Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Michael Fallon and Tristram Hunt(8 years, 2 months ago)
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Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Defence (Michael Fallon)
We aim to maximise the benefit for the UK from new technologies and know-how developed through defence research. Our science and technology organisation, the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, DSTL, exploits those results through its technology transfer company, Ploughshare Innovations Limited, which we estimate will have contributed over £200 million to export value by 2018 and generated over 500 jobs. On Friday, I will launch our plans for a new approach to further exploiting innovation in defence.
Tristram Hunt
During the recess, I spent some special time with the Government Chief Whip, the right hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Gavin Williamson), and the hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) visiting the Signal Regiment at Stafford barracks. As we continue to draw down from Germany, Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire are enjoying an influx of highly trained personnel and, with them, the potential growth of telecoms businesses. May I urge the Secretary of State to hold a meeting with the Stoke and Staffs local enterprise partnership to see how the Ministry of Defence can help to ensure that local businesses enjoy some input to their growth from the arrival of highly trained personnel and their military research at Stafford barracks?
Michael Fallon
I am happy to help to facilitate that meeting with the defence procurement Minister. I am aware there are a number of companies in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency that have already submitted proposals to the Centre for Defence Enterprise. I think they have received some feedback. We are as anxious as he is that we capture that know-how for the future.
Michael Fallon
My hon. Friend will know that the defence budget is increasing in any event, and it will go on increasing in each year of this Parliament because of our commitment to meeting the 2% target in NATO. I know that he will join me in reminding our allies that although we are exiting the European Union, we are not abandoning our commitment to European security, which is why we are leading a battalion in Estonia next year, why we have committed extra troops to Poland, why our Typhoons were policing the Baltic airspace this year and why we will be leading the very high readiness taskforce next year.
Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)
Growth and Infrastructure Bill
Debate between Michael Fallon and Tristram Hunt
The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Michael Fallon)
I thank the hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) for the welcome he gave me, if not for drawing attention to the difference in our ages. As a former President said, I was not going to make an issue of his youth and inexperience.
I also thank all those who have contributed to the debate, but before I reply to some of the main points, I remind the House of the purpose of the Bill, which is to support local growth and local jobs by tackling the barriers that hold back investment and growth, and that slow down sustainable long-term development. Through this Bill, six Government Departments come together to make the planning system quicker and more efficient, to accelerate investment in the modern infrastructure that our economy needs—including faster broadband and more energy generation—and to introduce a completely new type of employee ownership.
The Bill has the support of the business community. The British Chambers of Commerce said that it welcomed legislative measures to promote growth and infrastructure and the measures in the Bill to speed up and simplify the planning system. The Confederation of British Industry said:
“This new Bill should give confidence to business that the Government understands the need to fast track important infrastructure projects to boost growth. “
It welcomed the measures aimed at increasing transparency and accountability in the planning system.
I turn to some of the questions that have been put. The shadow Secretary of State asked me for an assurance that any amendment to clause 23 would be brought forward in this House and I am happy to give him that assurance. That is the aim of the timetable that we have set out in the consultation.
We had some notable contributions from Government Members, including from the former Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), and my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert)—it was good to hear from him. He and my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) raised specific questions about the effect of clause 7 on national parks. I am happy to write to both of them with specific reassurance on that point.
Michael Fallon
I will in a moment.
I welcome, too, the support that we have had from my hon. Friends the Members for Halesowen and Rowley Regis (James Morris), for Bury St Edmunds (Mr Ruffley), for Henley (John Howell), for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) and others. My hon. Friends the Members for Rugby (Mark Pawsey) and for Waveney (Peter Aldous) raised specific questions about business rates. What I can tell them is that the Valuation Office Agency will be publishing data shortly, which we will collect in the impact assessment, which will be available to the Committee scrutinising that particular provision.
I turn to the principal issues raised by Opposition Members about clause 1. First, they asked where the evidence was of delay. Let me answer that directly. Less than 60% of major planning applications are decided in 13 weeks. Secondly, if Coventry can increase the percentage of all its applications that are determined within 13 weeks from 54% to 98%, and if Surrey Heath can increase its percentage from 42% to 100%, then any council can. Let me be clear: efficient councils have nothing to fear from clause 1.
