Renters’ Rights Bill

Neil Hudson Excerpts

Wednesday 9th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

There are separate rules for HMOs, but we are also extending ringfenced civil penalties to support councils more, because we need to make sure that there is enforcement. A database will be important when we are looking at what we face, and also in making sure that we can take action. The problem is not every landlord. Most landlords act in a reasonable way, but we need to make sure that action is taken against those who do not.

We recognise the important role that tenants play in holding their landlords to account, and we want to incentivise them to do so. That is why we have significantly strengthened rent repayment orders. To empower tenants to take direct action against unscrupulous landlords, the Bill will add new rent payment order offences, double the maximum penalty for offences, and ensure that offenders will more often pay the maximum penalty. When landlords break the rules, tenants must have recourse to action.

Finally, I want to mention pets. It is a shame the Speaker is not here, because this was my bit for him! Our reforms are aimed squarely at improving the lives of people and families, but I trust that right hon. and hon. Members will agree that pets are not just animals but family. That is why this Bill will make it easier for tenants to request the ability to have a pet in their home. It will also allow landlords to require insurance covering pet damage, so that everyone is covered and no one is left unfairly out of pocket.

[Dr Neil Hudson (Epping Forest) (Con)]

It is important that this legislation balances the rights of both tenants and landlords. We all know the benefits of pet ownership to our physical and mental health, and indeed to the animals. I very much welcome the fact that clauses 10 and 11 will allow pet ownership in tenancies, but can the Secretary of State reassure the House that those clauses will allow responsible pet owners to ask to keep pets in their property while ensuring that landlords are insured in case of property damage caused inadvertently, or perhaps advertently, by pets?

Oral Answers to Questions

Neil Hudson Excerpts

Monday 9th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dehenna Davison]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for raising this, and I will of course meet her to learn more and see what more we in Government can do to help support her constituents.

[Dr Neil Hudson (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

Levelling up must cover all parts of our country—north, south, east and west—including rural areas. With that in mind, does my hon. Friend agree that a great way for the Government to show their support for rural areas would be to back the Inspiring Eden Enterprise Hub bid, which would really be a shot in the arm for the people of Penrith, Eden and rural Cumbria?

[Dehenna Davison]

My hon. Friend, my constituency neighbour, is an excellent champion for Penrith and The Border, and I certainly see the excellent work he does. I am certainly happy to meet him to discuss this further.

Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Bill

Neil Hudson Excerpts

Friday 18th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dr Neil Hudson (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Chris Clarkson). I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) for introducing this Bill, but in the top trumps of adulation, I do not think that I can compete with my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt).

My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East is a proud champion of speaking up for the most vulnerable in society, and I pay tribute to him for all the work he has done in this area and for introducing this important Bill. I am really pleased that it has so much cross-party support, as it shows the importance of what he is doing. This House is at its best when we are united in the common good of trying to protect the most vulnerable in society.

I also welcome the Minister to her place, and I look forward to hearing from her later. What really resonated with me, as a vet and a scientist, was when my hon. Friend and other colleagues talked about the paucity of data in this area. If the data are not there, we just do not know what we are looking at. We can make good policy with evidence-based decisions, and we need the evidence out there. This debate today has highlighted the importance of that data collection.

It is clear that those who are protected by this Bill are among the most vulnerable in our society. I pay tribute to those across my constituency of Penrith and The Border who support the most vulnerable people. In the housing arena, I pay tribute to Eden Housing Association, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. I hope that the Bill complements the work of people up and down the land who are supporting the most vulnerable in society. At a time of economic crisis, when people’s livelihoods have been affected, forcing them to live from day to day, it is so important that we are putting forward good legislation to provide help in these troubling times.

I welcome the fact that the Bill will try to stamp out the awful practices that have been highlighted today of rogue landlords exploiting people. There have been some pretty harrowing examples from Members on both sides of the House, and it is so important that the Bill will clamp down on these practices and rid them from society. These people on benefits are really struggling, as are many people across the country. As we have heard today, this is a compassionate piece of legislation, and when we are driving Bills with cross-party support through the House, it is so important that compassion is at the heart of that. To get political, I welcomed the Conservative Government showing some of that compassion yesterday with measures in the autumn statement, and the fact that we are now uprating benefits in line with inflation is critical to that compassionate conservatism.

We have heard from many Members, including esteemed medical colleagues, about the mental health implications in the supported housing sector, and we have also heard about physical wellbeing. Something that has really resonated with me today is the mental health impact of the situations that these people find themselves in; that impact is lasting, profound and very damaging for them. The mental health stresses in this sector compound the trauma that many of these people have experienced, having faced domestic violence, homelessness and all other manner of challenges in their lives. If they are then challenged in their own homes, that exacerbates the awful problems in their lives.

In rural areas such as my constituency of Penrith and The Border in Cumbria, the factors that challenge mental health are compounded by rural isolation. I have pressed the Government to ensure that policy making reflects the challenges we face in different parts of the country. Rural communities often struggle to get the mental health support they need due to the long distances and poor connectivity, whether that is physical or virtual connectivity or even mobile phone signal. This is something I feel very strongly about. I sit on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, and I initiated an inquiry on rural mental health. We looked at some of the trigger factors for people in rural communities, and we found that challenges in the housing sector were among those.

The Bill has to be part of an holistic approach, to protect the most vulnerable in exempt accommodation. We have heard today about mental health, and I feel passionately that mental health needs to have parity of esteem with physical health. The two go hand in hand, and they need to be balanced together.

To segue into another issue, as a vet, I am passionate about animal health and welfare. As a dog owner, I know the impact that animals have on people’s lives and the importance of people being able to have animals in their accommodation. I have worked with Ministers on various types of legislation, and we want people in the rental sector to be able to have pets in their accommodation. Responsible pet owners should be allowed to have a pet, to give them that companionship and to help their mental health and the health of the animal. That is something we can move forward with.

[Dr Luke Evans]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent point about the impact of animals on mental wellbeing. Does he agree that having an animal to provide that support is even more important in rural areas, where loneliness is such a big problem?

[Dr Hudson]

I very much agree with my medical colleague about the role of animals in society and in supporting us, and the support we can give to our animal friends, and that is pivotal in rural communities. We love animals in rural areas and in towns and cities. Our love for the animal world is something that unites us in humanity and across the Chamber.

I welcome the statutory requirement on local authorities to publish a strategy for supported housing, so that they can respond to the needs of their area. In rural areas such as my constituency, the importance of local councils and local democracy cannot be overstated. Local councils and parish councils are at the heart of these communities, in terms of community engagement and providing the key services on which we all rely daily.



