Local Government Funding

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

Wednesday 28th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

We will drop the limit to four minutes to try to give everyone equal time.

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[Jack Lopresti]

With pleasure.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Just one second. We are not going to be able to get Members in. Members have had six minutes each and I have now dropped the limit to four minutes. We are in danger of being self-indulgent if we are not careful. Some people will not get in and that is unfair when this issue matters to every constituency.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I withdraw my intervention.

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[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Like many colleagues, I will concentrate my speech on the effects of the cuts on my local council in Leeds. I must declare an interest: I am still a city councillor until 3 May.

I pay tribute to the imagination and innovation of our Labour administration and to our great set of council officers who have brought forward many new and radical ways of working despite the difficult circumstances. None the less, the depth of the cuts means that many services are at breaking point. The people of Leeds have borne the burden of maintaining services, which should be paid for from the local government grant. Leeds is a proud and compassionate city with a robust economy. I am incredibly proud of the council’s approach, which, in the words of our city leader, Judith Blake, is to

“put the needs of our most vulnerable residents first, to improve our communities and bring people together in a peaceful and cohesive society and to boost the life chances of our young people by giving them the best opportunities we possibly can.”

By 2020, Leeds City Council will have seen its grant cut, year on year, by £267 million, and the budgetary pressures are not just restricted to revenue budgets either. The city faces a gap in Government funding for capital school projects of approximately £71.7 million. To make matters worse, the Government leave it to the market of free schools and academies to choose where to build new schools. The city has responsibility for placing children in schools, but does not know where those schools will be placed.

I wish to move on to the legion achievements of Leeds City Council since its return to Labour control in 2010. The adoption of a civic enterprise approach paid dividends in the early years of the austerity Budgets, and brought with it the insourcing of housing and housing maintenance, school meals, fleet services, cleaning, catering and plant nurseries. The council also created Aspire, a staff-owned, not-for-profit social enterprise, which provides care and support services to people with learning disabilities; it is the largest co-operative in Leeds.

The council, under the most difficult of circumstances, has delivered new social housing, with a £108 million council house growth programme, which aims to deliver 1,000 new homes by 2020. Personally, I am delighted that the right-to-buy programme and the use of £3 million of prudential borrowing has meant that our great homeless charity, St George’s Crypt, is developing 45 affordable supported living units for people who are homeless or in housing need.

The Labour administration has had to make some hard political choices, but Leeds is the only local authority in England to keep all its children’s centres open. These are invaluable facilities, which helped my own children in their early years. The council has also removed charges for burials and cremations for children under 16. It is compassionate indeed. Leeds has by far the lowest funding for special educational needs of all core cities, with £378 per head against a core city average of £472. I call on the Minister to revisit that gross injustice.

I wish to concentrate my final remarks on the city’s work on climate change. As the deputy executive member for climate change and sustainability, I proudly played a part in the city’s work until my election to this place. Before the historic Conference of Parties 21, Leeds was the first authority to commit to 100% clean energy by 2050. The city has begun many projects to achieve that ambitious environmental goal. In my first few months in office, we installed more than 1,000 solar roofs on council homes and buildings, but we could not continue the programme owing to the Government’s cut in the feed-in tariff for solar. The council has had an extensive programme of replacing diesel with electric vehicles and now has a fleet of more than 70 electric vehicles.

The city is installing a district heat and power network after securing nearly £6 million in European funding. The network will heat 22,000 homes, including high-rise blocks, which are in fuel poverty. The city’s plans on clean air are ambitious, unlike those of the Government who have been dragged kicking and screaming through the courts four times by ClientEarth. Leeds has grasped the nettle and is the first city to go to consultation on a zone to cover all roads in the outer ring road, which is a very large clean air zone, and its proposals are already affecting behaviour, with First Bus investing in cleaner Euro 6 diesel vehicles.

The council needs to achieve much more on air quality, and cannot do so without Government support. I am still waiting for a real commitment from the Government to support us in Leeds. Leeds has done everything asked of it—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I call Jim McMahon.

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[Andrew Gwynne]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Given the unanimous view of the House to accept Labour’s motion on local government funding, and given that the motion ends with

“and further calls on the Government to report to the House by Oral Statement and written report before 19 April 2018 on what steps it is taking to comply with this resolution”,

that is the clear view of Members. How can we ensure that it happens?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

I think that the hon. Gentleman already knows the answer, but let me see if I can help a little. I am sure that the Government will reflect on the motion, but in the end, it is up to them, and unfortunately, it is not binding. I think that answers the question.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Is it right, Sir, that the Leader of the House has given an undertaking that within 12 weeks of such a vote she will make an oral statement to the House on it? Also, is it correct to record the vote as unanimous? If it had been unanimous, 650 MPs would have voted.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

I do not think we ever have 650, as the hon. Gentleman well knows, but allowing for that, I think it is a written report back to the House rather than a verbal report.

