Philip Davies
Main Page: Philip Davies (Conservative - Shipley)
Andrew Stunell
New clause 12 refines one of the central elements of the Bill—the general power of competence. I shall say more about that shortly and also address the other new clauses and amendments in this excessively long group.
The Government are committed to the radical decentralisation of power and control from Whitehall and Westminster to local government, local communities and individuals. We are pushing power back down to the lowest possible level, and this Bill is about shaking up the balance of power and revitalising democracy. It will give power to councils, communities, voluntary groups and the people, giving local authorities the power to take decisions that are right for their areas, and giving to local people the power to influence those decisions.
This Government trust local authorities to know what is best for their areas, we trust local councillors to know what they are doing and we are freeing up local government from the shackles of central Government. The Localism Bill does just what it says on the label.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
I welcome the Minister’s opening remarks and wonder whether he is, therefore, just about to get on to the fact that he supports my new clause 8, which would give local authorities the opportunity to vary Sunday trading laws. If what he says is true and he wants to pass all such decisions down to the lowest possible level, that is surely what he is about to announce.
Andrew Stunell
I look forward to hearing my hon. Friend’s case deployed in the debate.
I am pleased to report that there is a very broad measure of agreement, both inside and outside the House, on the Bill’s principles and, indeed, on many of its specific provisions.
Local authorities will need to ensure the delivery of more responsive services in a more transparent way, so that their citizens can see what is going on. To do so, local councils will need to innovate, to work across traditional boundaries and to ensure clear lines of accountability to their residents. That will be characterised, above all, by the way in which local democracy is renewed.
Within this very large group of proposed changes, there are a number of new clauses and amendments that hon. Members from all parts of the House have tabled, including the one to which my hon. Friend just referred. We shall debate them, I will consider carefully the points that hon. Members raise and I hope to have the opportunity to respond to them before the close of this debate.
We had a consensual time on the whole in Committee, and I hope that we can carry that forward in our discussion on this group of proposed changes.
Graham Jones
No.
The Minister of State had the opportunity before to say what he has said this evening, but there are real issues—[Interruption.] That is fine, but it is the Government who are putting forward their new clause, which now has no teeth.
In conclusion—because I was wrapping up—the LGA says that the proposal will be problematic to enforce. What are the Government enforcing? How can local government increase recycling rates for residents? If action is to be taken, it will hit some of the poorest communities that have higher recycling rates, not some of the wealthiest ones, and the same goes for landfill taxes. I appreciate Ministers’ comments, but as far as I am concerned, I am delighted that all the teeth have been taken out of this proposal.
Philip Davies
I certainly hope that the Minister will give me as helpful a response as he gave the previous speaker when he considers my amendments.
My new clause 8 would allow local authorities to vary Sunday trading hours in their areas. As hon. Members will know, under the Sunday Trading Act 1994, large shops over 280 square metres may open for only six continuous hours between 10 am and 6 pm on Sundays, excluding Easter Sunday, when they must remain closed. I think that this is rather anachronistic. Sunday trading is increasingly popular. I have no interest to declare, but I do have some experience to declare, as somebody who worked for Asda for 13 years. In my time there, Sunday trading hours were the busiest hours of the trading week. Contrary to common belief, Sunday trading hours were also the most popular hours that members of staff wished to work, because for many people Sunday was one of the few days on which they could do additional hours, as they had other people at home looking after their children and so on. If people want to shop on a Sunday or work for certain hours, I do not really see what business the Government have telling them what hours they can do.
Members may be aware that Scotland has a different regime. Sunday trading is fully deregulated in Scotland, although, under the Sunday Working (Scotland) Act 2003, workers have the right to refuse to work on Sundays. I am not aware that the whole world has collapsed in Scotland as a result of deregulating Sunday trading hours. In fact, my experience is that it has proved to be incredibly popular with both customers and workers alike. I would like workers and shoppers in England and Wales to have exactly the same rights to shop or work in shops at a time of their choosing as people in Scotland have.
My new clause 8 would not give local authorities the opportunity simply to extend Sunday trading hours, because I believe in true localism. My new clause also offers local authorities the opportunity to restrict Sunday trading hours further, if they so wish. If we believe that decisions should be taken locally, we should give local authorities the widest possible ability to make decisions to suit their areas. In areas that need extra regeneration, the opportunity to open for extra hours on a Sunday might be welcome, as it may benefit the local authorities in such areas. I do not see why the Government should stand in those authorities’ way if they believe that to be an important part of their regeneration strategy. Other local authorities may wish to restrict Sunday trading hours. I would not advise them to do so—I do not think it would be very popular—but that would be up to them, as democratically elected local authorities. So I hope that the Minister will explain whether he agrees with my proposed extension of the principle of localism. If he does not agree, will he tell me what on earth his objection is to extending a right to the people of England that the people of Scotland already have?
Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Philip Davies
I want to press on, because the Government have allocated a shameful amount of time for this debate and other people want to speak.
I support first past the post, even though my father would have been disadvantaged by it. My amendment 15 proposes that there should be a two-thirds reduction in the number of councillors in local authority areas that have an elected mayor. There are already far too many local councillors; Bradford has 90, for example. The US Senate has only 100 people in it, for goodness’ sake. Why do we need 90 councillors in Bradford? If we are to have an elected mayor as well, why on earth should we have an additional layer of bureaucracy, more expense and more levels of local politicians? If we are going to have an elected mayor, for goodness’ sake let us reduce the number of local councillors at the same time and save the council tax payer some money. I hope that the Government will accept my rather modest amendments, but if they do not, I will certainly be interested to hear their reasons.
Kelvin Hopkins
I entirely endorse what the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) said about first past the post. I am not a supporter of elected mayors but, if we have to have them, they should be elected by the first-past-the-post system. He is absolutely right.
I rise briefly to speak to my amendments 353 to 357, which would delete clauses 30 to 34. The clauses relate to fines to be imposed by the European Union. I find the whole idea of such fines complete anathema—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] I thought that I might get some support in the Chamber on that point. We could quite easily leave out all reference to the EU, and I would like to see that happen.
I note that the Minister, in introducing the new clause, said that he had already had discussions with the Local Government Association. The LGA is very concerned about this issue, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Graham Jones) rightly said. I hope that the Government will think again and simply delete any reference to the EU. Rather than giving freedoms to local authorities, their proposals will put an imposition on them. They would place more central control on them, rather than leaving them to their own devices and giving them more freedoms.
I hope the Minister will think about this and that the Government see fit, during the later stages of the Bill, to delete any reference to the EU. I strongly support the LGA’s view, which was ably set out by my hon. Friend, and I hope that the Minister will give this matter some thought. I shall not press my amendments to a Division, but I hope that he will bear in mind my feelings and those of many other Members.
Greg Clark
I will continue to make a bit of progress, then I will certainly give way to my hon. Friends.
Taking away some of those appeals for determination by an undemocratic body, rather than by local authorities on the basis of a plan, is the wrong thing to do, and would also elevate the status of planning officers above members. Such an approach would essentially say to planning committees that they should either agree with their planning officers or risk facing an appeal. That is the wrong approach. My hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay will shortly see evidence in the national planning policy framework of my absolute intention to make plans sovereign, so that it is not possible simply to set aside democratically agreed local plans in response to particular pressures.
There is also a case for looking at the fact that the costs of losing appeals can sometimes hang over local authorities. Sometimes the threat of losing an appeal dissuades a local authority from turning down an application that it might want to turn down. We should look at that, to ensure that it will be possible for local authorities robustly to stick to their local plans.
Philip Davies
My right hon. Friend will remember visiting my constituency to meet local residents who were fighting against unwanted developments in Micklethwaite and Menston. The logic of what he is saying seems to be that the appeal process should be evened up to deprive the developer of the opportunity to take their plans to appeal. Is that what he is proposing? One way or another, the plans should be equal between the developer and the local residents. On the basis of what he has just said, can he clarify whether he is going to stop developers having the right to appeal?
Greg Clark
I know that my hon. Friend withdrew an amendment proposing to deprive developers or property owners of their right to appeal. He will know, as a robust free-marketeer, that when planning consent was nationalised, it took away people’s opportunity to do what they wanted with their property, and that that became subject to the right of appeal. I think that that is a reasonable safeguard. I want to make the local plan clear and sovereign, so that it becomes the determinant of planning applications, so that they do not need to go to appeal.
Joan Ruddock
I very much agree.
There have been the changes of use on Deptford high street that I have described, but at the same time there has been a determination to improve it, and after years of battling we secured the funds, with the co-operation of a Labour Government, for a new station at Deptford and we expected new development to follow. However, who will want to live where they will look out on such a high street? As local campaigner Sue Lawes has described, at No. 14 we have Better Betting, at Nos. 34 to 40 we have William Hill, at No. 44 we have The Money Shop, for payday loans, at Nos. 49 to 50 we have Ladbrokes, at No. 55 we have Paddy Power, at No. 60 we have Fish Brothers pawnbrokers, at No. 70 we have Coral and at No. 72 we have H&T pawnbrokers. The final straw is Betfred’s application to take over the old Halifax building. There the change of use would have been required because it was restricted specifically to use by a building society.
