Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Foster of Bath Excerpts

Monday 12th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Paul Burstow (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)]

1. What steps he is taking to support town centres.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Don Foster)]

Before I reply, I am sure that the whole House will join me in congratulating my right hon. Friend on his recent appointment to the Privy Council.

The Government have recently announced support to help revitalise more than 300 town centres in England through the town team partners scheme, which is in addition to the 27 Portas pilots that were announced in the summer. Building on this year’s success, we are delighted to announce another “Love your local market” campaign for next May.

[Paul Burstow]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his kind remarks and for his answer.

Our town centres need to adapt to changing times and circumstances, and in particular the fact that we have an ageing society and growing numbers of people who suffer from dementia. The Prime Minister identified dementia as one of the Government’s key priorities, and the Government are working with the Alzheimer’s Society through the dementia challenge. Will my right hon. Friend ensure that his Department works with the Alzheimer’s Society to ensure that our town centres are dementia friendly?

[Mr Foster]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his advocacy of the rights of people with dementia, and on his work in that field. He will be delighted to know that a couple of days ago the Prime Minister received the latest report on this issue, and I can announce that more than 20 cities, towns and villages have already signed up to become more dementia friendly. We are working with a wide range of groups within society, including leading businesses, high street banks and others, to find ways of going still further. For example, Tesco supermarket is training its staff to provide better support for customers with dementia, as are many of our banks.

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

Will the Minister condemn the disruption caused by far-right groups that, twice in the past month, have brought their extreme and racist demonstrations into Rotherham town centre, landing us with a bill of half a million pounds in policing costs and lost trade?

[Mr Foster]

I certainly do condemn that, and I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for raising the issue. The Department is taking a lot of steps to bring communities together, and we will shortly be announcing further funding for further such measures. The right hon. Gentleman will be delighted to know that only a few days ago, my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister announced a further £214,000 for the “TELL MAMA” campaign, which is about reporting acts of anti-Muslim hatred.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

People are delighted that Desborough and Kettering town centres are newly designated town team partners. When might they expect to receive the extra funding that goes with that designation?

[Mr Foster]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on his campaign to achieve that success for his constituents. The money available is £10,000, and some of the 300 successful towns have already received those funds. If the cheque is not quite in the post, I assure him that it will be fairly soon.

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

Are not the Government’s attempts to revive town centres undone by the appalling Growth and Infrastructure Bill, which allows major out-of-town retail parks to be designated of national significance? When will we have clear guidance and joined-up thinking on our town centres?

[Mr Foster]

The hon. Gentleman is simply wrong. The national planning policy framework has a clear “town centre first” policy, and the Department is putting a large amount of funding into measures such as the Portas pilots schemes—and many others—to provide support for our town centres. The Government are supporting town centres, which have experienced real problems given the disastrous situation in which this country’s economy was left.

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

2. What progress his Department has made on developing proposals to reform the Audit Commission.

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[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

8. What assessment he has made of recent trends in private sector rents in local authority areas close to London; and if he will make a statement.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Don Foster)]

There is no definitive source of data for rent increases at local authority level. What data we do have show an annual increase of between 0.9% and 3.3% to June 2012 nationally. For Slough, the Valuation Office Agency has published an indicative average rent of £750 over the same period. The figures for neighbouring boroughs range from £650 in Dartford to £1,200 in South Buckinghamshire.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

I feel tempted to give the Minister a geography lesson, but I will resist the temptation. Is he aware that spending in Slough on emergency housing provision for temporarily homeless people has gone up by 10 times in the last year? The reason for that is not an increase in homelessness; it is that landlords will not accept people who are being paid the local housing allowance rate as they prefer to wait for people being sent from London at higher rents and with premiums. What are Slough and other local authorities on the boundaries of London supposed to do about that?

[Mr Foster]

I think that all hon. Members are aware of that problem, as we all share it in our own constituencies. We are taking steps to address it, however. The hon. Lady should take a look at our latest moves that will make it easier for local authorities to use the privately rented sector. I can say to her that across the country some 30% of private affordable rental accommodation falls within the housing benefit levels, and we have invested £200 million to have more housing built specifically for that purpose. The key is to get more accommodation.

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

Will not prosperous home counties such as east Berkshire and north Oxfordshire have to use our housing stock as effectively as possible? Will the Minister compliment housing associations such as Sanctuary Housing, which recently got together tenants in under-occupied property where children had grown up but had now left home, and tenants in over-occupied property, to see whether it was possible to arrange swaps so that the housing stock could be used more efficiently?

[Mr Foster]

I welcome what my hon. Friend’s local authority and many others are doing in that regard. We have put in place measures to make sure the limited accommodation that is available is made use of most effectively in precisely the way he describes, but the key is building more affordable housing, and that is what this Government are doing.

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[Ms Buck]

With private rents in London in particular soaring and driving up homelessness, can the Minister tell us which of the following two statements is consistent with Government policy: the statement by the previous Housing Minister, the right hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps), that homeless households should not be uprooted from their local communities and moved hundreds of miles away, or what is actually happening in the seven west London local authorities, who in their homelessness strategy have talked of their aim to manage the movement of households out of London?