Department for Transport

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 27th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Thomas]

Does my hon. Friend also think it is regrettable that the Department for Transport has blocked London from accessing the new national clean air fund, given the scale of problems that diesel is causing, particularly in central and outer London?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I do not want to stop the debate, but I am going to have to drop the time limit to four minutes for the next speaker. The way we are going, it will have to go down to three to get everyone in. I am bothered about that, so can Members who have already spoken bear that in mind?

[Andy Slaughter]

I will just say that I entirely agree with my hon. Friend and will not take any further interventions.

I will give one example of how politics, rather than good sense, is governing the way that London is dealt with. It is a local example, but I think it is a good case in point. I am sure that many Members have visited the Olympia exhibition centre, an excellent Victorian centre that has been going for 100 years, serving the people of the country, not just London. Until seven years ago, it had a dedicated timetabled tube service. In response to lobbying by Conservative Members to take trains away from that part of the service and put it on to the Wimbledon part of the District line, we lost that service, despite the fact that because of development, up to 8 million visitors will be going there and it is in the most densely populated part of London.

We have to start taking sensible decisions. That is what the Mayor of London is doing. He has frozen tube fares, which were going up too quickly, for four years. He has introduced the hopper fare, which means that people changing from one bus to another do not have to pay extra. That has benefited 140 million journeys so far. He has introduced the night tube, which the previous Mayor failed to. He has reduced strike days by 65%, and he has, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West indicated, done a lot for not just walking and cycling but increasing zero-emissions vehicles and, indeed, the whole green agenda in London. Last year, he also reduced operating costs for Transport for London by £150 million in a single year.

I will briefly turn to more strategic matters. We have some major developments in London. I am a supporter of HS2, notwithstanding the disruption it is causing to my constituency and neighbouring ones, because it is one of those great transport projects that I believe the country needs. I agree, as I quite often do, with the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham that the execution of the project leaves a great deal to be desired.

I declare an interest, because HS2 is bringing a lot of jobs and homes to my constituency, and it is co-ordinating with Crossrail, which is bringing a £42 billion benefit to the UK economy. We need Crossrail. We also need Crossrail 2. I remind anybody who thinks it is a new scheme that it is the Chelsea to Hackney line from the 1970s. Far from building these great infrastructure schemes in a way that is controversial, we delay for years and sometimes decades in doing so.

Finally, one strategic project that I think is a terrible error of judgment is the expansion of Heathrow. We now know that its commercial benefit is half what the Airports Commission said. It is less than Gatwick, and the net present value of it is about zero over the 60 years. Public infrastructure, in terms of road and rail, could cost up to £18 billion. Despite paying a huge dividend to its shareholders, Heathrow is only prepared to put £1 billion of that in.

The expansion will have terrible consequences in terms of noise and air pollution. We must think again about that. I know that the shadow Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald), is applying the four tests of the Labour party and doing exactly that.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. I call Sir Robert Syms. You have four minutes.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I do not really want to make the time limit three minutes, but if Members could just knock a bit off their speeches to help one another, it will get us all there.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I was hoping that the hon. Member for North Devon (Peter Heaton-Jones) might shave a little off. If others do not follow his example, I shall be very grateful.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. The time limit will have to come down to three minutes. I was hoping every speaker could have given 20 or 30 seconds, but unfortunately that did not happen.

Local Government Finance

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

Wednesday 7th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. May I help the hon. Lady a little? We did have the police debate before. I presume that as you were going to name the hon. Member for Bolton West (Chris Green) in the way that you have and quote the newspaper, you made him aware that you were going to speak about him. Did you do that? I am just a bit concerned that he has not been notified.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

My apologies, Mr Deputy Speaker. I will let the hon. Gentleman know after this debate that I have referred to him.

Let me get back to the facts. Certain parts of the country need extra resources, and any funding formula that is created must take account of that. Many areas are unable to raise the money that they need and it is a big challenge for local authorities. While I am on my feet, may I ask for some extra money to fix the potholes in Bolton? May I also ask about an application that the council has made in respect of a mill on Crescent Road and a brownfield site being turned into housing? We still have not heard any response from Ministers about whether they are giving permission for building to take place. Finally, on housing, when the Labour Government came to power in 1997 they spent £18 billion on repairing homes. They did that in their first few years in office. So when people say we did not look after the issue of housing, I say that we did. We then also started building homes as well. We need more of those.