The council has of course turned down that application and said, quite reasonably, that there are already far too many betting shops in the area and that it is unnecessary. They say that within the designated core shopping frontage the number of betting shops has reached
“beyond an acceptable level, detracting from the range of retail services available within the defined District Town Centre”.
Betfred has of course appealed. We await the result of that appeal with interest.
I put it to the Minister that it cannot be acceptable that, in an area of great deprivation but great spirit, local residents, 700 of whom have signed a petition, have no say in what is done there. I suggest not only that local people must have a say, but that others need to be protected from this kind of proliferation. Surely this is a community that can ill afford to spend what little money it has in betting shops on this scale. I am not opposed to betting; none of us is. It is the cluster effect and the proliferation that must be dealt with, and I very much hope that he will see that that is done.
Philip Davies
I am surprised at the lack of faith that the right hon. Members for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock) and for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) have in their own constituents, because betting shops of course go where there is a demand for them. If there was no demand for them on the high streets in Lewisham and Tottenham, presumably some of them would close down.
Philip Davies
No, because I do not have enough time.
The fact that these betting shops have not closed down indicates that the right hon. Member’s constituents want to use them, which makes them viable. I commend the right hon. Gentleman in particular for leading with his chin on this issue, because of course it was the Gambling Act 2005 that removed the unstipulated demand test. He was not only a member of the Government at the time, but in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, which introduced the Act which he now finds so offensive. I hope that the Minister will resist the siren voices from the Opposition Benches calling on him to do something about the general principle of supply and demand, which I hope he, as a staunch supporter of the free market, will stick to.
I want to touch on new clause 7, which I have tabled, which relates to casinos. It would give all 600 local authorities fairly and equally the power to decide whether to allow the licensing of casino premises in their areas. The location of casinos was determined by legislation back in 1972, which identified 53 permitted areas on the basis of population data as it stood at the time and added a number of seaside towns. That information is now woefully outdated and denies many local authorities access to investment and jobs and unfairly constrains and confines legitimate and licensed businesses. Despite the emergence of new towns and new centres of population, there have been no changes at all to those permitted areas in almost 40 years. A casino licensed in an existing permitted area can move premises only within the same permitted area in which it was licensed; it may not even transfer to another permitted area, even if a local authority wants it. Those anachronistic and ridiculous constraints have enabled casinos, ironically given our previous discussion, to be crowded into outdated permitted areas. Through my new clause I do not seek to allow any more casinos in this country, even though I probably would not object to that in principle; the same limit would apply to casinos throughout the country. All my new clause would mean was that casinos were able to apply to be outside the existing 53 permitted areas, if local authorities wanted them. We would be giving every local authority the chance to have a casino in their area, if they want it, rather than sticking to outdated rules from more than 40 years ago.
Joan Walley
I will be brief, because there were many references to sustainable development not only in the Minister’s introductory comments, but in the speech that the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) made.
The Minister made what was effectively a winding-up speech at the outset, and I rather suspect that the whole debate about sustainable development will be discussed further in the other place, so I want to send the most powerful message that I can, stating that when that debate takes place we should not just be satisfied with legislation that relates to guidance or with a new framework policy document that might come out in the near future; we should make sure that Parliament defines sustainable development and sets it out clearly in relation to this Bill, in this Bill.
My amendment is supported not only by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), who chairs the Communities and Local Government Committee, but by Friends of the Earth, the Campaign to Protect Rural England, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the Town and Country Planning Association, the Wildlife and Countryside League, the Woodland Trust, WWF UK and many more.
I simply say this by way of a message to the other place. The previous Parliament proposed that the Procedure Committee should allow the recommendations of Select Committees, when there has been a unanimous decision and report, to become material considerations as legislation goes through this place. Were that the case now, I have no doubt that it would have brought forward an opportunity to consider precisely what the Environmental Audit Committee’s short, sharp inquiry, which is tagged with today’s business, recommended—namely, that there should be a definition of sustainable development to allow for future progress, and that the Localism Bill should include a statutory duty to apply the principles of sustainability to the planning system and other functions of local government, and set out that definition.
We have not got that far with our modernisation of parliamentary procedure, but in the interim I genuinely hope that those valid concerns will be taken into account, so that we have not a whitewash but a means of balancing what many Opposition Members think, and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) said, are now going to be financial considerations, giving developers free rein to do what they like, with the real principles of sustainable development.