Levelling-up Missions: East of England

Priti Patel Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) on securing the debate. I pay tribute to him and to the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) for their leadership of the important all-party parliamentary group. It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Giles Watling). I am very fond of Clacton. I have been a resident of the east of England for nearly 17 years, and I know my hon. Friend’s constituency well. We campaigned on a by-election together, with good long-term results.

It is important to say that the contributions so far have included some serious issues that need to be addressed, which I say as the Member of Parliament for Witham for just over 12 years. My hon. Friend the Member for Clacton is the chairman of GEML, which for the benefit of Hansard is the Great Eastern Main Line taskforce. I co-set that up nearly 10 years ago: GEML was all about getting infrastructure investment into that main line. We have been successful, though I will touch on some elements that have not materialised. There are important areas, highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney, that speak to lamentable actions across Government and the low confidence that my hon. Friend touched on. I want to speak specifically about those.

First and foremost, infrastructure clearly covers road and rail. That has frankly become a joke in the overall way that Whitehall has failed to integrate. That is not to do with the Minister’s Department; it is a failure of the Whitehall system to work across Departments and integrate funding. Basically, securing investment in our infrastructure is one example of how we can support levelling up. It is a statement of the obvious.

We have new rolling stock on our line—part of the GEML taskforce—for a very good reason. A decade ago, I and colleagues across that network went to the Treasury and the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, the former Member for Tatton, and put forward a business case. Some of us are capable of putting together presentations and business cases. We put that forward in conjunction with Network Rail and it secured £600 million, linked to a nine-year franchise that was very much about delivering rolling stock, improvements on productivity, performance and so on. We achieved that, but it is only one example.

The failure to secure funding for Ely junction and Haughley junction was not the fault of the taskforce but of Whitehall, and its lack of integration. Those sites are not in my constituency, but they are east of England infrastructure projects that would unlock the economic potential not just of the east, but of the nation. It is interesting that, at a time when HS2 is again being vilified for a range or reasons, such as being over budget and not on time, we have to stick the course with infrastructure projects.

The problem is that the Armitt process has not been published. That is the funding mechanism, which sits in the Department for Transport, for securing these major infrastructure projects. The other problem, as we have already heard, is that the east of England is a net contributor. Our main line has been subsidising the rail network for the rest of the country for decades. That money goes to the Treasury. The revenue base sits with Treasury, and the Department for Transport is deprived of the funding stream to help with the financial pipeline of rail investment.

[Giles Watling]

Does my right hon. Friend not believe that the investment in Haughley and Ely is relatively low? We are not asking for a lot of money. It would unblock the blockage; it would take the cork out of the bottle of the entire east-west connection.

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend, the chair of the GEML rail taskforce, has hit the nail on the head: this speaks to a fundamental failure in Whitehall, and my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney repeatedly highlighted that. This is the core message that has to be taken away, and that is just on rail. Of course, rail supports economic growth. The west Anglia line is another classic case. With four trains an hour to Stansted airport, it feels like “Mission Impossible” right now. Some proper work needs to be undertaken, and the Government need to support that. We have been successful in getting Emirates into Stansted. We want to get other international airlines, as my hon. Friend said, including from India.

On roads, I have again secured funding, as a Member of Parliament, for feasibility studies on the A12 and A120, but yet again we are going round the merry-go-round of not getting the commitment from central Government to proceed with those schemes. Quite frankly, that is down to inadequacies with National Highways, which fails to operate in a transparent way, to engage with local community or the county council, which has responsibility for the strategic road network, or to engage with the Department for Transport, so we are not getting the road upgrades we need in the county. Those road networks are the economic arteries of the east of England.

[Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con)]

Integration in the planning of infrastructure goes beyond just roads and rail; there is the integration of offshore wind into the national transmission network. Only in East Anglia are there radial connections from offshore wind to the national transmission network. The rest of the country benefits from the holistic network design. Does my right hon. Friend agree that East Anglia should be included in that design and that we should move away from these radial connections?

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I will come on to energy shortly for another reason, and I will pick up on that point after I conclude on the issue of roads.

Essex is a net contributor, and the A12 and A120 are literally roads from the dark ages. They are deeply unsafe roads. If we care about road safety and the people who get up every day at the crack of dawn, such as lorry drivers and commuters, to service our public services or to come to London to provide services for major hotels and the UK’s service sector, we must upgrade these roads. It is becoming a joke right now—it really is. It is an insult to commuters and the people who use the roads who have to navigate the potholes and poor quality of the roads every single day. They feel, by the way, that they are getting an unfair deal when they fill up their cars because of the cost of fuel at the pump. This is not a criticism of the Minister’s Department, but it shows the breadth of issues that need to be grasped across Government on integration to provide those levelling-up outcomes. Otherwise, levelling up will just become a slogan.

I would like to touch on a couple of other areas, which are both linked. One is skills and education. I am proud not just to be the Member of Parliament for Witham, but to represent Essex and the east region. When I became the MP for Witham, the majority of my schools locally were in special measures or required improvement. I am pleased to say right now that we have great schools—good schools and outstanding schools—and, as a result, Witham is now a commuter town. People want to live and work there, and some schools are outstanding—that is a great thing. We need not just to give our youngsters great educational opportunities through our schools, but to ensure that they can get jobs and that they inherit skills for life. That could be skills within the region for the great energy coastline that we have developed over the past decade, which has been remarkable, and previous Ministers in Government should be thanked for their hard work on that matter.

Essex is a county of entrepreneurs, and I never tire of saying that. We are the home of small businesses and innovators, and R&D is big in Essex. However, our prosperity masks challenges when it comes to deprivation, as we have heard, but also skills, opportunity and aspiration. We need businesses to work with our schools and get their foot in the door to talk to pupils at an earlier age. I have a careers fair taking place on 24 March on Witham. I never tire of being a champion of those skills fairs, and we are bringing in businesses from former industries I have worked in to those schools. I want to see Government embrace that, because the apprenticeship levy is, quite frankly, not delivering the outcomes it was originally set up to deliver. I maintain that it needs reform. Of course, by getting those skills locally, we can create jobs with skills that focus on areas that Members have touched on already. I feel very strongly about that.

I want to touch on health, which has been raised. My hon. Friend the Member for Waveney said that we do not have a technology campus in the east of England—I agree, and we should work to achieve that—but we do have a university medical school. I was involved in the original bid to do the business case for that, and I am proud that we achieved it. However, I am afraid that our health infrastructure across the east of England is inadequate. Our patient-GP ratio is one of the highest in the country, and we are not training enough students in our medical schools. We need to do much more. When he was Health Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt) worked well with us to deliver some good health outcomes, but there is much more that needs to be done. We are an ageing part of the country, but we must work with our young people to grow skills in health and social care. I pay tribute to Essex County Council for the work it is doing in that area.

