Oral Answers to Questions

Robert Courts Excerpts

Monday 7th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Alok Sharma]

The Secretary of State has set out the position very clearly. Of course we will be bringing forward any potential new regulations. The hon. Gentleman and his colleagues talk a lot about supporting vulnerable people, but they voted against the £1.5 billion of support last year and against the £4.5 billion of support introduced in the Budget. He should be supporting those policies, not talking them down.

[Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)]

6. What assessment the Government have made of the effectiveness of universal credit in helping people into work.

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

10. What assessment the Government have made of the effectiveness of universal credit in helping people into work.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Amber Rudd)]

There are many good reasons why universal credit is effective at helping people into work. The most important is that the legacy system disincentivised people from taking up work, often by applying a tax rate of 90% and above, while the taper rate under universal credit is more likely to be 63%, which enables people genuinely to get into work.

[Robert Courts]

Will my right hon. Friend join me in commending the hard work of the Witney jobcentre? Will she also explain how jobcentres such as the one in Witney are using new technology to help people into work in the digital age?

[Amber Rudd]

I thank my hon. Friend for drawing this to my attention. I thank the Witney jobcentre for the work that it does in helping people into work, and I also thank him for his work on this as a Member of Parliament. Of course it is essential that we make advanced digital equipment available to our work coaches to ensure that the service they deliver really is first class, and we will always ensure that they do.

Oral Answers to Questions

Robert Courts Excerpts

Monday 15th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ms McVey]

I have to say that that is some of the worst scaremongering I have ever heard. At the last Budget and this year, we put in another £1.5 billion when we knew that we had to provide more support. I announced in June that we would be helping another half a million disabled people on the severe disability premium. I have agreed to do more for kinship carers and the most vulnerable 18 to 21-year-olds. We are also agreeing to work with Citizens Advice—an independent and trusted organisation—to help people to get on to the benefit. When we hear what we need to do, we will do it.

[Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)]

3. What estimate the Government have made of the number of jobs created in the UK since 2010.

[Trudy Harrison (Copeland) (Con)]

20. What estimate the Government have made of the number of jobs created in the UK since 2010.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Ms Esther McVey)]

Employment in the UK has increased by more than 3.3 million since 2010 and is currently at a near record high of 32.4 million. Since 2010, the UK has created more jobs than France, Spain, Ireland, the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden and Norway combined.

[Robert Courts]

I thank the Secretary of State for that answer. What support are the Government offering to build on that employment success?

[Ms McVey]

That is precisely why we brought in universal credit, which made sure that people could work each hour they wanted to work and were not trapped by barriers to work, such as the 16-hour rule. We know that there are now 113 million more hours that people can work and that there will be more than 200,000 more jobs that people can go for.

Housing and Social Security

Robert Courts Excerpts

Thursday 22nd June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bacon]

I thank my hon. Friend for that and agree with him, although the caveat is that some developers are good at getting around neighbourhood plans, undermining their basis and confidence in them. The Government need to address that.

The key to getting the right kind of development is more choice and beauty. Now, that may sound airy-fairy, but it is the exact opposite, something which the Prince of Wales noted in his BIMBY or “Beauty-In-My-Back-Yard” campaign. We must have better, smarter, beautiful development that offers a wide range of real choices to consumers and is actively welcomed by existing communities, including the grandparents and parents who so often oppose development with arms folded saying, “We don’t want any houses in our area.” They want to see the next generation flourish and do well, and see their own grandchildren adequately housed. We must allow our communities greater voice and choice about what gets built, where it is built, what it looks like and who gets first chance to live there.

[Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making some extremely important points that resonate in my constituency. Does he agree that one way to ensure acceptance and, indeed, the welcoming of development in our communities is to allow for the increased availability of self-build, of which he is a great supporter, and to ensure the diversification of housing providers? Small local companies should be able to benefit from building, which brings jobs and work to the area.

[Mr Bacon]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As recently as 1988, 66% of housing in this country was built by small local builders. There has been a huge change that has benefited a small number of large companies, but not our communities or most of our constituents and society as a whole.

My hon. Friend mentioned self-build and it will not surprise him to know that I promoted, got through this House and the other place and secured Royal Assent for the Self-build and Custom Housebuilding Act 2015, which has now been strengthened by the Housing and Planning Act 2016. Some 53% of people in this country would, at some point in their lives, like to build their own house or have someone build a house to their design. Government policy should not just take account of that, but embrace it and make it as easy as possible.

All my Act does is require local authorities to keep a register of individuals and what are called “associations of individuals” who want to get a serviced plot of land to build a house. An “association of individuals” could be anyone: a group of friends; the governors of a school looking to provide accommodation to help recruit and retain teachers in difficult-to-fill subjects; or the Royal British Legion or a similar veterans’ body, such as Help for Heroes, working with veterans to fulfil their accommodation needs—[Interruption.] I see my hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mrs Trevelyan) nodding and I am pleased to see her in her place. An association of individuals could include the directors of a social services department looking to provide accommodation to help to recruit and retain social workers in parts of the country where jobs are difficult to fill. My act has now been strengthened by sections 9 to 12 of the Housing and Planning Act 2016, which require local authorities not only to keep a register but, crucially, to provide enough suitable development permissions to meet the demand on the register.

