Affordable and Safe Housing for All

Naz Shah Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)]

Much has been made of this Queen’s Speech but it does not meet the challenges of post-pandemic Britain and continues to illustrate the weak foundations of public services after more than a decade of austerity, which impacts on my constituency. My constituents are frankly sick and tired of this Government failing to address historical inequalities after 10 years of austerity that impact on education, jobs, health and social care, housing and economic recovery in my constituency in a post-covid world.

Speaking of the world, the Queen’s Speech also fails to address the international challenge and our having a foreign policy that rises to the challenge we are seeing played out on our screens today. We sit here in the mother of Parliaments, the House of Commons, living under the rule of law, upholding fundamental freedoms for all who live in our green and pleasant land without any fear and without having our rightful connection to it denied. Palestinians do not live in the same security; rather, they live in constant fear of being forcibly dispossessed from their ancestral homes by the Israeli army. They have been abandoned by the international community, and they have been abandoned by us.

This weekend was the 73rd anniversary of what the Palestinians call the Nakba—the catastrophe; the day that marked the beginning of their dispossession in 1948. That dispossession continues—by bombs, by mob lynching, by expulsions, all against innocent Palestinian civilians. These crimes are the root cause of the tragic violence we are seeing across the Holy Land today. When this Government urge the restoration of calm in Palestine, they must remember that Palestinians have been robbed of their calm for 73 years, with the occupation’s checkpoints, the siege in Gaza and the various types of discrimination against Palestinians across the Holy Land.

Israeli human rights groups such as B’Tselem, international groups such as Human Rights Watch, and others have concluded from painstaking analysis that the Israeli Government stand guilty of the internationally defined crime of apartheid. I ask: how should that affect our relationship with Israel? This is not a conflict with two equal opposing sides; rather, one people dominates the other through illegal occupation, siege, dispossession and discrimination.

If we claim that there are two equal sides, why is it that we recognise only one while we have yet to recognise Palestine? Israel is the occupier of the Palestinian Territories, not the other way round. Israel has placed Gaza under siege, not the other way round. Israel is dispossessing Palestinians with illegal settlements, not the other way round. Israel applies policies of apartheid, not the other way round.

The just and peaceful solution we all seek will not be possible until the UK and its allies recognise this imbalance and take effective action to address it. The violence will not end until impunity does. The Government’s support for a ceasefire in Gaza is welcome and vital to preventing further needless loss of life, but there will be no sustainable and just peace in Palestine and Israel until all are equal and accountable before the law.

The Government must therefore urgently support the following actions: an independent investigation by the International Criminal Court into the situation in Palestine; a special session of the Human Rights Council looking into potential war crimes and accountability based on human rights; a review, in line with our own laws, of all licences issued for arms and equipment used by the Israeli security forces that may be used, directly or indirectly, to commit acts of internal repression, external aggression, including de facto annexation, or violations of international humanitarian law; and an end the empty words of a two-state solution while recognising only one state; and, finally, recognition of the state of Palestine.

Oral Answers to Questions

Naz Shah Excerpts

Monday 19th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Our high streets have been hit hard by the pandemic, but the market forces have been amplified and magnified. These are very long-standing issues and ones that we have been focused on for some time. We need to make some fundamental changes to ensure that we have a flexible planning regime so that businesses can adapt and evolve, for instance by turning a café into a hairdressers or a yoga studio into an office, all without the need for costly planning permissions, and where businesses and buildings are sat empty and derelict, then to be able do the logical thing and turn them into something else, particularly homes. That is exactly why a few weeks ago we brought forward the planning changes to do that, and I hope that will see hundreds, if not thousands, of homes being created in our town centres and on our high streets over the course of this year.

[Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State’s Department is bringing forward further permitted development rights that will allow gyms, crèches and offices, as well as shops, banks and restaurants, to be converted into homes without going through planning permission. Has the Department conducted an impact assessment of how many cafés, pharmacies and corner shops will be lost from our high streets, never to return?

