Hall]

I thank my hon. Friend for his point. We are currently undertaking a fundamental review of business rates, and as part of that exercise we are considering the frequency of future revaluations. When deciding whether to have more frequent revaluations, we need to strike the right balance between more up-to-date assessments, which would flow from such a reform, and the uncertainty it could create, with more regular changes to bills, while also taking into account the time it currently takes to process changes and the impact that any changes that might be required would have on the current system. I certainly understand, however, the point that he has continually made about annual revaluations and how that could further improve the system. I am sure that will be considered.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Hollinrake]

That kind of change to the multiplier would probably cost around £12 billion a year. Does the hon. Lady have any idea of where she would get the money to fill that gap?

[Sarah Olney]

That is an important point and I very much hope that the business rates review will look at it. There is no doubt that online retailers are not currently paying their fair share. Lots of solutions to that problem have been proposed, although I do not think this is the right forum to debate them. There are pros and cons in respect of proposed digital sales taxes, but nevertheless it is a policy area that seriously demands to be looked at. I am sure the hon. Gentleman would agree that high street retail businesses having to bear the brunt of property taxes when they no longer get the lion’s share of the retail market is a situation that cannot continue.

Finally, I just wanted to make the point that we are all expecting a major economic dislocation as a result of the unwind of the furlough scheme and the other measures that the Government have put in place. We are anticipating high levels of unemployment, but one way to mitigate that is through people starting up their own businesses. There are opportunities in the retail sector for those who are looking to start up their own businesses, particularly in constituencies such as mine. We have seen a rise in home working, which has meant that, for the high streets in Richmond Park, there has been a rise in footfall, as people are now at home during the day, instead of perhaps travelling into the city, which is what they would have done previously.

Certainly, speaking to local retailers, I have been quite surprised to find how many of them have thrived over the past few months. They have diversified and found new ways to get their goods to customers. Certainly, the trading conditions are quite strong on our local high streets and, as I say, I believe that that represents opportunities for those who may find themselves out of work in the near future, but I urge the Government to do what they can to lower the barriers to new entrants to the retail markets, so that we can really make the most of these opportunities for new retail businesses on our high streets. That is why I urge the Government to do what they can to address the current rate structure for new businesses.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I have quite significant interests in the business rates system, in terms of my own business, so hon. Members should take that into account.

To touch on the comments from the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), I absolutely agree with his point about the business rates loophole for holiday cottages, and I hope that the Treasury is listening to that. It is an obvious loophole to close, and it affects North Yorkshire like it affects the Lake District.

I very much support the Bill. I sat on the joint Treasury Committee and Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee inquiry into business rates. We looked very carefully at the frequency of revaluation. We took evidence from a number of different sources. Some nations do the revaluation annually, not three yearly, and that would be better from a business perspective. It would give a more current perspective on the trading environment, although we should bear in mind that all business rates revaluations are fiscally neutral. Some people would benefit from a reduction in their business rates valuation, but that would have to be made up elsewhere by the multiplier changing to come back to the £30 billion a year that business rates raise.

I do not know whether hon. Members have a solution to that problem— I have heard a couple of speeches from Opposition Members who say that the business rates system is not fit for purpose, yet only one solution, from the hon. Gentleman. He suggested, potentially, a land value tax, but that has other inherent difficulties because it is, again, a value-based tax. Business rates are a valued-based tax. It has a correlation with the rental value of a property, which is, of course, inherently tied to the capital value of the premises. As Ronald Reagan once said, “There are simple solutions, but there are no easy solutions.” We might all want reform, but finding reform that works and is fair is difficult—I will, however, suggest something before I sit down. The other issue with the current system is that reliefs and changes brought in as a transitional phase mean that those who should benefit from the revaluations do not do so for some time, in order to try to help with people who are “going up in value”. It is far from a perfect system at the moment.

My first hustings took place in the village I have lived near all my life. One question from the audience was about a local retailer where many of us had shopped—Craggs electrical, a good local white goods retailer selling TVs and the like. It had just closed down after many years in that community. Mrs Craggs was in the audience and the questioner said, “Mrs Craggs’ business has just had to close down because of the situation. She cannot pay her business rates. It is just unaffordable. What are the Government going to do about it?” The reality is that Mrs Craggs’ business was closing down not because of Government business rates, but because of the different shopping trends of all the people in that room; all those people were applauding and saying we should take some action, but the reality is that fewer and fewer of us are buying that kind of stuff from shops. So it is not about what the Government are or are not doing; it is about shopping trends.

As my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Duncan Baker) mentioned, before the crisis, 20% of shopping was done online but that figure has risen rapidly to 35%, which is making the whole system difficult. Most businesses look at the rent and the business rates when they first take on a premises, and then plug that into their cash flow and decide what they can afford to pay. That is what a good businessperson should do. It is not that the business rates system is anachronistic; the pace of change is the problem. At some point in future, when all this has settled down, businesses will say, “We can afford to pay this rent and these rates”, but the difficulty is being caused by the pace of change.

[Sarah Olney]

I am listening carefully, and I bow to the hon. Gentleman’s expertise on this subject, as I know he has studied it long and hard. We have talked a bit about the divide between digital and high street retail. Does he agree that there is a social good to be achieved in supporting high street retail and that the Government should perhaps express a preference for it over digital through the tax system?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Yes, I absolutely agree with that. Community is very important to me and our shops are part of those communities. It is dangerous when the Government start picking winners—I do not think that should happen. The forces of free markets and a market economy are the best things to ensure that prices are kept low and levels of services are high for consumers. That is what is most effective. So what we have to try to do, of course, is create a fair and level playing field, and let businesses come in to fill that gap and provide services that people want. That is what we should be looking to do.