I turn again to the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne, because I do not think that he is fully persuaded of how powerful such measures could be. The Dutch expert group will be imitated by the right to build expert taskforce being launched at the end of the month at a housing conference in, funnily enough, my constituency. The taskforce will take the lessons that have been learned in the Netherlands. If we were building as many units of self-build and custom house building as there are in the Netherlands now, we would be creating 60,000 extra units a year on top of what is currently being delivered, which could make a significant difference.

I have two requests of the Government. First, paragraph 2.19 of the housing White Paper states:

“We will target the £2.3bn Housing Infrastructure Fund at the areas of greatest housing need. We will open this capital grant programme to bids in 2017… We will fund those bids that unlock the most homes in the areas of greatest housing need.”

Amen to that, but we need the details to be announced. I understand that they have not been announced due to the general election, but it needs to happen soon.

Secondly, the Government should adopt the 10-point plan of the National Custom & Self Build Association—point 2 in particular—which calls for a help to build equity loan scheme to help people get their own house. A deposit of just 5% is required to buy a home under the Help to Buy scheme, although that does not create any more dwellings; it just helps volume house builders to sell the houses that they have already built. I will happily provide the Government with what NaCSBA has proposed. A help to build scheme would ensure that an extra house was built. Moreover, one could recycle the money because, in most cases, as soon as the house is built the owner could re-mortgage, and the equity loan could be paid back and would be available to lend to somebody else.

The final thing that I want to say in the 30 seconds that remain is that our party did not reach out during the recent general election to young people in the way that it should reach out. However, it is true that all people, but young people in particular, need somewhere to live. It is absolutely fundamental. In many cases, young people have given up on the prospect of ever having their own place. We have to make owning a house a reality. The architect Rod Hackney once said:

“It is a dangerous thing to underestimate human potential and the energy which can be generated when people are given the opportunity to help themselves.”

Pension Schemes Bill [Lords]

Robert Courts Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 30th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)]

I am conscious that some Members may be worried that they will be collecting their pension before we have finished debating the Pension Schemes Bill, but I promise that I will not detain the House long. That is a light-hearted start to a speech on a serious issue. It is a great pleasure and honour to speak in this debate, and to follow the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman), who made the important point that for many years there has been a lack of saving and pension provision in society at large. Members of the public turn to pension saving later than perhaps they ought to have done, and—dare I suggest it?—some Members of Parliament may have done the same. That is what the Bill is designed to address.

This is an important and often neglected policy area, and the Government’s strides towards automatic enrolment have gone a great way towards putting wrong that right. There is a need for further work, however, which the Bill is designed to address. We have heard about the types of master trust available, and I will not take the House through them all again. They are important, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises. I am made aware of that every time I go around my constituency and meet those in charge of small businesses, of which we have a great many in Witney. Their main concerns are regulation and the steps that they have to go through. Master trusts give them a way to deal with those matters very quickly, because administration costs are pooled and one group of trustees manages a scheme. Not all employers will wish to set up their own scheme, so master trusts help them greatly. As has been said in the other place, master trusts are a neat solution for smaller employers, for whom setting up an individual scheme would be a burden.

We need the Bill, because the previous reforms have led to the master trusts being a great success. So far, more than 7 million people have been enrolled in a workplace pension by more than 370,000 employers, and total assets of £10 billion are being managed. As the programme rolls out to smaller employers during 2018, we expect that to increase so that an estimated 10 million workers will be newly saving, or saving more, in those workplace pensions. That will have generated £17 million per annum in additional pension savings by 2019-2020.

Action must be taken now, because the increased saving is taking place against a legislative and regulatory framework that was designed for 2010, when some 200,000 members were taking part in master trust schemes; now the figure is some 7 million. The regulatory framework was designed with single-employer schemes in mind, but master trusts operate on a different scale and with very different dynamics. The first part of the Bill, which I support, will help to deal with that.

The second part of the Bill deals with early exit charges. In 2014, the Government brought in major changes to pensions, which have allowed 232,000 people to access flexible payments and exercise their right to use their money in the way they see fit. More than 1.5 million payments have been made, with £9.2 billion withdrawn in the first 21 months. Some schemes impose costs on people when they withdraw their money to use as they see fit, and the Bill is designed to address that.

In conclusion, I support the Bill. It will, I submit, increase confidence in saving and confidence in pensions. It will protect savers, and it will enable them to take full advantage of the new pension freedoms that they have been granted by the Government. It is a reforming Bill that amends the existing framework, and it will be of benefit to all. I urge the House to support it.