Trade Union Bill (Discussions)

Debate between Nick Boles and Philip Hollobone

Thursday 28th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

This is a shabby political episode. The Government have been caught diluting trade union legislation to persuade the trade unions to come on board with the campaign to stay in the European Union. Is it not clear that the Government, big business, the big banks, the BBC and now the big trade unions are all ganging up on the British people to try to persuade them to stay in the European Union?

[Nick Boles]

Nothing pains me more than to have angered my hon. Friend, as I clearly have. I have huge liking and respect for him; whenever he asks me to visit his constituency I drop everything to come, because I just think he is a great man. But I reject what he has said. Unlike in any other case, perhaps in this case he is blinded a little by his passion for the issue. I simply point out that all he need do is look at the front pages and editorial pages of every single newspaper that is traditionally seen as a Conservative supporter to see that there is a balance of opinion in this debate and his arguments are being well represented.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Boles and Philip Hollobone

Monday 25th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

T7. At the end of last week, Tresham College, which has its headquarters in Kettering, announced draft proposals to end its A-level provision. I join local parents and students in opposing those plans but, should the worst outcome be realised, will the Minister make it clear to the college that it must do everything it can to ensure that those students who have already completed one year of their A-level course will be able to complete the second year at Tresham College?

[The Minister for Skills (Nick Boles)]

I am happy to reassure my hon. Friend that the college would have a clear responsibility to ensure that those students were able to complete their A-levels at another high-quality institution, and I would be happy to work with him to ensure that it lives up to that responsibility.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Boles and Philip Hollobone

Tuesday 15th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, I greatly value the work that trade unions do in encouraging employees to take up training opportunities, which is why we continue to fund the important work of Unionlearn. I will certainly reflect on his suggestion, and will make some announcements shortly.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Snap-on is a major United States manufacturer, developer and marketer of tools, and its UK headquarters are in Kettering. Given that it is seeking to increase its investment in apprenticeships throughout the country, will my hon. Friend accept an invitation to open its new £2 million facility in Kettering on 15 February?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Boles and Philip Hollobone

Monday 26th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

I certainly agree with the hon. Gentleman that there are remarkable sixth-form colleges achieving extraordinary things, and I want to support them as best we can. As he knows, one option we are keen to explore is whether some sixth-form colleges might want to link up with groups of schools and multi-academy trusts in order to be stronger themselves and to provide more of their great education to more people.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

10. How many pupils of secondary school age there are in Kettering constituency; and how many such pupils there were in 2010.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Boles and Philip Hollobone

Thursday 12th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

There were a wonderful 850 apprenticeship starts in Kettering last year, led ably by Tresham college in my constituency. Is the Skills Minister satisfied that LEPs are working as well as they might with local further education establishments in pushing the apprenticeship agenda?

[Nick Boles]

My hon. Friend is right to suggest that LEPs should take this seriously. Some are doing better than others on this, but our message is clear: they have a key responsibility, working with local businesses and colleges such as the one my hon. Friend referred to, to ensure that as many businesses as possible take up the opportunity of an apprenticeship. because that is the way to build the skills that his constituency and others need for the future.

Out of Town Supermarkets

Debate between Nick Boles and Philip Hollobone

Tuesday 24th June 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

We all got back rather more quickly than I thought, so I will ask the Minister to resume his remarks.

[Nick Boles]

Mr Hollobone, I feel that the Almighty perhaps felt that I was becoming a little too intemperate in my comments. I am sure that coalition harmony will now break out and that we can work out where we agree.

Although my hon. Friend the Member for Southport and I seem to have a different general attitude to the role that supermarkets have played in our society, we do not, nevertheless, disagree on other things, not least because I represent the three market towns of Grantham, Stamford and Bourne, which face similar challenges in their town centres. I want to make sure that independent retailers in their town centres can thrive, that new ventures can come in, set up and be successful, and that we do not end up with hollowed-out town centres, with thriving supermarkets outside.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for acknowledging that the “town centre first” policy is a long-standing one. I believe the previous Conservative Government brought it in towards the end of their time in office, and the Labour Government maintained it through their long period in office. It is maintained in the national planning policy framework, having simply been translated from the much greater bulk of previous planning policies, but with no dilution of its content—certainly in terms of policy intent, words or their legal import.

My hon. Friend suggests that, despite the inclusion of the “town centre first” policy, the sequential test and the requirement for an impact assessment on any proposed out of town development, more such developments seem to get through first, than is intended by the Government under the policy, and secondly, than was the case before. That is an interesting claim, and he referred to the report commissioned by the Association of Convenience Stores. He is right to acknowledge that the association—this is entirely proper—is a lobby group that represents its members and that commissions and publishes reports that advance their cause, but he is also right to say that it has taken the trouble to see what has in fact happened.

