Education and Local Government

Robert Jenrick Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Robert Jenrick)]

It is an honour to close this debate, which has been characterised by many impressive maiden speeches. They began with the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (David Johnston), who recalled his predecessor. It made me think back to the first time I encountered Ed Vaizey, which was when I, as a, I guess, very young-looking new MP was sworn in here, in front of the whole House, after Prime Minister’s questions; it was after a by-election. The House was very silent and then there was a heckle from across the Chamber—it was Ed Vaizey saying, “Is he here on work experience?” Everyone laughed. However, I am delighted that on all sides of the House there are now far more MPs who are younger than I am. I was also struck by some of the superb maiden speeches that Members gave, including those Members on both sides of the House who bring direct experience of education, whether as teachers, school governors or having supported schools in other ways, such as my hon. Friends the Members for Wantage and for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis). I am sure all of them will be great contributors to debates in this House.

With regard to my own Department, Members on both sides of the House bring direct experience of local government: my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Daly); the hon. Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins), following in her great family tradition; my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Paul Holmes); and my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt), who has been involved in the mayoral combined authority in Cambridgeshire. I share and echo the comments of the shadow Secretary of State in paying tribute to all those, from all political parties, who contribute in the democratic process as councillors and council officers across the country. It was also a particular pleasure to listen to the maiden speech of my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Tom Randall). I enjoyed working with his predecessor, Vernon Coaker, and I very much look forward to working with my hon. Friend in the future.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Sir Robert Syms) said early on in the debate, we stood at the general election on a platform of breaking the deadlock that was holding the country back. The election result has, without question, delivered that. It has enabled us to get Brexit done and honour the outcome of the referendum. It has probably contributed to breaking the deadlock in Northern Ireland, as referenced by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). I am sure that is welcomed by all of us across the House. It has provided certainty to businesses and individuals across the country, and it has enabled us to get on with delivering on the public’s priorities: levelling up across the country and making Whitehall work for local communities.

As my right hon. Friend the Education Secretary said, and as we heard in numerous contributions from across the House, the central role of high quality education in ensuring that young people can fulfil their full potential has been very clear and is shared on a cross-party basis. We heard about the importance of funding schools properly. The Government are doing that, with every pupil in every school seeing an uplift and by providing a fair floor for all, beginning with £5,000 per pupil in secondary schools.

We also heard, again on both sides but perhaps more on the Government side, that funding alone is not the outcome. The outcome is better standards. Under this Government, 1.8 million more young people have been in good or outstanding schools since 2010. That is underpinned by outstanding teachers, such as the one referenced by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North. They have played a role in all our lives and, no doubt, in getting us here to this House. We will repay that by ensuring that they have higher starting salaries and rigorous and transparent inspections by Ofsted. They will also see a willingness to innovate and set teachers free to create new and exciting schools, such as the Michaela free school co-founded in London by my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Suella Braverman).

On both sides, we heard that further education colleges and quality apprenticeships matter. That is why we are providing a £400 million boost for education for 16 to 19-year-olds next year and 20 new institutes of technology.

[Karin Smyth]

I was just wondering where all the women had gone from the Tory Benches. Maybe they are off at a party somewhere else. On apprenticeships, I am looking forward to chairing the all-party group on apprenticeships with the hon. Member for Chichester (Gillian Keegan), but I understand that there will not be a dedicated apprenticeships Minister. That would be a concern. I am a strong supporter of apprenticeships, but we need to address what has gone wrong. It makes a massive difference to my constituents and I wonder whether the Government would like to address that.

[Robert Jenrick]

Absolutely. Unusually, in this Government it is the Secretary of State himself who has chosen to take on that responsibility as a sign that apprenticeships matter to this Government, as they have since 2010.

We heard throughout the debate that we have a special responsibility to support those with special educational needs. That is why we are funding local government to provide those services with a 12% year-on-year increase.

I shall now answer the points that relate to my Department. Last year we built more homes than we have built for 30 years—241,000 new homes and 1.5 million since 2010. We built more affordable homes per year on average than the previous Labour Government and more council houses were built last year than in 13 years of the previous Labour Government put together. However, there is no room for complacency and we know there is a great deal more to do. That, I hope, is set out in the ambitious legislative programme of the Queen’s Speech.

We will take this forward in a number of ways—first, with further planning reforms. We have announced a White Paper on planning reform, which I will introduce in the coming months. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) said, we need a fair planning system that allows new homes to be built, encourages densification and gentle building upwards, and ensures that homes are built in the right places with a planning inspectorate that listens to local communities and is brownfield-first.

[Robert Halfon]

I am grateful for the towns fund, from which Harlow can access up to £25 million. My right hon. Friend talks about changing planning law. Will he also look at changing permitted development rights, so that we ensure that we have quality homes—not ghetto homes—and that London councils do not use it to send their most vulnerable families to my constituency?

[Robert Jenrick]

Absolutely. My right hon. Friend showed me some of those properties when we visited Harlow last year, and we will take forward reforms to permitted development rights in future.

We will also invest more in infrastructure. We did that in the last Parliament with our housing infrastructure fund, and we have been very clear that more investment in infrastructure is required, as we heard in numerous speeches, so that we build communities with the forethought of planned towns and cities such as Milton Keynes, which we heard about in the maiden speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt).

