Management of the Economy and Ministerial Severance Payments

Debate between Matt Rodda and Helen Hayes

Tuesday 15th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

In my seven and a half years in this place, I have never known a time like this. Our country was already straining and buckling under the weight of 12 long years of austerity, the impact of the covid-19 pandemic, the economic consequences of Brexit and the war in Ukraine. But when people across our country most needed leadership, comfort and meaningful support from their Government, the Government gambled their security on their own ideological slot machine, inflicting entirely unnecessary additional damage on the economy, instigating a financial crisis and opening a vast, gaping hole in the public finances.

There is another thing I have never known before: the sheer scale and extent of the collective anxiety out there in our communities. That is palpable everywhere I go. People are terrified about how they will meet increased mortgage or rent payments, terrified about how they will afford to pay their bills and terrified about how they will continue to feed their families and keep a roof over their heads this winter. By undermining our economic security so much, this Government have delivered a huge blow not only to our nation’s finances and the health of our economy, but to our nation’s mental health.

What is the response of the Government and Conservative Members? To put the blame everywhere but at their own door. In no other country anywhere in the world did the central bank have to step in overnight to stop a collapse in pension funds

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech and is contrasting effectively the Government’s reckless disregard for the everyday reality of residents across the country. Does she agree that there is particular pressure on many younger people who are currently trying to get on to the housing ladder?

[Helen Hayes]

It was already so hard for young people in our country to afford to get on to the housing ladder, and it is devastating for so many of them that that challenge has been made even worse.

This Government seek to pretend that the extraordinary and unprecedented situation we face—a £30 billion self-inflicted hole in our public finances—is normal and nothing more than a minor accounting error that they are seeking to rectify before they carry on with business as usual. They seek to normalise the terrible damage they have done.

This is not normal. My constituents do not get to carry on as normal as they struggle to pay their mortgages. My local councils, which, later this week, are likely to face further swingeing budget cuts to services that are already stretched to breaking point, do not get to carry on as normal. Our public services, including our NHS, do not get to carry on as normal. They all have to live with the disastrous consequences of this Government’s ideologically driven mismanagement of our economy. The loss-of-office payments are the salt in the wounds. The previous Chancellor and Prime Minister were reluctant to tax the windfall profits of the energy giants, but happy to take the windfall profits from the disaster they created.

This is UK Parliament Week, and when I visit schools in my constituency, as I did this morning, children ask whether it is right that former Ministers who presided over such a disaster are taking loss-of-office payments. They also ask whether the most senior politician responsible for our nation’s health during a pandemic that saw such catastrophic loss of life should be taking part in a reality TV show while his constituents are left to fend for themselves during the current crisis.

I hope that Government Members will visit schools in their constituencies this week to hear what children in our nation think about their behaviour, which is corrosive to trust and confidence in our politics, widens the gulf between those in power and the communities they represent, and brings shame on this place while our constituents foot the bill. I hope that Government Members will reflect on that as they decide how to vote on the motion.

Housing and Planning

Debate between Matt Rodda and Helen Hayes

Tuesday 3rd March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for Harborough (Neil O'Brien) for securing the debate and for raising a series of important issues about the planning system. I agree with him that the Land Compensation Act 1961 is in urgent need of reform. In fact, I introduced a Private Member’s Bill in the last Parliament to exactly that end.

We need to remove hope value from the planning system. Lest any Member is in doubt about why that is important, I give the example of a site in the middle part of Southwark—not in my constituency—that became vacant with an existing use value of £5 million, but was put on the market by the developer with an auction starting value of £25 million. That tells us about some of the gross injustices in our housing and planning system. The system recognises the right of a landowner to a windfall value of £20 million, over and above the right of residents in Southwark to genuinely affordable council homes on the same piece of land.

Reform is important, but cannot be limited to looking at hope value. That is important, but unless we also reform the definition of an affordable home, homes that are not affordable to the vast majority will continue to be built in this country. In my constituency, a definition of affordability recognises homes of up to 80% of market rental value as affordable. They are simply not affordable to the vast majority of my constituents.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

As a fellow MP from London and the south-east, does my hon. Friend agree that the current policy has a disproportionate impact on local communities? There are severe shortages of professionals in key parts of the public sector and for some private sector employers. We have a huge shortage of NHS staff in Berkshire, as she probably knows. There is also a shortage of people for key commercial businesses.

[Helen Hayes]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. That is certainly true of some key public services, such as King’s College Hospital in my constituency, where staff are moving further and further away from the hospital because they cannot afford to live close to it. It is a widespread issue.

Recently the Government have come forward with mooted proposals to increase the cap on the Help to Buy scheme to £600,000 within its affordable housing programme. It beggars belief that the Government think that that will do anything to address genuine housing need in this country.

I want to highlight one further aspect of the planning system that needs urgent attention: permitted development rights. In the last Parliament, the Government expanded permitted development rights. They did so against all advice from the sector, resulting in examples of the most appalling accommodation being delivered across the country, with office accommodation being converted into homes without full planning permission.

