Education Funding in London
Debate between Lyn Brown and Robert Neill(8 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Robert Neill
I am just going to make this point before I start giving way again—otherwise I will not make a coherent argument at all. There is a reason for that funding, which is that London has, on many levels, greater challenges. There are far more children with English as a second language. There are higher levels of deprivation on almost any indices. There is great wealth, but there is also great deprivation, and those are closely—geographically and physically—juxtaposed. On any view, there are also extra costs involved in being a teacher or in running a school in London. The capital cost of sites is more because the land values are much higher. The cost of housing also means that teachers’ wages have to be higher. It is not illegitimate for those things to be reflected in the formula. London as a city is also the UK’s principal economic driver and puts in more to the UK economy than it takes out, so in that respect we are already subsidising the rest of the UK.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate and on the manner in which he has approached it. I agree with almost everything he has said. I come from an outer-London borough officially, but we have inner-London needs, and that is not reflected in the funding we receive from central Government. Does my hon. Friend—sorry, the hon. Gentleman—agree that we must make sure that funding is commensurate to the needs of the children in an area?
Robert Neill
The hon. Lady is almost an hon. Friend when West Ham are playing on Saturdays, and we hope for a good end to the season. She is right, and that brings me to the second point about funding. First, some outer-London boroughs are no better funded than shire counties anyway, yet in London there are much greater costs than in the rest of the country; and secondly, there is an artificial distinction in how funding in London is split up between inner and outer London. If justice is to be done in a formula, we need to move away from that distinction, which is purely historical. It goes back to the creation of the Greater London Council in 1963, when the then Inner London Education Authority was in fact part of the old London County Council, which had been a county education authority, while the outer-London boroughs had been educational authorities in their own right, either as parts of counties or as county boroughs. The historical anomaly that the hon. Lady mentions is the fact that her local authority is an amalgamation of two county boroughs that are part of the east end but were not in a county of London, so are treated as being in outer London, whereas Wandsworth, for example, which, in many respects, is much more prosperous, is an inner-London borough. That is a wholly illogical and unsustainable distinction that we need to break down because it distorts the arrangements.
Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Lyn Brown and Robert Neill
Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds). I wish her many happy returns. At my age, I have further to look back on my childhood than she has, but I remember growing up in an ordinary London suburb in a modest home that had been bought as a result of the hard work of my Labour-voting, shop steward, dock worker grandfather. That was about aspiration. There was no ideology about it. Those of us who have worked our way up in the world will not take lectures from the Labour party.
Robert Neill
I will not give way at the moment. I acknowledge the balanced contribution of the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East, but we will not take lectures from her more ideological colleagues about the importance and value of aspiration.
I also remember from my childhood how the lives of the families of my school friends who lived on neighbouring council properties were transformed by the right to buy when it was introduced by Margaret Thatcher. They were given opportunities and security that they had never had before. It is important that Opposition Members remember that the aspiration for ever to be dependent and to be renting is not the aspiration of the majority of the British people.
The hon. Lady is right to say that we all need to build more homes. I recognise that Governments of both parties have failed in that regard, but the reality is, and history shows, that home ownership peaked at 71% in 2003. That happened under the Labour Government at a time when they were largely following the economic policies of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke). After 2003, as the Labour party moved to the left, it lost economic credibility and home ownership declined steadily. The coalition inherited the mess it left behind, which had presented the market with further problems. That is the reality and there is no way Labour can escape that. That is the true history of the matter. This Bill therefore provides a welcome and much-needed boost for the housing supply. The coalition Government made a good start, but we need to do more and my right hon. and hon. Friends in the ministerial team recognise that.
My hon. Friends the Members for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) and for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond) referred to the particular issue of the London housing market. As a London MP, I endorse and support everything they said, which is why I will support their proposed amendment. The London housing market is complex and much more varied than anywhere else in the country. In looking at how constructively to introduce the right to buy for social housing tenants in London, we will have to bear in mind the particular pressures on the London market as a result of its land-replacement costs being so much higher than those in the rest of the country.
I get the sense that Ministers understand that, and my hon. Friends and I look forward to working with them to achieve an outcome that increases the total supply in London. That includes what we generally call “affordable housing,” although nowadays that term is sometimes used as a proxy for social rented housing, which is important. Perhaps we also need to consider intermediate forms of tenure, which often relate to the squeezed middle in London who are in employment, working hard and cannot immediately get on to the market, but who will never qualify for subsidised social housing. Getting that mix right is absolutely critical.
On the Bill’s planning and compulsory purchase provisions, the planning changes are welcome, particularly the increased transparency as a result of making available basic financial information about planning applications. That follows on from the work my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I did in government to refine and rationalise the rules on predetermination. We can now have a sensible debate about the pros and cons of planning decisions to be made by communities and elected representatives. That is welcome.
Compulsory purchase might not be as headline grabbing as other parts of the Bill, but it is still important. I welcome the important proposals to make advance payment of compensation easier, but I hope the Government will reconsider the rate to be paid. I know they are considering 1% to 2%, but if a business loses its land through compulsory purchase, it will have to reinvest in its business, which, in most cases, will mean going to the bank for a loan. It would be much more equitable, therefore, to align the level of compensation more closely with the going commercial rate of bank loans. I hope we can consider that.
