New Developments on Green-belt Land

Maria Caulfield Excerpts

Wednesday 12th October 2022 Westminster Hall

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi) on securing this important debate, although I shall start by disagreeing with her slightly.

In the Lewes constituency, we had a good system. We had a local plan in place, and nearly every town and parish in the Lewes district had neighbourhood plans, which were voted on by local people and put together by parish councillors. That was delivering our housing numbers in the right place and delivering the right type of accommodation, which enabled older people to stay in their communities by downsizing and young families to begin their life in their community with a starter home.

Our issue is that in 2019 the Lib Dem-Greens took over the district council and let that local plan go out of date, and with it the five-year land supply. With that, all the neighbourhood plans have fallen, and since then we have been inundated with applications from developers, who seized the opportunity to target every greenfield site in the constituency for housing development.

The local planning authority has refused most of those applications on the principle that they are not in the local plan and not in the neighbourhood plan, but those refusals are being overturned almost daily by the planning inspector, as my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Caroline Ansell) suggested, and there is inaction from our local council, which is squabbling over housing numbers. Meanwhile, not having a local plan in place means that our communities, parishes and town councils, which worked so hard to accommodate the housing numbers they were given, are being left to face the consequences.

[Rachael Maskell]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Maria Caulfield]

I will not because there is little time left.

That is not fair because the housing being built on those sites is not affordable for local families. It is £400,000 or £500,000 for a starter home, and those are three-bedroom or four-bedroom homes that do not allow our older residents to downsize and stay, or our new young families to start their life in their community. This is not the right housing. We were trying to build communities, not just homes, and the system has failed us.

I have seven key asks of the Minister. Many Members have raised the brownfield first strategy, which was highlighted by the previous Prime Minister and hinted at by our current Prime Minister. We need clarity on that. In Lewes town, we had the Phoenix quarter, which would have delivered thousands of new homes. The Government gave the council £1 million to start that scheme, but not a brick has been laid on the site. Meanwhile, our green fields are being concreted over.

We need to be able to force local councils to get their local plans in place. It cannot be right that we had a plan in place that delivered the housing numbers and the housing that our communities wanted, but that the local plan is not happening because the council is squabbling over housing numbers. All that is now a hostage to fortune. It is the same in the Wealden district of my constituency, which I share with my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne. There has never been a local plan and the district is holding out for the Government either to scrap housing numbers or to deliver a different housing strategy. Meanwhile, every greenfield site is open to challenge from developers.

The standard method was touched on by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Gavin Williamson). I have received letters from the previous Housing Minister saying that it is not a target, just an indication, but local councils do not feel confident enough to take matters to appeal, because when they do so the planning inspector does not uphold that view. The 2014 housing numbers, which form the standard method, as has been highlighted, are inaccurate and out of date.

We need to take the heat out of the south-east. Members across the Chamber might not agree with me, but we are talking about applications in their thousands, not their hundreds. We have GPs who have closed their lists because they cannot cope, schools that are full and roads that are congested. At the end of the day, we are just not building the housing that helps our local communities, and residents have had enough.

On the land banking issue, Oliver Letwin did a review a couple of years ago and said there was no problem—“Nothing to see here, folks.” Actually, I agree with the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) and my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne. Wealden district has 8,000 units that have planning permission, but because they are mainly on brownfield sites, it is cheaper, quicker and easier for developers to challenge the council, win at appeal and build on greenfield sites instead.

We absolutely need to support our local planning authorities. In the case of the proposed Mornings Mill development, the council has refused it twice and it has gone to appeal. I am concerned not about the cost but about the principles behind that decision. What is the point of having planning authorities? We might as well give the decision to planning inspectors in the first place. We have tried to build the housing that we are required to build, we did our local plan and our neighbourhood plan, and it cannot be right that decisions by democratically elected councillors are overturned. Developers have the money and legal expertise to be able to win every single case.

Finally, I will address the issue of local plans and five-year land supplies going out of date. Does it really need to take years? They were good plans, and there are only a couple of sites that did not come to fruition. It should take months to revamp that, and we should be able to keep those local plans and the legal protections they provide for our constituencies.

The odds are stacked against our communities at the moment, and we need the Minister’s help. We want to build housing, but it must be the right type of housing for our communities, and we want to build communities and not just homes.

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

I thank all of you for your co-operation this morning.

Deaths of Homeless People

Maria Caulfield Excerpts

Tuesday 1st October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Luke Hall]

There is absolutely no shying away from today’s figures, so I take what the hon. Gentleman says head-on. The local housing allowance freeze is, of course, due to end in March 2020, and the Government are considering options for after the freeze. We are having continuing conversations about that issue.

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

Will the Minister join me in congratulating Lewes District Council, which along with Wealden and Rother managed to secure £120,000 earlier this year from the £46 million rough sleeping initiative? Does he agree that it is this Government who, for the first time, have got serious about tackling the causes of homelessness by introducing the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 and providing £1.2 billion of support for tackling all the causes of homelessness?