[Robert Jenrick]

The hon. Lady will be aware that we have approached this issue with great caution and due consideration. We have consulted on those matters and received thousands of responses, and we have made our proposals on the back of that, so they have been carefully thought out to consider some of the issues she has raised. We made a number of changes, to protect, for example, nurseries and to provide further protections for conservation areas, but the Opposition’s approach, which could be characterised as the ostrich’s head in the sand, is not the one that we have chosen to take. We think that high streets and town centres are undergoing the biggest transformation not just in our lifetime but at least since the second world war and that we need to introduce measures that are proportionate to the scale of the challenge. That is why we are making billions of pounds of investment through our towns and high streets and levelling-up funds, and that is why we are pursuing the planning reforms that the hon. Lady refers to, and I think most reasonable people across the country would agree. I note that in her own constituency Mike Cartwright, who runs the Bradford chamber of commerce, seems to agree. He says:

“Having unused space is bad for the economy,”

and

“buildings remaining empty for years is to no one’s benefit.”

We agree; that is why we are taking action.

Oral Answers to Questions

Naz Shah Excerpts

Monday 22nd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Thank goodness we are not having a political broadcast, as we now move to the shadow Minister in Yorkshire, Naz Shah.

[Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab) [V]]

Cumbria County Council has been hemmed in by the planning system over the application for the west Cumbria coalmine, which it will likely be forced to pass to avoid the threat of legal costs. This is despite the environmental damage and the small number of unsustainable jobs that the mine will create. Leaving aside fixing the flaws in a system that allows for the opening of a polluting coalmine in the year that the UK hosts COP26, will the Secretary of State now do the right thing on this issue of national—if not global—importance, block this application and work with his colleagues in the Cabinet to provide the long-term, secure and green jobs that west Cumbrians deserve instead?

[Christopher Pincher]

The hon. Lady and the House know full well that our green credentials are second to none. The hon. Lady also knows that I will not and cannot comment on an individual planning application. What I can say is that there is a high bar to be passed for a local decision to be assessed by the Secretary of State. We believe—the law believes—that it is always best to leave local communities to make decisions for themselves, and that is what we have done in this case.

Oral Answers to Questions

Naz Shah Excerpts

Monday 11th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

My right hon. Friend raises an important point. Local councils have done a fantastic job, but they have limited capacity and in many cases they are close to the limit of that capacity. We are very aware of that. I am urging my colleagues in Cabinet and across Government to prioritise carefully their asks of local government, to ensure that the schemes they bring forward are as simple as possible to reduce the burden on local councils. My long-standing view is that we should be providing funding in almost every case to local councils on an un-ring-fenced basis. That is certainly the way we have proceeded in general throughout the pandemic. We have provided £54 million of un-ring-fenced funding to her local council on top of, as she said, a whole range of schemes to support local businesses and the care sector.

[Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State has taken the extraordinary decision not to challenge the opening of a new deep coal mine in Cumbria. In the year the UK is hosting COP26, we need to show an example to the rest of the world. The application is of national, even global, importance and demands his intervention. Will he now commit to block this disastrous application? If he will not, will he tell the House how he expects anyone to take the Government seriously ever again on tackling climate change?

[Robert Jenrick]

I cannot comment on an individual application, other than to say that a decision not to call in an application is not a decision on the merits of a particular case. It is a decision on whether it meets the bar to bring in a case and have it heard on a national scale, or whether, in the opinion of the Secretary of State, it is better left to local democratically elected councillors, in this case in Cumbria. It is those councillors who will now make the decision. The national planning policy framework presents a balanced judgment that they will have to make, balancing our national presumption against new coal with any particular benefits that a project might bring to that community in terms of jobs, skills and economic benefit. That is a decision that in this case will be made by the democratically elected members on Cumbria County Council.

The Future of the High Street

Naz Shah Excerpts

Thursday 10th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)]

As we have heard, this debate is not just about the economics of business. Our high streets are about more than just pounds and pence and GDP. As we have heard from many hon. Members across the House, including my hon. Friends the Members for Stockport (Navendu Mishra), for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi), for Coventry South (Zarah Sultana) and for York Central (Rachael Maskell), this debate is about the importance of the idea of place—identity—to communities up and down this country. Our high streets are not just the locations that employ our workers, build our economy and provide goods and services; they are embedded in the very culture and heritage of this nation. As my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous) eloquently pointed out, high streets are not just about transactional value but social value. They are part and parcel of all our lives. Whether we live in South Shields or Bradford West, growing up and visiting the high street is part of our way of life.