This is a message to central Government: we cannot have people working in silos in Government anymore. When I was Home Secretary, the Health Department said to me, “Please do much more on health and social care visas,” which I am pleased that we have done—I did that as Home Secretary. However, there is more that we need to do in that area, and we also need more home-grown talent.

Finally, planning is the biggest issue in my constituency casework. Witham has become a building site over the past decade. We are building homes, and it is right that we do that. The question is, are they affordable homes? We have already heard of the high income ratio that is required to live in our fantastic part of the country. This point is specific to the Minister’s Department. Planning is contentious, and we are not getting it right in this country; there is no doubt about that.

In Essex, and in my constituency in particular, we stopped the West Tey development, a proposal for a garden community of 45,000 new homes—which, by the way, was without any infrastructure at all. The entire concept was an absolute scandal and a disgrace. I pay tribute to campaigners such as Rosie Pearson and others in my constituency who worked together to bring that to the Planning Inspectorate and get that proposal overturned. Five-year land supply has also been a problem, along with local councils that have no neighbourhood plans. I want to put on the record the fact that I think it is deeply disappointing that the Department, in its former guise as the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, used taxpayers’ funds to boost and beef up that concept without working in a considered way with the local community on the kind of housing that was required.

I am afraid that this is not specific to the Minister’s Department. We are going through this all over again with another project: pylons. It is less about housing, but it will become a planning issue. The development of pylons across the east of England will, frankly, have a detrimental impact. We are pioneers in offshore grid wind farm development and renewables, and we must absolutely look to invest in that capability, rather than putting up more infrastructure that will bring great blight to our local communities and, I am afraid, agitate them even more.

I know I have taken up a great deal of time, Mr Davies. In conclusion, there are great things about the east of England. We are net contributors to His Majesty’s Treasury, and we cross-subsidise much of the United Kingdom through the hard graft of the great men and women of the east of England, but we are lagging behind on these key assets that are of national significance. My hon. Friend the Minister can only do so much with her remit in her Department. My wider message is about devolution and local government reorganisation, as well as about the size of the state in Whitehall; how bloated and unaccountable that has become, and how detached it is from the good men and women of the east of England who, as taxpayers, contribute to the bureaucracy of Whitehall and get very little back. That is where reform has to start. The devolution train is well under way now—certainly in our part of the country. In Essex, I back it. Quite frankly, we need reform of the core of Whitehall to start delivering for the good people of the east of England.

[Geraint Davies (in the Chair)]

I call the last, but not least, of the Back Benchers, James Wild.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Dehenna Davison)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies, I think for the first time.

Huge congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) on securing this vital debate. I echo the sentiments that have been expressed across the Chamber to mark 70 years since the terrible storm that took far too many lives.

Huge congratulations to the APPG for the east of England, that incredible cross-party body, on producing an incredibly insightful report, which my officials and I have been pleased to read and look into. It shone the brightest possible light on the region’s towering strengths: energy and clean growth, with the east of England producing more than half of the UK’s offshore wind and power; exports and global trade, with Felixstowe alone accounting for more than 40% of national container traffic; and the life sciences sector, which my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney mentioned. AstraZeneca’s R&D facility is rightly cited in the APPG’s report as an exemplar of the region’s booming sector, not least for its leading role in producing the life-saving covid-19 vaccine, for which we are all incredibly grateful.

For all those brilliant strengths, the report also highlights how the east of England faces its own challenges, too. As my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney highlighted, last year the Government published their levelling-up White Paper, where we outlined 12 key levelling-up missions between now and 2030. I fear, as my hon. Friend did, that I might scratch only the surface of the issues, but I will endeavour to cover as much ground as I can.

I will start with devolution—something very close to my heart and within my brief, so hopefully I have an advantage on my first point. As I read the report, I was a little troubled to find only medium confidence in delivering devolution. I clearly want that to be high confidence, so I will address a few of the points raised today.

We are pleased with our progress on devolution, particularly in the east of England with the historic deals we recently signed with both Norfolk and Suffolk. We all know that local areas know best what they need; they know better than Whitehall and we Ministers in Westminster ever will, and that is what devolution is all about. Transferring money and powers on housing, regeneration and skills will empower new directly elected leaders to drive local growth and focus on their priorities to level up their own areas.

That comes on top of substantial devolution and local growth commitments that we have already made through investments such as the £500 million city deal with Greater Cambridge and the £600 million Cambridgeshire and Peterborough devolution deal, and wider investment across the region through the getting building fund and £1.5 billion from the local growth fund. To reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney and others, devolution deals are only one of the areas where my Department works in co-ordination across Government to deliver on levelling up. That is what the White Paper with its 12 missions was all about: recognising that levelling up has to be a whole Government effort.

An inter-ministerial group was recently established to pull together Ministers from across Government to focus on core levelling-up outcomes and missions to make sure there is a co-ordinated effort. Without such effort, we never will achieve the levelling up that this country deserves.

For years the east of England has been a region that punches above its weight, but arguably below its potential. If we want to realise the full potential of the region, we need to level up skills provision—the region currently falls below the national average. I was concerned to read in the report that participation and academic achievements in the east of England were among the lowest of all regions in England. As we would expect, where there is a lack of skills and too few decent jobs to go around, there is inevitably deprivation as well. That remains a real challenge for the region, which has pockets of significant poverty, including in coastal towns, as highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Giles Watling), such as Jaywick, Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth.

I was pleased to see the recommendation in the report that the Government should promote skills devolution—something on which we are very much focused. In the current academic year, the Government have devolved approximately 60% of the adult education budget to nine mayoral combined authorities and the Greater London Authority, and Cambridgeshire and Peterborough received £11.9 million in the most recent financial year. As set out in the levelling-up White Paper, devolution of adult education funding has been a core part of all MCA devolution deals to date.

The Department for Education has committed to devolving adult education functions and the associated core adult education budget to new areas from 2025-26 as part of new devolution deals. We have worked across the country with new areas on devolution, including Norfolk and Suffolk, as I have already referenced. We will fully devolve the adult education budget in Norfolk from the academic year 2025-26, subject to readiness conditions and parliamentary approval of the required legislation.

We are also ensuring that everyone, irrespective of their age or background, has access to high-quality education or training, while prioritising the needs of employers. We are investing £3.8 billion more in further education and skills—

[Priti Patel]

Before my hon. Friend moves on to further education, let me ask about skills devolution; we in Essex have wanted this for a long time, so we must have it. What work is taking place to bring businesses into skills devolution? Local authorities, like Whitehall, can only do so much. This is all about ensuring that businesses are connected with a potential pool of labour and a talent base, so that this can come together.

