Oral Answers to Questions
Rob Butler Excerpts(1 year, 5 months ago)
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James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)
Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)
Simon Baynes (Clwyd South) (Con)
Lee Rowley
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that levelling up is hugely important not just for communities in the west midlands but for those all across the country, both in areas traditionally labelled as levelling-up areas and in those with high needs and high deprivation throughout the country as a whole. He is a huge advocate for the work that is being done across the west midlands and in his constituency. I know that it will be successful both there and wherever else we can do something across the country.
Rob Butler
Buckinghamshire Council successfully secured £170 million from the housing infrastructure fund in 2020, to enable the delivery of Aylesbury’s long-awaited and much needed link roads programme. It was met by much celebration locally, as the town has suffered traffic gridlock during rush hour for many years. With the costs of construction materials spiralling, it is essential that these roads are built as soon as possible. Will my hon. Friend work with me and the council to help us get a little bit of necessary flexibility on the precise way that the funding is deployed, to ensure that this vital new infrastructure is completed?
Lee Rowley
The Government are absolutely committed to ensuring that infrastructure is in place at the right time. My hon. Friend has worked incredibly hard in in this place in the period he has been here to make clear that the traffic challenges in Aylesbury are because of pressure from new housing, hence this grant. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for North West Durham (Mr Holden), who is responsible for this area, and I are happy discuss this issue further with him to help his constituency.
Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill
Rob Butler ExcerptsWednesday 8th June 2022
(1 year, 10 months ago)
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Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate on a Bill that is at the heart of the Conservative party’s commitment to delivering for each and every constituency in the country. Levelling up and regeneration have the power to drive progress and prosperity in areas that have long been neglected. The place where we live should not determine our opportunity or our life chances, our health or our life expectancy. In that context, there is a great deal to commend in this comprehensive Bill.
I am grateful to Ministers for heeding the widespread concern about the designation of growth zones, which would undoubtedly have put pressure on our precious green spaces. Many of my constituents contacted me to say how worried they were that growth zones would be imposed on them, irrespective for local circumstances and bereft of local democratic accountability, and I am glad that those zones are no more.
I am especially pleased to see the introduction of a new infrastructure levy. Aylesbury is no stranger to development; the town has grown massively since I was born there some 50-odd years ago. What is rather less familiar to the people of Aylesbury is a sufficient level of funding for the infrastructure to support the new houses and the people coming to live in them. Development has to work for all—for old and new residents—and that means that GP surgeries, schools and roads must be completed at the same time as the houses, not after they are occupied. With further huge housing growth on the cards for Aylesbury in the next 20 years, our already stretched public services will simply not be able to cope without radical improvements to our local infrastructure, so I was delighted to hear the Secretary of State say this afternoon that the new infrastructure levy would be “inescapable”.
Aylesbury is a great place to live, work, visit and invest, but it is no exaggeration to say that it is a town of two halves. People in Bedgrove and Fairford Leys live longer, healthier and wealthier lives than those in Quarrendon, Southcourt and Gatehouse. We have entrenched pockets of deprivation where outcomes in education, health and income are far below those in other parts of the town and in other parts of the country, including much further north.
For example, only 49.7% of children in Aylesbury north-west achieve the expected standard in reading, writing and maths at key stage 2. The Government’s ambition is 90% nationally by 2030, so there is clearly an enormous gap to bridge. For that reason, I firmly believe that levelling up must apply to the whole country, wherever it is needed—whether that is in the north, the midlands or the south. For Aylesbury to flourish, we need to be able to compete on a fairer footing with towns in other parts of the country when it comes to funding from central Government. If I can put it this way, we need a level playing field to level up.
We do not expect the Government to do all the work, let alone provide all the money—far from it. Buckinghamshire Council has strong and exciting plans for the regeneration of Aylesbury town centre. We have seen what can be done with the excellent Exchange quarter. We have a dynamic, able and willing private sector and local entrepreneurs with imagination who are investing in local businesses. Our garden town master plan will open up the town centre and make it more accessible, with cycleways, walkways, greenways and blueways truly bringing natural beauty into the heart of Aylesbury.