In its review of business rates, the Treasury talks about different options, including an increase in VAT, changes to corporation tax and an online sales tax. It seems to land on the online sales tax as the solution, so let me talk about a couple of things that it sets out in that consultation. It sets out not that an online sales tax will replace business rates, but that it will exist alongside them—that is a key thing to understand—and that it will potentially lead to a reduction for retail. So there will be two systems coming together.

I have heard a few Members talk about retail in this debate, but the changes in consumer behaviour are not just about retail. Uber Eats and Deliveroo, for example, deliver to people’s houses often not from takeaway premises on the high street but from mini-establishments off the high street. Travel agents, insurance brokers, banking—all those things are changing because of consumer habits; people do not visit shops anything like as much as they used to. Looking at the problem purely from a retail perspective is wrong; doing so does not understand the problem.

Another issue is what is online? One of my fantastic local butchers in Thirsk is Johnson’s, an order-in butcher’s, which has wonderful meats, but does not seem particularly the type of business that would go online. I visited them during the crisis, because they had set up a delivery service and offer click and collect, as well as traditional shopping. They have even set up a little bot from which you can order, which talks to you using artificial intelligence—very clever stuff and really innovative, which was great; but how would you assign an online sales tax to those different categories? It would be hugely complex for a business to work out what was bought purely online, what was bought on click and collect and what was bought by customers walking into the store. It would make the system more complicated. The more we try to simplify the tax system, of course, the more complicated we make it. There are some inherent flaws in an online sales tax; it is so very difficult. The problem of distinguishing between online, click and collect and physical shopping is inherent in lots of different businesses, John Lewis being an obvious example. It is not clear how such a tax would operate without making the system more complex.

Simple and easy are two different things. The simple solution, which will not be universally popular, is to look at sales tax. We already have a sales tax; it is called VAT. The simplest thing to do would be to raise VAT. We could not just put a hole in the business rates system—some 30 billion quid—without replacing it with something, certainly not given where the public finances are today. Putting 2p on VAT, would raise £12 billion a year; 4p on VAT would raise £24 billion a year. We could also look at the threshold system of VAT, which is a real deterrent for businesses to grow. If we want a simple solution that is effective and crosses all the different sectors, it is there. It is fair and would keep the tax system as simple as possible.

I urge my very good friend the Minister on duty, the Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood (Kelly Tolhurst), and the Treasury to think about the full extent of the problems, as well as the potential quick wins. When compared with an online sales tax, VAT is a much better system to operate.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

The reform of business rates and revaluation has been in a holding pattern for many years, and those of us who have spent time in local government will be conscious that the expected impact of that reform on local authority finance has been hotly debated. I think that we are still of the view that business rates in their current form are the worst possible solution to financing local government, with the exception of all other available choices. My hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) made that point strongly in describing the hard choices we need to make in identifying alternative sources of finance. It seems clear that, in the Treasury, the business rates billions remain a key building block of our national budget. As a consequence, there has been a long-held reluctance to tinker with them, for fear of the wider impact on the bigger fiscal picture.

Business rates have been in existence for a long time. For many of our citizens, they used to walk in lockstep with residential rates, long abolished. Even today, the variation in business rates income at local authority level is reflected in the grant funding—the traditional revenue support grant that was the basis of most local authority funding—and in things such as school funding. When schools were first set up as a local authority responsibility, local authorities funded them according to their incomes from business rates and domestic rates, and that differential has been carried forward into the funding rates of our schools today. That long-standing impact and the fiscal picture across government of linking day-to-day expenditure on these services to the income we can rely upon coming through business rates remain in place. That goes to the heart of the point that a number of colleagues have made about the need for reform, but we need to address it as part of that complex formula.

I would like to add my voice to the request from many colleagues for greater flexibility in the way that business rates are deployed. I am fortunate to represent a constituency that has a great diversity of local businesses and very vibrant high streets. Many of those new businesses have grown up to take the place of more traditional activities, some of which have seen their departure mourned by local residents, and others perhaps less so. For example, a sports club has closed and been replaced by a children’s soft play area, because the baby boom means that there is now a much greater market for that kind of activity. The bank that I used to be responsible for is now a bookshop and coffee shop on Pinner High Street, reflecting the fact that our high streets can remain vibrant.

This is not about saying that the Government or the local authority need to pick the businesses that they think should be winners on the high street. It is about reflecting the fact that the challenge of online versus bricks and mortar retailing, the changing nature of the high street and our ability to keep it vibrant on behalf of our communities means that we need flexibility.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. He alluded to the point I made earlier. If we had a business rates system that purely provided discounts for retail premises, what would we do with premises that were not retail and became retail or were retail and became another business category?

[David Simmonds]

My hon. Friend reinforces the point robustly. I declare an interest, as a father of young children. The development on our high streets of more community-focused business opportunities, due to there now being many more young children in my part of the world looking to access soft play, clothing retail and other things, is a reflection of the fact that our communities change—they are vibrant. That is what their nature should be, and those market forces are a welcome part of responding to the changes in our communities.

When we see challenges that come along, whether they reflect the national economic position or indeed wider issues on a local level, we need to be able to respond effectively. A really good illustration of that is the impact on the local authority that serves most of my residents and Heathrow airport—the London Borough of Hillingdon. Heathrow is the largest single payer of business rates within the Greater London area, but the challenge for the local authority that collects those business rates is that the revenue it collects and the proportion retained locally is far less than the cost to the local authority of dealing with the consequences of having the airport in its local area.

