Localism Bill

Kris Hopkins Excerpts

Monday 17th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Kris Hopkins (Keighley) (Con)]

As a former leader of the council—and obviously a councillor—of the great city of Bradford, I welcome this Bill. I have some reservations and I am sure that as time goes by we can thrash out some of those issues, but my local council will no longer have to doff its cap to a regional development agency to ask for its own money. My local council will not have to argue about ridiculous housing figures or argue the toss about child pregnancy figures when every professional said they were unachievable and primary care trust chairs and directors had to intervene on the Government to explain the ridiculous targets that had been set. There was paper-chasing, whole departments had to be established to facilitate inspectorates, initiatives came through where one-off moneys were chased and a few days’ notice was given to bid for millions of pounds. Such ridiculous initiatives—

[Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Kris Hopkins]

No, I will not. The shadow Secretary of State said earlier that she was concerned that the Secretary of State had sent a note about the Queen’s jubilee coming up. I got a note reminding me that it was St George’s day. I did not need to receive a note from the Secretary of State to tell me that it was St George’s day, because we celebrated that in Bradford with great pomp and with all the community behind us.

The Bill will end the farce of the Standards Board for England and the cost of the eternal process of the regional strategic planning regime. I welcome the idea that we can tackle rogue developers in the planning process and that we will not have to facilitate retrospective planning permission. The cost to individual councils of pursuing individual developers is outrageous. I am concerned that we should really mean localism and local determination on planning. My local parish council rejected a Tesco application and my local district council unanimously rejected it, but it then went to the inspectorate, which overturned that decision. Those decisions were overturned in the face of the local populace. I want some clarification on how we are going to address the anomaly, whereby local people are refused what they want.

I am concerned about housing. People can argue the toss about tenures, but we need to build more houses. Affordable housing must be facilitated. The recession has wiped out a whole skill base as far as housing is concerned and I want to see how Business Link, business development and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills will support local government in utilising that housing land.

I am very concerned about elected mayors. My constituency was put into Bradford and although I like the city and people of Bradford, the people of Keighley are not too enthusiastic about being part of Bradford council. The idea that there is a very good chance that somebody from Bradford might be the mayor of Bradford will further alienate the people of Keighley, who will be further detached from that administration. I look forward to using one of the referendum options so that the constituency of Keighley can break away from Bradford council, if it needs to, and form its own administration.

As for the devolution of powers, it is quite easy to devolve powers when there is no money left in the kitty. I look forward to the time when there is more in the kitty, when we have put the economy right and when our local people can make those decisions. Individual departments need to respect their responsibility, as central Government have been an absolute nightmare for local government, trying to join it up to make decisions.

Finally, all the great things proposed in the Bill are undermined by the fact that democracy has been undermined. The postal voting system is undermining local democracy and must be addressed.