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[Imran Hussain]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I apologise to the Minister, but I have been advised that I must raise this point of order immediately. When I took part in the debate earlier, I should have put on the record and referred Members to my registered interest as a serving local councillor.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

Excellent—sorted. Minister.

[Rishi Sunak]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. [Laughter.] I am sorry—Mr Deputy Speaker.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

I may be called Lindsay, but—[Laughter.]

[Rishi Sunak]

We have gone above and beyond the four-year deal in listening and responding to what the sector wants. That is why last year we allowed increased flexibility in the use of the adult social care precept, and why this year we have proposed additional flexibility on the core council tax referendum principle.

On adult social care, of which we have heard much today, on top of the extra £2 billion announced at the spring Budget last year, we have now announced an additional £150 million extension to the adult social care support grant, and we have increased the rural services delivery grant to its highest-ever level.

We are also building on the highly popular business rates retention scheme. Local authorities estimate that in the year just finishing they will keep about £1.3 billion in business rates growth, and we expect this to be maintained going forward.

[Rishi Sunak]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. He rightly points out that he raised this issue in Prime Minister’s Question Time earlier and has made representations to me about it. I am pleased to confirm that my officials and I are looking into the matter. He makes the point well. The existing system does leave some scope for ambiguity, and we will look into that.

The vital funding that comes from business rates retention—over £1 billion—is a direct result of local authorities driving economic growth in their areas, and it is on top of the core settlement funding that we have announced today. Over the long term, local government will be transformed, becoming increasingly self-sufficient with local resources funding local services. But to achieve that, we all know that the funding formula needs to become fairer, more transparent and more responsive to changing demands. Getting it right will of course be a challenge, but the prize if we can do that is a system that will be truly fit for the modern world and allow councils to face the future with confidence.

The business rates retention proposals that we mentioned earlier are a key step in this journey, and we hope to see local authorities retaining 75% of business rates from 2020-21. There is a great deal of enthusiasm across the country for this new model, and I can assure the House that I and my Department are committed to working with the sector to make this a success.

I turn briefly to some of the specific points that have been made. The hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) and my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) were right to pay tribute to local councillors who have, we acknowledge, made difficult decisions and have done an extraordinary job over the past few years. My hon. Friends the Members for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski), for North Dorset, for Waveney (Peter Aldous), for Redditch (Rachel Maclean) and for Ludlow (Mr Dunne) talked about rural areas and the need for fair funding. I can assure them that we are committed to that. The fair funding review will specifically take a fresh look at how council tax should be taken into account when redistributing income, and relative costs of delivering services will also be considered.

My hon. Friends the Members for Corby (Tom Pursglove) and for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) rightly talked about the role of governance and leadership in local councils. They were followed by my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris), who rightly said that it is not just about how much, but how it is spent. Unaccompanied asylum seekers and the costs that councils have to bear were raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Corby and the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke). I am pleased to announce that the Government have allocated funding from a £29 million pot for exactly that. My hon. Friend the Member for Corby will be pleased to know that Northamptonshire will receive £231,000 from that grant, and the hon. Member for Dover will know that Kent will receive more than £1 million.

Opposition Members talked a lot about whether the funding was fair. They pointed to Knowsley, so they will be pleased to learn that it receives core spending power per dwelling 26% higher than the average. Indeed, across the country, the 10 most deprived local authorities receive core spending power per dwelling 23% higher than the least deprived. We heard a lot from the Opposition about money. Indeed, the hon. Member for Dover put it well: there is no question to which the answer is not more money. We all know where that money has to come from—our hard-working taxpayers. Under the last Labour Government council tax doubled, and that is what we would have to look forward to again.

This is a settlement that honours our commitment to local government—delivering certainty, recognising the challenges and making additional resources available, all while keeping excessive council tax rises in check. It gives councils the resources they need to provide the world-class services that their communities expect and deserve. I commend it to the House.

Question put.

The House proceeded to a Division.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

I remind the House that the motion is subject to double-majority voting: of the whole House and of Members representing constituencies in England.

Housing, Planning and the Green Belt

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Due to the number of Members who wish to speak, the time limit will have to drop to six minutes. Hopefully, we will not have to drop it again.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I am going to increase the time limit back to eight minutes because a couple of speakers have withdrawn.

Parking (Code of Practice) Bill

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

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

[Sir Greg Knight]

May I take up this theme? The Bill is really saying to cowboy operators, “‘Get Back’. You will no longer have a ‘Ticket to Ride’. And if you do not follow the statutory code of practice, it will be a case, for your business, of ‘Hello, Goodbye.’”