That brings me on to my final plea to Ministers as we begin to look to what the future of business rates may be beyond this revaluation. Too often, there is little or no upside for local authorities in supporting the development and growth of businesses, because so much of the money goes into the central pool and the community sees the disbenefits such as congestion and pollution—sometimes, in the case of airports, in the form of air pollution—and needing to provide services to people such as refugees and those who find themselves stranded at the airport. All those are direct costs to local taxpayers as part of the statutory frameworks; they simply are not met by the share of the income that lands locally.

We need to have a much broader discussion about how we ensure that local authorities that see these opportunities to develop local businesses, jobs and a vibrant local economic strategy can see the benefit of doing that coming directly into their local community. In the United States, for example, it is a very common part of considerations of any infrastructure development that local politicians can say to the local community, “Yes, you will have to put up with a downside, but you will see this enormous benefit as a consequence of this development or this project going ahead.”

We need to see this as part of a much broader and more strategic review of the way in which we fund public services in this country. The hon. Member for Blackburn (Kate Hollern) pointed to the impact on local authorities of a reduction in revenue support grant. That is part of this complex picture, but over the same period, we have seen significant growth in levels of business rate income that have been retained by local authorities. When the Ministry makes its calculation of spending power, the reduction in spending power does not simply reflect a reduction in the revenue support grant: it then needs adding back into it the additional revenue that is coming from other sources.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton explained so clearly, this is not simply a matter of being able to offer everyone out there who would like to see a reduction in their business rates such a reduction, because if we do that, we need to decide which other taxes will go up to pay for it. We must make sure that we consider that decision fully in this House before it is made, because we have a responsibility to local authorities and residents to make sure that the services we commit to provide for them are financially sustainable.

[Kate Hollern (Blackburn) (Lab)]

It is wonderful to hear so many Members recognise the need for reform of business rates—and of course, in fairness, right across the patch. I want to return to two points very briefly.

There are many ways that the Government can support businesses, and making the next business rates valuation a smoother transition for them, as this Bill does, is one way to do it. However, as the Government know all too well—the shadow Chancellor, my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), has spoken about it at length from this Dispatch Box—they have consigned businesses and jobs to the scrapheap. The Government are failing to give businesses that could be viable, although they have been closed for a few months, the support they need. If we are to rescue businesses, there is an urgent need for the Government to support them through this difficult time. Tens of thousands of jobs are at risk. We are talking about rates and how people pay into the system. If people are unemployed, of course there is a cost to that as well, not only financially but emotionally and socially.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The hon. Member makes a very good point. On the jobs at risk and the Government support she is criticising, if this is such a big issue for her party, why are no Labour Back Benchers willing to speak on this very important issue that affects millions of businesses around the UK?

[Kate Hollern]

I am sorry that the hon. Member does not understand that this debate is for today. There have been a number of debates on the lack of support for businesses from this Government, and quite a few Conservative Members have recognised that some businesses have had absolutely no support at all, so perhaps we do need another debate on that subject.

On local government funding, councils face a multimillion- pound funding gap. Of course, local government works hand in hand with local businesses to create a sense of place to create vibrant town centres, as well as to encourage community sites and economic growth. I do recognise that the Government are covering 75% of the income loss incurred by councils, but that still leaves them hugely out of pocket and less able to support businesses.

The Bill is a first step to supporting businesses and local authorities, but everyone who has spoken agrees that business rate reforms need to be an urgent priority for the Government. If we are to protect jobs in high streets, this must be dealt with fairly and quickly. I hope that Ministers and their Department will keep these comments in mind as we look ahead to the comprehensive spending review.

Public Interest Disclosure (Protection) Bill

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 25th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dr Whitford]

Absolutely; I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and I will come to some of those issues later. This issue, as has been said, is in part one of culture, of being open, of realising that it should be about learning and fixing rather than trying to shut someone up. The more that downward pressure is put on people—like a pressure cooker—the more that builds, and there is more and more unhappiness. The problem is that in something such as health and social care, it actually affects patients.

That is why I am proposing the Public Interest Disclosure (Protection) Bill. The key thing that I seek to achieve is to remove whistleblowing from employment law and create free-standing protection legislation. If we really value whistleblowing, it should not be tucked away in some corner. It should be something that stands by itself—that sends the message that, in whatever sector, if someone sees wrongdoing and damage, they should come forward.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I pledge my support on a cross-party basis, and I am delighted to associate my name with the Bill. The hon. Member talks about valuing whistleblowers. Does she agree that we should value them not only for the risk they take and the individual issues they raise, but for the wider cultural issues they raise within a system—particularly, as she says, in financial services—which allows this House to put the measures in place to clamp down on that adverse culture?

[Dr Whitford]

I welcome that intervention, but whistleblowing should not have to be a risk. It should be a normal part of someone’s work or their duty as a citizen to come forward and report something.

The Bill defines whistleblowing disclosures, but it also widens the definition of “relevant authorities” to include not just employers, but public authorities and regulators, as many whistleblowers report that when they have involved regulators, they have been intimidated in exactly the same way and have made no progress. It places a duty on all relevant authorities not to subject whistleblowers to any form of detriment, and indeed, to protect them from detriment, but particularly—I cannot reiterate this more strongly—to investigate the concern and take action to prevent a recurrence.

The Bill widens the list of professions in which a disclosure may be made to include those previously excluded, such as religious ministers and police officers. Let us consider the cases of child abuse that might have been prevented had priests and ministers been able to speak up, or how much earlier the families of the Hillsborough victims could have been told the truth and given closure.