There are a number of things wrong with this system. The first is that in bypassing the planning system, a number of the checks on quality of design and space standards are being bypassed altogether. Section 106 opportunities are also being lost, so those homes are not contributing anything to public or open space or to facilities in in the surrounding area.

Those homes being delivered under permitted development rights that are good enough and of a standard would not have had a problem getting through the planning system, so I fail to understand why the Government are continuing to cut the planning system out of this important aspect of housing delivery. We cannot be delivering the slums of tomorrow in order to satisfy spreadsheets today. It simply will not do. It has to stop. I hope the Minister, in responding to the debate, will say some positive things about the need to scrap permitted development rights, rather than expanding them further.

Finally, our planning system has a vital role to play in combating climate change. The relationship between the built environment and climate change is substantial, and unless we fully resource our planning system and enable local authorities to play the fullest possible role in place-making and in driving up standards of insulation and carbon reduction in new development and in new housing, we will not achieve the level of carbon reduction that we need to in order to resolve the climate emergency, and we will still be building homes today that will need to be retrofitted tomorrow. I end with that point, calling on the Government to resource our planning system properly and to recognise the role that it has in facilitating and delivering the high-quality homes we need to build, at scale, in order to resolve both our housing crisis and the climate emergency.

Environment Bill

Debate between Matt Rodda and Helen Hayes

Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Ways and Means resolution & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Wednesday 26th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

Since before the EU referendum in 2016, my constituents have been raising concerns that Brexit would mean a watering down of the most important protections we have derived as a consequence of our membership of the EU. Again and again those fears were dismissed. We were told there was nothing to fear, accused of scare- mongering, and told to be quiet. Yet at the first test before them, the Government have failed. They have failed to reassure my constituents at all—failed to make a commitment to keep pace with EU standards and to avoid slipping back. The Government could easily have put a commitment to non-regression into this Bill. There is no reason not to do so. This is not about whether, in any hypothetical scenario, the Government cannot go further and faster than the EU; it is about being certain that we will not slip backwards. This is a fundamental breach of trust and of the commitments that were made both during the referendum campaign and at every stage subsequently by those who argued to leave.

Air pollution is one of the issues of greatest concern to my constituents. We have in Dulwich and West Norwood areas of extremely poor air quality. My constituents have watched with dismay as the Tories have been taken to court three times over illegal levels of air pollution and, instead of reacting with the concern and urgency that such a legal defeat would demand, have chosen to spend public funds unsuccessfully appealing against the court decisions—funds that could have been spent on developing the comprehensive air quality strategy that this country so badly needs. That strategy is still missing from this Bill. Air pollution is a public health emergency. Toxic air affects every organ of the body and contributes to as many as 40,000 premature deaths a year. In this context, it is inexcusable that the Government will not commit in this Bill to meet legally binding WHO targets for particulate matter by 2030.

On plastic pollution, again this Bill contains a woeful lack of ambition and detail.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend speaks eloquently about the very serious challenge that this country faces on air quality. Does she agree that this is a matter not just for London boroughs but for almost every urban area and some rural communities, and that it is one of the most significant threats to public health that is emerging in the 21st century?

[Helen Hayes]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. It is a fundamental flaw of the approach that this Government have taken over the past five years that they have again and again pushed responsibility for air quality down to local authorities, forgetting that the circumstances are different in many areas of the country and that it is not within the gift of local authorities to address many sources of air pollution.

The role of plastic pollution in the ecological crisis is profound and devastating. So much single-use plastic is completely unnecessary. The Government could take action to begin the elimination of it now, yet this Bill introduces no bans. I want to draw attention particularly to the role of single-use sachets common across the catering and cosmetics industries. Globally, 855 billion sachets are thrown away every year—enough to wrap the entire surface of the globe in plastic. Replacement materials are available for most sachet packaging that render the use of plastics in sachets completely unnecessary. So I ask the Government to amend the Bill to include provisions under the banner, “Sack the Sachet”, to eliminate this harmful and unnecessary form of plastic pollution.

Finally, I want to address the related issues of biodiversity gain and nature recovery. In relation to biodiversity gain, there are key weaknesses and omissions in this Bill. Biodiversity gains should be protected in perpetuity. National infrastructure should not be exempt from it, and the provisions should cover the private as well as the public sector. I ask the Minister to look again at the proposals for biodiversity gain to ensure that they are comprehensive and genuinely deliver the net improvement that we need to see.

As parliamentary species champion for the common pipistrelle bat, I have similar concerns about the proposals in the Bill for nature recovery strategies. Nature recovery strategies have the capacity to play an important role in restoring habitats and enabling species recovery, but they will do that only if they are deliverable as well as descriptive. That means the Government resourcing local councils to prepare and implement nature recovery strategies. Will the Minister confirm that new burdens funding will be allocated to local authorities, to enable nature recovery strategies to be meaningful for the long term?

The Bill provides an opportunity to demonstrate that the Government are serious about the climate emergency and ecological crisis. As currently drafted, it does not do so, and there are critical weaknesses that, if left unaddressed, will prove to be fundamental flaws. I ask the Government to commit today to ensuring that the Bill cannot result in our regressing from EU standards; to strengthening many of the provisions; and to giving teeth to enforcement. The emergency we face demands nothing less.