In fact, this is all going to prove so popular and irresistible to visitors that we are going to need to find more ways to get them there, so if I could encourage my right hon. Friend the Minister to give his friends in the Department for Transport a little nudge on the Aylesbury link of East West Rail, that would be very welcome. There are some railways in my constituency and my county that we would really like to see.
In conclusion, creating the opportunity for people to succeed in the life they choose is core to the reason why I am a Conservative. This Bill is a step in the right direction and I will enthusiastically vote for it.
General Practice: Large Housing Developments
Rob Butler Excerpts(2 years, 1 month ago)
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Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) on securing this incredibly important debate. The debate brings together two of the biggest categories of complaints that I receive in my constituency: housing development and GP services.
The town of Aylesbury has been expanding for more than 50 years. Indeed, the area of Bedgrove, where my parents had their first home together and where they took me home as their newborn son, more than 50 years ago, was built on the site of a farm, and many more farms and green spaces have been subsumed by housing developments in the ensuing half century—Walton Court in the 1970s, Quarrendon and Watermead in the 1980s and Fairford Leys in the 1990s and early 2000s. All have attracted many more people to make their homes in the proud county town of Buckinghamshire. With each new development, new pressures have been placed on existing communities and the infrastructure that serves them. Key among those services is the provision of healthcare, especially GP surgeries.
I want to be clear that neither I nor my constituents are opposed to development. We recognise that the next generation needs somewhere to live, and Aylesbury is a fine place to choose. However, since 2000, more than 16,000 homes have been added to the town. The newly approved local plan will add that same number again. The people who come to live in those new homes need excellent local services. They need road and rail connections, such as the Aylesbury link road and the Aylesbury spur. They need schools with enough spaces for all the children living locally. Crucially, they need sufficient healthcare provision, particularly at primary level. Yet GP surgeries in my constituency are already at breaking point.
Like other hon. Members present, one of the most familiar refrains I hear from residents is that they simply cannot get an appointment to see their doctor. In recent months, I have visited several GP surgeries not only to thank the hardworking doctors, nurses and, crucially, receptionists for their incredible work during the pandemic, but to hear first hand about the challenges they are experiencing. Top of their list is that there is simply not enough capacity to deal with all the patients who need care.
Meadowcroft surgery is a good example of the pressures that population growth can have on towns like Aylesbury. The surgery opened in 1964 to serve what was then the new Quarrendon estate. It moved to a new site at Jackson Road in 1992, with 8,000 patients on the list. Today that list stands at more than 16,000, and will grow to more than 26,000 when the surgery moves to another new site in Paradise Orchard later this year, following a merger.
For more than a decade, residents in the south of Aylesbury in Stoke Mandeville and Weston Turville have been opposed to a new development on a greenfield site called Hampden Fields. The Hampden Fields Action Group is extremely concerned that the development will have inadequate healthcare provision. Their fears are completely understandable, given that another area—Kingsbrook—is yet to have a new surgery 10 years after its construction.
It is just plain common sense that new housing developments need to include healthcare provision. GP surgeries and all that they now include—such as paramedics, pharmacists and, of course, nurses—are absolutely critical to that provision. We must ensure that buildings for these facilities are core to the design and planning of large-scale new housing developments, and we must also remember that we do not just need the premises; we need the people as well. So we need to ensure that we have enough young people training to join the health service across the full range of its professions, with courses such as those at Buckinghamshire New University, Buckinghamshire College Group and Buckinghamshire University Technical College all providing that critical first step.
We must consider retention as well as recruitment, so that people living in those housing developments will still have excellent healthcare provision in 10, 20 and 30 years’ time. And we must not forget that primary healthcare can result in referral to secondary healthcare. GPs send some of their patients to hospital, and that route must not be neglected either, when we consider housing development on a scale such as we are seeing in Aylesbury.