It is a reasonable challenge to the Government to look closely at that report and to ask ourselves whether it looks in a complete way at all the evidence. In addition, does it judge what the counterfactual would be? I say that because, without wanting to comment on the proposal that has been made in my hon. Friend’s town or on any other particular proposal, I can imagine that, in the teeth of a deep and long recession, planning authorities may well have been more swayed by arguments highlighting the number of jobs created by new supermarket developments than they might have been inclined to be during the boom times towards the middle and end of the last decade or, indeed, before. It is entirely proper for planning authorities to weigh up the relative worth of very different impacts, but that balance of judgment may shift back as, hopefully, the economy continues to improve and conditions within the retail sector gradually improve.

Although I accept my hon. Friend’s point on the level of vacancies in his town centre, it is not bad compared with some other places. I have high vacancies in one of my town centres, in Grantham, but in the past few months the figure has fallen significantly. All the landlords of small retail units in my town centres are saying that things have been picking up in the past few months, so I hope that is a sign that things are beginning to return, which may shift the balance of thinking in local authorities.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Boles]

On that note, I have nothing further to add. Coalition harmony has broken out once again.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

Thank you very much to all those who took part in that important debate for Southport.

Planning (North East Lincolnshire)

Debate between Nick Boles and Philip Hollobone

Tuesday 29th April 2014 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Nick Boles)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone, and it is a particular pleasure to take part in a debate among Lincolnshire MPs about the examples of good and poor local government in our wonderful county.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) on securing the debate. I know that the issue is of great importance to him and his constituents, because this is by no means the first time that he has talked to me about this subject—his concerns about the lack of a local plan in North East Lincolnshire and the effect that that is having on decision making about particular applications in his constituency. Because he has such a sophisticated understanding of the planning system, he will understand that I cannot refer to any decision that has been made or any application that may be under way, but I can talk to his point about the local plan and to the effects on decision making of not having an up-to-date local plan.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that local plans are absolutely at the heart of the planning system in a way that they were not when we came into government in 2010. The previous Government’s approach was that local areas were told what they had to do and where they had to do it, and they were denied both the responsibility and power to make decisions about providing for their needs. That happened through regional strategies, and he referred to the fact that his authority lies at the edge of two such regions.

On coming into government, we strongly felt that it was important not only that local areas were given the power to make decisions about development, but that that power could be transferred to them only if they had taken responsibility for showing how they would meet their housing needs by identifying, through a local plan, a sufficient supply of sites to meet those needs so we could all be reassured that enough houses and other facilities would be developed over the coming years to meet the area’s needs—hence the importance of local plans.

I am glad to say that, nationally, local authorities have been making very rapid progress in plan making. When we came into office, less than a third of local authorities had a draft published plan and only 17% of authorities had an adopted plan. The latest figures, in 2014, are that 76% of all authorities have a draft published plan and more than 54% of authorities have an adopted plan. There are lots of local councils whose plans are in examination or about to be submitted for examination by inspectors, so I am hopeful that those figures will continue to rise steadily over the next few months and years.

What those figures highlight, I am afraid, is the failure of some authorities, including North East Lincolnshire, to do what many other authorities have managed to do. I am not suggesting for a moment that putting together a local plan is easy or straightforward, or that it is uncontentious. It is not easy, straightforward or uncontentious in any part of the country, but 76% of local authorities have managed to produce a draft plan and 54% have managed to have it passed through examination and be formally adopted, so there simply is no excuse for his local authority not having managed to make more progress. My hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) draws a contrast with the other authority in the neighbourhood, North Lincolnshire council, which is Conservative controlled. That contrast is instructive because the North Lincolnshire local plan was adopted in June 2011 and sets out a five-year land supply, which means that North Lincolnshire council’s development decisions are respected. As I often put it, North Lincolnshire council is in the driving seat on local development decisions.

If North Lincolnshire council could adopt a plan in time—and no doubt it had to go through difficult moments and have difficult conversations with local communities—and ultimately do what we elect local authorities to do, which is to take responsibility for local decisions, there is simply no reason why a neighbouring authority should not have been able to do the same. I have to confess that I can see absolutely no reason or excuse for the suggestion that North East Lincolnshire council will not be able to put a plan in place until November 2017. World wars have been fought and won in the same amount of time. It is extraordinary that an authority will spin its wheels for so long.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes is entirely right about the effect on decision making. In his textbook exposition of the planning system, he made only one very small error when he said that, in cases where there is no five-year land supply, there is a presumption in favour of development. The presumption is actually in favour of sustainable development, which means that policies on environmental protection, respecting the need for adequate transport infrastructure and recognising floodplains, and so on, have to be seriously taken into account. The presumption will apply only if a proposed development can be demonstrated to be sustainable.