[Dehenna Davison]

My right hon. Friend will recognise that that does not fit within my brief, but I can reference the Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022, local skills improvement plans and work that is being done on our trailblazing devolution deals to further devolve skills powers, which would take into account local skills needs as outlined by local businesses. More on that will be coming soon, when we announce further details on those deals. We are investing in further education skills over this Parliament to ensure that people can get on the ladder of really good, high-quality training and education that leads to good jobs, addresses skills gaps, boosts productivity and, ultimately, supports levelling up.

Having skills really is not the end of it. Without stable and reliable jobs to go along with those skills, areas such as the east of England could lose their newly skilled and experienced workforce, which we of course want to avoid. The region already boasts incredible companies, particularly in life sciences. The Cambridge Biomedical Campus is the largest centre of life sciences and medical research in Europe, employing over 20,000 researchers, industry scientists and clinicians. I have referenced internationally significant companies such as AstraZeneca, with their £1 billion state-of-the-art global research and development facility, and GlaxoSmithKline.

There is always more to do to make sure that people have the necessary skills and adequate jobs. That is why, in the autumn statement last November, the Government reaffirmed their commitment to Sizewell C, which, once operational, will generate 7% of the UK’s energy needs. This investment is vital to the Government’s net zero strategy, which is connected to the east of England’s 13th mission, which we are working across Government to ensure we deliver. The Government’s £700 million investment in the project marks a further step towards energy independence for the UK, while providing a boost to the local economy in Suffolk, with over 10,000 highly skilled jobs set to be created during the plant’s lifetime. The skills investment and devolution is on top of other education investment—for example, the £294.9 million extra being provided for mainstream schools in the east of England this year, as well as the three priority education investment areas in the east of England.

As hon. Members from across the Chamber have highlighted, the issues go beyond skills shortages. Poor connectivity is holding the region back. A lack of decent rail and public transport connections between towns and cities means that a lot of people are forced to drive, not just for their commute but for hospital appointments, to go shopping, and to visit friends and loved ones. Transport East estimates that well over 40% of the region’s carbon emissions are down to private car use. There is a long way to go to bring that figure down over the medium to long term. That throws into sharp relief the need for the Government to redouble our efforts on levelling up when it comes to transport.

I have heard much, loud and clear, about the Ely and Haughley junctions, and will elbow colleagues in the Department for Transport to meet you guys who raised the matter to discuss it further. It is vital that we continue to improve roads across the region, as has been mentioned by a number of hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton and my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel). We have invested £462 million in local roads maintenance between 2022-3 and 2024-5, and £88 million in transport improvements across the east of England. We are going further to ensure that we improve capacity on the railways and bus services, because that rail capacity is crucial, as we all know.

East West Rail plays a vital role in boosting connectivity and unlocking productivity in the Oxford to Cambridge area, supporting access to jobs, education and other opportunities. It plans to create a direct rail link between Oxford and Cambridge, significantly improving journey times, and delivering benefits for passengers and businesses regionally and nationally. The Government have provided £1.3 billion towards the delivery of connection stage 1 of the project, which will provide services between Oxford, Bletchley and Milton Keynes. In the autumn statement the Government affirmed their commitment to plans for transformative growth for our railways, including East West Rail, and I am told that an update on that project will be provided in due course.

On buses, DFT is providing over £100 million of bus service improvement plan funding in the east of England, with £49.6 million going to Norfolk County Council. That will make a significant contribution to local public transport connectivity in the region. The Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority received £4.3 million funding from the zero emission bus regional areas scheme, for 30 double-deck electric buses to be introduced on park and ride bus routes in Cambridge.

Let me turn to the APPG’s recommendation that simpler, long-term funding mechanisms are required to support the priorities set out in the strategies of the region’s two sub-national transport bodies. DFT seeks to ensure that all local transport authorities have stronger plans and capabilities to deliver enhanced local public transport. DFT is currently developing guidance and options to incentivise the refresh of local transport plans, so that places have an up-to-date plan for improving connectivity.

As previously mentioned—this is a bit of a pet project of mine—devolution of powers and funding is an intrinsic part of that work. The recently signed devolution deals in the east of England mark a new relationship between Government and Norfolk and Suffolk. A directly elected leader for each county will be responsible for a devolved and consolidated integrated local transport budget for their area, consisting initially of the local highways maintenance funding, both the pothole fund and highways maintenance block, and the integrated transport block, helping to provide strong local leadership and better transport outcomes for local people.

I was pleased to read in the report that the APPG agrees that living standards, especially when it comes to pay, employment, research and development, and wellbeing within the region, are all trending in the right direction. In the same breath, I was disappointed by the report’s assessment of digital connectivity and pride in place, as I know that my Department, and Departments across Government, are working incredibly hard to ensure we make progress on those areas.

My hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (James Wild) raised the issue of gigabit broadband coverage. In the east of England alone, that has increased from 5% in November 2019 to 61% in January 2022, and since then that coverage has been expanding rapidly, with forecasts predicting it should reach 70% to 80% by 2025. Ensuring that areas in the east of England with the poorest fixed and mobile connectivity are improved is a big priority for my Department and for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. In terms of mobile connectivity alone, the majority of 4G coverage uplifts from a shared rural network will come from the industry-led element of the network, which will target partial notspots in areas where there is coverage from at least one but not all mobile network operators.

As all hon. Members will know, growing people’s pride in the places where they live and work is at the heart of the investment we are making through the levelling-up fund. On that basis, I congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Clacton and for North West Norfolk on their successful bids, on which I know they and their local authority teams worked incredibly hard. I reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney that full written feedback will be provided to local authorities and the MPs who supported the bids, with the option of follow-up verbal meetings to go through the bids and see how they can be strengthened to secure potential future funding.

Our flagship levelling-up funding investment is helping people in a huge number of overlooked and under-appreciated communities in the east of England. Some £253 million has already been allocated; of that, £87 million was awarded in round 1 and £166 million was awarded in round 2. Almost £48 million was awarded to redevelop the station quarter in Peterborough and nearly £60 million-worth of bids were successful in Tendring, Harlow and Colchester. On top of that, the east of England has been allocated a total of £97 million from the UK shared prosperity fund.

I should highlight that the UK shared prosperity fund is one measure that the Government have taken to simplify funding streams and give more autonomy to local areas to deliver, without having to go through competitive funding processes. I hope that will reassure the hon. Member for Bedford (Mohammad Yasin). That is just one of the measures we are taking, and a funding simplification plan is coming incredibly soon.