It cannot be left to a random soup of acronyms— section 106, CIL and HIF—to make all of that necessary provision. What we need is a strategic, considered plan that can be delivered fairly and transparently. And within that plan, we probably need to consider novel ways of financing infrastructure, so that we get it at a much earlier stage—before all the houses are sold and when the developers are prepared to pay.
Today’s debate is an important and welcome opportunity to highlight how crucial healthcare is to the British people as we tackle the burgeoning demand for new homes. I hope that the Minister’s response will serve to reassure existing and future residents of Aylesbury that the Government understand the challenge and are set to meet it head-on.
Levelling Up
Rob Butler Excerpts(2 years, 2 months ago)
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Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)
I know that my right hon. Friend believes that local leaders know best when it comes to regenerating local areas, and when it comes to Buckinghamshire, he is absolutely right. Buckinghamshire Council, which effectively created the concept of county deals, is very disappointed not to be one of the first nine, so will he tell me how soon the second tranche will be announced, because Bucks is poised to not just negotiate, but spring into action?
Michael Gove
I absolutely appreciate that and Martin Tett, the leader of Buckinghamshire Council, is a first-rate local authority leader. I cannot give a timescale at the moment. We want to make sure that the first nine county deals are successful, but we want to move on rapidly thereafter to expand the scope of county deals.
Oral Answers to Questions
Rob Butler Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Dean Russell (Watford) (Con)
Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)
Chris Clarkson (Heywood and Middleton) (Con)
Robert Jenrick
My hon. Friend and I have spoken about that on a number of occasions—as have I with you, Mr Speaker. He will appreciate that I am unable to comment on the specific local plans because of my quasi-judicial role. However, he is right to say that housing targets are only a starting point. All local plans are subject to an independent examination. Following consultation with the local community, anyone who wants to make representations to change a plan must be heard by the inspector. That process will take into account local land constraints such as the green belt, sites of special scientific interest, national parks and so on in coming to a sensible and credible way forward.
Rob Butler
My right hon. Friend is right that planning reform is overdue, but in Buckinghamshire there are serious concerns that the voices of local people will not be heard. For example, we know that in Aylesbury many thousands more houses will be built in the coming years, but the town is already merging into nearby villages and infrastructure is at breaking point. What reassurance can he provide that when residents raise legitimate concerns, they will be listened to?
Robert Jenrick
My hon. Friend makes an important point, and he is right to say that significant housing delivery is occurring at the moment in Aylesbury. There are two principal things that the Government seek to do to support his constituents. The first is to ensure that more infrastructure accompanies that housing; we will do that principally through our infrastructure levy, which will capture more of the land value uplift and put more money at the service of his excellent local council in Buckinghamshire. Secondly, we will ensure that more local people can be involved in the planning system by digitising it so that, at the touch of a smartphone, people can access and understand a plan and comment on or even object to a planning application. By doing so, we expect that we can boost the number of people who engage in our system and drive a truly localist approach.
Affordable and Safe Housing for All
Rob Butler Excerpts(2 years, 11 months ago)
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Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)
It is a privilege to speak in response to the Queen’s Speech, which laid out an ambitious and exciting programme of legislation. It is a Queen’s Speech to build back better from the pandemic, and it is the literal sense of building that is an intrinsic part of the theme of today’s debate.
A property-owning democracy is at the core of what we as Conservatives believe, and I wholeheartedly share the Prime Minister’s desire to move from generation rent to generation buy. I well remember the day I bought my first flat. It was the realisation of an ambition and the culmination of working hard and saving harder, but for too many young people today, this dream is beyond reach. In my constituency, house prices are now more than 10 times earnings. Despite many thousands of new homes being built already, in the past five years, Aylesbury has seen prices rise by 27%. The market therefore clearly calls for a greater supply of housing, but it is important that local development always reflects local circumstances and listens to local voices. I am grateful that Ministers did indeed hear the concerns of local people over the previously proposed algorithm, and I am confident that they will do so again as they move forward with the planning Bill.
