Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [Lords]

Debate between Natascha Engel and Greg Clark

Monday 7th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Greg Clark)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

I would like to thank—[Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)]

Order. The Secretary of State is moving the Third Reading.

[Greg Clark]

I thank all hon. Members from both sides of the House who have contributed to the development of the Bill, particularly those who participated in the extensive scrutiny on the Floor of the House both in Committee and on Report. The House will observe that we have followed the principle of listening to the views of Members, both in Committee and on Report. We made several improvements to the Bill after having heard serious representations from those across the House. I want to put on the record my thanks to my officials and to the Clerks, who have guided us adroitly through every clause.

I also want to thank councillors of every party and business leaders from across the country who have helped to give this Bill the momentum it deserves by embracing the localism agenda that began in the last Parliament. Important though the Bill is, it is worth noting that it is not the only means by which devolution is being advanced. For example, the Chancellor’s announcement that 100% of business rates would be retained by local government, rather than sent to the Treasury, is a significant step forward for the greater independence of local government.

I want the Bill to commence several things. I want it to allow the often latent potential for economic growth across all parts of the country to be better unleashed. The Bill and the process that we have introduced have brought businesses right across the country into close collaboration with their local authority leaders. The degree of enthusiasm for this has been gratifying.

The Bill allows reform where civic leaders and councillors desire it. It is a Bill that proceeds from the bottom up, rather than the top down. That makes it a novel Bill in the history of legislation concerning local government that this House has considered. It is a Bill that does something that previous Governments have baulked at, which is to transfer deliberately powers that Ministers and Governments have held and exercised in Westminster and Whitehall to authorities across the land. The insight of the Bill is that those objectives can be achieved together if local people are given their voice and allowed to set their arrangements in their own way.

The breakthrough is the recognition that not all places need to be the same. One of the glories of this House is that we know that each of our constituencies is very different from the others. No two places are the same. A world in which policy is identical in every part of the country is a world in which policy is not well set for particular parts of the country. Each place has a different history, different strengths and different capacities.

In the past, proceeding at the speed of the slowest has hampered efforts to devolve. Therefore, the approach that we have taken has been to invite every part of the country to make its proposals to the Government from the bottom up and to encourage those with the most ambitious proposals to advance them, while encouraging other places to find their feet and take the powers that they want for themselves and their people.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Natascha Engel and Greg Clark

Tuesday 11th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. That is one of the purposes of the funding that we have made available. I participated in a very good exercise organised by a group of young people called Bite the Ballot to encourage registration in my constituency. It was a great success. I can tell my hon. Friend that £48,000 has been provided to the electoral registration officer in Bradford precisely for that kind of activity.

[Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)]

Almost half of all 16 and 17-year-olds are missing from the electoral register. If they are not on the register, they cannot vote when they turn 18. What additional support is the Minister making available to help local authorities to get young people on to the register?

[Greg Clark]

As I have just said, £4.2 million has been made available across the country, the majority of which has gone to the electoral registration officers in local authorities, who know their area best. They have been invited to concentrate on the areas of under-registration, which have historically included schools. There are good examples of lessons and materials that can be used in schools that have a demonstrated record of achievement in enthusing young people and getting them to register, and I hope that the hon. Lady will be able to do the same in Derbyshire.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Natascha Engel and Greg Clark

Tuesday 11th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)]

12. If he will take steps to open up dark pool trades on the UK equity markets to greater transparency.

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Greg Clark)]

The regulation of dark pools is subject to the markets in financial instruments directive, which is currently undergoing legislative review. The Government are negotiating to ensure that all dark pools are subject to regulatory oversight and that appropriate transparency measures are applied to them. However, we believe that dark pools provide a valuable service to pension funds and other investors and that regulation should not prohibit that.

[Natascha Engel]

Dark pools have that name for a reason: they are murky and not transparent, allowing financial institutions to buy and sell shares without anybody seeing what they are doing. Why will the Minister not just apply the same rules to dark pool trades as are applied to the open stock market, where everybody can see exactly what is sold, when it is sold, to whom it is sold and at what cost?