We all recognise that significant population growth in any area will have an impact on vital and speedy access to healthcare for all residents, as highlighted by my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham, my hon. Friends the Members for Waveney and for North West Norfolk, and the hon. Member for Bedford. That is why, in the autumn statement, the Government made up to £8 billion available to the NHS and adult social care in England in 2024-25, including an additional £3.3 billion in both 2023-24 and 2024-25.

The Department of Health and Social Care works closely with NHS England and regional teams to distribute that funding settlement as needed, in order to reflect and address the needs of local populations, including through the agreement of annual plans for each NHS trust. Healthcare funding allocations are weighted heavily towards deprivation, which in turn correlates strongly with need. Per capita, funding for the most deprived local authorities is on average about 130% more than for the least deprived.

Finally, to ensure that we are improving capacity and capability in the healthcare system in the east of England, we are continuing to build five new hospitals as part of the Government’s commitment to build 40 new hospitals by 2030. That includes the rebuilding of James Paget University Hospital and the West Suffolk Hospital, a new cancer hospital at Addenbrooke’s, a new high-tech healthcare campus to replace the ageing Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow, new hospital buildings at Watford General Hospital and the refurbishment of Hemel Hempstead and St Albans City Hospitals.

I hope that has given a rough flavour of just some of the work that is going on right across Government to ensure that we are focusing on levelling up, obviously with specifics for the east of England. I know how hard the APPG and all Members present have worked on preparing this incredibly insightful report, which my Department and others have valued a great deal. As well as the challenges, some of which we have touched on, it reinforces that the region really is a true economic success story. As has been highlighted, it is a net contributor to the Treasury; few regions can boast of that, and it is something that the region should rightly be proud of. It is an international gateway for global Britain, and it boasts some of the highest levels of employment, pay and productivity anywhere in the UK.

Our shared challenge now is ensuring that the huge benefits of these tremendous assets and opportunities are shared more evenly across the region and that it ultimately achieves its true potential. As my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney and others have rightly highlighted, ensuring that the east of England reaches its potential really is core to the prospects of the UK as a whole. I believe that there is every chance we can ensure the east of England reaches its potential.

The report illuminates the significant progress we have made on our levelling-up mission so far, but it also shows that there is clearly room for improvement. To reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton, we know that the job is not done; we set out those missions to aim towards by 2030 to ensure that we are levelling up in the east of England and right across the UK. The only way we can achieve that is by ensuring that we are working cross-Government, cross-Whitehall and, of course, cross-party to ensure that we are achieving what we need to achieve to truly level up the UK.

On that basis, I look forward to continuing to work cross-party with Members across the House, and with Ministers across Government, to unlock the east of England and the UK’s true potential.

Oral Answers to Questions

Priti Patel Excerpts

Monday 9th January 2023 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

1. What steps he is taking to help communities protect themselves from potentially unsuitable development proposals.

[The Minister of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Lucy Frazer)]

Mr Speaker, I would like to start by apologising on behalf of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for his absence from the Chamber. As I believe you and the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) are aware, he has a family reason that means he is unable to be here today.

The Government are taking action to protect communities from inappropriate development through measures in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill and through our proposals for updating the national policy planning framework, which we launched for consultation at the end of last year. Those proposals include giving increased weight to plans in decision making, removing the requirement to demonstrate a five-year housing land supply where a plan is up to date and strengthening the protections from speculative development for areas that have a neighbourhood plan that meets its housing requirement.

[Priti Patel]

The Minister is well aware that communities across the Witham constituency, including many villages such as Hatfield Peverel, Tollesbury, Tiptree and Black Notley, have been subject to speculative developments, some of which have gone through on appeals from builders in particular or have been approved by councils concerned about their five-year land supply. What assurances can she and the Government give my constituents, who are fighting against many speculative developers and developments, that the Government’s planning policies are on the side of those communities?

[Lucy Frazer]

I am very aware of the issues my right hon. Friend raises, because we discussed them at length as the Bill was going through the House. I am grateful for her contributions, which have strengthened the Bill. I know that communities, including in her constituency, invest considerable time and effort in preparing neighbourhood plans, and I understand their frustrations when decisions go against their wishes. The current NPPF already provides important additional protection from speculative development for areas with a neighbourhood plan, but we want to go even further. We have just published proposals to increase protections for areas, including those with neighbourhood plans. Those proposals are now out for consultation and I know the Secretary of State will consider all views carefully before making a final decision.

Oral Answers to Questions

Priti Patel Excerpts

Monday 22nd July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

As the hon. Gentleman pointed out, we commenced a formal process of intervention in 15 local authorities to ensure that they fulfil their obligations. I have spent the last 12 months touring the country, exhorting local authorities not only to get a local plan in place, but to do so on a long-term basis so that people can see the kind of decadal-scale planning that is required to get to 300,000 homes a year. If local authorities remain sluggish in producing a plan, as the hon. Gentleman claims his local authority has been—I think that its plan is due for submission in August 2020, which does seem a little tardy—action may be required, beyond just a stiffly-worded letter.

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

When district councils do not have a local plan and a five-year land supply in place, it is villages and parishes that face the consequences of planning development. What protections will the Minister and his Department put in place for communities trying to establish neighbourhood plans, and will he reflect on his Department’s recent decision to grant planning permission to two sites in Hatfield Peverel that go against the neighbourhood plan?

[Kit Malthouse]

My right hon. Friend, with her usual skill, puts up a stout defence on behalf of her constituents. She is quite right that protections that would otherwise exist for neighbourhood plans recede where a local plan is not in place, particularly when there is not a five-year land supply. I would point out that having a five-year land supply is not a necessary condition of having a local plan. It is possible to have one without the other, and I hope that her local authority will seek to do so. We will shortly be issuing planning guidance on plan making, wherein I hope we will include measures to strengthen neighbourhood plans, either in the absence of a local plan or where they are not co-terminus.

Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government

Priti Patel Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 2nd July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones). I normally agree with him on so many things, but since he touched on the Conservative party leadership contest, let me say that there is a hustings for Conservative councillors taking place at this very moment at the Local Government Association conference. Of course, they are at the forefront of public service and our local communities, and they are proud Conservatives in the role they play in local government. I had better declare an interest: I am married to a Conservative councillor, so I will double down and reiterate that point.

I think all Members would agree that local government stands at the forefront of the delivery of so many services across our country, and that so many of our constituents depend on those services. I think it is fair to say, on the basis of the comments we have heard, that we all know there are challenges with that across our constituencies. It is appropriate that we should debate local government and the MHCLG estimates on the day that the Local Government Association holds its conference in Bournemouth, because councils are responsible for the delivery of so many vital services in our communities. I want to touch on a number of them, including housing, adult social care and supporting children with special needs, with reference to the challenges of growing demand.