[Luke Hall]

I thank my hon. Friend and congratulate her local authority. One of the important points about the Homelessness Reduction Act is that for the first time, we have a year’s worth of data showing the importance of the early intervention that she talks about. She is right that it is backed up with £1.2 billion of funding, but of course today’s statistics show that there is so much more to be done.

Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2019 Section 6

Maria Caulfield Excerpts

Monday 30th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

We are 100% genuine in our commitment to deliver on the moral and legal obligation to come forward with those regulations. Our intention at the moment is to come forward with regulations but to do so through a process that genuinely engages stakeholders and gives people the opportunity to express their view on the fairness and practicality of what is being proposed. But I hear what the hon. Lady says, and I am more than happy to follow up with her personally if she is interested.

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

I echo the call for this to be done through primary legislation. I think the nervousness on both sides of the House is about the definition of a victim, because there are victims out there who will refuse to take any compensation if they feel that terrorists will benefit from this. Given the lack of clarity from the Victims’ Commissioner, it is incumbent on us to ensure that the definition is watertight in legislation.

[Mr Hurd]

I understand the point made by both the hon. Member for Belfast South (Emma Little Pengelly) and my hon. Friend, and I have a feeling—new as I am to this post—about the underlying sensitivity of this issue. I will come on to the definition of victims, which I know is an extremely controversial issue but one which we see as being distinct from eligibility for payments under the scheme that we are working through.

As set out in the update report, to meet this commitment we have been undertaking work to develop the detailed arrangements for the scheme, with factual input from the Northern Ireland civil service. As the House would expect, that has included consideration of other relevant schemes, detailed design work, discussion with certain key stakeholders and making plans for future engagement, and preparing detailed advice on the proposed architecture of the scheme: its purpose and principles, levels and methods of payments, eligibility—critically—and other technical considerations, the assessment process and wider support arrangements for scheme applicants.

During the passage of the 2019 Act through Parliament, Ministers were clear that “through no fault of their own” would be the guiding principle as we develop the regulations required by the Act. The current Administration and I share that conviction, and I have heard the Prime Minister express it from the Dispatch Box. We must ensure that the scheme gets to those who need it most, but not at the expense of paying a pension to terrorists injured by their own hand. We are clear that any legal duty imposed by the Victims and Survivors (Northern Ireland) Order 2006 relates to the appointment and functions of the Commissioner for Victims and Survivors for Northern Ireland, and not to wider issues such as the provision of a victims’ payment scheme. It is our view that any change to that definition—a hotly contested matter—is a matter for the Northern Ireland parties, and we believe that it is a separate discussion from those about regular payments to victims. We do intend to deliver on our obligations within the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2019, and we do propose to engage widely on the details of this scheme ahead of the date by which the regulations must be made. The views received on our proposed approach will help to inform final decisions on how that scheme will be implemented.

In conclusion, more than 20 years on from the Belfast/Good Friday agreement, while Northern Ireland is clearly a different place in many positive ways, the legacy of the troubles—as many in this House know much better than I ever will—casts a long shadow over many aspects of life in the here and now. We must never forget that over 40,000 people were injured during a 30-year period, and those still living carry a significant burden. We know in this House that it is difficult to move on and secure a better future for Northern Ireland without dealing with the past. The Stormont House agreement provides a framework for doing so, with much detail that needs to be worked through and discussed further, but surely we should not let those discussions hold up or divert a pragmatic determination across all parties to deliver, at pace, a fair victims’ payments scheme that those most seriously affected by the troubles need and deserve, and this Government are committed to work with all parties and stakeholders to deliver just that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Emma Little Pengelly]

I thank my hon. Friend for that valuable contribution. One of the interesting aspects of the proposal is that it has been so long in gestation that the debate, knowledge and evidence of the impact of the psychological injuries has grown. The original proposal was for the severely physically disabled victims, but I welcome the recommendation in the commissioner’s report that both physical and psychological injuries should be covered. The key point is the impact on the ability to gain employment and thus an employment-related pension.

On the Victims Commissioners’ advice, I was vocal at the time about my deep disappointment that it did not reflect the strong feeling among many thousands of people across Northern Ireland that the pension should not go to victim-makers. Throughout the many years I have been involved in this project it has been clear that that was a significant view among the victims and in the wider population. I have spoken with the commissioner on many occasions and I have huge respect for her. She does many things well, and I know that many victims have respect for her. I met her monthly or bi-monthly over several years and repeatedly raised with her my concerns that if the victims pension included the victim-makers, many people would be deeply hurt by that. What I said was that surely we have a responsibility first of all to do no harm. In this case, the issue is to do no further harm and cause no further hurt to the very genuine victims who are desperately in need of this proposal. I acknowledge that this tricky issue has held up discussions for some time, but the biggest impact on progress has been the lack of a Northern Ireland Assembly. I strongly welcome the Government’s commitment to ensure that this pension does not go to those who were victim-makers.