[Mr Foster]

There is no evidence that across the board there are rising—or rocketing—rents as the hon. Lady described. Only on Friday we announced measures that will make it easier for local authorities to make use of the privately rented sector. We have also introduced measures to ensure that accommodation is appropriate, taking account of not only the accommodation itself but local facilities, including schools. That will help councils keep people in the local area.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

10. What progress he has made on implementing the localism agenda in respect of planning policy.

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[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

18. If he will estimate the potential number of affordable homes, jobs and apprenticeships that would be created if the revenue from the auction of the 4G mobile telephone spectrum was used to fund an affordable house building programme by his Department.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Don Foster)]

As the 4G auction has not yet taken place, we do not know what the total amount of generated revenue will be, but hon. Members should be aware that £600 million has already been allocated from the fund for science and innovation. We are making great progress in the development of affordable housing, and we hope to have 170,000 more affordable homes over the period, with £19.5 billion of investment.

[Alex Cunningham]

If the Government did the right thing, the cash could pay for 100,000 social and affordable homes, cut homelessness, create nearly 600,000 jobs, make a major contribution to the economic recovery and help rescue Ministers from their appalling house-building record. Will the Minister stand up to the Chancellor and demand the cash?

[Mr Foster]

No, what I will do is ask the hon. Gentleman where he thinks the £2.5 billion will come from, given that Ofcom put out a press release today saying that it expects the amount raised to be roughly £1.3 billion; remind him that we have already allocated £600 million of the sum; and point out the rather bizarre situation in which the press release to which he refers says that a third of the revenue will be used for affordable rented homes, whereas the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey),on the Labour Front Bench, says that the Labour party is against them.

[Mr Sharma]

With the latest affordable housing supply figures showing an across-the-board decrease, does the Minister agree that his Government’s failure to build enough affordable homes and homes for social rent, combined with their economic policies, are fuelling homelessness and rough sleeping?

[Mr Foster]

I am absolutely staggered that the hon. Gentleman asks me that question, bearing in mind that, when his party was in power, 421,000 social houses were lost—became unavailable—whereas the coalition Government are seeking to build 175,000 additional properties.

[Stephen Pound]

On the subject of being staggered, the House was certainly so when during the previous DCLG questions the Secretary of State compared himself to Bertie Wooster. Whereas the right hon. Gentleman’s aspirations may be to the Drones club and an agreeable weekend in Blandings castle, many of my constituents want no more than a roof, and many of them want a job. The 4G revenue can provide them with both. Why not, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) said, stand up to those bloodless mandarins in the Treasury and say, “The people come before some fiscal policy”?

[Mr Foster]

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has already made it clear where he does not want to be: on a bushtucker trial. I was surprised to see the hon. Gentleman, for whom I have a great deal of admiration, table a take-out question from the Whips Office, and I am disappointed that he has not followed it through with a question that acknowledges the significant contribution that the Government are making to getting a roof over somebody’s head and getting them a job after the mess left by the Labour Government.

[Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

May I remind my right hon. Friend that the previous Government built fewer council houses in 13 years than the Thatcher Government built in 10 years? That said, it is quite a good question—can we not take on board what is being proposed?

[Mr Foster]

My hon. Friend must also look at the figures. We do not yet know what will be available, but £600 million has been allocated. There will still be questions about what will happen to house building in the period after the current spending review, and we are looking at that at the moment. Clearly, we want to have more houses, and more affordable homes. That is what we are already delivering, and we want to deliver more.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State knows that millions are locked out of home ownership, that families are struggling to pay ever higher levels of rent in the private rented sector and that council waiting lists are lengthening by the day. Why will he not support the investment of the 4G windfall in a programme that the National Housing Federation has said would result in 100,000 homes being built and more than 500,000 jobs being created? Does he not agree with the director general of the CBI, John Cridland, who has said that that is exactly what the economy needs?

[Mr Foster]

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has done more than anyone in this House to get house building going, with the additional money that was announced on 6 September, which will result in a further 10,000 affordable homes and bring a further 5,000 empty homes back into use, and with measures involving £200 million to get more privately rented accommodation, additional support for homeless people and so on. My Secretary of State can stand up and be proud of what he has achieved, unlike the Labour Government, who failed people in regard to house building during their 13 years in power.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

15. What consideration his Department has given to the proposal by the Association of Metropolitan Fire and Rescue Authorities for a flat-rate reduction for all fire services.

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[Andrew Stunell (Hazel Grove) (LD)]

22. How many homes for social rent have been (a) built and (b) sold in England since 1997.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Don Foster)]

Before I answer the question, I am sure the whole House would wish to join me in congratulating my right hon. Friend on his elevation to the Privy Council.

As I mentioned earlier, the total number of social rented housing stock fell by a staggering 421,000 units from March 1997 to March 2010.

[Andrew Stunell]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his disarming answer. Many families in my constituency are stuck on the housing waiting list, and their plight has been made much worse by that sale of houses by Labour. Will he please push the Government strongly to increase their social and affordable housing programme to deliver for my constituents in Hazel Grove?

[Mr Foster]

My right hon. Friend can be absolutely assured that the Department and I will continue to press the Treasury, but he will know that we have already delivered the funding for a programme that will deliver 170,000 affordable homes, and that we have recently announced further funds that will increase the number of affordable homes and the number of empty properties that will be brought back into use. I congratulate my right hon. Friend’s own council on receiving nearly £1 million through the new homes bonus, bringing more units back into use. Nearly £2 million, furthermore, awaits his local authority from the Homes and Communities Agency to do more good work.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)]

T2. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

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[Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

In a recent survey, one in four tenants reported that they had been ripped off by letting agents. Do the Government recognise that and, if so, what are they going to do about it?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Don Foster)]

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s concern. He will be aware, however, that a number of letting agents have come together to form the safe agent scheme. We urge all people using such agencies to look out for that scheme, which gives an absolute guarantee that the funds are available to provide the necessary support.