Only a small minority of councils need to raise their game. Let me reassure the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke): we are not, as she feared, speaking of a massive number of councils. It is a small minority who need to raise their game if we are to ensure their local areas do not lose out in the recovery that is now under way. The Labour party had exactly the same concerns. In its last year in office in 2009-10, it cut the planning delivery grant for 22 local authorities on the grounds of poor performance. It was concerned, just as we are concerned. Applicants do not have to go to the Planning Inspectorate. Clause 1 makes it very clear that they simply have that alternative.
Turning to clause 5, there are, of course, concerns about the amount of affordable housing, and especially about those schemes that are stalled in section 106 negotiations. I need to repeat the point made earlier by the Secretary of State: affordable housing that is stalled for a minimum period of five years is not affordable housing—it is non-existent housing. We already know there are 1,400 sites comprising some 75,000 homes waiting to be unlocked. We accept that some councils are already renegotiating. However, even on the Local Government Association’s figures, 60% of councils are not renegotiating. Some 20% of councils are unwilling to negotiate. If we do not act, each of their schemes must wait for a further five years before appealing to the Secretary of State. For anybody who genuinely wants to see more affordable housing, that is simply unacceptable. If some councils can renegotiate, then all councils can renegotiate, and all councils should renegotiate. The shadow Secretary of State cannot have it both ways. At one point he suggested the measure was unnecessary and would not have any effect. Then he complained that developers would wait for it to take full legislative effect.
Turning to clause 7, I was asked about the definition of electronic communications equipment. The Bill has to be technology-neutral, so this clause could apply to all electronic communications equipment. However, as we have said before, the intention of the Bill is to allow cheaper and quicker deployment of broadband street cabinets and overhead infrastructure, not mobile phone masts. Let me reassure those who have concerns about the possible impact of this provision on our national parks and other protected areas that, under proposals on which we will shortly be consulting, providers will still have to notify local authorities of their plans. They will be encouraged to engage with local authorities and communities as a matter of best practice, and they will have to sign up to a code of practice on the siting of this infrastructure, to ensure that that is handled sensitively.
Michael Fallon
I will give way in a moment.
The right hon. Members for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford) and for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) asked about the definition of significant commercial development under clause 21. We will consult on that definition soon, and on whether a new national policy statement should be put in place.
I can understand Labour’s ambiguity on this topic. Since the last election a succession—an entire football team—of former Ministers have admitted that their approach was too top-down: the Leader of the Opposition; his brother; the shadow Chancellor; the shadow Energy Secretary; the shadow Work and Pensions Secretary; the shadow Health Secretary; the shadow Culture Secretary; the right hon. Members for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) and for Southampton, Itchen (Mr Denham); the hon. Members for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) and for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck); and, latterly, the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey). On his first appearance, he said that
“Labour was wrong…to downgrade the role of local government.”
One year on, at the Labour party conference last year, he said, after all, that he supported regional housing targets:
“you’ve got to have that strategic approach…in the regional spatial strategy framework.”
There we have it: they are against a top-down approach but they are back in favour of regional spatial strategies. Of course we will listen in Committee as we debate each—
Mr Speaker
Order. The Minister of State is not giving way. He gives every indication at this stage of wishing to plough on, and that is his entitlement.
Michael Fallon
Of course we will listen in Committee to the debate on each clause, but the Labour party is going to have to be a lot more persuasive than it has been this afternoon.
Tristram Hunt
Will the Minister return to the points raised by the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) that this wretched little Bill constitutes a total reversal of the localism strategy of the past two years and is a classic case of centralism based on a failed economic strategy?
Michael Fallon
I have already made it absolutely clear that as we have simplified the planning guidance, we are, of course, also responsible, as are local councils, for the efficient delivery of planning applications. I repeat that good, efficient councils have nothing to fear from the Bill.
Let us examine the previous Government’s record: in 13 years, they passed 15 planning Acts; six years after their main planning Act of 2004, fewer than 60 out of 335 planning authorities actually had the core strategies they were supposed to have; and after 13 years of top-down housing targets, they ended up with the lowest number of new homes built in any peacetime year since the 1920s. And who can forget the shambles of the eco-towns? Ten were promised, only three turned out to be viable without public subsidy, amazingly only one was assessed as environmentally friendly and, of course, none of the 10 was actually built. That is Labour in a nutshell: nought out of 10 for delivery. They give the builders of the Potemkin village a good name. So there we have the Labour record: planning authorities with no plans; development agreements commissioned but not actually signed; affordable housing commitments demanded but not actually built; eco-towns promised but none—not one—actually delivered. The Labour party is defending a record of failure and supporting a position of stagnation.