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[Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)]

T8. Perfectly viable businesses up and down the country are going bust while the Government meet the Financial Services Authority and the banks on an ongoing basis to try to come to a conclusion on interest-rate swaps, so I have a suggestion that might focus their minds and make them arrive at a decision more quickly. Why will the right hon. Gentleman not take steps to allow a moratorium on paying back loans that include interest-rate swaps? That would make everybody come to a decision very quickly and help perfectly viable businesses during the recession.

[Greg Clark]

In answer to an earlier question, I said that I have written to all of the banks and asked them—and they have agreed—to forbear on charging businesses where these matters are in dispute and if the company has financial problems. I am also speeding up the process to resolve these issues once and for all. The matter is rightly of concern to many businesses right across the country and I will do everything I can to help.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Natascha Engel and Greg Clark

Monday 2nd July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

I know my hon. Friend is a member of that Select Committee, and one of the most shocking things I found when I read the six volumes of written evidence that had been submitted was how many submissions had to be anonymous because the people giving evidence feared reprisals. It is completely unacceptable that bullies and thugs should intimidate some of the most vulnerable people in our society. The Housing Minister has published a consultation on the measures that are needed to deal properly with the problem and to drive out these rogues from the sector, including restricting their ability to block sales. Those measures will be reflected in our hon. Friend’s Bill, to which I hope the whole House will give its full support as it makes progress.

[Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)]

I belong to the all-party mobile homes group, and we have been campaigning for years to strengthen the hand of local authorities to enforce properly the licences that protect people who live on park home sites. Will the Minister outline the specific powers that local authorities are being given to ensure that the powers that they do have are properly enforceable?

[Greg Clark]

Now is not the time, because the Bill will be published, as well as the response to the consultation. However, the hon. Lady can have my reassurance that the Select Committee’s recommendations on strengthening the ability of local authorities to prevent the owners of park homes from denying the rights that every other home owner reasonably expects will be present in the Bill.

National Planning Policy Framework

Debate between Natascha Engel and Greg Clark

Tuesday 27th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

Two factors are relevant to that question. The first is the intended abolition of the regional strategies, with their targets. That will remove the imposition on local councils of those targets, as will be the case with other targets. The policy also contains the ability for local councils to map and set criteria for where renewable energy would be appropriate, and to use those criteria for subsequent applications to determine what would—and, by implication, would not—be appropriate in each of their areas.

[Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State prides himself on being a blunt-speaking, plain-speaking Yorkshireman. Will the Minister adopt some of that plain speaking and give the House a definition of the word “sustainable” that people in Yorkshire, Derbyshire and even Kent can understand?

[Greg Clark]

We followed the suggestion of the Communities and Local Government Committee and used the classic Brundtland definition, which is about protecting the ability of future generations to enjoy the benefits that the present generation enjoys. We have also included the five principles of the UK’s sustainable development strategy. In practice, the policies outlined in the national planning policy framework will determine, in each case, what is and is not sustainable. For example, it is not sustainable to have a shopping development outside the town centre and it is not sustainable to build in the green belt. There is a high level of definition, and the practical application is very clear in the policies.

National Planning Policy Framework

Debate between Natascha Engel and Greg Clark

Thursday 20th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

Let me make some progress, and then I will of course give way to hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber.

Let me set out the reasons for our reforms in context, which relates to the point that the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) raised. The first and overriding objective is to put power in the hands of local people. Over the years, we developed arrangements in this country—most recently through the regional strategies—that sought to resolve issues outside what people thought of as their communities. I understand the reasons for that and I do not think that those efforts were ill-intentioned by any means. However, the consequence has been that many people in this country feel that planning is something that is done to them, rather than something that involves them. I am not alone in saying that: the problem was also recognised in our discussions in Committee on the Localism Bill. The last planning Minister in the previous Government, the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) said:

“I inherited the regional spatial strategies and quickly found that they had…few friends…what was clear to me…was that our regional spatial strategies and our approach to planning…was too top-down”.—[Official Report, 30 June 2010; Vol. 512, c. 272WH.]

[Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)]

This is really about definitions. I asked the Prime Minister a question about that, and he said that the measures were about giving power to local people, but does the Minister think that local people and local authorities are the same thing? These measures will give power to local authorities and planning committees, not to local people.

[Greg Clark]

I am pleased that the hon. Lady has raised that point. We are indeed giving power to local councils, which are the democratically elected representatives of local people. We are also scrapping the regional strategies that impose decisions on them. Crucially, however, the Localism Bill—many Members participated in the debates on it—creates the legal right to a neighbourhood plan in any parish, town or neighbourhood below the local authority level. It is absolutely right that neighbourhoods should have that ability, which is part of our reforms.

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[Greg Clark]

Of course I will. Let me turn to some of the concerns that have been raised, of which that is one. I shall preface that by saying that it is not our intention to change the purpose of the planning system. There has been some suggestion that the proposals represent a fundamental change in what the system is about, but they do not. They will, quite rightly, balance the environmental, the social and the economic, and there is no change in that regard, as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has declared.

Let me turn to some of the concerns that have been expressed, including the definition of brownfield sites that the hon. Gentleman has just mentioned. It is true that the draft national planning policy framework does not use the words “brownfield sites”. However, that is not for the reasons that have been imputed to us. The reasons are rather more prosaic. Many Members will have participated in debates during the previous Parliament in which we discussed the fact that it was being presumed that gardens that had ended up being included in the brownfield definition were available to be developed. One of the first things that we did was to take them out of the definition.

[Natascha Engel]

rose—

[Greg Clark]

I am responding to the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer).

In the draft framework, we decided not to use what had been quite a crude definition. Another example—something that I did not know before—is that a china clay quarry in Cornwall apparently falls outside the definition of a brownfield site. Paragraph 165 of the national planning policy framework therefore contains a requirement on councils to allocate land of the lowest environmental value. That was suggested by the environmental charities. There have been representations to say that some strictly brownfield land that has been developed has, over the years, been put back into use to support nature, especially in our cities. That was the reason behind having a more environmentally based definition.

Without pre-empting the consultation, which would clearly be wrong, let me say that there have been suggestions that, because some people have got used to the word “brownfield”, they might appreciate some reference—some explanation—that links the policy to that. That is a representation that has been made, and given that it is our intention, for all the reasons that the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton suggests, to ensure that we bring back into use first land that has been derelict or previously developed and that makes a lesser contribution than green fields, that will be made absolutely clear when we respond.

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[Greg Clark]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point; it is exactly the intention that councils should be able to prioritise and to bring forward the lowest environmentally valuable sites first. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point.

[Natascha Engel]

rose—

[Greg Clark]

I want to make some progress, and the hon. Lady intervened earlier.

Let me say something about the definition of sustainability, which I know has attracted some interest. The definition that we have used is the one used by previous Governments. It is the Brundtland commission’s definition, which has stood the test of time. It has been suggested that it is a high-level definition, so there should be a further elaboration of it. Hon. Members will know that planning policy statement 1, for example, contains the Brundtland definition in one paragraph and includes an extra 10 lines referring to the sustainable development strategy. That has been part of the previous document and some organisations and perhaps some Members have suggested that we should make reference to the current version of the sustainable development strategy, the 2005 document.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Natascha Engel and Greg Clark

Thursday 15th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. PPS3 has been revised with immediate effect, so those powers are now available to his authority and every other authority in the country; they can decide the status of gardens as they see fit.

[Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)]

The Housing Minister has just put forward a written ministerial statement that allows the hundreds of park home residents in my constituency access to the Residential Property Tribunal Service, and that is very welcome. Will he meet me to discuss how he plans to implement the consultation outcomes, which specify that there should be a strict personal specification of “fit and proper person”, with regard to park home site owners? Will he meet me before the recess?