I urge central Government to take care that the Bill’s statutory requirements on the Secretary of State at national level do not create inertia or an inability to act at local level. We have seen a bit of inertia in Cumbria with local government restructuring, as we move to two unitary authorities. Sadly, local democracy has ground to a halt as people jockey for position and decide who is in charge of which parts of the county. Parish councils are struggling to get things through, and grant applications are not being looked at. For local democracy, we have to make sure that we do not have inertia after decisions are made. This is a really good Bill and, when it gets on to the statute book with cross-party support, we need to make sure the process is lubricated.

I echo the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory) highlighting the lack of housing in rural areas, exacerbated by the upsurge in short-term holiday lets and Airbnb, which is also a critical issue for us up in Cumbria. I welcome the fact that the Government are listening to Back Benchers who have raised the lack of housing. In our rural communities, we see people being driven out of their local area because they cannot find rented accommodation, so I welcome the fact that Ministers are looking at this issue on a cross-departmental basis. There has been a consultation on short-term holiday lets, and I look forward to the Government working through the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill to make sure we have sensible legislation so that people in rural communities can live, work, study and have their kids go to school in their local community. I very much hope the Government move on that, too.

There is a huge impact on employers in rural Cumbria, as they are not able to attract staff to come and work in their pubs, restaurants and farms because of the lack of housing due to short-term holiday lets. I welcome the fact that my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth has raised this issue, as have I in Cumbria and as have other colleagues from up and down the land. It is a key point, and I hope the Minister will look at it in parallel legislation.

Again, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East for bringing forward this Bill. I welcome the strong cross-party support, including from the Government, as the compassion at the heart of this Bill has my firm support.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ben Everitt (Milton Keynes North) (Con)]

Thank you for calling me, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am normally called last!

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Robbie Moore), who made a thoughtful and insightful speech, and it is a pleasure to speak in this debate. As my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) mentioned in his introduction, he once promoted another private Member’s Bill that dealt with a very similar issue. I pay tribute to the work that he put into that first Bill, which made it all the way to becoming law—the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017. It is tremendously satisfying for a Back Bencher to be involved in making laws in this way, especially when it is for such good reasons. Let me also welcome the Minister to her place: it is wonderful to be working with her, and I look forward to getting stuck in on multiple issues, not just this one.

Many people have been involved in getting my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East to this point, but I can say from the perspective of the Select Committee, of which I am a member, that a considerable debt is owed to the whistleblowers who have shone a light on the terrible conditions in which some people are living. As we have heard, some of the conditions to which they are subjected amount to what is effectively a gang environment, so those who come forward are doing something that is incredibly brave as well as incredibly useful. I also appreciate the work of the charities Shelter and Crisis and that of the all-party parliamentary group for ending homelessness, co-chaired by the my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East.

The work that has already been done is fantastic, but this debate is about the work going forward. The Bill is primarily aimed at dealing with rogue landlords and the regulation of supported exempt accommodation, and it will strengthen the enforcement powers that are available to local authorities, as was pointed out earlier by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood). If passed, it will become the first piece of legislation to regulate directly the standard of support provided to residents of this kind of accommodation in England, which is no mean feat.

Currently, unscrupulous housing agencies are allowed to profit from the housing benefit system, and that is simply not right. There has been an increase in demand for supported housing—in fact, there has been an increase in demand for housing across the board—but at the same time, the exempt accommodation sector is in need of huge and urgent reform. Rogue landlords have been exploiting loopholes in the regulation, making obscenely huge profits while not ensuring that the accommodation they provide meets the standards that occupants deserve. Throughout the Select Committee’s inquiry, we encountered many cases in which rogue landlords are using exempt accommodation simply as a cash machine, and, as I mentioned in an intervention earlier, that can involve property deals that are international.

The scale of this problem is disgraceful. Landlords drive the rent high while pushing standards down, forcing marginalised, vulnerable people to live in unsafe, unfit housing. The system is so warped that—in my view—it aids organised crime. Indeed, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood used the word “gangsters”, and I agree with her. The Committee’s report describes the conditions in exempt accommodation as “beyond disgraceful”, and says that there has been a “complete breakdown” of the systems that should protect residents. The Bill will tackle these issues head-on. It will bar rogue operators from entering the market, while ensuring that action is taken against bad-faith actors. We should be clear, of course, that even though there are gangsters out there getting away with this, the vast majority of the operators in this sector are good people who are in it for good reasons: supporting the most vulnerable of our society. We need to be mindful of that and ensure that, in putting this legislation together, we do not get in their way. I will come later to how we can use this legislation to drive up standards in the sector as a whole and focus on sharing good practice.

However, we need to focus on driving out the bad behaviour, so this is about growing the quality of the provision and ensuring that those examples we have heard about today—of residents in cramped, inappropriate accommodation, often grouped with exactly the wrong type of person—can be resolved. We want to ensure that the growth of exempt accommodation in certain areas is managed, because of the impact on local communities. Again, that comes back to data; we need to understand where the exempt accommodation is and who is in it, which in turn will solve the problem of the lack of regulation, so that we can get a grip of the governance of the providers and stamp out the exploitation of the system by those unscrupulous landlords.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt), who is sadly no longer in his place, paid fulsome tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East, but it is not just him who is full of admiration for our hon. Friend. Crisis has worked closely with him in the development of the Bill and it, too, is fulsome in its praise:

“Overall, this is about changing the national narrative and discourse around supported housing. Crisis knows how key exempt accommodation sector can be to helping people rebuild the lives so they don’t have to go back to rough sleeping.

When the system works well, people receive the support they need in accommodation that is suitable for them. This Bill will be vital toward ensuring that this can be achieved.”

I wholeheartedly agree.

Let us look at a few of the key measures in the Bill. It introduces a supported housing advisory panel, to be drawn from across the sector. That is important, because it is not just about the housing; it is about recognising the complex multiple needs of the people in the housing. They come from all areas of society—they can be refugees, care leavers, people with disabilities, people who have been previously homeless or sleeping rough, recovering drug addicts, victims of domestic abuse and, as the shadow Minister rightly pointed out, people recently released from prison. We know that in the critical 12-week period after release those people really need support and structure around them, helping them to turn their lives around and get on the straight and narrow.

So this is mostly about the needs of the people within the supported accommodation, but it is also about looking toward the demand. The local supported housing strategies would therefore place a duty on the local housing authorities in England to review the exempt accommodation in their districts and then publish those findings. That will help us to highlight the future needs and feed in that data, which we simply do not have at the moment and which will be so crucial to managing that issue as we go forward. Again, it will help us to identify and root out rogue operators.

Then we come to the national supported housing standards, which are the critical bit about identifying good practices, which are across the whole sector. Let me be clear again that there are some good people doing good things for good reasons and getting good outputs for the most vulnerable in our society in this sector.

[Dr Hudson]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful contribution. Something that has been highlighted today is that there is good practice in this sector. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr raised the point that people who are in the right place in this sector doing the right thing will engage with this legislation and then we can shine a spotlight on this best practice, which will really raise standards and drive out bad practice.