Nevertheless, my hon. Friend is right that, in the absence of a local plan and a five-year land supply, the presumption in favour of sustainable development will be what determines whether a development should go ahead. The preferences of local people and local communities as to where development should happen will unfortunately not carry the weight that they would have carried if the local authority had a five-year land supply and a local plan. Indeed, that is what has happened in some of the decisions to which he referred, and it is happening in other areas of the country, too. I completely understand local people’s frustration and dismay that their opinions are effectively being overridden by such decisions, but we have to return to the fundamental point that we can transfer the power to say yes or no to development proposals only if local councils have taken responsibility for identifying how they will meet those needs. It is only when that responsibility has been demonstrated through a five-year land supply that that power can be transferred to local councils in a relatively unfettered way.

I know that my hon. Friends the Members for Cleethorpes and for Brigg and Goole, and indeed all hon. Members, including yourself, Mr Hollobone—nobody is more involved at both local level and parliamentary level in representing people than you are—want our authorities to be in a position to make decisions on behalf of local people that local people have helped to shape and form. That is what we all long to see. The good news is that most areas are arriving at that point, but I completely understand the frustration of my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes that his authority, a Labour-controlled authority, is entirely failing. I wonder whether that failure is a result of incompetence or cowardice, and I wonder whether his local authority prefers to be able to blame the Government and the Planning Inspectorate for difficult decisions, rather than taking responsibility for having conversations locally about where development should take place. I hope that the people of north-east Lincolnshire will not reward people for failing to take responsibility, for acting in a cowardly fashion and for failing to discharge their responsibilities.

We are all elected to public office to do a job on behalf of our communities. That job is not always popular, and it is certainly not always to avoid difficult decisions; the job is to work with communities to explain what is needed, to talk about the alternatives and to secure broad community support for a balanced plan for discharging our responsibilities. That is what we try to do here in Parliament, and I suspect that it is what all of us here today tried to do when we were councillors representing people on local authorities. It is what North East Lincolnshire council should be doing, and it is what North Lincolnshire council is doing.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate, and I will be delighted to meet him to discuss further how we can help him to kick North East Lincolnshire council into swifter action on making its local plan.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

I thank all those who have taken part in this extremely important debate.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Boles and Philip Hollobone

Monday 7th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

I know that my hon. Friend has been tireless in promoting this scheme and, indeed, has managed to secure a visit from one of the Mayor of London’s deputies to discuss the possibility of transferring a site from Transport for London for school use. I will absolutely back her in that, and I am sure that she will quickly make progress.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

11. What assessment he has made of the wider applicability of the key elements of Kettering borough council's budget for 2014-15 which (a) freezes council tax, (b) cuts car parking charges and (c) maintains grants to the voluntary sector. [R]

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Boles and Philip Hollobone

Monday 20th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

I have the greatest respect for the hon. Gentleman, but I totally disagree with everything he has just said. Contributions to create community benefit are exactly what we should be trying to get more of, so that it is not just the owners of new developments who benefit but the entire community, whether through new facilities or through a financial contribution to make their lives easier. We should be supporting this, not describing it as bribery.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

But how can we ensure that, when new funding is made available for new schools and other developments, it is not simply provided by the local county council, for example, as the local education authority? How can we ensure that academies and other education providers also have a chance to come forward with sensible proposals?

[Nick Boles]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I know that the Secretary of State for Education has made it clear that it must be open for a free school to be the promoter of any new school that is set up.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Boles and Philip Hollobone

Monday 25th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

The hon. Gentleman will understand that it is the responsibility of his council to assess all housing needs for students and other people, and to make adequate provision. That is what councils should be doing through their local plans. I am sure he is influencing his council strongly on its plan.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

3. Whether parish councils are able to draw up a neighbourhood plan if they take a different view from their local planning authority on local planning issues.

Planning (Broughton)

Debate between Nick Boles and Philip Hollobone

Tuesday 21st May 2013 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Nick Boles)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) on securing this debate on an important local issue. He is, as you know, Mr Weir, the living embodiment of localism, being a representative of his constituents not just in this Parliament as a Member of Parliament but as a borough councillor. I am in awe of his work ethic in taking on two such testing roles.