The Bill also includes those who were not previously defined as employees, such as trainees, interns and volunteers. I am sure that all of us who have taken an interest in this topic are well aware of the four-year persecution of Dr Chris Day, who warned about unsafe staffing in his intensive care unit, only to be told that junior doctors were not classed as NHS employees and that he had no protection. Although that anomaly has been resolved, it highlights the traps that unsuspecting whistleblowers can fall into.

The Bill seeks to establish an independent body with statutory powers to oversee whistleblowing. I have called it a commission in the Bill, but I do not care what it is called. After his report into the deaths in Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, Sir Robert Francis established the “freedom to speak up system”, but the national guardian is not a statutory role and the local guardians are trust employees who themselves may be put under pressure when investigating a case. That comes back to the point raised in an intervention earlier: there needs to be absolute objectivity and a determination to deal with an issue locally, rather than it becoming a festering sore. By contrast, the Scottish Independent National Whistleblowing Office was established as a statutory body in 2018. It published its draft standards for the NHS and social care last year.

Devolved Governments will develop whistleblower-support systems for their public services, but PIDA is the underpinning legislation for all sectors—including businesses and financial services—and it no longer serves its purpose. The commission’s duty would be to protect whistleblowers and promote the principle of whistleblowing in the public interest. Such a body would develop standards of practice for whistleblowing policies and procedures and monitor the compliance of organisations with those standards. Such standards would include how issues should be investigated, and organisations would be expected to show what action they had taken to address cases. The standards would stipulate prospective protection of the whistleblower from detriment, from the point of their making a disclosure, including by preserving their anonymity and confidentiality—many whistleblowers suddenly find themselves splattered across the local paper.

The commission would also seek to resolve cases and reduce litigation, which is wasteful of public funds and both expensive and traumatic for the whistleblower. It could provide advice to whistleblowers who do not have any other route to report an issue or who are not making progress locally. It would be able to issue redress orders to try to repair detriment suffered by a whistleblower, rather than just making financial awards, and it would include the banning of non-disclosure agreements, which whistleblowers are often intimidated into signing. When staff have been subject to deliberate detriment, there would be the ability for civil action. As in Australia, criminal charges would be available for the most egregious cases of whistleblower persecution.

There are different ways to improve the quality of a service, and whistleblowing should not be the main method of detecting poor practice, the squandering of public funds or fraud. Just as audit is critical to ensure probity in the financial sector, it is also essential to detect poor clinical practice. In Scotland, we have had regular reporting against quality improvement standards for the most common cancers for many years. In the case of my specialty, breast cancer, I was involved in leading the development of the standards almost 20 years ago. The process identifies outliers, who can then be supported to update their practice, but it also creates peer pressure to drive clinical improvement, as people know that their performance is going to be shared at a conference, openly and transparently, every single year.

It is important to normalise incident reporting and encourage a culture of routinely raising issues without the sense of conflict and pressure associated with whistleblowing. That is the aim of systems such as Datix in the NHS, through which staff record, review and seek to learn from all incidents, from minor to major, including near misses. There will, however, always be cases that cannot be detected by audit, such as alcohol or drug misuse, bullying or racism. For that, whistleblowers are essential.

For whistleblowers to speak up early and reduce harm, they must be valued, supported and protected. In the NHS, that is about patient safety, which is literally a matter of life and death.

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[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I will be brief, to let the Front-Bench spokespeople conclude. In the parliamentary briefing for this debate, there is a question posed to the Minister: do sufficient protections for whistleblowers already exist in current legislation? I hope his answer to that will be no. I hope that the Bill is successful today, but if not, it will be passed on a future occasion. My hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mary Robinson) and I are meeting the Minister on Monday to discuss this, because we need reform. The proper protections are not in place at the moment.

I want to give one example, which I have spoken about before in this place, and that is the case of Sally Masterton. She was not a whistleblower. In 2013, she worked for HBOS, and she wrote a report about a fairly low-level fraud in the company. She was discredited by Lloyds to the regulator—it simply said that she was not a credible witness. The Financial Conduct Authority did not investigate. She was effectively suspended by Lloyds, through constructive dismissal. Five years later, the FCA decided that she actually was a cogent witness and said to Lloyds, “You need to do something about this. You need to compensate her and apologise,” which it did. The terrible fact about the case is that nobody at Lloyds or HBOS has been sanctioned for that disgraceful mistreatment of a whistleblower for five years. This was part of a disgraceful 13-year fraud of small and medium-sized enterprises within the bank, and still to this day that scandal has not been resolved.

[Dr Whitford]

The hon. Member highlights that the regulator—the FCA—also let that whistleblower down, and that is another thing that needs change.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. As I said in my earlier intervention, it is not just about the relatively small issues that the whistleblowers highlight. It is about the wider cultural issue. It shows the mismatch of power between the whistleblower, these big, powerful organisations and their customers, which we know we need to tackle, but we would not know that without people like Sally Masterton. I commend the hon. Lady for bringing forward this legislation. I hope she is successful; she will be sooner or later.

End of Eviction Moratorium

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

We have provided a great deal of resources for local authorities and charities to support people through this emergency. We will continue to keep those policies and programmes under review. If the hon. Gentleman has specific ideas that he wishes to suggest, I am happy to hear them.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. It is absolutely right that we should be fair to tenants affected by the covid crisis, and the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), who secured the urgent question, is right to say that we might consider giving the courts discretion over the nature of arrears. But it also has to be right that we should be fair to the neighbours of those guilty of antisocial behaviour, fair to those affected by domestic abuse and fair to landlords who were affected by arrears pre-covid, and that should be the immediate focus of the courts’ attentions.

