Amendment of the Law

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

Well, let us go through it, shall we? The deficit plan that we put in place would have involved £57 billion-worth of discretionary action—[Interruption.] Will the Secretary of State just pause for a moment? I know that he has read all 40 pages of chapter 6 of the Budget that was published in March last year, but let me just remind him of their contents: £57 billion-worth of discretionary action; £19 billion-worth of tax rises; and £38 billion of cuts, £18 billion of which would have fallen on capital, and £20 billion of which would have fallen on current expenditure, of which £12 billion would have fallen in Whitehall, £5 billion would have fallen on lower priority projects and £3 billion would have been achieved through a pay freeze and asking public sector workers to—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I just want to clarify that the hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) meant that the right hon. Gentleman was inadvertently misleading the House.

[Mr Ellwood]

Of course.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Thank you.

[Mr Byrne]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. Please resume your seats. As Members can see, more than 40 colleagues have applied to take part in today’s debate, so there is a six-minute limit on speeches, with the usual injury time for two interventions. As happened yesterday, persistent interveners will be moved down the list. I also remind Members of Mr Speaker’s instruction to them not to approach the Chair during the debate to find out where they are on the list. Those who can finish their speeches in less than six minutes will be helping colleagues. I call Mr Peter Lilley.

--- Later in debate ---

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

The cornerstone of this Budget is undoubtedly the need to tackle the deficit. Spending £50 billion a year just on debt interest, which is double what we spend on transport, was clearly intolerable and could not go on. If we had not tackled the deficit, we would have found that an Irish, Greek or Portuguese economic future awaited us all, meaning more cuts, more public billions down the drain and higher interest rates, which would have hit everyone with a mortgage, everyone with an overdraft and every business dependent on bank borrowing. There is no point pretending that the cuts are not painful, but interest rates of 7%, 8% or higher would have been extremely painful, too, so I am glad that the Chancellor did not take that risk.

I am also very glad that the Chancellor is well on the way to fulfilling a Lib Dem election pledge to take more than 1 million people out of income tax, benefiting 24 million more by raising the income tax threshold. That will take nearly 2,000 of my constituents out of income tax altogether and benefit nearly half the population of the town.

There are also many welcome measures in the Budget for business and for investment. The cut in corporation tax will help small businesses in my constituency; I hope that we will benefit from some of the 40,000 new apprenticeships for young people not in education, employment or training; and it would be churlish of me not to mention the redoubling of the Swindon to Kemble line, which will be good for Cheltenham, good for business and good for the environment.

Good for the environment, too, will be the tripling of the endowment to the green investment bank to £3 billion, and the news that that bank will in due course be able to borrow on its own account. That is an important signal to green investors, and it will help us to lay the foundations of a low-carbon economy. So, too, will the commitment to a floor price for carbon, and, although £30 a tonne by 2020 is a pretty modest ambition, it gives an underlying message and confidence to those investing in green industry and green jobs.

I hope, however, that the measure will not lead to an accidental, back-door subsidy to the nuclear industry—not just to new nuclear but to the existing nuclear industry, which already costs us £1.5 billion of public money a year to clean up and close down. That is important, because any subsidy to the nuclear industry would run counter to specific pledges made in opposition by both Conservative and Liberal Democrat spokesmen, and I know because I was one of them.

I have a few other slight worries about the Budget. Not all red tape is bad, and I am concerned about the relaxation of the rules to be able to request flexible working. In my experience as an employer, I found that flexible working generally increased staff commitment and productivity. Progressive and innovative companies are trying to do more of it, not less.

My biggest worry about the Chancellor’s speech is about planning. He said that

“we will introduce a new presumption in favour of sustainable development, so that the default answer to development is yes.”—[Official Report, 23 March 2011; Vol. 525, c. 956.]

It may have been a shame that he did not have the space or time to explain that statement more fully, because, on the face of it, it is rather alarming. Not all development is sustainable, so how can the default answer possibly be yes?

I hope the Chancellor was guilty of no more than radical oversimplification, but one or two other statements in “The Plan for Growth” give cause for alarm. It states that the Government will enable

“businesses…to bring forward neighbourhood plans and neighbourhood development orders.”

There are many definitions of a neighbourhood, which was not clearly defined in the Localism Bill, but I am pretty sure that a business is not a neighbourhood.

“The Plan for Growth” states also that the Government will

“localise choice about the use of previously developed land, removing nationally imposed targets”.

I do not welcome nationally imposed targets, but it is important that localities are able to prioritise brownfield sites over greenfield, and any qualification of that ability would not be helpful.

Possibly the most alarming news of all in “The Plan for Growth” is:

“Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) will be able to play a vital role in supporting local authorities plan for key sub national infrastructure… providing a powerful voice for business in the planning system”.

My constituents generally think that business has a pretty powerful voice in the planning system already, as it usually deploys battalions of barristers and consultants, but “sub national” worries me, because it has unfortunate echoes of Labour’s old regional spatial strategies.

People in the parish of Leckhampton with Warden Hill in my constituency know a bit about regional spatial strategies. They fought a battle against the south-west RSS for many years, and they are still fighting to protect the last substantial green space in the parish from disappearing almost completely. Such green spaces next to urban populations are vital for people’s health and physical welfare. They are opportunities for recreation; important for local food production; they absorb carbon dioxide and particulate pollution; and they are the most visited parts of the country and treasured by local people. Once lost, they are gone for ever, but they are exactly the spaces being targeted by developers, who in the past were supported by Labour’s myth that endless growth in urban extensions was sustainable. It simply was not.

The Localism Bill offers local communities real hope and the prospect that they will have a voice in the future of their own areas—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order.