I strongly welcome Broughton’s interest in pursuing a neighbourhood plan. It is probably the most transformative of the Government’s planning innovations, and I am delighted that it is making particularly good progress with the first three referendums on neighbourhood plans, which were passed with overwhelming majorities. Thame in Oxfordshire secured a higher turnout than the county council elections that took place on the same day. People went to the polls to vote for the neighbourhood plan, but did not vote for a county council candidate. There is a huge amount of popular interest in neighbourhood planning, and I strongly welcome any community that wants to pursue one.

My hon. Friend will understand that I cannot discuss individual applications, past or prospective, but I hope that I can explain to him how the balance of planning policy works and offer to engage with him and Broughton’s residents in future. At the heart of the Localism Act 2011 and the national planning policy framework that it introduced is our wish to devolve to local communities responsibility for making provision for future development as well as the power to plan how those development needs should be met. It is important to understand the combination of the power and the responsibility.

This country has an intense housing need; that is true in Northamptonshire, in my county of Lincolnshire and certainly to the south of both. Every year, the country has built many fewer houses than we need just to meet the growth in our population as a result of ageing and other social changes. That is why we placed at the heart of the framework the idea that discharging responsibility to the local community involves providing sufficient sites to meet the five-year land supply need. That means having sites that are available for development now that could satisfy the area’s housing needs over the next five years. The framework then says that if a local authority does not have the five-year land supply in place, its housing policies will not be considered robust, and applications for housing developments will therefore have to be judged against the national framework policies, which cover a wide range of planning issues, and the presumption in favour of sustainable development.

To reassure my hon. Friend, it is important to understand that it is not a presumption in favour of all development—it is not a free-for-all. The presumption is in favour of sustainable development. The sustainability policies, which are clearly set out in the national planning policy framework, relate to environmental protections and to the importance of sufficient infrastructure. Sustainability captures not only environmental concerns, but economic sustainability and physical sustainability, in terms of the infrastructure supporting development. I am well aware of other decisions by inspectors. They regularly turn down proposals for development when authorities do not have a five-year land supply, because they accept that those development proposals are not sustainable and would conflict with important policies in the framework.

The presumption kicks in when there is no five-year land supply. As my hon. Friend has accepted, that is unfortunately, at the moment, the case for Kettering borough council, although he makes a good argument about why that is, in part, a result of problems with the A14 and its new junction. I would like to reassure him that, as somebody served indirectly by the A14, I am very keen for the A14 improvements to be brought forward. Just yesterday, I met the Minister in the Treasury with responsibility for infrastructure, Lord Deighton, to discuss major national infrastructure projects, and I know that improvements to the A14 are absolutely at the top of the Government’s list of priorities for such projects.

I hope that together we can work to try and accelerate those improvements and the creation of the junction, which my hon. Friend supports. I hope, however, that he also accepts that national policy must be made to apply equally everywhere. Having a policy that requires boroughs to have a five-year land supply means that his borough then needs to find alternative sites while the sites off the A14 are not available, knowing that there will continue to be development needs, and perhaps at the back end of the 15-year plan, those sites will come on stream and other sites will not need to be provided, once the A14 development is complete.

My hon. Friend quoted Councillor Jim Hakewill’s eloquent letter, which I read and replied to on the Prime Minister’s behalf, and which asked, importantly, whether it would be possible to call some kind of moratorium on development applications while neighbourhood plans are under way. That case has been made by other Members of Parliament and by a number of organisations, including the Campaign to Protect Rural England. The difficulty with that proposal is that, first—of course, Parliament could change this—there is no legal basis for introducing a moratorium on development applications while plans are under way.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly—because we can change the law any time if we are persuaded of the merits of doing so—it would, unfortunately, create a perverse incentive that I fear communities less responsible and less proactive than my hon. Friend’s would be inclined to abuse. If we said that once work had started on a neighbourhood plan, there would then be a moratorium on all development applications until the plan process was complete, every single community in the country that wanted to stop development would have a clear incentive to start a neighbourhood plan and take their own sweet time to conclude it, as they would know that they could see off any application in the meantime.

Unfortunately therefore, we need to have, embedded in the system, a dynamic incentive for communities to get a move on and put their plans in place, whether at neighbourhood or local level. The fact is that only through having a robust plan can the community make decisions about speculative applications and know that they will stick. That provides the incentive to take the difficult decisions involved in drawing up a plan, and for the borough council, of which my hon. Friend is a member, to put in place its five-year land supply. That same incentive puts a tiger in the tank of people working as volunteers in neighbourhoods to do their community plan, because they will then know that if they want to control the future development of their community, the plan is urgent, important, and worth getting on with.