The Commissioner for Victims and Survivors has defended her report and said that she is caught by and operates under the definition of the 2006 order, but I find it unacceptable and I was deeply disappointed that the report made no reference to the existence of those other views. If I were a Minister or the Secretary of State and I was asking for this advice, I would want the advice to be clear: “There are these views on this matter, but also be aware there are that a significant number of other views, and if you progress down this recommended path hurt will be caused, victims will come out and say that they will not receive it, and that they are deeply upset by it.” That exists as a view and it should have been reflected in the commissioner’s report.

I find the fact that that was missing from the commissioner’s report deeply disappointing. I genuinely feel that it has led to her losing the confidence of a huge number of victims across Northern Ireland and that her position is unsustainable. That is the position that I have outlined to the Secretary of State, and I was therefore disappointed to see that the commissioner’s term was extended. It is key that any commissioner should have the support and confidence of the people she is supposed to speak about, and in this case what has happened has led to her losing that.

I want to move on to the specifics of the proposal in the report, which is the special pension for victims and survivors, and to touch on a number of very technical issues. As I mentioned, I am concerned about the proposal to introduce this through regulations because there were a number of aspects that need to be debated and aired for potential amendment. The proposal from the Victims Commissioner deals with the method by which people will be assessed, and she has asked very strongly that this is done in a way that is victim-centred. I asked the Minister and the Secretary of State to look carefully at the Victims and Survivors Service process. I was involved in the setting up of that new institution, and there was a lot of genuine intent about some of the mechanisms to assess the level of need of the victims and survivors, but within a very short period of time it became absolutely clear that victims and survivors were being re-traumatised or troubled by the process of questioning and assessment. They felt that this was a test that they either failed or succeeded at.

In due course, we have to change that process, so I ask the Secretary of State and the Minister to look very carefully at it and to ensure that however people submit their applications and however the assessment is done, it takes account of the types of evidence and documentation already in the system—perhaps with the Victims and Survivors Service—to avoid victims and survivors having to go through the process again. It should be a victim-centred, sympathetic and empathetic environment, not a questioning environment or one in which people feel they are in the witness box giving evidence.

The Minister and the Secretary of State should also ensure that it is done swiftly. One of the big challenges with the Victims and Survivors Service was that the assessments take time, and dealing with hundreds or thousands of applications could risk people waiting six or 12 months before getting their assessment. Perhaps the Secretary of State or the Minister could put their mind to how that can be done in a way that ensures victims and survivors can get financial help quickly while they are going through the process and waiting for it to end.

The Minister referred to the fact that we have had 1,000 days without devolution, and that to me is an absolute travesty. It comes back to the point that I raised in the earlier debate: this House has broken the precedent that it does not legislate on devolved matters. This House has legislated on devolved matters. Victims and survivors of the troubles—and the survivors of historical institutional abuse, those who are sitting on waiting lists, those who are dying on waiting lists, people who are waiting for their child to get an autism assessment, and people who are in desperate need of public services—ask me why those issues were picked for this House to decide to legislate on, despite the convention. Why pick those issues on which to break precedent and the convention of this House by legislating on them, while in this case the victims and survivors are suffering pain every hour of every day, and they have done so since they got their injuries 20 or 30 years ago?

These are victims in pain saying, “Why do we have to wait? Why are we being told, ‘No, no, this House doesn’t deal with that’? This House can only do that by regulation. This House does not legislate on that.” This House has legislated. It has legislated on cases that are considerably less urgent, where people are not in pain, where people are not in real financial need. As I said about the historical institutional abuse inquiry, I urge the Minister and the Secretary of State to take swift action. This House and its legislative timetable, whatever is announced in the Queen’s Speech, could all fall. Who knows what will happen in the next few months? But this is the important point: the Minister can do this. He can introduce this provision as a piece of legislation. He can get the time to do that and he can do it very quickly. The message needs to go out to people in Northern Ireland—the victims and survivors who are suffering—that this is not a case of can’t; it is a case of won’t. I ask the Minister to make a promise to this House and those victims and survivors that he will decide to no longer go with “won’t” but to move to “I will”. I ask that he introduce it as quickly as possible to ensure that those victims get a special pension by and before 31 October, because he can do that.

[Maria Caulfield]

May I echo the hon. Lady’s point? I think there is a nervousness in the Government caused by a fear that if this place legislates it is offending the nationalist community, but members of the nationalist community were victims of institutional abuse or victims of terrorism and they all want compensation and need pensions and to have justice for what they have suffered. We need to be bold and brave about this. We will do no favours for the nationalist community by not legislating on either historical institutional abuse or victims compensation.