Much of this has been mentioned already, but I would like to give some examples from Essex, where we also have funding pressures. It is not a policy of discrimination, if I may say so in reply to the points made by the right hon. Member for North Durham. Despite facing a tight squeeze on the funds they receive from central Government—a squeeze that started before 2010—local authorities have worked hard, and we should pay tribute to all councils, whatever their composition, because they have all worked hard to balance their books.

We know that efficiencies have been made. We know that local authorities have been innovative: services have been shared, procurement strategies changed, and some services reduced or changed. But rising demand has put councils at a tipping point where they now need some increases in resource from central Government, certainty about medium-term settlements and more flexibility over the powers they have and the ways they can generate income.

In the amazing and incredible county of Essex, the county council has delivered £311 million of savings over the last four years, a significant sum, and it is working to make a further £176 million of savings by 2021-22. The reason for those savings is to ensure that resources are naturally focused on investing in adult social care and the council’s outstanding children’s services. It received an outstanding Ofsted score, and I am very proud of the council for its sheer determination and the work it has done to receive that score. But the savings target is a stretch, because there is little left to cut. There is little more that the council can slice off because demand on services is growing at a startling rate. For adult services, we see a growing number of service users who use services for longer and have more complex needs. Over the next decade, the number of residents in Essex aged over 80 will rise by 60% and the number of those aged over 90 will double. There are also growing numbers of adults with learning disabilities who we want to support as much as possible. That is the right and compassionate thing to do, and we want to provide fairness and opportunities in doing so.

We must see the Government do more to give councils such as Essex the resources to meet these needs. We also need to see the Government recognise that our councils need more resources to support children’s services and those with special needs and disabilities. The hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) also mentioned that in her opening remarks, and that touches on education, health and care plans too. While councils’ budgets have been squeezed, they have had to provide for more services and new responsibilities, and it is right that we all recognise that.

The introduction and roll-out of education, health and care plans has caused a 35% increase across the county in the number of pupils covered by EHCPs in the four years between 2013-14 and 2017-18. It is right that we recognise the impact that is having on budgets for supporting children with special educational needs, because it has not been met by the high needs funding block.

Councils now face the challenge of carrying deficits and they do not know what the Government will do to address that. In Essex, the deficit is now £15 million and it is set to double. Across the country, it could hit £1.6 billion by 2020-21. That challenge needs to be addressed. We have all heard about funding reforms and we have all participated in many debates and presented the issues to Ministers, stressing that those matters will have to be addressed through the comprehensive funding review and fair funding review, when they come. Those reviews must deliver genuine reform. We cannot tinker around the edges any more.

The process must include addressing the regional inequalities that other hon. Members have mentioned in funding for councils such as Essex. Despite the growing levels of demand on services, Essex is underfunded compared to many other areas. In Essex, the funding level is £271 per person per year for services, whereas the figure elsewhere is much higher, doubling to £563 per person in parts of London. As a result of those pressures, the council is looking at making very difficult decisions just to close the £176 million funding gap.

At the moment, the council is consulting on proposals to change library services, which could lead to seven of the eight libraries in the Witham constituency closing if community management proposals do not come forward. I should add that that is not the sole answer when it comes to addressing library services. The total budget for libraries is about £13 million, and, while there may be some merit in looking at ways in which to bring more community management and involvement into our libraries and modernise services, the potential impact on our communities is significant. I do not think anyone in the House can dispute that, especially given that reductions in the libraries budget will make barely a dent in the £176 million savings target.

No one will be surprised to learn that I have met many residents throughout my constituency who are campaigning passionately to save our libraries, including those in Wickham Bishops, Kelvedon and Coggeshall. They want those vital services and facilities to remain open. I hope that the Government will reflect on what they can do in the long term to continue to safeguard the community lifelines about which so many of us feel so strongly.

The issue of planning and development is highly controversial in many parts of the country, but it is incredibly controversial from an Essex perspective. We want to see communities, not housing estates, being built. In Essex, and especially in my part of Essex, we know that the building of new homes is absolutely right because it gives families more security, including financial security, but we are aware of the challenges that local authorities face in respect of the five-year land supply.

My communities are open-minded about development, but they are frustrated by a lack of infrastructure and a lack of support. We must be radical in our use of, for instance, the new homes bonus to support more infrastructure, and change the way in which we support local government funding across the country.

Housing

Priti Patel Excerpts

Tuesday 9th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

The residents of the Witham constituency are concerned about a wide range of housing matters. Ministers might be familiar with some of them, but I want to pick on three examples.

First, the issue of how the five-year land supply is calculated affects communities across the country. In planning applications and appeals, we see developers trying to pick apart the declared pipelines in councils’ local plans. To be frank, highly paid consultants and advisers are producing lengthy reports for applications and appeals, and the public struggle to contest them because they do not have the resources. I have seen many cases in my constituency of developers trying to pick apart the council’s supply pipeline and go against local community planning and the council’s planning objectives. That is not good enough.

We all recognise that the delivery of land and housing can sometimes be beyond councils’ framework and mandate. I urge the Government to look again at how much weight is applied to the five-year supply. We must ensure that councils and communities have more protection. Developers think that by ripping apart five-year supply calculations, they can develop almost anywhere. That is a major issue across the board.

[Kit Malthouse]

I hear what my right hon. Friend is saying. She is making a strong point. I hope she agrees that part of the solution is to encourage neighbourhood plans, particularly in her constituency.

[Priti Patel]

I thank the Minister for that point. I will come on to that. Like all Members of Parliament, I want to see my communities empowered in planning decision making. In Witham town, there was recently an application for Gimsons—a site at River View in Witham—which is deemed a visually important site and is highly regarded by everyone in the community. The current local plan protects it from development. The draft local plan, which could be two years away from adoption, recommends approximately 40 dwellings, but an application for 78 came along and was granted permission. The residents were appalled that their views were ignored.

I am a great believer in neighbourhood plans and I encourage all my parishes to develop them. We want much more support for community-based planning and neighbourhood plans, particularly with parish councils. I urge the Minister and his team to give more resource to parishes and communities so we can ensure that they are protected from developers, who sometimes come along wanting to rip up the five-year land supply and to challenge councils and communities. Importantly, we must ensure that there are resources and that place-shaping can happen. The Minister has already spoken about that.

My final point is about the ways in which we can support housing and development. The Minister spoke about garden settlements. We have had many conversations and I urge him to ask the Secretary of State to reply to me—we have some outstanding correspondence. There is a huge opportunity for all Departments to work together to ensure we have integrated planning. That means that we have the right infrastructure, including road and rail, health, schools, and public amenities and services. That is a great programme that our Government could take forward. I urge the Minister and his colleagues across Government to work in an integrated way so we can drive the right kind of local community outcomes on housing and planning.