[Christopher Pincher]

My hon. Friend, as ever, puts the point eloquently, and I am sure that Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service will have listened to him carefully.

United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

I must bring my response to a close. The amendment risks undermining the independence of the CMA and its global reputation for producing credible, impartial and expert analysis.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Paul Scully]

I cannot at the moment, I am afraid. I hope that hon. Members will not press their amendments to a Division, for the reasons that I have given, and that they will support the Government’s amendments.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst talked about amendment 66, and I assure him that we will be moving it. I thank him for his work on resolving this issue.

The hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum), who is not in her place, talked about the concerns over the Belfast agreement. The Bill does not interact directly with the Belfast agreement. It does interact clearly with the withdrawal agreement and the Northern Ireland protocol, but it seeks to make the Belfast agreement work in certain given circumstances.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Earlier, my hon. Friend mentioned the Sewel convention. Could he set out exactly what influence it has on legislation that is made in Brussels?

[Paul Scully]

Exactly. As my hon. Friend knows, it has none. Importantly, as we bring back power from the EU to the UK Government, we will work to pass on many, many powers to the devolved legislatures, whether it is the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly or the Northern Ireland Assembly. They will be getting powers, and we will all work together as the UK to give businesses the continuity that they need with our UK internal market.

Unpaid Work Experience (Prohibition) (No. 2) Bill

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 11th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Alex Cunningham]

I most certainly do welcome it, but, sadly, it has got off to such a chaotic start that I really worry about how those job creations will actually happen. Yes, let us make it happen, but the Government need to look very carefully at the very poor start that we have made with that particular programme.,

I am pleased to put forward this Bill to tackle one area of employment that can be exploitative and unjust. This Bill seeks to ban unpaid work experience that lasts more than four weeks. Before I continue, let me thank those who have helped me get this far with the Bill: the Sutton Trust for its insight and support in providing me with the guidance and information that I needed to confidently bring this Bill forward; the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) for having brought an almost identical Bill to the Commons during an earlier Session: and, finally, the Conservative Lord Holmes, who currently has a parallel version of this Bill laid in the other place. Much work has been done on this issue in the past, and I am grateful for the support and perseverance of those who have been long-term campaigners for this cause.

We often hear today, from young people in particular, of those applying for jobs being told that they do not have enough experience, yet the opportunities to get that experience are often closed off. Jobs are either unadvertised, given to friends of the organisation, or somebody who knows somebody else’s dad, or advertised as unpaid roles, which means that only those with existing wealth to pay for the cost of living can apply.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is outlining some circumstances that he is right to address, but there is another side of the coin. In our business, we have often advertised a job and had a number of applicants, some of whom, despite being unsuccessful, have then contacted us—not through their father or another contact—to ask whether they can do some work experience to understand more what the job is about. We have done that, and those people have ended up getting jobs in our organisation. Are not some types of work experience a route into work?

[Alex Cunningham]

The hon. Member is totally correct, but people do not need to work for six months, 12 months or longer to get work experience. Four weeks will be sufficient in the organisation that he once ran to get that experience and build towards a new job.

Every party in this House claims to be the party of social mobility. Today Members have an opportunity to stand up and prove that theirs is the one that believes in that area of activity. If they are advocates for social mobility, I hope they will stand up to organisations that exclude those from poorer backgrounds from opportunities because they cannot afford to live without pay.

But this is not just about exclusive opportunities for those who can afford to take unpaid roles. Having people work for months on end without pay is exploitative, even when they are prepared to work for nothing. I am aware that some Members have argued that banning unpaid work experience would simply mean that organisations would stop offering opportunities altogether. First, for me, organisations not offering unpaid roles at all is preferable to them offering them exclusively to a distinct group of people. Secondly, if there is a real job to be done, organisations will find the money to pay someone to do it. Just because there are plenty of young and eager people, that does not mean that organisations should choose to save money by bringing in someone to do a job unpaid under the guise of work experience. Surely a young person does not need to work for six months or a year to get experience of a workplace or to learn a little of how a particular field operates.

But what does the employer or the organisation get out of it? It is quite clear: they get free labour, expecting a full day’s work without a full day’s pay. They save themselves a salary. They also save themselves national insurance and pension contributions. Surely it would be fairer for everyone if we limited such work experience placements to a month. Even the Exchequer could benefit. Such a move would ensure that living costs do not stack up, putting people further in debt, and would enable those opportunities to be offered to more people. A six-month unpaid placement could instead be offered to six people instead of one.

Westferry Printworks Development

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

Wednesday 24th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That an Humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, that she will be graciously pleased to give a direction to Her Ministers to provide all correspondence, including submissions and electronic communications, involving Ministers and Special Advisers pertaining to the Westferry Printworks Development and the subsequent decision by the Secretary of State to approve its planning application at appeal to the Housing, Communities and Local Government Select Committee.

The Westferry case, and the role of the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government in it, has blown apart confidence in the planning system. The only way to put that right is for the Secretary of State to publish the evidence about what really happened. If he has done nothing wrong, he has nothing to fear. I hope that he will welcome this opportunity to restore trust in a sector that will be so critical in rebuilding Britain after the lockdown.

In November last year, the Secretary of State attended an exclusive Conservative party fundraising dinner. He was seated next to Richard Desmond, the owner of Northern & Shell, and three of his senior executives. I understand that Mr Desmond’s lobbyists—a company called Thorncliffe—had been busy selling tickets to the event to people who wanted access to the Secretary of State.