[Emma Little Pengelly]

I thank the hon. Lady for that very valuable contribution and I absolutely agree. This is so difficult to explain to victims and survivors. I know that the Minister will have found himself in this position as well—it is so difficult to explain to people a point of constitutional theory or purity. Quite frankly, given what has happened in this place over the course of the past few weeks and months, people have no time for that. What people want is action and what victims and survivors need is help to support them in their pain. They need financial security as they get into their older age and they need the Government to act. They can act, and I am asking the Government today to please commit to doing so as quickly as possible.

Local Government and Social Care Funding

Maria Caulfield Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I totally agree with my hon. Friend. Joint working has been done on delayed discharges of care. It is about ensuring that there is good practice and sharing that more broadly. We are doing that equally in children’s social care, where the Department for Education is providing funding to ensure that that is better adopted. It is about good practice and looking at the outcomes. The simple binary approach that the Opposition take is, I think, mistaken.

Another issue on which the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish was fulsome was that of council tax. I want to remind Labour Members that it was the Labour Government who made ordinary families pay the price for their failures, with band D council tax more than doubling under Labour and families paying an extra £750. Even now, Labour wants to abolish the council tax referendum limit, which prevents excessive rises in council tax. It is all very well for the hon. Gentleman to suggest that he is on the side of ordinary hard-working families, but that is not what we saw from Labour in government and it is not what we are seeing now. The real price of Labour is that it always costs you more. This is not just about the cost of a Labour Government; it is also about what people are paying now. Households in Labour-controlled areas have to pay higher council tax to make up for incompetent collection. In the worst-hit areas, Labour councils have unpaid council tax bills of up to £100 million, which is the equivalent of £439 for every household. The 10 councils with the worst collection rates in England are all Labour-run.

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

It is true that Labour is promising £500 billion of extra spending, but what it is not telling ordinary hard-working families is that that will mean an increase in income tax and a doubling of national insurance, council tax and VAT. Those are not my words, but those of a former Labour shadow Chancellor.

[James Brokenshire]

The interesting thing about some of our earlier exchanges was the acknowledgement that the last Labour Government, going into the 2010 election, did not guarantee to protect local government. We have had to make difficult choices and confront difficult issues to put the public finances back on an even keel, and that has not been easy. I pay tribute to the innovation that councils have been engaged in up and down the country to help us to put this right. It is telling that there was no acknowledgement of that in the hon. Gentleman’s opening remarks.

--- Later in debate ---

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), the Chair of the Select Committee. I agree with everything that he said in the last part of his speech. It is a shame that his Front-Bench team did not take a similar approach. The shadow Minister spoke for nearly 40 minutes and did not come up with one solution or proposal as to how we improve social care.

I am a great believer in the idea that it is not what you do but the way that you do it. In the same way, I believe that it is not how much you spend but how you spend it that makes the difference. As someone whose constituency falls in the county of East Sussex, which has the highest number of over-85 year olds in the country, I can speak with first-hand knowledge about the pressures on our social care system. I am not saying to the Minister that East Sussex does not need more funding, because it most definitely does. East Sussex has set up its Better Together system, working hand in hand with the NHS. Last winter, by working with the clinical commissioning groups and funnelling money into community care beds, it managed to reduce its delayed discharges by 33%, and that was despite an 11% increase in demand. The £2.5 million extra given to East Sussex by the Government this winter went into the system and, as a result, there were no delayed discharges or ambulances queuing up at the hospitals’ closed A&Es. The system was able to cope even with an increased number of norovirus and flu outbreaks.

Last year, we were subjected to urgent question after urgent question about the winter hospital crisis. Sadly, even with the system coping so well this winter, we have not had any acknowledgement of how hard NHS staff and local council staff have worked to ensure that, despite the extra pressure, there was no winter crisis this year. That success is because councils and the NHS are working much better together than they have ever done before.

We need to see what East Sussex is doing across the board. Although it is welcome that we now have a Health and Social Care Department, we are not seeing that joined-up working at a national level. I am concerned that if we do not see that joined-up work across the board, the £20 billion extra going into the NHS will be eaten up by the pressures on social care. If patients do not get the social care they need, their health will deteriorate, they will be admitted more often, they will be sicker when they are admitted and they will be in for longer periods of time. Their discharges will be delayed and their outcomes will be poorer. Not funding social care properly, or not using that money wisely, is a penny-wise and pound-foolish approach.

When this Session comes to an end and we have a new Queen’s speech, I hope that social care will be top of the agenda. I wish to see three things. First, there is the funding of social care. I am sad that the amendment to this Opposition day motion was not selected. I too have a copy of the report of the joint Select Committees, “The long-term funding of adult social care”. The hon. Member for Sheffield South East is right: instead of having a Green Paper, let us just get on with the recommendations in this report, because there is cross-party support for looking at a social care premium system, such as the one in Germany. We must be honest with the British public: there will need to be funding for social care. We need to have something, instead of people who have worked hard all their lives selling their homes to pay for social care—and not realising that that is what they will have to do—or refusing social care until they reach a crisis point and then have to pay for it.