Oral Answers to Questions

Priti Patel Excerpts

Monday 8th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

Essex County Council is set to carry a £15 million deficit for special educational needs and vulnerable children. I hear what the Minister says about working with the Department for Education, but what are it and MHCLG doing collectively to ensure that the Treasury looks at the long-term needs of the many children who are currently not funded?

[Rishi Sunak]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that question. Her county council is a leader when it comes to dealing with vulnerable children; it is an example for others across the country to follow. I assure her that we are working very closely with the Department for Education. We are jointly undertaking a review to understand the exact drivers of the increased need that she mentioned, and we will make a compelling and evidence-based pitch to the Treasury come the spending review.

Oral Answers to Questions

Priti Patel Excerpts

Monday 28th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

This Government are committed to ensuring that every resident in this country gets the funding they need to have the services they deserve. The upcoming fair funding review is based on transparent, simple analytics and I am happy to hear from any colleagues if they disagree with the numbers.

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

Residents across my constituency and beyond are extremely concerned about the Rivenhall incinerator development, which was originally approved by the last Labour Government. With revised planning applications being considered, will the Secretary of State listen to my constituents and act by calling this application in?

[James Brokenshire]

I note the way in which my right hon. Friend is championing her constituents in her customary powerful and passionate way. She will understand, on the issue of calling in, that this is quasi-judicial and I am therefore unable to comment. However, I note the way in which she has championed the cause.

Local Government Funding

Priti Patel Excerpts

Tuesday 15th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in the debate and to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker. I congratulate the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) on securing this debate, and I thank her for her remarks. It is fair to say that she has covered a full gamut of aspects of local government. Like her, I pay tribute to the many thousands of councillors up and down the country who work tirelessly in their community as public servants, delivering some very difficult portfolios and in some very challenging parts of the country. At this time of year, councils across the country are in the process of finalising their budgets for the next financial year, which is why the hon. Lady’s debate is so timely.

My constituency covers three lower-tier authorities—Braintree District Council, Colchester Borough Council and Maldon District Council—as well as an upper-tier authority, which is Essex County Council. I pay tribute to all my colleagues at all the authorities, particularly Essex County Council, who are faced with a number of pressures, including growing demand on services—it is a theme that no doubt we will hear throughout the debate—and the overall impact of the Government’s financial settlements on them and on councils across the country. My colleagues at Essex County Council work very well with the Local Government Association, which has campaigned clearly and robustly on areas where more needs to be done. There is always scope for innovation, efficiency and transformation. Naturally, these local councils look to central Government to provide more certainty on the future of their finances and the level of support they receive from the Government.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the hon. Lady accept that one way central Government give certainty is by letting authorities that had the benefit of the retention of business rates know what the Government’s plans for the future are? At the moment, it is very uncertain.

[Priti Patel]

I will touch on business rates later. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and councils need to be getting on with their own plans.

With the comprehensive spending review taking place later this year, rate reform and the fair funding review—I know the Minister is well aware of this—the Government have the opportunity to consider carefully the various submissions and representations from local authorities. Compared with other local areas, we are underfunded in Essex not just through local government, but through our police and health services. I very much hope that the Minister and the Government will be sympathetic and understanding, and that they will use this as an opportunity to rebalance resources towards our county, particularly our county council, which has the responsibility for adults and children. Essex County Council is experiencing considerable budgetary pressures, which the Government will know about from the various representations that my colleagues across the county and I have constantly made to the Department.

Essex faces significant financial challenges in adult social care, which accounted for 45% of the council’s total spend, with a budget of £646 million in 2017-18. The council is collecting over £82 million in fees and charges from residents, but budgets are being squeezed and it already faces demographic pressures and challenges. The number of people aged over 80 is set to grow over the next decade by 61%, and those over 90 by 100%. The council is facing rising costs as it seeks to provide support to around 4,000 residents with learning disabilities, including cases that are very complex to resolve. Its objective is to provide those residents and all citizens with a good quality of life.

On top of those pressures, provider costs for care packages are increasing while the supply of beds and residential accommodation by providers is falling. Some 362 beds were lost to the market in 2018 as seven care homes closed, and contracts from domiciliary providers have been handed back. These are continuous pressures on funding social care. We know that money has been put aside for social care, which is of course welcome, but it is not meeting the growing pressures and demands in Essex and around the country, too.

I hope to work with the Government and my councils to look at how we can constructively address these pressures and constraints. The council faces pressures on education and special needs in addition to social care. I appreciate that this issue rests primarily with the Department for Education, but resources are being squeezed and I have many concerns. I have a vast number of constituents coming to me, and it is pretty clear that their needs, challenges and concerns are not being met in the way that we as a Government would like. The council has been proactive in its own representations to Ministers, and I very much look forward to the Government working with it.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston made a strong and important point on public health. Across the country—I see this in Essex—we are seeing pressures on public health. We can do much more to prevent many of the pressures on A&E, our hospitals and GP surgeries. One of the greatest challenges that we face, which relates directly to planning, is that the population of my constituency, and the number of houses, is growing. We have to meet those challenges by ensuring that the right kind of support goes into public health and infrastructure provision, so that we can get a new health centre for primary care in Witham and invest in our roads and in other aspects of local amenities and public services, too.

I come back to the point on education. When the provisional settlement was announced last month, Essex County Council was very keen to ensure that it was part of the pilot round for local business rates. It was pretty disappointed not to be, and I make a plea to the Minister for some kind of reconsideration or to ensure that Essex features in future schemes.

Essex is a county that constantly innovates. We want to strive for excellence while delivering value for money and meeting our service requirements to deliver to the public. There are endless pressures. Across the county of Essex, there are some big challenges that we want to work on with central Government to look for innovative solutions and ideas about how we can address many of those concerns.

Housing and Home Ownership

Priti Patel Excerpts

Tuesday 16th October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Neil O'Brien]

I utterly agree; I was about to make that very point. At the moment, we infill bits on the edges of every village and town. We are effectively building in the places that annoy people the most, so we do not build enough homes, as my hon. Friend said. When we do that, we cannot keep up with the infrastructure needs of these places, because it is physically impossible. Perhaps the primary school is on too small a plot or we cannot widen a road that has become a rat run because there is not enough money to meet infrastructure needs.

Previously, we did things very differently. There was the new towns programme: those new towns now house more than 2 million people very successfully. They are fast-growing places. Mrs Thatcher created docklands in London and Liverpool, and the model was roughly the same for both. A development corporation would buy land cheap at existing low values. It would assemble the land, install the infrastructure and sell on that land for uplifted values, therefore paying for itself. That model has been used successfully all over the world.