Northern & Shell is the applicant behind the Westferry Printworks development in Tower Hamlets, a highly controversial live planning application on which the Secretary of State was due to take a final decision. Ministers are not allowed to take planning decisions if they have been lobbied by the applicant. Under the ministerial code, Ministers are required not to place themselves under an obligation by, for instance, helping to raise funds from a donor who stands to benefit from the decisions they make, because it raises questions about cash for favours, which would be a serious abuse of power.

Tower Hamlets Council was opposed to the Westferry scheme because it was oversized and lacked affordable housing, and the Secretary of State’s own planning inspector agreed with the council. However, on 14 January, just weeks after he had dined with Mr Desmond, the Secretary of State overruled them and forced the scheme through. He claims that he had no idea he would be sitting next to Mr Desmond and his senior executives.

The Secretary of State has not yet told us whether Conservative party officials knew and whether they sold tickets on that basis, as Thorncliffe seems to believe they did; he has not explained why, since he admits that the meeting gives rise to apparent bias, he did not ask to be re-seated elsewhere as soon as he realised who he was sitting next to; and he has given no reason why he did not immediately recuse himself from any further involvement in the decision.

The Secretary of State assured the House only last week that he did not discuss the scheme with Mr Desmond. Unfortunately for him, Mr Desmond says that they did. He has gone further and told us that the Secretary of State viewed a promotional video about the scheme on Mr Desmond’s phone—something the Secretary of State failed to mention to the House.

It is very hard to imagine that the Westferry scheme did not crop up during the three hours or so that the Secretary of State must have been sitting next to the owner of Northern & Shell and three of his most senior executives. Viewing Mr Desmond’s video is not cutting off the discussion, as the Secretary of State told the House; it is the developer lobbying the Secretary of State, and apparently with some considerable success.

The Secretary of State has still not confirmed when and how he notified officials in his Department about this encounter. Was it before he took the decision, or was it afterwards? What was their advice to him? It is hard to believe, if he was honest with them about viewing the video, that they did not advise him to recuse himself immediately—so did they, and did he overrule them so that he could do favours for a friend?

The Secretary of State took his decision to approve the Westferry scheme on 14 January. That was one day before a new community infrastructure levy came into force. The timing of the Secretary of State’s decision saved Mr Desmond up to £50 million.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I think the hon. Gentleman may be unintentionally misleading the House on that point. It did not save the developers £50 million. If he reads the inspector’s report on this, he will see that it quite clearly says that the schedule 15 viability assessment can be rerun in the event that the appeal scheme becomes liable for community infrastructure levy. The report states:

“The adjustment is likely to reduce the amount of affordable housing.”

What the Secretary of State did was to make sure that the right proportion of affordable housing was delivered on that scheme. The hon. Gentleman is saying, quite wrongly, that that was not the reason. If he repeats that, or anyone else does, in this debate, they will therefore be intentionally misleading this House.

[Steve Reed]

I am going to come on to the issue of the proportion of affordable housing that was included in the scheme. The timing of the decision is a further issue on which I am seeking clarification from the Secretary of State. He could easily provide that if he published the documents behind it. I hope that he will, and that Conservative Members will all be voting for that when this debate concludes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Reed]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. There is, of course, a very simple way for the Secretary of State to show that he did absolutely nothing wrong—it really could not be more straightforward. Officials in his Department will have kept meticulous records of the entire process: how and when he notified them about his dinner with Mr Desmond, and whether he told them that he had viewed the video; whether they advised him to recuse himself, and whether he overruled them; why he needed to take the decision in a way that helped Mr Desmond cut his tax bill; and what advice he received about the viability of the scheme with a higher level of affordable housing. It is all there. If he has nothing to hide, he has nothing to fear. He can just publish it, and I urge him to do that.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I think the hon. Gentleman is unintentionally risking the reputation of this House. Does he not accept the position that I stated earlier? It is not a question of saving the developer up to £50 million. As the inspector himself admitted, it is simply that a commensurate amount of money would have been reduced from the allocation of affordable housing. That is what would have happened. It was not going into the back pocket of the developer. The hon. Gentleman must accept that, or he risks the reputation of this House.

[Steve Reed]

The hon. Gentleman gives me the opportunity to repeat the same point: let us see the documentation from the Department and the advice that was given to the Secretary of State—openly, transparently, for everybody to see—and then we will know exactly whether what happened was in breach of the ministerial code of conduct and the planning code.

Instead of being open and transparent, the Secretary of State has gone to great lengths to keep the documentation secret. Tower Hamlets Council took out a judicial review of his decision and was rewarded with a high-handed and arrogant letter from the Department accusing it of going on a fishing expedition, until someone realised that a judicial review would require the Secretary of State to release all the documentation and correspondence about the decision in open court for everyone to see. He then took an extraordinary step. Suddenly that “fishing expedition” did not look quite so speculative, because he quashed his own decision and declared it to be unlawful because of apparent bias. That is explosive. A leading planning barrister says that it is without precedent and raises questions about the integrity of the entire planning system. That prompts the question of what in the documentation is so embarrassing and so bad that it is better to admit taking a biased and unlawful decision than to publish the documents in open court.

There is only one way to clear this up. Let us see the documents. Let us see that there was no breach of ministerial code. If the Secretary of State continues to refuse, let us have a full investigation by the Cabinet Secretary. Without it, there can be no trust in the Secretary of State or the planning system over which he presides. Without that trust, who on earth will believe that the Secretary of State has the credibility to take the numerous decisions that he makes every day, let alone reform the entire planning system, as he has said he wants to do?