[Andrew Lewer (Northampton South) (Con)]

I invite my hon. Friend to agree that, notwithstanding her radical suggestion, which was also made by the Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, about not bothering with the Green Paper, it would nevertheless be helpful if the publication of the Green Paper was now actually announced as a date—not as a month, a season or even a festival, which is the latest estimation we have had, but actually as a date.

[Maria Caulfield]

My hon. Friend is quite right. I am being slightly facetious in saying that we do not need to bring out the Green Paper. However, it would be very welcome indeed if the Green Paper contained some of the Select Committee’s recommendations.

We need a long-term funding solution, and I have discussed this with the Minister previously. The four-year settlement for local government was really helpful. If local authorities could have a 10-year settlement like the NHS has just had, they could do far more with their money, even if they were not seeing the significant increases that they would particularly like.

My third request is to look at the better use of our healthcare and social care professionals. We have grown up with a historical medical model that has depended on doctors and GPs, but people often need a diverse range of professionals to help them. The East Sussex Better Together model has just announced its community pharmacy programme, which is improving communications for patients discharged from hospital and helping them with their medication. The transfers of care around medicine project, or TCAM, is enabling those patients at risk of delayed discharges or readmission to hospital to have a dedicated pharmacist to help them, because we know that having problems with medication is one of the core reasons that people fail when they are discharged from hospital.

Under the community pharmacy programme, pharmacists would have access to patients’ medications, and would be able to answer their questions, monitor side effects and issue repeat prescriptions—things that often do not happen when someone is discharged home. The research and evidence base show that following such a model will reduce admissions and length of stay, and give patients a better experience and better outcomes. Some 112 pharmacies in East Sussex are going to take part in the project, which is a joint working venture between the county council and the clinical commissioning groups. I encourage the Minister to look at rolling this scheme out across the country, so that we can move away from being so dependent on GPs and doctors. I am conscious that there are a number of doctors in the House this afternoon. Doctors do valuable work, but there are other healthcare professionals that we should also be using.

This is not just about funding. Although the Government have given £20 billion extra for the health service, funding for local councils has increased by £1.3 billion this year—an increase of 2.8% compared to last year—and we have given extra money for winter funding, it is what authorities do with that money that makes the biggest difference. We need a long-term solution and a specific funding supplement, as recorded and recommended by the Select Committee. We also need to make better use of some of the fantastic resources that we sometimes fail to recognise. We can do a lot more, even with the existing resources. I am disappointed that the Labour Front-Bench spokesperson did not take the same tone as the Chair of the Select Committee, because we can do more to improve the lives of our constituents.

Antisemitism in Modern Society

Maria Caulfield Excerpts

Wednesday 20th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Dame Louise Ellman).

One of the most poignant sayings is that history has a habit of repeating itself. The hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) put it in excellent terms this afternoon—that history tells us where all this will lead. Whether it was in the holocaust, or whether it was other genocides that followed, in which people of different faiths and from different communities have been tortured and murdered, whether it was in Rwanda, whether it was the Rohingya, the Yazidis, or in Srebrenica—all followed a similar pattern before genocide and holocaust took place. The warning signs are there long before the action happens.

Antisemitism was clearly evident long before the holocaust in which 6 million Jews were executed. Looking at the parallels between then and now, there are some disturbing similarities. Only a few weeks ago, as the Secretary of State said, many of us were signing the book of remembrance for Holocaust Memorial Day, promising that we would speak out if we saw those patterns of behaviour emerging in our society. That is part of the purpose of today’s debate. It is important not to sit silently by, not calling such behaviour out.

At the time in 1933 when Hitler took over as Chancellor, few saw that the creeping antisemitism would lead to the murder of 6 million Jews. Look at the building blocks that were put in place to get to that stage. A man got into power—a man that, in 1919 when he joined the German Workers’ party, many thought a political lightweight that would never lead the party. But he got into power, promising the masses, in the time of austerity following the first world war, that he would end austerity. Hitler denounced international capitalism; he said he would install a new order to dismantle the broken politics of that generation. He promised increased public spending to build more hospitals, schools, roads. He would curb big business and end capitalism. He had sidelined traditional trade unions and established his own new group, the Labour Front. He set up a youth wing to indoctrinate the next generation so it would follow his values and beliefs. They were often found chanting at popular events such as the Olympics.

Hitler changed the rules in his own party, so that people could not challenge him and get rid of him. He got rid of the moderates in his own party, using the Enabling Act, so that no one could speak out, and if they were afraid, they were gone in an instant. He ended the freedom of the press, and it was after he got into power that the antisemitism was really ramped up. Anyone looking at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum website should listen to the testimony of someone like Hedi Pope, whose parents lived through that. She said they were Jewish, but they dismissed some of the changes; they thought they would never last—he would be gone in a few years, and things would return to normal. But they never did.