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend who, as ever, is making a very persuasive case. His Onwards report is very good, and he is contributing to what I would call the battle of ideas. He mentioned Margaret Thatcher, who was at the forefront of that. The Centre for Policy Studies published a paper on “help to own” on Monday. We want to be in this space to address some of the big challenges we are facing on planning, taxation and infrastructure, but we also need to try to persuade other parts of the Government—including the Treasury and our dear colleague in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government—to address some of the bigger issues of intergenerational fairness. A whole generation is locked out of home ownership, and we want to help them get back on the ladder so that we can become that property-owning democracy again.

[Neil O'Brien]

My right hon. Friend makes an extremely profound and important point.

A lot of councils are now getting back into the business of building new places. They are being forced to, because if they do not want to mess up every village and town in their area, they need to build new stand-alone places. We need to ensure that they have the tools and expertise they need to make that work.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Housing (Kit Malthouse)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your guiding hand, Mr Pritchard. It is a great pleasure to respond to this very important debate secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien). In his report, “Green, pleasant and affordable,” he has presented a smorgasbord—a veritable cornucopia—of radical and interesting ideas. In the time I have available, I want to go through a number of the areas that the report covers, in particular supply and home ownership.

The first issue he quite rightly raises is that of getting the most out of land. In order to increase housing supply, we understand that local authorities need to be empowered to make the most effective use of the land that is present across all our towns and cities.

In its recent report on land value capture, the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee made several recommendations for reform of compulsory purchase compensation. Its recommendations included restricting compensation by removing hope value from the assessment of the market value of land. The Government will publish their response to the Committee’s report shortly. As I explained when I gave evidence to the Committee, we have very recently introduced wide-ranging reforms to make the compulsory purchase process clearer, fairer and faster for all. That includes changes to the Land Compensation Act 1961. We are keen to let those important reforms bed in. The revised national planning policy framework, to which my hon. Friend referred, encourages local authorities to make more proactive use of their extensive land assembly powers. We will keep the operation of the system under review.

We also recognise that the availability of sustainable infrastructure is important to support new housing. That is why we have introduced changes to the NPPF that will ensure that developers know what contributions they are expected to make towards affordable housing and essential infrastructure, that local communities are clear about the infrastructure and affordable housing, and that local authorities can hold them to account. The revised NPPF requires local authorities to set clearer policy requirements for infrastructure and affordable housing through plans, informed by more transparent viability assessments. It will also support local authorities to ensure that development meets the policy requirements set out in the local plan.

Fundamentally, what we are trying to do in the NPPF is to give clarity up front to developers and local communities about what will be expected, which will allow them to factor that into land value over time. My hon. Friend quite rightly expressed dissatisfaction with the amount of value that is captured from land. He is correct that often in a viability assessment, it is the community infrastructure component—the section 106 component—that gets squeezed. That is largely because the negotiation takes place after planning permission has been granted. We are trying to give more clarity up front through the planning system, so that developers know what the requirements are going to be, whether that is infrastructure or affordable housing, and can factor that into the value that they pay for the land, so that fundamentally it is the land value that will get squeezed.

We have consulted on further reforms to developer contributions, including removing existing restrictions in certain circumstances that prevent local planning authorities pooling more than five section 106 planning obligations towards a single piece of infrastructure. We will be responding to that consultation in the near future as well.

Local authorities are also able to use the community infrastructure levy to help to fund the supporting infrastructure that is needed to address the cumulative impact of development. Where authorities have introduced CIL, 15% is specifically allocated to meet local priorities, and that is increased to 25% in areas with a neighbourhood plan in place. In an area that has a parish council, the money is passed directly to it. That neighbourhood allocation from CIL gives communities real power in deciding and delivering their infrastructure priorities for their area and will hopefully encourage the spread of neighbourhood planning.

In his report, my hon. Friend also considered the creation of new communities. We believe strongly that the creation of new garden communities can play a vital role in helping to meet this country’s housing need well into the future. Our current programme supports 23 locally-led garden communities that have the potential to deliver more than 200,000 homes by 2050. They range in size from 1,500 to more than 40,000 new homes in one place. We have just launched a new garden communities prospectus, inviting ambitious proposals for new garden communities at scale. This is not just about getting the numbers up; it is about building quality, innovative places that people are happy to call home.

[Priti Patel]

The Minister has lit the blue touch paper in mentioning garden communities. He will know from my correspondence with his Department that one of those garden community proposals covers my constituency, and the Braintree district and Colchester borough. Can he provide any clarity on the conditional requirements that the Department is putting in place for the development of those schemes—where public funds are being used—to support the concept of garden communities?

[Kit Malthouse]

The primary requirement we have for garden communities is that they have strong local support and are supported by local democratically elected politicians. We would, for example, not countenance a proposal for a garden community that came forward against the wishes of the local authority or local authorities concerned. My right hon. Friend may have noticed—this points to an issue that my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough raised about capacity and capability—that we recently changed the regulations so that we can have locally-led development corporations. They are brought together and approved by the Secretary of State, but under local initiatives and with local control, to try to deliver some of those communities more effectively. Local control, consent and engagement are key, in terms of both acceptability and development.

Another issue that has been raised is increasing density, which we believe is also important. We need to make sure that we make the most effective use of underutilised land. That is a crucial part of our focus. Higher density development and the development of brownfield land can play a significant role in increasing housing supply in urban locations, especially in areas that are well served by public transport and in town and city centre locations. The revised NPPF requires local planning authorities to be more proactive in identifying opportunities to make more effective use of land. That includes planning for higher densities in locations that are well served by public transport, and reallocating underutilised land to serve local development needs better.

I disagree slightly with my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough about the requirement to build towers to achieve density. In central London—a place that I know very well, having served there as a London Assembly member and councillor—some of the densest areas are in fact some of the most desirable, and they are low-rise. It is probably still the case that the densest part of central London is Cadogan Square. Towers do not necessarily deliver density, and they can often be intrusive. Our framework goes further by stating that local authorities should support the use of airspace above existing residential and commercial buildings to provide new homes, as my hon. Friend said. We recognise that there is more to be done, and that is why we have just announced that we will publish proposals for a national permitted development right to permit people to build upwards on existing buildings rather than just to build out.

Important in all of this is the need to diversify the market. We believe that to increase our housing supply we have to be innovative and boost the development sector to allow both large and small builders to flourish and to build the homes that our communities need. The Government fully recognise the important role that small and medium-sized house builders play in delivering much-needed housing in this country, and we are committed to ensuring that this support is in the right place. We have already put in place a number of initiatives to help SME house builders to grow and develop, including the home building fund, the housing growth fund and the housing delivery fund, as well as proposals to make it easier for SMEs to identify land.