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. May I suggest that we all want to be “Homeward Bound”?

[Pete Wishart]

I think all this just goes to show how much in harmony the members of MP4 are on these issues.

This is a particularly useful Bill, which I strongly support. I believe that it is absolutely necessary. Private parking companies have become a curse in so many of our communities, and they are out of control in so many areas. They are a blight on communities, harassing motorists and driving tourists away from many towns and city centres. The city of Perth is plagued by these cowboys. I have received more complaints about one car park in Kinnoull Street than about any other issue in my constituency. That car park is operated by the John Wayne of all the cowboys, the appalling and loathed Smart Parking, a company that blights communities throughout Scotland, including Inverness, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry). It distributes fines like confetti, and its so-called smart technology seems almost designed to frustrate motorists and harvest fines from them.

Another company in my constituency, UKPCS in St Catherine’s Retail Park in Perth, has even managed to outdo Smart Parking. One part of this free car park is ringed with signs saying that anybody who parks there who has the temerity to leave that zone and access facilities in other parts of the retail park will be fined up to £100, and people’s privacy is being invaded by car park attendants taking photographs of unsuspecting customers to prove this crime. This is the level of harassment our constituents are now having to put up with on a daily basis at the hands of these cowboys, and it has to come to an end.

The sheer scale of their preying on our constituents is almost industrial in its operation and organisation. A private parking ticket is now being issued every 4.5 seconds, the equivalent of 13 per minute. The RAC estimates that the total value of illegitimate parking tickets issued by private companies in a single year could be as much as £100 million. These parking cowboys know they are on to a good thing, and they know what to do now is build parking ticket charges into their business models in order to increase their profits at the expense of our constituents. This Bill will hopefully signal the beginning of the end of the parking cowboys.

Self-regulation has obviously failed dramatically. The British Parking Association is as much use as a multi-storey car park in the middle of Gobi desert. The parking cowboys hide behind BPA membership to give a veneer of legitimacy. Every time I take up issues with Smart Parking, it just comes back to me and says, “We’re members of the BPA so it should be all right.”

What do our constituents think? Some 93% of participants in an RAC survey think a Bill aimed at tackling the issue is a good idea, so the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire is on to something here; 84% want fines to be proportionate to the contravention; 74% want fines capped; and 81% of motorists want a national standard on signs. The good news for the right hon. Gentleman is that 78% want a parking regulator that enforces good practice.

We have heard some of the things that should be included; I will make a couple of pitches, and I hope to serve on the Bill Committee to pursue them. When people receive PCNs, their rights should be included on them. Too often the parking cowboys dress them up as fines; they are not fines. They are not even effectively legally enforceable; what they are is a statement to say that the recipient has somehow breached the terms and conditions of using that private land, and if the parking company were to pursue them, it would have to go to the civil court and prove that they broke those terms and conditions.

I make a plea, too, on the use of debt collection agencies, which has to end. They are grossly invasive, threatening and meant to intimidate people into paying. I have seen some appalling examples of the use of debt collection agencies and how they increase the intensity of their threats and intimidation. I have had constituents who have had 10 threatening letters, which increase to the point where I almost think they are going to be taken out and shot at dawn, such is the level of their threats.

The National Motorists Action Group has also found an unsavoury profitable collusion between private parking companies and debt collection agencies. It is right that PPCs should expect settlement and that they write letters, but local authorities do not use private collection agencies, so if it is good enough for the statutory sector it should be good enough for the private sector, too.

I wholeheartedly agree with the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate (Luke Hall) about DVLA access. I believe parking operators should have to prove they are entitled to get DVLA access. I know that is not being considered, but I would like it to be. Parking operators should meet a test to show they are a responsible parking operator in order to get DVLA access, but if there are any examples of bad practice, DVLA access must be removed. I like the AA’s suggestions and ideas about monitoring hotspots through postcodes, and if something peculiar and particular is going on, as in Perth, the private operator has an obligation to resolve it and, if it is not resolved to our satisfaction, they lose access to the DVLA. That is a straightforward suggestion.

I am also grateful that this will cover the whole of the United Kingdom, so that areas like mine are covered. My constituency has been particularly blighted by the parking cowboys and hopefully this will mark the beginning of their twilight months.

In my experience, people are happy to pay for their parking, and an arrangement that ensures that parking on private land is properly charged and any transgressions are proportionately tackled is the way forward. Surely it is not beyond our wit to design such an arrangement.