After 1933, the Jews were dismissed from the civil service. People were told to boycott Jewish goods. They could not attend schools. They could not go to public areas, such as cinemas. There was the physical destruction that we have heard so much about this afternoon—of synagogues, Jewish homes, places of business. In 1938, Jews started to leave, but for many of them it was too late.

At Prime Minister’s Question Time this afternoon, I spoke about Anne Meadows, a councillor—a Labour councillor—since 1994. I know Anne because I was a Conservative councillor with her in the ward of Moulsecoomb and Bevendean—I was the first Conservative councillor there for 20 years. Anne is a fierce, patriotic Labour woman. You did not mess with Anne. I found that to my cost when I was a fellow councillor. To see a woman like that having to leave the Labour party because of antisemitism against her husband is absolutely shocking. What did her local Labour MP tweet today? That this was nothing more than a bare-faced career move by Anne. There was no sympathy for the plight of Anne and her husband. That tells us where we are today. If we think that antisemitism is something that happened in the past and could never escalate to the same levels, we are fooling ourselves and denying what has happened. There is antisemitism today, and as we remember the lives that were lost in the holocaust and previous genocides, we are confronted with a question—what would we have done? Would we have prevented what happened then? Will we have a chance now, because history tells us that if we do not take it we know where this will end?

Local Government Finance

Maria Caulfield Excerpts

Tuesday 5th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

The funding challenges facing East Sussex County Council are well documented. It has had to make £129 million of savings since 2010 and has cut services to the core as a result. Most of the difficulty is due to the demographic challenges that the county council faces. It has the highest number of 85-year-olds in the country, and a quarter of the population are over 65, which puts huge pressure on adult social services. We heard earlier that most councils are spending money on their children’s services. In the budget for next year, East Sussex proposes to spend £171 million on adult social care and just £77 million on school services, because it is having to push the funding to where the greatest need is.

Over the weekend, I met the chief executive of East Sussex County Council and the leader of West Sussex County Council. They both have high praise for the Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Rishi Sunak). He has met them, listened to them and understands their problems, but they still face difficulties. They have the historical issue of being rural authorities with 50% less funding per head of population than urban areas, and we cannot continue like that. Many Members have mentioned the fair funding formula. It cannot come soon enough for areas such as East Sussex. I know that the Minister has had discussions with the council. When this four-year funding settlement is over, the council needs certainty, so that it can plan services.

Despite the revenue support grant dropping, East Sussex County Council has received extra funding from the Government. It has been lucky enough to be included in the business rates pilot, which has generated £1.6 million for it. It has secured £4 million of extra funding for adult social care, £2 million extra for services this winter, £4 million extra for potholes and £1.1 million for special educational needs. While not part of the revenue support grant, all those pots of money are making a real difference to communities in my constituency. I welcome that, but we need it to be ongoing, not in yearly one-off settlements. I urge the Minister to look at population projections in the fair funding review, because we do not want to be pitting old against young and asking who needs the funding most. It has to be done on a fairer basis.

While East Sussex County Council does need more funding, I am disappointed when councils just top-slice and cut services when funding is a struggle. I have the privilege of having the county town in my constituency of Lewes, and it is like a Monopoly board of local government infrastructure. None of it is joined up or shared. We have the beautiful town hall in Lewes town, which the town council shares and is well used by the community. Two minutes down the road, we have Southover House, which is for the district council and which no one else uses. A further five-minute walk down the road is the county hall building, which is the sole preserve of the county council. We have Sussex police headquarters another five-minute walk from that, which is overstretched and does not have enough space for the police, but the police and crime commissioner has her own headquarters another five minutes down the road from that. We then have the beautiful Lewes House building, which is completely underused but owned by the district council. It cannot be right that councils are not making the best use of the resources they have when they are struggling.

I echo the sentiments of my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South (Andrew Lewer) in urging councils to become unitary authorities. I would force them into that, because this is not the best use of resources. That would not only save £2.9 million across the country but enable better services. Our county council recently introduced fees for using the tips for tyres and rubble, which has dramatically increased fly-tipping, and the district council then has to pick up the tab for that. These are not joined-up services. This is not just about saving money; it is about a better service for local residents.

I will support the Government tonight, but I urge the Minister to devise an innovation fund. If the Government cannot force councils to become unitary authorities, they must incentivise them to do so, because they are not making the best use of their resources.

Oral Answers to Questions

Maria Caulfield Excerpts

Monday 28th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Rishi Sunak)]

I share the hon. Gentleman’s passion for ensuring that councils have adequate early intervention services. I have been championing the troubled families programme since I arrived in this job, and I would be delighted to hear from him and others about how best to ensure that a successor programme is available to councils.

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

T6. In many of my local towns and villages, the last bank and the last cashpoint have long gone, and the post office now provides essential services for my communities. Despite the Government investing £370 million in local post offices since 2017, post offices in East Dean, Alfriston and Newick are temporarily closed. What more can the Government do to support local community post offices across my constituency?