[Ben Everitt]

I could not agree more. The entire point is to identify those national standards and ensure that they are met, and the Bill does that in two ways. First, it legislates for the power to introduce the licensing scheme to support exempted accommodation. That is optional between districts, but it is an additional power. Further, it supports exempted accommodation that falls outside the definition in subsection 12(2), and includes a power to introduce licensing for that accommodation as well.

In the Select Committee, when we were scrutinising that question, I wondered whether that was perhaps regulatory overkill. As my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Chris Clarkson) said:

“The law should be a scalpel, not a machete.”

However, the scale and complexity of the issue we are trying to deal with is so vast that we need a variety of tools within our locker. That is not to say that they will all be used at every point. Therefore, there is a good reason for putting in these licensing schemes and potentially following up with some form of compulsory registration, although I am sure we will come on to that in later stages of the Bill—sort it out in the Lords, as I have heard before.

We know that we will have the powers to put that scheme together and that the licensing scheme can work with a system of compulsory registration, but the most important and critical factor in what could potentially be a bureaucratic Frankenstein of a piece of legislation is that it works with other Acts. It works together with the Housing Act and the forthcoming Social Housing (Regulation) Bill, so there is a neat legislative fit, filling in those cracks in the legislation that are being used as loopholes by unscrupulous landlords to scam their way into making a fortune from the most vulnerable in our society.

Levelling Up Rural Britain

Neil Hudson Excerpts

Wednesday 9th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. Wind-ups will start no later than 26 minutes to 7, so the time limit for speeches is now six minutes.

[Dr Neil Hudson (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the jazz odyssey that is three Dorset contributions on the bounce. May I take the House from the deep south up to rural Cumbria? I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) for securing this vital debate. As we have heard, levelling up is not just about towns and cities; it has to include rural areas. Rural communities need support more than ever now; the cost of living crisis has become even more acute than when I raised the issue of levelling up rural Cumbria in an Adjournment debate a few months ago.

At the heart of the issue is the potential of our rural communities, which we can unlock if we level them up. The key theme is that rural areas are not London; Cumbria is not London. Their unique nature puts them on the front line of the cost of living crisis. We have spoken about people, households and businesses off grid. At home in Brampton I am on heating oil, and the £100 supplement does not even touch the sides, because people have to make minimum orders of sometimes 500 litres. I urge the Government to review that.

It is not just households that are off the grid but businesses as well. Hospitality and tourism are crucial to Cumbria and Penrith and the Border. I firmly believe that those businesses need the emergency support measures that this Government brought in during the pandemic. I am very pleased to be working with Eden District Council and supporting the levelling up bid for the Inspiring Eden Enterprise Hub near Penrith, which I hope the Government look at favourably.

As we have heard from many colleagues across the House, housing is pivotal for rural communities. That is very much the case in rural Cumbria; it is so important for families and young people to get homes and for those who work in agriculture, tourism and hospitality to be able to live in the areas where they work. We desperately need more accommodation in rural areas, and we need Government to look at amending planning processes to tackle the issue of second homes and short-term lets.

On agriculture, I am proud to stand up for our Cumbrian and British farmers, who are the best in the world and farm to the highest animal welfare standards. The agriculture sector is on the front line in the crisis of fuel, animal feed and fertiliser costs. We as a Government need to look favourably on our farmers who produce food for us, while also supporting our environment. The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee has been looking at that in its food security inquiry and, as we have heard, the ELMS transition inquiry. I firmly believe that the Government need to look at that, review the schemes and make sure that our hard-working farmers who produce fantastic food for us are supported.

We have heard much about connectivity. Transport links are vital in rural areas. We need to support railway development, such as the borders railway coming down through Longtown in my constituency and on to Carlisle, and reopen stations such as Gilsland. We need to improve the train services that come up to rural Cumbria. The Avanti West Coast service is in special measures now; it has been looked at and it has six months’ notice. I firmly believe that we need strong action on that.

We have heard about ticket offices. We must protect our ticket offices in stations such as Penrith and Appleby. We have heard a lot about buses as well. In rural parts of the world, volunteer groups often step up where there are gaps in provision, such as the Fellrunner service or the Border Rambler service. I urge central Government to work with local government to use moneys sensibly. I urge Cumbria County Council to review its decision and the new unitary authorities to look at using central Government moneys to subsidise rural bus routes. That is an important point.

Hon. Members have spoken about education. It is so important that young people post 16 are able to get to their next place of training or education. I have been working with communities in Alston to help provide that. I urge the sensible use of central Government moneys. I hope that local government can put in provision. I want policy change that mandates local authorities to provide post-16 transport for our young people. Education is pivotal in my part of the world. We have fantastic schools. I urge central Government to look at rebuilding some of our important rural schools. Ullswater Community College in Penrith in the heart of my constituency is in need of a radical rebuild.

We have heard much about virtual connectivity, and Project Gigabit and the shared rural network are welcome. We have rays of light in Cumbria with B4RN—Broadband for the Rural North—providing services and working with the Government vouchers. We need to support communities to stay connected, we need to support our local radio stations and we need to support the terrestrial TV that people rely on. I firmly believe that we need to have policies made in London that reflect rural areas. We need to allow rural parish councils to meet virtually or in hybrid format so that local democracy can take place in areas where there are challenges. I firmly believe that rural areas need to be looked out for. Cumbria is not the same as London.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Neil Hudson Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 8th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dr Neil Hudson (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

I very much welcome the aims and missions of the Bill on education, skills, health and wellbeing, transport connectivity and closing gaps in opportunity. Levelling up is a key priority for the Government and a key priority for me representing a rural constituency. I am passionate that rural areas are looked after by the levelling-up agenda and recently held an Adjournment debate on that very issue.

Transport access is pivotal in levelling up. Unfortunately, in 2014, Cumbria County Council took the decision to stop using central Government moneys to subsidise commercial bus services. That led to a reduction in services. Last year, Cumbria received £1.5 million from the rural mobility fund, but this year it did not receive anything. I am concerned that the funding system needs to be looked at. Central Government and local government need to work together to produce better services. We have fantastic volunteer services in Cumbria—the Fellrunner, the Border Rambler—but we need people to work together.

I have been working closely with Alston Moor Federation of schools to see what can be done to improve transport access. Pupils and teachers tell me that, basically, students are being disincentivised to go to the next stage of their education because of the lack of transport facilities. That is not levelling up; that is really unfair. There are similar themes in other schools in my constituency, including in William Howard School, Ullswater Community College and Nelson Thomlinson School to name just a few. Students are having to drive themselves on challenging rural roads or rely on families, and are sometimes taking the life-changing decision not to go to the next stage of their education. The Government have, quite rightly, said that people need to be in education up until the age of 18, but the discretion is with the local authorities as to what level of transport is available for post-16. I really urge the Government to put a duty on local authorities to look after people post-16, so they can get to the next stage of their lives. I have raised the issue with various Government Departments, but we really need to get central Government working with local government to improve the life chances of our young people.