We believe that that is a critical way to encourage innovation. The market has agglomerated into a small number of large players, which are perhaps not as innovative as they could be. If we can create a more vigorous market of people competing to build houses and competing for our custom, they are likely to be much more innovative in their method, supply and typography of housing, and they may well cater to different parts of the market and look at sites that larger builders might not.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kit Malthouse]

By sheer coincidence, on my accession to the chrysanthemum throne in housing, I raised a similar possibility, should we look at some way of transferring from landlord to tenant in the future. Those issues of tax, stamp duty and ownership are way above my pay grade, but I have no doubt that the report will have winged its way to the Treasury, where our colleagues will be considering its efficacy. I can see why it might be attractive from a landlord transfer to ownership point of view, although we would have to study its fiscal effects to see what the cost might be.

[Priti Patel]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Kit Malthouse]

I will make a bit of progress. I want to address the issue of home ownership, because it is fundamental to the report and it is, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough quite rightly said, one of the most important challenges of our time. As he mentioned, we must find ways to improve home ownership. Rising demand for housing has increased prices and in many cases pushed down home ownership. The Government believe that people should be free to purchase a second home or invest in a buy-to-let property. However, we are aware that that can make it difficult for other people, particularly first-time buyers, to get on the property ladder. That is why in April 2016 the Government introduced higher rates of stamp duty land tax on purchases of additional properties.

Since the council tax empty homes premium was introduced in April 2013, the number of long-term empty residential properties has fallen. When it is in force, the Rating (Property in Common Occupation) and Council Tax (Empty Dwellings) Bill will allow councils to go further, increasing the premium by up to 300% in some cases. That will allow authorities to encourage better use of the existing housing stock in their area. As the Prime Minister announced, the Government are also taking action on non-resident purchases of residential property, which can make it more difficult for UK residents to purchase a home of their own. The Government will publish a consultation on introducing an increased stamp duty land tax charge on non-residents buying property in England and Northern Ireland. More details will be brought forward through that consultation in due course, following the normal tax policy-making process set out by the Government—the legislation will be in a future Finance Bill.

We must also support our younger generation, who find it increasingly hard to get on to the property ladder. We are supporting people’s aspirations to buy through a range of initiatives, including Help to Buy, right to buy, greater funding for shared ownership, and rent to buy. Since the spring of 2010, Government-backed schemes have helped more than 481,000 households to buy a home. Younger people are also helped directly by our investment in affordable housing. The Government are investing more than £9 billion in the affordable homes programme to deliver a wide range of affordable homes, including shared ownership homes, by 2022. Since 2010, we have delivered more than 60,000 shared ownership properties, helping people to take their first steps into home ownership. Our recent Green Paper, “A new deal for social housing”, announced that we would be exploring innovative, affordable home ownership models to support those who are struggling to raise a deposit.

The Prime Minister has made it clear that this should be a country that works for everyone. That means building more of the right homes in the right places and ensuring that the housing market works for all parts of our community. It is this Government’s mission to reverse the decline in home ownership and to revive the dream of Britain as a property-owning democracy. We must revive that dream for ordinary people—for those striving on low and middle incomes, who find the first rung of the housing ladder beyond their reach. The Government are committed to tackling this challenge to make the housing market work. By the mid-2020s, we aim to have increased house building to an average of 300,000 net new homes a year.

On planning permissions, which my hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti) mentioned, we are now granting more than 350,000 permissions a year against a building target of 300,000 houses. That is another challenge that I face. In the time that I have in this job, I am always open to ideas. I certainly welcome the radical thinking that my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough and his collaborators on the paper have injected into the debate. I will be studying the paper in some detail and I hope to weave some of his thinking into our policies in the future.

Question put and agreed to.

Anti-Semitism

Priti Patel Excerpts

Tuesday 17th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

I start by paying tribute to our colleagues, the hon. Members for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth), for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) and for Bassetlaw (John Mann), for their sheer determination and the courage with which they have spoken today. It is with a great sense of sadness and anger that I feel compelled to speak in the debate today. It is appalling that, in the 21st century, we are having to discuss the growing tide of anti-Semitism in the United Kingdom. I say this as the daughter of migrants who fled persecution and hate; it is appalling, and anyone who has endured hate crime or been on the receiving end of abusive comments about their religion, their culture, the colour of their skin or their heritage will know just how disgusting and hurtful those comments can be. Many, including myself, had hoped that the attitudes of the past would have disappeared by now, and that we would never see them repeated, yet they feature prominently in our society and our politics today. I hoped that we would have become much more respectful and tolerant as a society.

Racist and anti-Semitic attitudes have festered and brewed on the hard right but also on the left, and there is absolutely no justification for those attitudes or behaviours. There is no justification for people to claim to be emboldened, perhaps through social media, to make vicious and vitriolic comments about the “Jewish lobby” and the “Israeli lobby”, or about “conspiracies”. There is no justification for the stereotypical racist attitudes and abuse that are deliberately targeted at members of the Jewish community in Britain today. It is appalling that we now see anti-Semitism in all forms, and it is right that hon. and right hon. Members across the Chamber have unequivocally condemned those who hold such extremist views.

I pay tribute not only to colleagues but to the Community Security Trust, which has done so much to support the Jewish community and keep it safe. In the community that I grew up in, in Radlett in Hertfordshire, we saw the CST outside synagogues and schools, protecting children and families. Now, however, we see Jewish students at university who feel unsafe because they are being threatened, victimised and targeted. I was shocked to read an account of a debate at City University this year in which a female student was being targeted and experiencing pure hatred. People were taking pictures of her and whispering obscenities in her ear to try to intimidate her. She said that she now felt completely unsafe being a Jew in the city of London. That is shocking and disgraceful, and as politicians, it is right that we should be held to high standards and that we should call out that kind of behaviour.

It is particularly alarming and shocking to hear about what is happening in the Labour party, with Momentum and the hard left now out there perpetrating awful comments and actually celebrating and cheering some of the comments that they are putting out. I pay tribute to the Labour Members who have stood up to anti-Semitism in their party. We must all stand shoulder to shoulder with them. The hard left’s hatred and intolerance for those with different opinions has gone much too far.

We have heard today about the suffering and persecution that the Jewish community has faced for hundreds of years through mass expulsions, persecution and lies. Jewish people have been stigmatised, forced to wear badges and treated with suspicion. In one of the darkest chapters in human history, they were forced to go through all sorts of horrors that we should not have to speak about in this day and age. Each and every one of us has a responsibility to speak up and be a strong voice against the forces of hatred, prejudice and discrimination within our own community. We must ensure that we continue to stand up against the racism and anti-Semitism that we now see across society and across our politics today.