--- Later in debate ---

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I do not intend to speak for more than about five or six minutes, if that is of help to the House.

The seriousness of these allegations merits a high-profile and far-reaching investigation, so I thank the Opposition for tabling this motion on the Westferry scandal. In contrast, the Government appear to just hope that it will simply disappear. I am still not entirely clear from what the Secretary of State said whether the Government will oppose the motion in the Division Lobby tonight. The motion before us certainly has the full support of the SNP, and we will vote in favour of it if the Government are daft enough to push it to a Division, which I must suggest to them would not look good.

I must confess that I do not like the all-too-frequent fixture in our politics of calling for ministerial resignations left, right and centre. However, in this case the conduct of the Secretary of State is seriously called into question when he himself has acknowledged that this decision was made unlawfully. In any other circumstance, this would already be difficult territory for the Secretary of State to try to wriggle off the hook, but the fact that this £1 billion housing development is linked to a Tory donor means it stinks—and it stinks, frankly, to high heavens.

Put simply, this is a classic Tory sleaze scandal that involves money and the Conservatives scratching one another’s backs. For a minute, let us put to one side the fact that the development’s owner is Richard Desmond, a multibillionaire and former owner of the Daily Express, and look solely at the fact that the development was originally denied by the Planning Inspectorate for failing to deliver enough affordable housing. That should not be overlooked, because the Government’s record on building affordable housing, let alone social housing, is absolutely woeful. We respect the fact that the impartial Planning Inspectorate rejected the application on reasonable grounds. Most of us can follow the logic on that.

Here is the nub of the matter, and why the Secretary of State’s position is so weak. The decision of the impartial Planning Inspectorate was overruled by the Secretary of State on 14 January, less than 24 hours before the introduction of a community infrastructure levy that would have cost the developer £40 million. Soon after the decision to approve the project was made, Richard Desmond makes a new £12,000 donation to the Conservative party. In the eyes of the public, the Secretary of State steps in and saves the developer £40 million in the community infrastructure levy, and then miraculously, the developer later makes a donation to the Conservative party. Surely no self-respecting Member of the House, not even the keenest December-intake Member, cannot see that that absolutely stinks.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[David Linden]

I am very happy to, if the hon. Gentleman wants to defend this one.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I do not think any self-respecting Member of this House should twist an argument like that. It did not save the developer £40 million. That money would have been taken directly off the allocation for affordable homes. Has the hon. Gentleman read the document? Has he read the inspector’s report? That is exactly what it says.

[David Linden]

I have, but part of the issue is that so few documents are in circulation. That is the whole point of the motion before the House and that is what we are calling for. If the hon. Gentleman wants people to read documents, he will be in the Lobby with us to make sure that those documents are published.

To make matters worse, we have also learned that Mr Desmond, who is, let us not forget, a property developer, and the Secretary of State, who has a quasi-judicial role in the planning process, were sat together at a Tory fundraiser in November. This is the point that I was trying to intervene on the Secretary of State about earlier, because he glossed over that.

“What I did was I showed him the video”.

They are not my words but the words of Richard Desmond, who says that the Secretary of State watched a promotional video for the development of Westferry for three or four minutes and:

“It’s quite long, so he got the gist.”

In the course of the Secretary of State’s remarks, hon. Members were trying to intervene to ask whether he had watched the video, but I do not think that he was clear. I am happy to give way to him now if he wants to come to the Dispatch Box and put it on record that he did watch the video.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State is obviously going to respond to the letter I sent to him from the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee. We may well come back to some of the issues, depending on what he says to the Committee in that regard. I said previously in the House that these matters are dealt with best when we have the facts in front of us, rather than supposition and conjecture, because that leads us into very difficult territory. I have also said that I am not accusing the Secretary of State or anybody of wrongdoing. I want to see the facts and look at the situation, along with the Committee, and then come back to any further questions we may have.

In the absence of the documentation—even if it has been sent to the Committee by now, I have not had a chance to read it before the debate—I say to the Secretary of State that there will probably be some questions about the precise nature of conversations at the dinner. Whether someone sees a video or not, I would have thought, would have been fairly well stuck in the Secretary of State’s mind. However, when he had been to the dinner, did he immediately inform his officials that he had been present at the dinner, that he had sat next to Mr Desmond, that the matter of the application had been raised with him and that he had refused to discuss it? If so, when was that confirmed with officials? Did he put that in writing to officials, and, if so, did they then advise him whether it was appropriate for him to carry on considering the application and making a judgment about it? If so, was that put in writing to him? If officials had reservations, was that put in writing to him as well?

Did officials and the Secretary of State at any point, therefore, consider whether in the light of the conversations at the dinner and a pretty well documented and considered attempt by the applicant to influence the Secretary of State at the dinner, it might have been appropriate for him to withdraw from the decision made at that time? When the case was going to court and the Secretary of State decided to withdraw his decision, because of the appearance of bias with regard to the financial liability on the developer that would be removed, was any part of his decision to withdraw also based on the possibility of an appearance of bias in relation to the events at the dinner that he or officials concluded might be an issue that came up in court at the time?

In planning, perception can be just as important as the facts. Even if the Secretary of State refused to discuss the matter at the dinner—I completely accept his word on that—should not the fact that the developer with an interest had sat next to him at the dinner and raised the matter with him have alerted him to the possibility of an appearance of bias and of accusations following if he made the decision in favour of the developer? Again, appearances are really important.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

It was a pleasure to serve for four years on the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee under the hon. Gentleman’s chairmanship. When he was interviewed recently by the BBC—it might have been Sky—did he not say that there was no information that the Secretary of State was guilty of any wrongdoing? Will he confirm that that was his position then, and is his position now?