Digital connectivity is absolutely paramount in the levelling-up agenda. I have been calling for better broadband and mobile phone coverage in rural Cumbria, as have colleagues across the House for their parts of the country. I firmly believe that part of levelling up has to mean physical and virtual connectivity, so again I urge people to work together.

Along those lines, local government restructuring has presented some challenges for rural Cumbria. I am concerned that there is inertia—lack of grant applications, lack of decision making—as we have new authorities coming in. I urge people to work together to ensure that public services can still be delivered. I again ask the Department to allow parish councils to be able to meet in virtual or hybrid formats, so that local decision making can be made in isolated communities, too.

We have heard about housing from many colleagues. In my part of the world, the second home issue is at crisis point. People are being priced out of their local communities and are unable to live in their own communities. I am pleased that the Government have moved on that issue, closing some of the council tax loopholes, and that the Bill looks at increasing costs on second homes, but we really do need more affordable housing for our local area, so that people can get on to the next stage of their lives.

Furthermore, in terms of levelling up our communities, we need equality of access to all our healthcare services. I feel passionately that we need equality on rural mental health for people to be able to access services and that is part of the levelling-up agenda, too.

UK Shared Prosperity Fund: Rural Areas

Neil Hudson Excerpts

Wednesday 11th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Alicia Kearns]

I could not agree more. Rural businesses also require more support to access the broadband they need to establish and grow.

I welcome the UK shared prosperity fund, which is a central pillar of our levelling-up agenda. It rightly focuses on local stakeholders and letting local people have their say, but I would like to raise the concerns expressed to me by Harborough District Council, Melton Borough Council and Rutland County Council.

First, rural districts and local authorities have been prescribed relatively small proportions of funding. That is not a surprise to many of us, but I hope it can be rectified. Secondly, local flexibility risks being constrained by the fund’s pre-specified outcomes. Finally, the yearly spending requirements limit our ability to maximise investment spend over the fund’s duration.

For the shared prosperity fund to be most successful, we have to focus on long-term investments, but a closer inspection of the 2021-22 Red Book shows that there will be no dedicated, ringfenced funding for rural businesses, which will hit communities like the hon. Gentleman’s and mine hardest. Shared prosperity begins with the recognition that different areas have different needs, and my good friend the Minister knows my constituency of Rutland and Melton and the Vale of Harborough villages very well. In many ways, our communities are the same. They are idyllic and have an enormous sense of community. Their big-heartedness and friendliness is heartfelt and deep, and we have the picturesque rolling hills of England. Uppingham, one of my three towns, was voted the best place to live in the east midlands, and Melton was voted sixth.

We have industries that people might not associate with rural areas. Samworth Brothers makes the majority of sandwiches in this country, and Arnold Wills makes the majority of belts. We have the Hanson cement quarry, Mars Petcare, C S Ellis, which is an amazing national haulage company, and Belvoir Fruit Farms, and of course our stilton and pork pies are enjoyed around the world.

We love and want to protect our rural way of life, but we need support. Delivering services in rural areas is more expensive, rural economies are more susceptible to skills shortages, our physical and digital connectivity lag behind other parts of the UK and the geographical spread of our communities can obscure the nature of the issues that people face.

The relative affluence of some parts of Rutland and Melton means that some pockets of deprivation are too often overlooked by Government policy, which is to the detriment of rural communities. Rutland ranks in the bottom 10% of the entire country for social mobility, and I believe rurality plays a large role in that, alongside insufficient Government support. I know that the Secretary of State is especially interested in tackling these pockets of deprivation, and that is where a rural deprivation unit within his Department would make a fundamental difference. Such a unit would help it consider and understand the complex nature of rural inequalities and make sure that local investment plans take it into account. It would provide a renaissance for our rural communities.

I come to local government funding, an issue that my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Jane Hunt) rightly raised. For too long, communities in Leicestershire and in Rutland and Melton have been coming second. Despairingly, Leicestershire is the lowest-funded county council per head in England, while Rutland County Council is expected to raise significantly more revenue through local taxation than other local authorities in England. The east midlands has the lowest level of public investment of any region in England. How can we have shared prosperity when long-term funding settlements are so unfavourable to rural areas? This is a bold and ambitious agenda, but how can our councils do more with less? We desperately deserve the funding we need.

Rutland County Council has been an effective unitary authority for many years and we are proud of our independence. We ranked No. 1 on the Impower index as the highest performing council on adult social care in the country, but we have forecast a budget gap for 2023-24 onwards. We are required to raise a shocking 80% of our revenue through taxation, whereas the national average for councils is just 60%. That means that the council tax for a band D property in Rutland is £2,200 a year, and we are talking about a council in the worst 10% for social mobility in our country. We receive £331 less Government funding per household than other councils and we have the highest council tax in the country. That is not good enough and it is not fair.

Let us then look at the position for Leicestershire County Council, in which the Melton, Vale and Harborough parts of my constituency sit. As I mentioned, if LCC was funded at the same level as Surrey, it would have £104 million more to support people across Leicestershire. This situation cannot be right, and we need fair funding. I am pleased to have secured productive meetings between Rutland County Council and the relevant Minister. I hear and hope that future funding settlements will be provided earlier to allow for better local planning, but they also need to be richer. My Leicestershire colleagues and I have worked tirelessly since our elections to try to get the Department to pay heed to this unfair imbalance. I know that it is not easy or straightforward, and that budget would be required, but we must rectify these injustices. I have raised the issue of them time and again, and I hope the Department will pay attention to them.

Let me move on to the issue of rural transport. Strong transport links are all the more crucial in rural settings, and it is fantastic that the shared prosperity fund is taking transport into account. After 40 years of promises, hope and let-down dreams, and through working with the Minister’s Department, the Melton Mowbray distributor road is finally being built in my constituency. It is going to transform the town centre of Melton and bring £160 million of investment into our amazing town. However, we have wider rural transport concerns that continue.

Community renewal is highly dependent on good transport services, but we have had recent reductions in all of our transport services, which threatens to undermine our rural growth. In Melton, the No. 19 bus between Melton and Nottingham has been cut, not only because it was being under-used, but because it would no longer be financed. Workers and students are no longer able to get from rural Melton to Nottingham for work or for educational opportunities, and businesses are suffering, as, in particular, are those with special educational needs.

In rural areas, those with SEN suffer so often because it is so difficult for them to access the services they need. I am hopeful that I can mitigate some of the loss of that bus service with the reinstatement of the train service from Melton to Nottingham; currently, there is no direct service and we have to go through the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough and through Leicester. The Government kindly provided £50,000 of funding to look at my proposal to reopen it. I politely ask the Minister to remind his colleagues at the Department for Transport that we are waiting to hear back on our bid, having made our business case.