Of course, much of this debate has been about the economic health of our high street, as hon. Members across the Chamber have discussed. The coronavirus crisis has had a unique impact on many aspects of life globally by speeding things up that were happening already, and the high street is no different. Covid’s chilling effect on physical retail has dealt a further blow to a sector that was already under threat, and, in turn, has accelerated decline on high streets that were already struggling because of the neglect by consecutive Conservative Governments. As Members have said, since 2012, footfall on the high street has been down by 10%, and one in 10 high street shops were standing empty even before the pandemic. My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North (Steve Reed) pointed out that since 2010 the Government have presided over the closure of 773 libraries, 750 youth centres, 1,300 children’s centres, and 835 public toilets.

[Sara Britcliffe (Hyndburn) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Naz Shah]

Due to time limits I will not give way—I will make progress.

Some 5,500 pubs and bars have closed in the past 10 years, since this Government have been in office. Because of the Government’s neglect, our high streets were already standing on the edge of a cliff, so why are they surprised that a crisis like the covid-19 pandemic pushed them over? As we have seen in the past few weeks, high street stalwarts like Debenhams and brands like Topshop, Burton and Dorothy Perkins have gone into administration or liquidation, putting more than 14,000 jobs at risk. Since March, up to 20,000 shops have closed and 200,000 people have been put out of work, but despite all this, the Government are refusing the levels of support they gave in March. As has been highlighted, 99% of beauty salons, 95% of cafes, 92% of gyms and 77% of pubs and restaurants are receiving less than they were in March.

My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North pointed to the challenges that small businesses are facing from the threat posed by online retail and the Government’s total failure to level the playing field through addressing business rates. As my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South pointed out repeatedly, this is about levelling the playing field. The Government talk a lot about levelling up, so perhaps the Minister will reflect on the fact that the business rates burden is hitting the north and the midlands hardest, as a report by WPI Strategy, written by former Treasury economists, found in October. The report told us that 77% of constituencies in the top 10% with the highest business rates burden are in the north and the midlands, compared with just 18% in London and the south. That is because the tax rate does not mirror economic performance, so for areas facing economic challenges, the burden is much higher.

Back in March, the Government promised to compensate councils fully for getting through the pandemic. They broke that promise, and the Institute for Fiscal Studies now estimates that the covid funding gap is £1.1 billion this year and £4.4 billion next year. That means more job losses, more cuts, and in turn less spending and less support for businesses. We know that there is light at the end of the tunnel with the arrival of the first new vaccine, but the reality is that businesses face a long and bleak winter unless the Government provide the support that they need now. That could mean that there are fewer high streets for people to visit, vaccine or no.

It is important that the Government learn the lessons from the past. Rather than neglect the sectors that need support, they must act now. The lessons from 2010 will be forgotten if the Government’s austerity drive chokes off business recovery. Since 2010, we have seen not only a physical decimation of the high street but significantly lower levels of growth. The Government are in danger of repeating the mistakes of the past. Just this week, Laurence Boone, the chief economist at the OECD, said:

“We made the mistake in 2010; we need to learn from the mistake. We need to keep up the support for the people and those in and out of jobs. We must make sure income is supported…When you’re in a battle and you know the cavalry is coming, you don’t stop fighting. In fact you keep fighting until the cavalry is around. In fact you keep fighting while the cavalry is there.”

The country is fighting. Retailers on our high streets are fighting. The pubs on the corner, the restaurants in the highest tiers that have closed, the small, family-run businesses that have been part and parcel of our local towns and are struggling to keep their doors open—they are all fighting. They are all waiting for the cavalry to arrive, but the Government are leaving them to fight alone on the battlefield.

North Staffordshire Potteries Towns: Levelling Up

Naz Shah Excerpts

Tuesday 1st December 2020 Westminster Hall

[Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I thank the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) for initiating this important debate. Only last week I was in this Chamber speaking on a debate about levelling up. That, too, was about areas in the north. The stark reality is that the north has faced decades of underfunding, which has only been exacerbated during this pandemic. All hon. Members spoke passionately about that underfunding.

In times like these, those years of failing to fund statutory services show their actual cracks. Sadly, the results have been deadly. People in the north have been more likely to have their working hours reduced or to have lost their jobs altogether. As the shadow Chancellor put it, bluntly and tragically, they have been more likely to die of covid-19.