Another point relates to the useful changes to nationally significant infrastructure projects. I understand that it might sometimes be useful to have housing ancillary to a national infrastructure project—the consultation document talks about workers’ accommodation and so on—but it would be perverse if, as under the current rules, and as a result of a nationally significant infrastructure project, land was compulsorily acquired at current use value and the acquiring authority then built and sold houses at the housing value, meaning that the original landowner loses their land without any element of the uplift that comes from the housing development. That seems anomalous and unfair, and I hope the Minister will think about it.
All in all, this is a good and constructive Bill, and I will have no hesitation supporting it in the Lobby tonight. I commend it to the House.
Growth and Infrastructure Bill
Debate between Lyn Brown and Robert Neill
Robert Neill
As a former sous-chef in the Department, I have no doubt that if my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State says he wishes to achieve a workable and viable compromise, he means it. I trust him and believe him because I know him, and I hope all my hon. Friends think the same.
Very little weight can be attached to the Opposition’s cynical approach. Having spent nearly two and a half years as a ministerial sous-chef stripping away the centralised control that the Labour party placed upon planners in this country and the constraints it placed on local authorities, I think that it ill behoves Labour Members to talk the language of localism.
Robert Neill
I will make some progress before giving way.
It is well known that throughout the history of planning legislation in this country there has been a concept of permitted development. That is not new; it goes back to 1947. It has always been accepted that it is legitimate, for reasons of public policy, from time to time to adjust the criteria that determine what constitutes permitted development, and that has always been done at national level. The difficulty with the Lords amendment is that it would allow a complete opting-out of any adjustment to national policy at a local level, and that seems to me to be nothing other than a needlessly blunt instrument. However, I accept that there is an issue about the operation of article 4 in practice. I know that from my own dealings with local authorities and from my own experience as both a Minister and a councillor.
Lyn Brown
The hon. Gentleman is very kind. I was going to ask him whether he thought that the policy was consistent with the Government’s localism agenda. I think he would agree with me that it is not. Does he agree with me that Newham council has an issue with developments on back gardens that are used as dwellings but are uninhabitable, unsanitary and completely against cohesive communities?
Robert Neill
There is a real issue in Newham and other parts of the country about developments in back gardens. When I was in the Department, it was my right hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps), then the Housing Minister, who did more to tackle the issue than any Minister before him, and that is now being carried on by my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles). This Government are helping to deal with the issue the hon. Lady raises on behalf of her constituents.
I accept that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, with his experience of the matter, understands that we need to find an article 4 system that actually works, rather than the well-intentioned but draconian outcome proposed by their lordships. Rightly or wrongly, concerns have been raised about how article 4 actually operates on the ground. That relates in part to the point my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) made about a degree of risk averseness among local government officers in recommending them to their members.
Local Government Finance Bill
Debate between Lyn Brown and Robert Neill(12 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Robert Neill
It is a pleasure to be back here under your chairmanship, Mr Hoyle, dealing with the next part of the Bill. The amendments make changes to paragraphs 12 and 15 of the schedule and some consequential changes to schedule 3. To make sense of how they operate, it is sensible to look at the scheme of how part 5 works as a whole, which I shall do as briefly as I can.
In earlier debates on the Bill, the Government have made it clear that we have always accepted there would be a need for some redistribution of business rates from resource-rich to resource-poor authorities. We intend that the redistribution should be done by way of tariffs and top-ups, which have been mentioned in earlier debates. Those will be set at a level that ensures that no authority will be worse off on day one of the scheme than they would have been under formula grant. That is a principle that we have already established. So tariffs and top-ups will be set on day one so that no authority will be worse off. Thereafter, the intention is that tariffs and top-ups will be index-linked to the retail prices index so that the value of protection provided to top-up authorities is maintained in real terms. Under paragraph 10, the basis on which tariffs and top-ups will be calculated will be set out each year in the local government finance report, which the Secretary of State must lay before the House, and will thus be subject to the same scrutiny as the report.
Once the local government finance report is approved by the House—the normal procedure—paragraph 11 requires the Secretary of State to make the necessary calculation of the tariffs and top-ups to be paid, or received by each authority, on the basis approved in the report. After the calculations have been notified to the authorities, paragraph 12 requires them and the Secretary of State to make payments in line with them.
Part 5 of the schedule also provides, purely on a precautionary basis, that the Secretary of State may at any time up to 12 months after the year to which the local government finance report relates make a further set of calculations, but with the proviso that they are made on the same basis as set out in the report. That will make sure that in the unlikely event that we later discover a mistake in the original calculations we can put it right.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
I am listening to the hon. Gentleman with interest. Is it not true that as a result of the financial calculations that will be made under the Bill, the 10% most deprived areas will lose four times as much as the 10% best-off areas?
Robert Neill
I do not accept the hon. Lady’s proposition. The whole point is that we are not dealing with the individual circumstances of authorities; that will be done in the report. The provisions set out the methodology. That is the important thing. It is worth bearing in mind that under the existing formula grant arrangements, there is provision that in exceptional circumstances the Secretary of State can make an amending report. In effect, these provisions mirror the position for dealing with the situation now; we are operating with a baseline and top-ups and tariffs, with the protection that they are uprated in line with inflation.
Paragraph 13 makes further provision to allow us to put right a mistake in the basis for calculation set out in the original report, but it is important to stress that if we did so we would again need to seek the approval of the House of Commons. The principle exists in the current system, although it has not had to be used; it is a fail-safe arrangement.