The consultation that has already taken place contains some bold and praiseworthy ideas. I will certainly welcome proposals that could be used sensitively to redevelop and renew town centres such as Aylesbury, becoming places where people really do want to live, work, visit and invest. Carefully thought through densification and regeneration can undoubtedly help to reinvigorate towns and at the same time preserve our precious green belt. I am particularly pleased that the planning Bill will ensure that infrastructure is delivered at the same time as new houses, not years after. Anyone trying to drive through Aylesbury will agree that that is a long overdue change.
I have one small suggestion for my right hon. Friend the Minister and his colleagues in the Department, which is to consider the issue of empty commercial buildings that are all but abandoned by absentee owners—often overseas companies sitting on the land for its potential capital growth over decades but with no interest in a sense of place or community now. Aylesbury, unfortunately, has a few of those structures. They spoil the streetscape and are an impediment to ambitious and imaginative plans for development. Those sites could be much better used. The buildings could be repurposed for hospitality, retail or housing, or they could be demolished to create further brownfield sites. I hope that the ministerial team will look into ways of enabling that to happen.
The people of Aylesbury are far from nimbys. We already expect some 16,000 houses to be built in the next 30 years, but those developments must be right for residents, both new and old. Aylesbury garden town can help to fulfil that as a project, because it is not about bricks and mortar; it is about creating communities.
Oral Answers to Questions
Rob Butler Excerpts(3 years ago)
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Eddie Hughes
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her question. I am slightly disappointed, though. I thought she was going to rise to congratulate us on the social housing decarbonisation demonstrator fund, which has three excellent projects that are being progressed in Scotland. We on the Government Benches have no shortage of ambition to reach our net zero target by 2050. I look forward to working with Opposition Members to ensure we achieve that.
Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)
Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Robert Jenrick)
Infrastructure underpins our economy and improves people’s everyday lives. Over the next five years, the Government plan to deliver over £600 billion in public investment, the highest sustained level since the 1970s as a proportion of GDP. My Department is playing a leading role in that mission by making the biggest changes in the way we support local economic growth in a decade, with around £5 billion of investment through the levelling-up fund and community renewal fund, and our ongoing investment through the £3.6 billion towns fund. At the same time, we are reforming our planning system to build more homes, and ensuring that developers pay their fair share through a simpler, faster and more transparent infrastructure levy.
Rob Butler
Aylesbury has seen unprecedented housing growth over the past 25 years and we will see much more in the years to come. Our infrastructure is currently at breaking point, with traffic congestion a real problem for local people. One way of alleviating that would be approval of the Aylesbury spur of East West Rail. What steps can my right hon. Friend take to work across Government, in particular with the Treasury, to secure funding for that vital link to ensure that housing development is matched by the appropriate infrastructure?
Robert Jenrick
My hon. Friend is right to highlight the need for transport infrastructure investment in the Milton Keynes-Oxford-Cambridge arc, which is one of the fastest growing and most economically dynamic parts of the country. I understand how important the connection is to his constituents. I know he has met the Chief Secretary of the Treasury and the rail Minister to make the case for connecting Aylesbury to East West Rail, an overall project of which I have been a long-term supporter. He is right that more homes require more infrastructure. That is why we have a £7 billion national homebuilding fund, alongside the new infrastructure levy proposed to capture more of the land value uplift and ensure that when homes are built, they are built with the appropriate infrastructure as well.