Years of underfunding means that investment per person in the Staffordshire pottery towns is less than half of that seen in London. Over the past decade in the region we have seen a decrease in both health and education investment per head. The north simply does not have enough beds and hospitals. The toll on hospitals in the north, therefore, is far more severe than those with capacity in the south. The impact on schools means that after years of underfunding, 75 out of 86 schools in Stoke-on-Trent are still in crisis, with an estimated £6.7 million shortfall in 2020 and £174 lost per pupil even before the effects of the pandemic.

At the beginning of this pandemic, I am sure Conservative Members will remember, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government promised to fund councils with whatever was needed. Councils are facing an estimated £1 billion funding gap this year. That estimate was made prior to the introduction of the national lockdown, so the gap could now grow to be in the region of £2 billion. We have already seen the Chancellor pursue a public sector pay freeze for those who worked day and night, the public sector workers putting themselves at risk to deliver for this nation during the hard times. If councils, including Stoke-on-Trent, do not receive the funding they need, those same people may also face job losses.

The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) recently raised the unfair formula from Government on pothole funding for Stoke-on-Trent. I share those concerns, though I would like to add it is not just in Stoke-on-Trent; our nation’s roads are plagued by a pothole epidemic and the road maintenance backlog is valued at more than £10 billion.

Important investment projects were axed in 2010, only to resurface at greater cost later. Consecutive Governments have failed to provide the funding needed and now, when our public finances are already stretched with the pandemic, we are forced to accept a price we would not have needed to accept.

I want to follow up on the welcome, if slightly belated, announcement of the Government’s plans for the UK Shared Prosperity fund and the levelling-up fund, both of which have the potential to provide much-needed funds to our communities. I hope the Minister can provide further clarity on both those funds. I understood from the Chancellor’s statement last week that next year would see the launch of pilots of the types of scheme that the UK SPF will fund when it is eventually launched.

Will the Minister provide further details on how communities and local authorities will be able to access those pilots, and what form they might take? I am particularly interested, for example, whether he could confirm if partnerships of community organisations, local businesses and local authorities will be able to access this preparatory UK SPF funding next year. We have seen this year the value of local authorities and metro Mayors to their communities. Will any of the UK SPF be devolved to local or regional government to be distributed by them, working in their local communities?

The Chancellor also said in his statement last week that the whole of the UK will benefit from the UK SPF and, over time, we will ramp up funding, so that local domestic UK-wide funding would at least match EU receipts on average, reaching around £1.5 billion per year. The total funding, however, from EU receipts has been, on average, £2.1 billion per year, according to the House of Commons Library. Will the Minister clarify why there is that stark difference?

Finally on the UK SPF, will the Minister clarify why, given that the fund was first announced in the Conservative manifesto of the 2017 general election, we are only now trialling the fund? It is a shame, given the three years since that election, that we have not seen the design of the fund launched and consulted on, as was originally promised.

I would like to move on to the levelling-up fund, announced for the first time last week. I understand it is to be jointly administered by the Minister’s Department, the Treasury and the Department for Transport from Whitehall. As with the towns fund, we welcome any investment into held-back towns across the country after a decade of neglect by this Government. There has, however, been much debate, both in Parliament and the press, about the way the towns fund was designed, with a host of deserving towns inexplicably losing out. Has the Minister taken any lessons from that into the design of the levelling-up fund, so that those bidding can be reassured that they will not be excluded from receiving investment at the whim of Ministers?

Will the Minister also tell us who will be able to submit bids to the fund, and who they will need to support bids? It would be helpful to understand, for example, how the value of an MP’s support would be weighed against the support of a local council. I am sure that the Minister would not want to see deserving bids for funding submitted by councils fail because of the intransigence of a local MP. I am making a particular reference. We would not like to see another situation where one Minister signs off another Minister’s £25 million for their local town when those are marginal seats. That would be a travesty.

We gather from the Chancellor’s statement that the fund will be based on competitive bids, so will the Minister clarify what steps his Department will take to ensure that all of our communities are able to put bids together, and that the poorest are not disadvantaged? Finally, I hope he will also confirm if the focus of the fund on growth and regeneration outcomes encompasses social values, community wealth building and inclusive economic development.

Levelling-up Agenda: Tees Valley

Naz Shah Excerpts

Wednesday 25th November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)]

It truly is a pleasure to be serving under your chairmanship, Mrs Cummins. I thank and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) for securing this timely debate.