[Layla Moran]

The Secretary of State will know well that there are issues with South Oxfordshire District Council that relate to the housing infrastructure fund bid that we put in. Will he consider meeting me and council leaders to ensure that we develop a plan to deliver that money and that infrastructure funding?

[Robert Jenrick]

I would be happy to meet the hon. Lady—in fact, I have written to her council leader suggesting that we speak as soon as possible.

We will also invest more in affordable housing. We know that we cannot meet our objectives without more affordable homes. The Government have built 450,000 so far and we intend to go further. We will be replacing our affordable homes programme with a new one and we have lifted the housing revenue account borrowing cap so that councils across the country can build more homes. We want better designed, safer, more beautiful homes, rooted in communities, and we are creating a design code so that every community can have a right to demand good-quality, well-designed homes that work for them.

We are also going to boost home ownership, as a good in itself, because we believe that a home is more than four walls and a roof—it is about someone investing in their future and their family, and putting down roots in a community. As my hon. Friend the Member for Poole said, it is about building an ownership society. We will do that with our next step, on first homes, with a 30% discount for local people buying homes in their community, which was championed by my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake).

We will also ensure that homes that we build in this country are safe. We have learnt a great deal following the tragedy of Grenfell Tower and we know that our building safety regime needs urgent reform. We have two Bills in the Queen’s Speech, one of which is a building safety Bill, which will be the biggest change to our building safety regime in this country for 40 years. That will be a complex piece of legislation that I hope—as the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), the former Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee said—will command cross-party support so that we can build a robust system that lasts into the future.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

On my right hon. Friend’s next step on homes—I appreciate his reference to me—it is an excellent policy that will make home ownership much more affordable for lots of local first-time buyers. Will he consider blending it with Help to Buy to make it even more affordable and therefore even easier for people to get on the housing ladder?

[Robert Jenrick]

I will consider that a Budget bid and pass it on to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor. We will certainly blend it with things such as shared ownership and reform that model to take out some abuses that we have seen in recent years.

In addition to the building safety Bill, we will bring forward another Bill on fire safety sooner than that to ensure that we act urgently on the recommendations of the judge in the Grenfell inquiry. Again, I hope that those Bills can command cross-party support. We will answer some of the questions raised by numerous Members on the position of leaseholders not only through publishing a draft Bill shortly to outlaw leasehold for new homes and to reduce ground rents to a peppercorn, but by listening to the recommendations of the Law Commission and the Competition and Markets Authority to ensure that leasehold works for everyone and is a fair and sustainable system into the future.

[Mr Betts]

Will that include proposals to help existing leaseholders as well as future leaseholders?

[Robert Jenrick]

The draft Bill we intend to publish shortly will be about the future. A second piece of legislation will follow, following the reports from the Law Commission and the CMA, which is the right way to approach the task.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) and my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton, among others, in different ways spoke of levelling up. It is a challenge that we have confronted as a country since the second world war and which Conservative Prime Ministers since Harold Macmillan have taken forward. It is a difficult challenge that will involve closing the productivity gaps and raising living standards sustainably across the country, with more transport investment, education and skills and full-fibre broadband. It will also mean ensuring that the benefits of Brexit are felt across the country, such as through new free ports—the proposal from my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich is duly noted—and the £3.6 billion towns fund, which is working in over 100 communities, including the constituency of the hon. Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn). As I said, it will not be easy, but levelling up all parts of the country and making sure that prosperity and opportunity are shared by everybody is one of the Government’s central missions.

We will also publish a devolution White Paper showing how we can spread the devolution revolution we saw under the last Conservative Government across more parts of the country: more Mayors, more combined authorities and more opportunities for local authorities that wish to reform to do so—I note the proposal from my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson)— and by doing so to earn further autonomy and control over public funds. We know that Mayors can work. In that regard, we heard from the hon. Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth). Incidentally, we are indeed taking forward the western powerhouse, only we call it the western gateway, as it will combine parts of Wales and the west country. It has now been launched and I hope she will get behind it. There will then be routes to devolution for great metropolitan areas and for non-metropolitan areas, and we will publish those proposals shortly.

As the shadow Secretary of State said, we must ensure that local government, which provides so many important services in all our lives, is properly resourced, and that is why we are bringing forward the best settlement for local government in a decade. This includes a 4.4% real-terms funding increase, a £1 billion grant for social care and measures to place the sector on a sustainable financial footing ahead of the three-year settlement, which will come forward in the spending review and which I hope will answer some of the critical questions we have heard today, including on the future of social care. I take the shadow Secretary of State up on his offer to work on that on a cross-party basis.

In conclusion, one could not have listened to the fantastic maiden speeches today and failed to be optimistic about the future. The gridlock is broken and the country is no longer going round in circles. We have a functioning majority Government, Brexit is being delivered, and now the task for this Government is to repay the trust the public have placed in us and get on and deliver on the people’s priorities. That is exactly what we will do and what is in the Queen’s Speech. In education, in housing, in levelling up, in funding local government properly and in ensuring that public services are reformed and delivered, we will take forward the people’s priorities and get on and deliver for the people of this country.