Oral Answers to Questions
Rob Butler Excerpts(3 years, 3 months ago)
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Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)
Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)
Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)
Robert Jenrick
We will be publishing very soon the prospectus on the levelling-up fund, and that will give an opportunity for all parts of the country to benefit from this additional funding, including the community that my hon. Friend represents in Stoke-on-Trent. We also, as a result of his assiduous lobbying, have brought forward further funding for the remediation of brownfield land. Stoke-on-Trent has an excellent track record of developing new homes, but it does face significant challenges with the cost of remediation and the viability of those homes, so I hope Stoke-on-Trent will benefit from that funding as well.
Rob Butler [V]
Tremendous strides have been made in Aylesbury over the past year with the council and the town centre management team working incredibly hard, despite coronavirus, to make the town a place in which people want to live, work, shop, visit and invest. Proposals for the regeneration of the Market Square and Kingsbury Square will give a much-needed boost to the street scene, so could my right hon. Friend outline how the Government will assist ambitious local authorities such as Buckinghamshire Council to make plans for regeneration in Aylesbury a reality?
Robert Jenrick
I am very pleased to hear that Aylesbury has made such progress with its regeneration plans, which will complement Buckinghamshire’s ambitious garden town project—to which we have already allocated over £172 million—to unlock 10,000 homes. My hon. Friend is right to say that this year a priority postcode for every single council in the country, including his own, must be how they can help their town centre to thrive, not just today but well into the future. That will include ambitious plans to turn underutilised retail into work spaces and homes, and trying to attract private sector investment by making full use of the planning reforms that we have brought forward, with a more flexible, more certain and more responsive system to make regeneration a reality.
Oral Answers to Questions
Rob Butler Excerpts(3 years, 5 months ago)
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Kelly Tolhurst
I have to disagree strongly with the hon. Lady’s assertion that the taskforce has not been consulted. It has been led by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. We have listened to the views of the community leaders and individuals around the table, and evidence has been shared. I can agree to her call for a weekly meeting, because the taskforce already meets weekly.
Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
The Minister for Regional Growth and Local Government (Luke Hall)
We are committed to levelling up through further devolution, but our focus must be on tackling covid-19. I know that Buckinghamshire Council has worked tirelessly throughout this pandemic to support its community, helped by £32 million in additional covid funding. We intend to bring forward the devolution and local recovery White Paper in due course, detailing how the UK Government will partner with places across the country to build a sustainable economic recovery.
Rob Butler
I thank the Minister for his answer, and I join him in his praise for Buckinghamshire Council, which has worked tirelessly through this pandemic. Does he agree with me that this proposal from the council has all the potential ingredients for success, because it is place based and it has support from the local enterprise partnership, health partners, universities, and the voluntary and community sector? Will he therefore urge his officials to engage in conversations with the council as soon as is practically possible?
Luke Hall
I thank my hon. Friend for that question. He is right to raise this hugely important issue, and I was pleased to meet him and other colleagues from Buckinghamshire just the week before last. We are extremely grateful to the council for submitting its proposal, and I know my officials are looking at it closely. As I have said, we will set out details about our approach to devolution in the White Paper. I absolutely agree that our officials should meet as soon as possible to discuss this proposal in greater depth.
CCRC Decision on 44 Post Office Prosecutions
Rob Butler Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Paul Scully
I would echo the hon. Gentleman’s call for people to make sure they are in touch if they believe their convictions are not safe, because the Post Office is determined to make sure, as it looks back and reviews those 900 prosecutions, that it will be in contact—it is committed to being in contact itself—with anybody it feels is part of the Horizon process.
Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)
Last week, the Justice Committee, of which I am a member, published a report into private prosecutions, which was prompted by the Horizon scandal. Does my hon. Friend agree with its recommendation that any organisation that conducts a substantial number of private prosecutions should be required to meet the same standards of regulation, accountability and transparency as public prosecutors, and will he discuss that with the Lord Chancellor as a matter of urgency?
Paul Scully
I thank my hon. Friend for that, and as I have said, I pay tribute to the work that the Committee has done. The Government will certainly consider the very many sensible points that have been raised in the report, and we will report back in due course.