[Mr Betts]

We talked about that yesterday. Yes, of course I said there was no evidence. I have not seen any evidence, and I repeated just now that I am not accusing anyone of wrongdoing, What I am saying is that perception and appearances in these matters are almost as important as the facts themselves.

Although the Secretary of State recognises that an informed and fair-minded person might come to the view that there was bias on his part in terms of the liability to the developer that was removed by his decision, did he at any point consider that an informed and fair-minded person might conclude that the events of the dinner could also lead to bias on his part? That seems crucial. If that is the case, when he reflects on the matter now, does he think that he might have done better had he decided not to take part in the decision-making process, once the developer had, quite wrongly—I repeat, the developer had, quite wrongly— tried to influence him at the dinner?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

In this afternoon’s debate, we have heard strong and powerful interventions from parliamentarians, particularly from the Opposition Benches, that were centrally about restoring faith and trust in our planning system. In fact, it is about the integrity and honour of our Ministers and the moral authority of the Government—an authority that has been undermined by the actions of some, which imply that the rules, and in some cases even the laws, do not apply to them. From Dominic Cummings to, seemingly, the Secretary of State, it is a case of do as I say, not as I do.

I thank many of the MPs who have spoken today in defence of the standards required in the ministerial code and an accountable transparent planning system. I thank the shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North (Steve Reed), for opening the debate. I thank the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden), my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), the Chair of the Select Committee, who spoke eloquently as always, and the new hon. Member for Dewsbury (Mark Eastwood), who gave a personal and touching maiden speech on which I congratulate him. I also thank my hon. Friends the Members for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum), for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy), for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith), for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake), for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel), for Stockport (Navendu Mishra), for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome) and for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones).

I also thank Government Members for their creative attempt to defend the indefensible. At the heart of their argument, the defence of the Secretary of State is that he was merely caught in a timeline of an extraordinary set of coincidences. There was the coincidental seating arrangement at a dinner, with Richard Desmond as well as four senior executives from Northern & Shell and Mace; the coincidence that the Minister was shown a four-minute promotional video for the £1 billion development by the said guests on the table; the planning approval that coincidentally occurred the day before a £50 million levy—I stress: levy—would be charged; and the coincidence that a £12,000 donation was paid into Tory coffers just two weeks later. Just coincidences.

What is not a coincidence—Tory Members skated over this one—but is a fact of the matter is that the Secretary of State overruled the planning inspectorate, was taken to the High Court by Tower Hamlets Council, and has admitted acting unlawfully, with apparent bias. I stress in big bold capital letters: unlawfully, with apparent bias. Fact. What is also a fact is that the Secretary of State has resisted every request and every attempt to disclose all correspondence leading up to this unlawful planning direction, up until this debate today. I know that, as we have been speaking in this debate, the media have been well briefed about what is going their way. If the Minister had nothing to hide, he knew what to do, and he has had weeks to do it, so why wait until now and go through all this pain and grief and claim that these are cheap political points? Unlawful. Broke the law.

At least we know now, unlike when I first called for an investigation by the Cabinet Secretary, that Mr Desmond donated to the Minister’s party after his application was approved. We know that the Minister watched a video all about the development at a fundraising dinner. In fact, Richard Desmond has been quoted by Opposition Members as saying, “He got the gist after three or four minutes.” Those were his words, not those of Labour or Scottish National party Members. The Secretary of State not only saved Mr Desmond £50 million in money that would have gone into community development by approving the application when he did—

[Kevin Hollinrake]

A levy.

[Mike Amesbury]

Yes, it was a levy, as the hon. Member is right to point out, so it would not have been his personal money out of his pocket, but it was undoubtedly a saving. After the development was given a direction— I will not say called in, but given a direction, given after the decision was overruled as unlawful—Mr Desmond saved another £106 million or so by including fewer affordable houses. Those are the very homes that many of our key workers require. We have all clapped for them every Thursday. Every Thursday, we hear “Homes for the new heroes!” Surely they need and deserve those homes.

The Housing Minister, at a recent meeting of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, was pressed and pressed again on social housing. How many social houses? What is the target for social housing? How many are going to be built? He was asked four, five or six times, but when we check Hansard to see if there was an answer, we find there was no answer at all—he said there were no targets for social housing, none at all. Under Labour, an average of just under 28,000 social houses to rent were built per year; last year, under this Government, the number was 6,600, although I might be being a little bit generous there. [Interruption.] Don’t talk to me about the definition of affordable housing—the vandalised version, which is no real definition at all. It is not true.

To conclude, the Prime Minister, outlining his expectations in the ministerial code, is very clear that there must not be any misuse of taxpayers’ money and no “actual or perceived” conflicts of interest, as pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central. If the Prime Minister is so confident that the Secretary of State has abided by the code and has nothing to hide, we would expect that he and Government Members will support this Humble Address and publish in full—I stress, in full—all documentation and emails associated with this application. That includes correspondence from the advisers, the lobbyists and the Prime Minister himself—in full. It will be interesting to see what has been spun to the media while we have been having this debate.

Planning Process: Probity

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

Thursday 11th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Just to help the House, I should say that I am expecting to run this until 11.05 am.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend set out his plans to increase the supply of affordable homes to rent and to purchase through the excellent first homes programme that he has brought forward, particularly for key workers, the heroes of the covid crisis? Will he consider directly commissioning the construction of those homes on surplus public sector land?

[Mr Speaker]

Let me just say that we are straying from what the urgent question is about, so, unfortunately, we will have to move on.