In Rutland, Centrebus is only continuing the Rutland Flyer bus and the 747 routes after demanding additional subsidies from Rutland County Council. Given what I have just said about our funding issues in Rutland, Members can see why having to subsidise a bus route is an additional burden that the council cannot take on. The Government have promised to bring forward new arrangements for rural transport in the summer, and I urge them to act now to support faltering rural transport services, because that will provide a boost.

[Dr Neil Hudson (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate on support for rural communities. Levelling up throughout the entire United Kingdom must include rural communities. The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, on which I serve, is in the midst of a rural mental health inquiry. According to the evidence we have taken, much of the stresses and pressures on rural communities are exacerbated by rural isolation, by the things that happen in rural communities—such as animal disease outbreaks and flooding—and by connectivity issues, with people unable to get from A to B, as my hon. Friend is explaining passionately. Does she agree that central Government should work with local government to mitigate ruralisation by allocating funding for rural bus services and broadband for rural communities, to make sure people can be connected and stay together?

[Alicia Kearns]

My hon. Friend hits the nail on the head. Whether in respect of combatting loneliness, connectivity, business opportunity or the 150 Ukrainians who are to settle in my constituency—they have started over the past few weeks—the 431 square miles of my constituency are difficult to navigate when there are no bus services.

Let me turn to digital connectivity. We have a digital deficit in rural communities. In 2021, Onward and the National Farmers Union highlighted that only 20% of people in rural areas can access broadband speeds above 24 Mbps. That is not good enough. I was pleased to get Rutland into the first tranche of places in the country that will receive full fibre-optic—that is fantastic: we will get gigabit broadband—but we need it for more communities. [Interruption.] Excuse me, Madam Deputy Speaker—I promise I do not have covid.

On job retention in rural areas, if we are to give rural areas the tools they need, we have to make sure that people know they can remain locally for jobs—I touched on some of the amazing employers in my constituency earlier. To tackle the challenges, we need local authorities to be able to think about the long term. I am concerned that unless the shared prosperity fund can be used to address the root causes of rural inequality, it will have a limited impact on our communities. That is why the Country Land and Business Association has called for the creation of a separate fund for rural capital investment. I urge the Minister to consider that. Rutland and Melton are currently developing a joint levelling-up fund bid that reflects the varied nature of our communities and business interests. I look forward to championing it in Parliament.

Let me turn to health and emergency services—[Interruption.] And I thank the very good friends one can make in this place. The Government have rightly identified health as one of the key pillars of levelling up. A 2019 report found that although older people in rural areas experienced reduced rates of mortality, poor access to services was driving health inequality. People who live in the countryside can have the most incredible, healthy and happy lifestyle, but poor access to services is a meaningful challenge.

Since being elected, I have campaigned for a second GP practice in the town of Melton Mowbray, because I believe Latham House Medical Practice is the most over-subscribed surgery in the country. If nothing changes, 45,000 people will be served by one practice. That cannot be right. When I was elected, I was told that it would take me more than a decade to get us another GP practice; that is not good enough for me and it is not good enough for the people of Melton. I have been working hard with Melton Borough Council, especially its leader Councillor Joe Orson and chief executive Edd de Coverly, as well as with clinical commissioning group chair Andy Williamson, to make sure that we get another practice and do not wait 10 years for it.

There are wider health challenges in Rutland. I promised to save Rutland Memorial Hospital and now have a commitment from the CCG that it will be saved, but we need investment so that those in my local elderly community do not have to go to Leicester—which takes at least an hour—to get ongoing care for chronic conditions. We need new funds and we need to invest in community hospitals. Indeed, yesterday at the Dispatch Box the Prime Minister championed the fact that he fought for community hospitals when he first came to this place, so I hope he will listen and take heed of the fact that we need to invest in them now.

In Rutland, we also face challenges in respect of cross-border working. Constituents of mine access services in Peterborough, Lincolnshire, Kettering, Northamptonshire and Leicester. People in the vale access services in Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire. We now finally have a requirement that information has to be shared across borders, but there is more to be done.

I wholeheartedly welcome the shared prosperity fund’s emphasis on community and place. As the Minister knows, our motto in Rutland is multum in parvo—much in little—and we have an abundance of pride in our county. I invite every Member of this House to visit Rutland water. Indeed, a colleague grabbed me earlier and said, “Is Stoke Dry in your constituency?” I said, “Yes, it is. Did you know that’s where they launched the gunpowder plot?” He said, “No, I didn’t, but I did once I had been there. Aren’t you lucky to have that in your constituency?” I said, “Yes, I am.” He then went on to list a number of other villages and towns in my constituency and say how lucky I was.

Rutland is an amazing place to be. The Rutland showground does events such as Birdfair, and we have recently had two incredible archaeological discoveries. The first was the amazing Roman mosaic, found in a farmer’s field just 15 minutes from my own home, which tells the story of Achilles and Hector. It has changed our understanding of Roman Britain. In so many movies, Britain is depicted as having hordes of barbarians, but we now know that there were these amazing mosaics. The Roman mosaic is described as one of the most significant discoveries ever made in the UK.

Only a couple of weeks later, there was the discovery of a 180 million-year-old ichthyosaur, the UK’s largest and most complete record of the marine reptile, which I had the privilege of touching while it was being dug up. Surely funding from the shared prosperity fund could go towards the promotion of these discoveries. I have no doubt that the scale of them means that we deserve a heritage museum and a heritage trail. We need major investment in our tourism industry that would help counteract the fact that we do not get enough local government funding. It would allow us to stand on our feet, which is all that we are asking for, but we need investment from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, and I hope that we can make it a reality.

Melton too has much to celebrate in pride of place. We all know that it is the rural capital of food. We have some of the best farmers in the country who produce world renowned goods such as Melton Mowbray pork pies—yes, I promised in my maiden speech that Members would hear much of those pies and I have clearly not failed to deliver on that. We also have stilton—Tuxford and Tebbutt is the oldest producer in the world, and there is also Long Clawson Dairy. The world’s best ale is produced by Round Corner Brewing in Melton. We also have the award-winning Brentingby Gin—it did not win the international award—and Cidentro Cider, which, again, has won awards. We make amazing samosas at Samosa Wallah, and we are also the leading producers of paneer cheese, and of tofu for the Japanese restaurant market. We are the world’s capital of food, and food heritage is in our blood. We could be the home of food tourism with help from the Government.

I wish to pay tribute to Melton Borough Council and Leicestershire Enterprise Partnership, which set up the new Food Enterprise Centre last year. The new Stockyard was launched only two or three weeks ago, which will provide a new opportunity and a haven of food and drink in my constituency.