[Jake Berry]

We absolutely support the role of rural post offices, particularly as a hub at the heart of our communities. That is why the most recent Budget cut business rates for most small post offices, and through our support for “Pub is The Hub” we have helped post offices move into people’s locals. Pints and parcels, Mr Speaker.

Deaths of Homeless People

Maria Caulfield Excerpts

Thursday 20th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I would point to the additional funding that the rough-sleeping strategy seeks to deliver on the very important elements that are focused on providing support on mental health and other health services, because those issues do, very directly, matter. The rough-sleeping strategy is not set in stone. I have said that there will be annual reviews of the strategy, because I know that we need to respond to changing evidence and changing circumstances. I am determined that where further steps are required, we will take action.

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

Lewes District Council has a new homelessness outreach team that visits people who are rough sleeping. I welcome the £100 million for the rough-sleeping strategy, but does the Secretary of State not agree that many of the budget cuts to local government, which have reduced mental health services and help for ex-offenders and those with addiction, have cut preventive work to the bone, and that local government needs that funding to be able to prevent rough sleeping in the first place?

[James Brokenshire]

I hope that my hon. Friend will recognise the provisional statement that I made last week on local government finance, which gave a real-terms increase to local government for the 2019-20 financial year, and indeed provided £650 million of additional support for social care and dealing with some of the most vulnerable to whom she is very firmly pointing. In making her points, I hope she recognises that we have listened to a number of the concerns of local government in seeking to provide that additional finance. Obviously, I will continue to make the case as we look to the spending review next year.

Tenant Fees Bill

Maria Caulfield Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 5th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

That has not changed. In Committee and during the evidence sessions, there was overwhelming support for the idea of trading standards authorities playing a key role in enforcement, given their complementary responsibilities in similar legislation. We have heard good evidence for that, and they will be supported up front by half a million pounds from the Government in the first year of the implementation of the legislation.

We want to ensure that the enforcement authorities are required to notify the lead enforcement authority in the circumstances that I have set out. At present, they are required to notify the lead enforcement authorities only when they impose a financial penalty. Extending the notification requirement to criminal offences will help the lead enforcement authority more effectively to monitor and report on the effectiveness and operation of the ban. This will also help to support local authorities better with their own enforcement actions.

Fourthly, on enforcement, when a tenant takes action to recover their fees, they should have confidence that their local authority can assist them through the process. The Bill already provides that local authorities can assist an individual in recovering a prohibited payment via the first-tier tribunal.

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

One issue with current legislation on the requirement to publish letting agents’ fees has been the lack of enforcement. What confidence can the Minister give the House that enforcement will actually happen under this very welcome new legislation?

[Rishi Sunak]

My hon. Friend spoke passionately on Second Reading about renters in her constituency and the work she has done with them to ensure that they are treated fairly. I commend her for that, and for raising a very good point. I am pleased to tell her that the Government are funding enforcement activity with half a million pounds of fresh funding in the first year after the Bill is enacted. Subsequent to that, the fines that the legislation will enable local authorities to levy—potentially up to £30,000 for a repeat incidence—will help to fund ongoing activity. I am confident that we will be able to deal with the issue that she raises.

--- Later in debate ---

[Maria Caulfield]

To go back to amendment 3, is the hon. Lady not reassured by schedule 1? It states that

“if the amount of the payment exceeds the loss suffered by the landlord as a result of the default, the amount of the excess is a prohibited payment.”

Does that not reassure her that the Bill will protect tenants from those who want to charge exorbitant default fees, as evidence will have to be provided and the amount will have to be justified by the cost that the landlord or the letting agent has had to pay out?

[Melanie Onn]

As I said at the outset, we support the Government amendments and will not oppose any of them, but I am not sufficiently reassured that my amendment is not still required. As I said, we will not oppose the relevant Government amendment, which has come about as a result of constructive conversations in Committee, where a lot of these issues were dealt with in great detail.

We have not touched in great detail so far on how we can ensure that landlords do not avoid their responsibilities, and that is by enabling local authorities to enforce more proactively. The increase in the fines will go towards assisting with that, and we know that the Government have also committed some funding towards that. The evidence that we heard was that trading standards across the country is a decimated sector within local government. It is already unable to do what is required of it in making checks on letting agents—for example, on the displaying of tenants’ fees. We should therefore allow the additional funding that comes in through these fines to go to local authorities and back into enforcement, which is exactly what the Minister has proposed with the £5,000 fine. That will give local authorities greater income and revenue to provide that enforcement.

I will leave it there, but I hope that Members on both sides of the House will consider voting for the amendments that we have put forward today.

--- Later in debate ---

We need a system that we can trust. Landlords need a system that they can trust. Above all, tenants need a system that they can trust. This Bill will help the Government to achieve that, and I am happy to support it.