Other Members have already said that we have been hearing the message of levelling up from consecutive Conservative Governments since 2010. I take the point made by the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison), but this is not about looking in the rear-view mirror. The truth is that if a child does not have the absolute right start in life, that child’s chances for the future are depleted. That is the point that Opposition Members are trying to make. It is absolutely right that we refer back to the era of Margaret Thatcher, which desecrated the north. That was the foundation for where the north finds itself today.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North and other Opposition Members are right to talk about poverty, and as a Member of Parliament for a fellow northern city constituency I share with him the same concerns. We need to level up in education funding, unemployment rates, transport funding and much more. Whether someone comes from Bradford West or Stockton North or Middlesbrough, the barriers in life created by Conservative Governments are, sadly, the same.

Despite the Government’s claim, regional inequality has deepened under the conservatives. A decade of low investment has left the country deeply imbalanced, with towns and cities outside London losing out. My hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) mentioned the 22,000 potential jobs that could have been created with the campus in the north. The list goes on. The north has heard all the promises from the Government, and is still waiting for the current pledges of infrastructure funding to be fulfilled before we turn to the new commitments made.

Today, the Chancellor promised a bank, but the north is still waiting for its rail. Six years on from first being announced, Northern Powerhouse Rail has still not yet been approved, let alone started. The people of Stockton were promised a new hospital building, but it has yet to materialise 10 years later. Today the Chancellor spoke about creating jobs, but we have heard all of that before. At national level, employment figures across the country recovered in the decade following the crash, but there is a big imbalance in where the jobs were created. For every job created in the north-east, 13 jobs were created in London. The record over the last three years of the Conservative Mayor of Tees Valley—creating a single job at a cost of £100,000—is such a disastrous waste of public funding that only his colleagues in Whitehall could do worse with taxpayers’ money.

Time and again, the north of England has been governed by Whitehall and been left second to London. As already outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North, the health inequalities in Stockton-on-Tees are such that the lives of men living in the town centre are expected to be 18 years shorter than their counterparts just down the road. These existing inequalities have put those from the north at higher risk from the pandemic. Even in the pandemic, people in the north have been more likely to have their working hours reduced or to have lost their jobs altogether. As our shadow Chancellor put it,

“They have, bluntly and tragically, been more likely to die of covid-19.”

From the outset of the pandemic, we have continually called for local test and trace. Regional Mayors and local councils have been prepared from day one to assist the Government in building local infrastructure to deliver a localised service. The country was in a time of need and an opportunity to build locally presented itself, but the Government decided to dish out millions to private companies without competition, and without penalty clauses for poor performance. Those with connections were 10 times more likely to get a deal.

As if Tory cronyism could not get any worse, today, the Chancellor’s infrastructure fund is based on agreement from MPs—yet again Tory MPs get in ahead to lobby for their own areas. The 2019 towns fund is just one example that was meant to support struggling towns but, instead, one Minister signs off the next Minister’s request for funds. Out of 101 towns funded, only 40 were on a needs basis, and the other 61 were chosen by their own Ministers. While our nation is facing the largest fall in output for 300 years, the choices this nation needs to make are based on the country’s needs, and not the needs of Conservative MPs and their friends. We have been listening to Conservative jargon on redistribution since 2010. It is just another term now—levelling up—but despite the north and the poorest in society falling further behind, we are still waiting for delivery.

We need high-quality businesses in every town that provide well-paid and secure jobs, so that people do not just survive but thrive. With rising unemployment, lower average wages than the national average, and the biggest increase in child poverty in the past five years, the time is now for this Government to act on the north-east. The Government have a clear responsibility, and it is finally time for them to deliver on it. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mike Hill) outlined, this is a generational life-saver.

Covid-19: Funding for Local Authorities

Naz Shah Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) on securing such an important debate.

I will start by paying tribute to the council staff across England who have worked so hard to keep our communities safe in difficult circumstances throughout this pandemic. I have seen at first hand the efforts of council staff workers in Bradford West from the very outset of this virus—the hard work they do to minimise and prevent the spread of infection, get help to the vulnerable and support the care sector, work to sustain our businesses and the economy, keep essential services such as refuse collection and bereavement going, and much more, including setting up local Test and Trace services before there was any commitment or financial support from the Government. That has been the case for councils up and down the nation.