I previously stated that the shared prosperity fund can deliver outcomes greater than the sum of its parts, but can the Minister elaborate on ways in which we as MPs can access this fund? I was recently contacted by the trustees of Barrowden village hall, who have, over the past six years, been working on a plan to replace their ageing village facilities. The grants that they had hoped to apply for have been wiped out by covid. We recognise that we are asking for more in a time of less, but they are looking into applying to the community ownership fund to help restore their village hall. The next bidding round is in May, and the project would be a fantastic candidate for the community and place investment priority, so I hope that I have put that on the Minister’s radar.

I would also point out that I have been fighting for at least 18 months for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to open its office outside of London in Melton. It is not just that Melton needs DEFRA, but that DEFRA needs Melton. It should not be that our policy officials are reliant on field visits to meet farmers and to understand the rural way of life. We are in the final three to home DEFRA. It is Melton Mowbray, Peterborough and York. What do we notice about that? There are two cities and one rural town in the shortlist. Only one is the rural capital of food. DEFRA should come to Melton and it would get a wonderful home and wonderful support from my colleagues.

In conclusion, for far too long, rural areas have been left behind to the detriment of our society. That is grossly unfair to the Minister’s constituents and to mine. We have a levelling-up agenda that allows us to find and tackle these inequalities, but we have to be honest about the scale of the challenges. We need: a fair funding settlement for rural local authorities; investment in rural transport and digital infrastructure; improved rural health services; improved rural mental health services; and a long-term plan for rural culture. If we do this, all the communities of Rutland, Melton and the Vale and Harborough villages will have the chance to succeed. Rutland and Melton are currently tier 2 priority areas in the levelling-up fund, so give us that chance to succeed and support us.

In February, the Secretary of State offered to come to Rutland to see at first hand the opportunities that we have and the challenges that our local authorities face. I ask him to come. My colleagues are always welcome to pop across the border and join me. I hope that we can recognise that when rural communities prosper, so does the rest of the UK. I hope that we will not have to have a debate such as this again during my time as the proud Member for Rutland and Melton.

Rural Communities in Cumbria: Levelling Up

Neil Hudson Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dr Neil Hudson (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

It is a great honour to be able to open this debate on support for levelling up rural communities in Cumbria. The backdrop to this is that I very much welcome the Government’s White Paper on levelling up, but I want to highlight and stress that this is not just about towns and cities, and shine a light on some important issues facing our rural communities that the levelling-up agenda can address. There are laudable aims in the White Paper, but I say to the Minister, and to the Government, that this is about not just his Department but other Departments. I really plead with the Government to work cross-departmentally to deliver some of the aims for our rural communities.

Sadly, rural isolation and poor connectivity are endemic issues in many parts of our country, and particularly in my constituency. In addition, there are significant physical connectivity issues. Penrith and the Border is the largest constituency by land mass in England, and that has significant issues for both road and rail connectivity. I very much welcome the A66 northern trans-Pennine project. This major infrastructure project is much needed due to congestion issues, traffic issues, and very importantly, safety issues. I really urge the Government to listen to local communities, and I have been voicing these concerns on their behalf. We need to get this project right. I have raised this with the Prime Minister. We need to make sure that communities such as Warcop, Musgrave and Sandford are listened to with regard to the correct route.

The major infrastructure projects that are going on up and down the land are very important; they are the major arteries. That is very good, but we also need to consider the veins and capillaries. In rural areas, the capillaries are things like rural buses and rural roads, and we very much need to address that. For buses, we need to look at the funding structure. I very much welcome the rural mobility fund, which Cumbria will benefit from. Sadly, in 2014, Cumbria County Council took the decision to stop using central Government moneys to subsidise commercial services, and unfortunately some services had to close because of that. It left a big gap. We need to revisit that at central Government and local government levels.

We have fantastic volunteer schemes in Cumbria. We have the Fellrunner bus and the Border Rambler bus, and we have council-run schemes such as Rural Wheels, Village Wheels and Community Wheels in Alston Moor, but I want central Government and local government to work together with local operators. I have met many private operators that stand ready and waiting to reinstate many of the services that were cut. If we get the funding structure right and if local government spends sensibly the money given to it by central Government, we can fulfil that need.

Sadly, a lot of the positive agenda from the Government is London-centric. We talk about buses and hailing buses with apps and things like that, but if someone is in rural Cumbria and they do not have a signal on their mobile phone, these London-based apps with good connectivity will not work. I am an equine vet by background, so it has to be horses for courses. We have to get it right in our rural settings. I stress to the Government and the Minister that Cumbria is not London.

On that note, we need support for road transport. As I have said, rural areas are very different. We have different needs in rural parts of the world in terms of fuel and diesel vehicles and so on. We are very much shifting to more electric vehicles, but if we are going to do that, we need a fast roll-out of the charging mechanisms, too. We have to ensure that it is tailored for rural communities.

With rail connectivity, I would like to see some joined-up thinking across our United Kingdom and in the borderlands region, with the Scottish Government working with the UK Government and local authorities to extend the Borders railway down to Carlisle. That would be fantastic for our region and the United Kingdom. On a smaller note, but a very important one for a northern community such as my constituency, I would very much like to see Gisland station reopened, and we have been working with the Department for Transport on that. Opening up stations and connecting train lines are very important to get people connected to each other.

That is a bit on physical connectivity, but I want to touch on virtual connectivity, too. That has been brought into sharp relief during the pandemic with people working at home, isolating at home and their kids being taught at home. If people have poor broadband or poor internet, that comes into sharp relief. For farmers trying to file their payments, it has come into sharp relief, too.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

As you know, Mr Deputy Speaker, Devon has much in common with Cumbria when we look at the topography and the need to get rural broadband. It is great that my hon. Friend is standing up for Cumbria, but if there is one thing we need to fix across the country, it is rural broadband and broadband generally, because of everything else follows that. The pandemic has shown how much we need it and how much more we can do. Sometimes, broadband stops the need for physical movement, too. I very much support my hon. Friend’s great drive for rural Cumbria, but may I make a plea for rural Devon, too?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Cheeky.

[Dr Hudson]

I thank my hon. Friend, the Chair of the Select Committee on which I am privileged to sit. He makes a fantastic point. It is about connectivity across our great country, and rural Devon is the same as rural Cornwall and the same as rural Cumbria, and we need to get it right. We have to ensure that everyone gets good broadband and a good mobile phone signal. It is a point well made.

The Government aim to have gigabit-capable broadband to 85% of the United Kingdom by 2025. I hope that we can still move that way, but in my constituency, gigabit availability unfortunately languishes at a low 7.2% and the download speed is just over half the national average, so we are well behind. My plea is that we can have some help with that. In our part of the world, the mobile signal is poor. Sadly, there are many notspots in my part of the world.