In the meantime, I accept that a few applications may be made that will ultimately be accepted, either by the planning authority or by a planning inspector on appeal, that the community would rather not see happen. I completely understand that, but planning is a long game. My hon. Friend has been representing his constituents and residents for a very long time at different levels, and I hope that he will carry on doing so for an even longer time in future. Even if an application that a community does not like gets through in the next year or two, the game is over the next 10 or 20 years. If, 15 years ago, there was the possibility of having neighbourhood plans in all those communities, they would have been able to shape such developments in a way that they were never able to.

I hope that the community of Broughton, which my hon. Friend is representing so well today, will see that even if they cannot control the application that he referred to, they have the possibility, through plan making, of controlling developments for the next 15 years. That applies not only to housing developments, but to the development of community facilities, green spaces and design codes, and to lots of other issues that are vital to people growing up and living in a community.

[Mr Hollobone]

I have been listening to what the Minister is saying. He has obviously spent a lot of time on the brief and is explaining the policy clearly. On the way home to his constituency, I have a feeling that he probably comes very close to Kettering. Would he be kind enough to call in at Broughton, at a meeting that Councillor Hakewill and I would be pleased to arrange, so that he could listen to residents’ views on the issue and explain the policy?

[Nick Boles]

I would be delighted to. There is nothing I enjoy more than getting out of Westminster and talking to people. I was in Worcestershire and Shropshire last week, and next week I am in Devon and Cornwall—it is rather quicker and easier to get to Kettering and Broughton. I would be delighted to come and talk to residents, and hopefully explain to them the benefits of neighbourhood planning.

It is not that there are no frustrations—there are. It is not that there are no disappointments—there are. It is not that it is easy or quick—it is not. It is a long, painful process that requires volunteers and local councillors to undertake exhaustive efforts on behalf of the common interest, which is a thoroughly admirable thing that I applaud. However, we have a support contract in place to offer communities such as Broughton direct support. There is the possibility of securing a grant of £7,000 towards the out-of-pocket costs of organising a neighbourhood plan. I would be happy to explain that to them, and hopefully, to share the experience of other communities that have done neighbourhood plans successfully. Neighbourhood plans, such as that in Thame, have had to wrestle with substantial development. A plan has been backed that includes plans for 775 additional houses in Thame; nevertheless, it secured the support of more than 70% of the people who voted.

I believe that neighbourhood planning is the answer. I hope that the people of Broughton will not be downcast or put off this important initiative, and I would be delighted to join my hon. Friend in meeting them to discuss how we can make their neighbourhood plan come to reality.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Boles and Philip Hollobone

Monday 18th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Will the Planning Minister instruct the planning inspectorate not to sanction on appeal entirely inappropriate housing development outside town and village envelopes using the five-year rolling housing supply targets where the local authority concerned is doing all it can and more to meet Government guidelines on the development of local plans?

[Nick Boles]

What I can confirm is that the planning inspectorate will interpret the national planning policy framework and the policies contained in local plans and arrive at decisions that reflect the policies in both those documents. What I cannot do is give any particular instruction not to do something in a particular place, but national policy and local plans will be followed.

King’s Lynn Incinerator

Debate between Nick Boles and Philip Hollobone

Wednesday 16th January 2013 Westminster Hall

[Nick Boles]

I certainly agree with my hon. Friend that it would be preferable to have that support. We do need to recognise—this is not unique to incineration—that certain facilities that are required in every area of the country will never be popular among their neighbours. This facility may well be one of them, but what is absolutely the case is that there needs to be a thorough process to gain an understanding of the answers to the following questions. Is this is the right facility? Is it the right technology? Is it a necessary facility? Is it of the right scale and, critically, is it in the right place? Is the operator, as my hon. Friend has asked, a fit and proper operator? All those questions will be explored—should be explored—by the county council in putting together its plans and will be explored, to the extent that they are planning issues, in the planning inquiry.

The timetable for the public inquiry procedure is designed to enable the application to proceed quickly and fairly. I understand that the inquiry will commence on 26 February and it is envisaged that it will run until 19 April. My hon. Friend has made clear the extent and the strength of local feeling in his constituency and beyond its borders about the application. He has set out some compelling arguments about the particular facility and the people running it, as well as the alternatives that he and his constituents believe could do the job that is required for Norfolk’s waste, without bringing the impact on communities that he so fears. That public inquiry will give him and the people he represents so capably every opportunity to develop those views, to put their arguments and to have them tested by a planning inspector. That is what will inform a decision that the Secretary of State will ultimately make. I cannot promise my hon. Friend, of course, that the decision will be one that he will welcome, but I can promise him that the process of arriving at that decision will be thorough and open and will give his constituents and him every opportunity to make their case.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

We now come to the last debate of the day, which will conclude no later than 5.16 pm.