However, local government is at a crossroads. A decade that saw £15 billion cut from local authority budgets has ended with the impact of covid-19 driving up costs and cutting income, leaving councils across the country facing huge challenges to set a balanced budget. Many of my colleagues have mentioned those budget cuts, particularly my hon. Friends the Members for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel), for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock), for Stockport (Navendu Mishra) and for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum). The numbers do not look good for any of those constituencies.

Without proper funding, there is a real risk that councils will not be able to balance their budget, as they are legally required to do. Councils do not want to have to make those hard choices, but they have been left with little choice by the Government. Vulnerable people across the country will suffer the most if councils are forced to stop delivering the crucial services they rely upon. The tragedy of this is that after a decade of austerity, councils will be forced to cut back on funding again. Additionally, it has been reported that the Chancellor is considering a public sector pay freeze. Can the Minister clarify whether he feels comfortable clapping public sector workers as we entered the pandemic, and cutting their futures as we start to come out of it?

Since the beginning of the pandemic, councils have sent detailed financial returns to MHCLG each month, so this time around, the Government cannot feign ignorance. Ministers know exactly how much local government is out of pocket by. Despite the fact that at the Government’s daily press conference in May, the Communities Secretary said he would “stand behind councils”, it is clear to leaders of those councils that that promise will not be kept. Nor is this a short-term issue that will go away after covid; these funding pressures are cumulative. Councils are losing out on fees and charges from sources such as leisure centres and car parking: as my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) said, York has lost 8 million visitors due to covid-19.

There is no guarantee that there will be a return to normal next year, either, and it is not just me saying that. According to analysis by the cross-party Local Government Association, councils in England will face a funding gap of more than £5 billion by 2024 just to maintain services at current levels. The present national lockdown has no doubt made the funding crisis more acute. The same concerns have been raised by the Conservative-led County Councils Network, and the evidence from witnesses at the Select Committee on Housing, Communities and Local Government has been equally concerning. I also agree with the concerns that the chair of the all-party parliamentary group, the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous), mentioned earlier.

I hope that the Minister can provide some clarity about how the Government intend to deal with the huge challenges facing local government, and that he will be able to answer some questions. However, before I get to those questions, I want to talk about places of worship. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) highlighted the role of mosques. I have seen at first hand the role of mosques in my constituency, but ahead of the spending review, I have also had some conversations with local churches. The churches, mosques and all places of worship in my constituency have already been picking up the pieces of 10 years of austerity from Government cuts, including through food banks; across the country, each church equates to £300,000. There has been no commitment to help where churches or mosques are picking up the council pieces. Can the Minister highlight what is going on with the funding allocated to places of faith?

I understand that the Prime Minister’s adviser, Sir Edward Lister, wrote to councils under tier 3 restrictions to advise that they would not be asked to set a balanced budget this financial year. Will the Minister clarify how that will work and whether it will apply to those councils that are subject to increased restrictions after 2 December? Will he also clarify how much has been paid to local government to date, through his Department’s scheme to replace lost income and fee charges? Will he say whether his Department is considering further financial support for councils returning to the higher tiers of local restrictions after 2 December? Can he confirm whether that will be based on need or per head of population?

The Transport Secretary highlighted today that the Government would not engage with regional Mayors as we enter the new tiered system. Have the Government abandoned their pledges on devolution, and should we expect further Whitehall rules for the future of this Government? Finally, will the Minister clarify when the local government financial settlement for 2021 or 2022 will be published? My hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali), who secured this debate, laid out very eloquently the challenges that are faced. Councils have to make a choice: will they cut library services, refuge services, frontline workers, bin collections—what will face the axe next? Councils are between a rock and a hard place when making these decisions.

We have already seen the fiasco where the Government took the decision to centralise Test and Trace and give the contracts to Serco. My understanding is that Serco did not even have any penalties in its contracts. In my constituency, and others I have seen with a high prevalence of covid-19, people have been door-knocking and managing to test, isolate and track people locally. They have managed to isolate outbreaks, but the Government are not putting their money where their mouth is. That is an added pressure to those that councils already face.