[Maria Caulfield]

I want to touch on two issues to do with fees and enforcement. I want to put on record my thanks to the Lewes citizens advice bureau, which did extensive research for my Adjournment debate in May 2016. While the explanatory notes to the Bill say that letting agents’ fees are on average £200 to £300, in my constituency —probably because it is in the south-east—they are on average between £200 to £1,000. On top of a deposit of six weeks’ rent in advance, that means someone can have to find £2,000 to £3,000 in advance.

This legislation will make a huge difference to tenants in my constituency of Lewes. However, I have some concerns about default fees, which I raised on Second Reading and in Committee. I am pleased to see Government amendments 5 and 6, which tighten these provisions. As stated in my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, I am a patron of the charity Homelink, which provides more than £100,000 of support to tenants looking for deposits in the Lewes district. The charity is still slightly concerned about default payments, but amendments 5 and 6 are really welcome because they tighten the provisions and state that default payments have to be listed in advance in any tenancy agreement and that there has to be evidence that those fees exist.

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Maria Caulfield]

I will not give way, simply because of the time constraints on us.

If tenants are found to be in breach of those requirements, they will be liable to penalties and to prosecution, so I am more reassured than I was at the start of the debate. I welcome the fact that the Minister has listening ears, because he has really tried to listen to all Members on this matter.

On the enforcement issue, I am still concerned—not because of this legislation, but because of the failure to enforce the existing legislation requiring letting agents to publish their fees. I welcome the fact that, under clause 7, district councils will be able to keep the penalties charged, and I very much welcome the Minister’s announcement today that there will be £500,000 of up-front loading for councils to enable them to invest in staff and to start taking on enforcement. I want to pursue this, however, by asking what will happen if that still does not result in enforcement, because we will be no further forward with this brilliant legislation if enforcement does not happen. I also put on the record my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association, which asked for the up-front loading.

If we are giving councils the money in advance and they are able to keep the penalties, they really must step up to the mark and enforce the legislation. It will make such a difference to tenants’ lives if they know in advance what fees they will have to pay and that those fees are evidence-based, and if they know that if those fees are abused, there will be prosecutions and severe penalties. I cannot support the Opposition’s amendment 3, simply because schedule 1 sets out which fees will or will not be payable, while the Opposition have only given some examples of such fees. That is not really strong enough, and the amendment would severely weaken the legislation.

I congratulate the Minister, who has done a fantastic job in listening to everyone. I still have some slight concerns about enforcement and the default payments, but I am very happy to support the Bill.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

It is a pleasure to be able to speak in this debate. I am neither a landlord nor a tenant, but I am the chair of the all-party group on the private rented sector, and that sector is under substantial pressure on issues relating to regulation and interference by the Government.

The Residential Landlords Association has estimated that, in the past nine months alone, there have been over 25 consultations across Whitehall proposing changes that will have an impact on the private sector. More than 140 Acts of Parliament and more than 400 regulations affect landlords in the private sector already. That is why many of those landlords choose to get help from letting agents, and this Bill is a direct attack on the profession of letting agents. As my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) has said, this is not a Conservative measure at all, and I despair at the fact that so many people seem to want to support this exercise in socialism and control.

Why should a Conservative Government be engaged in preventing professionals from charging a fee for services rendered? Doctors in my constituency charge those aspiring to become social tenants £15 a time to get a medical certificate in support of a social housing transfer. That—in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman)—is not a cost, but a charge. It is a charge, and it is an arbitrary charge: it is imposed, but payable. As I understand it, the Government are not proposing to abolish the right of doctors to charge for writing letters, so why are we proposing to prevent letting agents from charging for the services that they provide?

Govia Thameslink Franchise

Maria Caulfield Excerpts

Wednesday 18th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Joseph Johnson]

The hard review, which we have discussed this afternoon, is under way. It got going on 21 June, and it is looking carefully at the performance of the new timetable. This is early days—we are on day four of the new timetable—and it is important that we give it a bit of time to bed in before we leap to conclusions. We want to make sure that we get the processes right. Performance yesterday was significantly better than it had been prior to the introduction of the interim timetable, with public performance measures in the 80s. The PPM for Great Northern, which I believe is relevant to the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, was 86%. Some issues this morning with Network Rail performance have affected services out of Cambridge, but they are not GTR’s responsibility.

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

My constituency is a Southern-only constituency, and I have seven stations. Although they are not high-volume stations like nearby Haywards Heath or Brighton, they provide people’s only public transport for getting to work and school, and visiting our coastal tourist regions. Although the PPM figures are improving, Southern passengers are still experiencing short formation, complete removal of trains from the timetable and station skipping. Why are they not getting the same compensation as Thameslink passengers?

[Joseph Johnson]

We have focused compensation, as we did with the Southern compensation that resulted from the industrial action 18 months or so ago, on passengers who have been most severely affected. Although Southern passengers have experienced certain knock-on effects, they have not been as affected by disruption as those on the main Thameslink services and Great Northern services following the introduction of the timetable on 20 May.