The Government have taken some positive steps. I welcome Project Gigabit. The shared rural network will have a key impact, too, as will the voucher schemes. Communities are partnering with fantastic companies, such as Broadband for the Rural North. I have seen that first hand in communities such as Kirkoswald, Mallerstang and Ravenstonedale. I pay tribute to companies such as B4RN, its chief executive Michael Lee, the teams and the volunteers who do fantastic work to connect people in isolated communities. I make a plea to the Minister for more help from his Department, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and indeed the Home Office in terms of shared mobile phone masts for emergencies.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, my neighbour, for securing this important debate and I congratulate him on a good speech. Does he agree that the communities of which he rightly speaks are at huge risk as affordable and family homes collapse into the Airbnb and second homes sector? There cannot really be levelling up for rural Cumbria if the Government will not take action to ensure that those communities are protected and that a limit is put on the number of Airbnbs and second homes that there can be in our communities.

[Dr Hudson]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, which I note. If he can temper his patience, I will get on to that topic shortly. I am surprised to see him here; I expected to see him in my constituency perhaps where he has been a frequent and regular visitor in recent weeks. Anyone might wonder whether boundary changes were imminent. I gently and respectfully remind him that we share similar issues in our two constituencies, but we do not share the same constituency.

I put it to the Government that we need to be cautious about future changes to things such as the BBC. In rural parts of the world, terrestrial TV is ever important and the BBC and public service broadcasters are a treasured national asset that deliver news, education and drama. Again, that came into sharp relief in the pandemic when kids at home were delivered a fantastic education through it. For rural areas, where we depend on terrestrial TV and where many homes do not have the internet at all, we cannot be thinking at a Government level about moving to a subscription-based model. I caution the Government that we need to be careful when we are making decisions about the treasured asset that is the BBC.

I turn now to interactions and local democracy. In the pandemic, our vital parish councils, which do such wonderful things for our communities, could meet in virtual or hybrid formats. Sadly, that modality is not now available. That is important and I have raised it with the Secretary of State on a number of occasions. I urge the Government to allow parish councils to continue to meet in virtual or hybrid formats. There are issues with rural isolation and the weather, with people’s jobs or caring responsibilities and with farmers. If we can empower local people to contribute to local democracy through that, we can learn the positive lessons of the pandemic.

In Cumbria, we are facing significant reform at a local government level with the changes to unitary councils. I am on public record as being against that, as I do not think now is the time for us to be doing it, and the groupings go against the natural geography and the community bonds. That said, we are where we are and we have to make the best of it and make it work. I make a plea to the Department, however, that ongoing projects should not be paralysed by that reshuffling and that we should certainly ensure that local democratic changes do not compromise local communities.

I turn now to the farming and agricultural sector, which is an important aspect of my constituency economically, as came into sharp relief during the pandemic because of food security. I pay tribute to our fantastic UK farmers and Cumbria farmers who deliver food to us and put food on our tables. Anyone in the food processing and marketing sectors needs to be thanked for what they have done. They are key workers.

The farming community faces many challenges, such as the changes to the funding system with the new environmental land management schemes. We also face challenges from trade deals. The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, on which I sit, is now looking at the Israel trade deal. There are significant challenges to our farming communities and we have to ensure that the Government get it right and do not undermine or undercut our farmers so that we can stand up for our values on high environmental and animal welfare standards and can be a beacon for the rest of the world. I ask the Levelling Up Department to work with DEFRA to support that sector.

That sector has also been significantly challenged by seasonal labour issues—we have been looking at that on the EFRA Committee as well—and there are serious issues in the food processing sector. Again, the farming community now has a crisis that has been ongoing in the pig sector. Currently, in excess of 40,000 pigs have been slaughtered on farm that have not subsequently gone into the food supply chain, and I really urge the Government to work cross-Government to mitigate and avert this crisis.

Another huge part of the rural economy in Cumbria is tourism and hospitality. Again, they are facing similar labour issues. That has been exacerbated by covid, but Brexit has certainly been a factor, and we need to make sure that we can supply the labour that our vital businesses need locally. This sector needs ongoing support, and I urge the Minister to work with the Treasury to make sure that we can keep some of the measures in place, such as the VAT cut for tourism and hospitality businesses, that will make things better for them. We need to think about tax relief for small rural businesses as well.

The hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) talked about the pressure on housing in local communities. We are a fantastic tourism part of the world up in Cumbria, and we have seen huge numbers of people come during the pandemic and when we started to open up. The pressure on local people to find local affordable housing has again come into sharp relief. With the increasing number of second homes in the area, locals are basically being priced out of their own local community. I really urge the Government to look at and address that with affordable housing, sensible planning and sensible measures, so that people can get on the housing ladder and it is not to their detriment when people come in and take second homes. I really urge the Government to look at that. Housing in our part of the world is very different from that in London. Again, when the Government are making changes and talking about changing boilers and such things, we have to bear in mind that many people in rural parts of the world have oil boilers, and we have to make sure we adapt. It is horses for courses.

Schools, pubs, shops and churches are the lifeblood of our local communities, and they need support. Many local communities are stepping up and acting together, such as the Kirkoswald community shop, and Bampton Valley community pub has now put together a shared programme to set up the pub again. However, we should not have to rely on the community stepping forward. We must get central Government working with local government and local communities, so I really urge the local government Department to offer more small grants so that we can put the life back into local communities.

Education is so important, and it plays a huge role in levelling up, with opportunities for young and old. We have had a very difficult time in Cumbria, and we have lost Newton Rigg College, the only land-based college in Cumbria. We worked very hard to try to save the college, but unfortunately that was unsuccessful. We now have pieces of the jigsaw coming together to try to rebuild land-based education in our community. I pay tribute to Newton Rigg Ltd, Newton Rigg Equestrian, Ullswater Community College and Myerscough College, which are working together with the Ernest Cook Trust and local stakeholders to see if we can get pieces of the jigsaw together. It is important that we rebuild land-based education in Cumbria.

To give an example, Ullswater Community College is a local high school with over 1,500 pupils, led brilliantly by headteacher Stephen Gilby, with a 600 square mile catchment area. I have raised this with the Prime Minister and the Education Secretary, but it urgently needs a rebuild, and I really press that message home to the Government. Outdoor education in Cumbria is a blessing for us, and that sector also needs to be supported. We have fantastic outdoor education centres, such as Blencathra outward bound centre. This is part of the recovery, it is about the life chances of young folk and it is very important for mental health.