We have had 10 years of austerity, followed by covid and a Government who have gone into national lockdown instead of taking a circuit breaker, which we advocated. That has had even more of an impact on our councils. They really need certainty. In Bradford, our councils have already had so many cuts, as have the councils of every Member on both sides of the House. Nobody is denying that we have had cuts for the last 10 years. Will the Minister confirm that the Government will be putting their money where their mouth is? Did they mean it when they said, “We will do whatever it takes”? Will he give the councils that reassurance?

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

If the Minister could finish his remarks no later than 3.57 pm, Rushanara Ali will have time to sum up the debate.

Oral Answers to Questions

Naz Shah Excerpts

Monday 16th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kelly Tolhurst]

I thank the hon. Lady for her point. She is right that any victim of domestic abuse needs that support in place, and the new duty in part 4 of the Bill will ensure that support is available to victims in a wide range of accommodation services and not just refuges. We recognise that more needs to be done to ensure adequate provision in the community is available, and that is why the Domestic Abuse Commissioner is undertaking a review of that provision. That review will enable us as the Government to better understand the needs and develop outcomes for how best to address them.

[Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)]

Only this morning, it was reported that women suffering from domestic abuse were being turned away by up to five separate refuges, even where spaces were available, due to them not speaking English and a lack of specialist services. The provisions in the Domestic Abuse Bill and the statutory duty on councils is one thing, but does the Minister understand that, if the funding for refuges from local authorities is as severely under-resourced as charities such as Refuge and Women’s Aid estimate, the legislative change will be meaningless for those women who are desperately fleeing abuse only to be turned away?

[Kelly Tolhurst]

The hon. Lady raises an important point. A home should be a place of safety, and for those in abusive relationships, the situation she outlines is not acceptable. Domestic abuse is a heinous crime, and we are committed as a Government to ensuring that survivors get the support they need. I am monitoring the situation as we move through covid in regard to the demand for places, and that is exactly why the Government announced the £10 million emergency support fund, which has gone to more than 160 charities. That has helped reopen 350 beds and created more than 1,500, but there is absolutely no complacency. I will continue to monitor this, as will Ministers in the Home Office as well. We will take action where required.

Draft Non-Domestic Rating (Rates Retention, Levy and Safety Net and Levy Account: Basis of Distribution) (Amendment) Regulations 2020

Naz Shah Excerpts

Tuesday 10th November 2020 General Committees

[Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)]

It is really an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ali.

In recent times, especially through the covid pandemic, local authorities have shown how they can provide the necessary localised support to communities. When the need came, they adapted their services. They housed those who were homeless, provided food parcels for those shielding and literally became a Government at the local level.

It is not just in times of pandemic, but more generally that local authorities have a better understanding of their local communities and businesses. They are therefore able to work with local people to ensure that businesses in the UK can genuinely thrive. After a decade of reductions in funding and rising demand, from which we seem to be beginning to emerge, councils, along with the rest of the nation, have faced the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on their citizens, staff, services and budgets.

Estimates by the Institute for Fiscal Studies suggest that another £2 billion might be needed this year to meet all the pressures and non-tax income losses that councils have experienced and will continue to experience as a result of covid-19, but that that could rise to £3.1 billion, depending on whether council assumptions about the end of the pandemic are correct. Changes in legislation that provide formulas to support local authorities and their budgets in such times are therefore hugely important and we certainly welcome that.

Although I understand that the changes in the statutory instrument are technical, and some relate to individual local authorities, I would be grateful if the Minister provided further reassurances on whether the Government will make adjustments to business rate retention calculations next year to take into account the impact of covid-19 rates relief.

As the Minister knows, following the measures announced in March, 40% of business rates in 2020-21 are being covered by retail reliefs of approximately £10 billion. However, business rates collection is likely to be down, despite the increased reliefs, with current predictions by councils suggesting a £1.6 billion shortfall to the public purse. The 2021 calculations, which will be made next year, will therefore be potentially less straightforward due to the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on collection. The calculation will need to be adjusted to deal with the retail reliefs. I would welcome the Minister’s outlining any further plans that the Government have to deal with that specific shortfall.

Additionally, will the Minister provide an update on how the Department plans to deal with the shortfall arising from irrecoverable uncollected local taxation in 2021? Will the Government cover all the shortfalls in planned non-tax income and local tax revenues, including business rates? The Minister will recall that the Government have a line that they will cover whatever is needed for local councils. After a decade of cuts and then taking on the burden of a pandemic, it is important that local authorities are supported so that local people, communities and businesses are also supported.