Health underpins levelling up, so I really urge the Government to support rural healthcare. We welcome the fact that we have a new cancer centre that has opened up in Carlisle and a new diagnostic centre in Penrith, but on mental health we need to make sure that the message of parity with physical health comes through loud and clear. In the EFRA Committee, we have triggered an inquiry on rural mental health looking at the key issues and the key stressors. We have significant risk factors in our rural communities. We get shock events; we get floods, we get storms. Professions such as my own—the veterinary profession, but farmers as well—are over-represented with a risk of mental health and suicide, and there are the pressures of running businesses in our isolated communities. I urge the Government to try to address many of those issues at cross-Government level, and to support the communities that we live in and we love. We want to ensure that the people’s voice is heard down here in Westminster and in Whitehall.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Glorious Ribble Valley is not London either, so I wait with eager anticipation, Minister, for your response.

Oral Answers to Questions

Neil Hudson Excerpts

Monday 24th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I welcome the moves across Warwickshire to consider how services can be delivered even more efficiently as part of the economic success story that is the greater west midlands. In particular, I commend the leadership of Izzi Seccombe, the leader of Warwickshire County Council. The fact that she and her group continue to be re-elected with ever greater levels of support indicates that she is in a strong position to help bring people together across the constituency.

[Dr Neil Hudson (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

Volunteers who serve on our parish councils do an amazing job. In rural communities such as mine, there are significant challenges to attending meetings, such as transport, adverse weather, work and caring responsibilities. In the pandemic, we have seen that the virtual or hybrid format works well. Moving forward, will the Secretary of State look to allow parish councils to sit in virtual or hybrid format to increase and widen access and to help them work to the best of their ability?

[Michael Gove]

If during the pandemic we had not allowed councils to meet virtually, not only would we have impaired the effective working of local government, but we would never have known about Jackie Weaver and the country would have been the poorer for it. I commend the work of parish councils and others. I am strongly in sympathy with the view that hybrid meetings should continue in order to ensure the maximum amount of efficiency. There is a case for saying that certain significant local authority meetings should occur with all councillors present, but I want to proceed with the maximum amount of consensus to reflect the maximum level of efficiency and in particular of sensitivity to those who serve in constituencies such as my hon. Friend’s, where the rurality and dispersed nature of representation are important.

Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill [ Lords ] (Third sitting)

Neil Hudson Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 9th December 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Eddie Hughes]

The hon. Gentleman said that I would respond by saying there will be more reforms in due course, and I think this should be something to be welcomed. What is sad, following what he said, is that he will not necessarily be part of the discussions, because I have found it incredibly helpful to work with somebody who is pragmatic, challenging and reasonable—it has been a real privilege.

New clause 1, which was tabled by the hon. Gentleman, would require the Government to produce draft legislation within 30 days of the Bill coming into force to restrict ground rents on all existing residential leases to a peppercorn. He will know that that is beyond the scope of the Bill. The Government share his concerns about the substantial difficulties that some existing leaseholders face, including burdensome lease terms and high premiums to extend their lease and buy the freehold.

The scandal of high and escalating ground rents is a serious concern, too. Indeed, that is a big part of why we are here today to debate the Bill. Some existing leaseholders are faced with high charges, which is why we asked the Competition and Markets Authority to carry out an investigation. As hon. Members will know, the investigation of potential unfair terms and mis-selling is ongoing, and my Department follows it closely. Indeed, I met the CMA last month to receive a progress update. It might benefit the Committee if I expand on the investigation and the progress we have seen so far.

In early 2020, the CMA’s report identified a number of serious concerns, including high and increasing ground rents. Following that report, it opened enforcement action involving four leading housing developers. I know that hon. Members will join me in welcoming the progress that the CMA has made since then. The CMA’s work is not to be underestimated. It has secured settlements with two leading housing developers and an investor in the leasehold sector, which have committed those parties to changes that will benefit thousands of existing leaseholders. The developers have agreed to refund homeowners who saw their ground rents double, and to allow leaseholders to buy the freehold of their property at a discount. Those landmark commitments will ensure greater transparency for the affected leaseholders, helping future buyers to make informed decisions without feeling pressured by time constraints. The CMA has made excellent progress, and that is just the start. We support the ongoing investigation and believe it will send a clear signal to others in the sector to follow this lead.

I referred earlier to the problem that some leaseholders face: a very high premium to buy their freehold—a process known as enfranchisement—or simply to extend their lease. The hon. Member for Weaver Vale will be aware that, earlier this year, we announced a package of reforms of the valuation process that is used to calculate those premiums. Our changes to the enfranchisement valuation process, including abolishing marriage value and prescribing calculation rates, will result in substantial savings for some leaseholders, particularly those with less than 80 years left on their lease. In fact, existing leaseholders can already buy out their ground rent when they extend their lease.

Importantly, we have announced that we will cap the treatment of ground rent in the premium calculation. This means that, in effect, the cost of buying out the ground rent will be reduced for many leaseholders, particularly those with onerous ground rents. We have also committed ourselves to enabling all leaseholders to buy out the ground rent without needing to extend their lease. That will be the case for houses and for flats.

I appreciate the urgency in wanting to address issues faced by existing leaseholders—indeed, I campaigned on that as a Back Bencher—and I reassure hon. Members that the Government are working at pace to bring forward wider leasehold reforms. However, I must once again state that I do not think that the arbitrary deadline in new clause 1 would be useful in that context. As members of the Committee will know, and indeed as, the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood, who is not in her place, said this earlier this week, leasehold law is extremely complex.

[Dr Neil Hudson (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

I echo the Minister’s comments and thank the hon. Member for Weaver Vale for his service in his Front-Bench role. I also thank Opposition Members for the constructive approach they have taken to looking at the Bill; we have moved together positively. I also echo the Minister’s comments in saying that this tightly worded Bill is an attempt to address future wrongs, but I am encouraged to hear that the Government will take comments on board and look at existing wrongs as they move forward with leasehold reform.

[Eddie Hughes]

I thank my hon. Friend for his endorsement and will turn to him for advice and support as we formulate that policy. However, we do need to take time to get the reforms right. Hon. Members can rest assured, though, that reforming the leasehold system is a high priority for the Government. I therefore ask the hon. Member for Weaver Vale to withdraw the motion.

Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)

Neil Hudson Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 7th December 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Mike Amesbury]

rose—

[Dr Neil Hudson (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

rose—

[The Chair]

We will hear first from Mr Amesbury and then Dr Hudson.

--- Later in debate ---

[Eddie Hughes]

I defer to you in all things, Mr Hollobone, and I feel better educated. I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border.

[Dr Hudson]

It is great privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I welcome the Minister’s comments and the Bill, as well as the constructive comments from the Opposition. We are all on the same page and think that this constructive Bill is a small step towards correcting future injustices.

I take on board the complexities for people in the existing system, but in respect of the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster, does the Minister agree that if we can get the Bill through, it will shine a spotlight on developers that have existing leaseholders and they may well reflect, so this Bill for new leaseholders might create some retrospective good will? It is a start, and I welcome the comment from the Minister that we can try to address things moving forward. I very much welcome the Bill, and I hope that it will start to address some of the retrospective issues indirectly.