Leasehold, Commonhold and Ground Rents

Robert Jenrick Excerpts
Monday 11th January 2021

(3 years, 2 months ago)

Written Statements
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Robert Jenrick Portrait The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Robert Jenrick)
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The Government are committed to promoting fairness and transparency for homeowners and ensuring that consumers are protected from abuse and poor service.

Last week I announced the most significant set of reforms to how we hold property for at least 40 years and the beginning of even more fundamental change to English property law, through the widespread introduction of the commonhold tenure.

To deliver this, we will bring forward legislation in the upcoming session to set future ground rents to zero. This will be the first part of seminal two-part legislation to implement reforms in this Parliament.

Enfranchisement valuation and lease extensions

In 2017 the Government asked the Law Commission to review the legislation on leasehold enfranchisement, with the aim of making it easier, quicker and more cost-effective for leaseholders to buy their freehold or extend their lease.

The Law Commission have now completed this work and their findings are clear. Under the current system, too many leaseholders find the process for extending their lease or buying their freehold prohibitively expensive, too complex and lacking transparency. I am addressing this, addressing historic imbalance to ensure fairness for leaseholders, whilst taking account of the legitimate rights of freeholders. I will continue to ensure we meet this objective as we bring forward reforms.

The Government will reform the process of enfranchisement valuation leaseholders must follow to calculate the cost of extending their lease or buying their freehold. Taken together these measures could save leaseholders thousands of pounds, depending on the remaining term of their lease.

The Government will abolish marriage value, cap the treatment of ground rents at 0.1% of the freehold value and prescribe rates for the calculations at market value. The Government will also introduce an online calculator, further simplifying the process for leaseholds and ensuring standardisation and fairness for all those looking to enfranchise.

Existing discounts for improvements made by the leaseholder and for security of tenure will be retained, alongside a separate valuation methodology for low-value properties known as “section 9(1)”. Leaseholders will also be able to voluntarily agree to a restriction on future development of their property to avoid paying “development value”.

Leaseholders of houses can currently only extend their lease once at a “modern ground rent” for 50 years, compared to leaseholders of flats who can extend as often as they wish at a zero “peppercorn” ground rent for 90 years.

I am confirming that the Government will give leaseholders of all types of property the same right to extend their lease as often as they wish, at zero ground rent, for a term of 990 years. There will continue to be redevelopment breaks during the last 12 months of the original lease or the last five years of each period of 90 years of the extension, subject to existing safeguards and compensation.

We will also enable leaseholders, where they already have a long lease, to buy out the ground rent without the need to extend the term of the lease.

Commonhold

In 2017 the Government also asked the Law Commission to recommend reforms to reinvigorate commonhold as a workable alternative to leasehold, for both existing and new homes.

Having closely reviewed their report, I am confirming I will establish a new Commonhold Council as a partnership of industry, leaseholders and Government that will prepare homeowners and the market for the widespread take-up of commonhold. I will start this work immediately, including considering legislation. I know this will take time and close working with consumers and industry, and the Commonhold Council will be the critical first step of this.

Restricting future ground rents

Finally, ahead of legislating to restrict future ground rents to zero for future leases, I am also confirming that this policy now also applies to retirement properties. Restricting future ground rents to zero is a basic matter of fairness and including retirement properties will ensure that those who live in retirement housing benefit from the same reform as other leaseholders.

I do not see a compelling argument to exclude the elderly from this new protection, in fact, they deserve it more than most.

In recognition of the previous announcement of the ground rent exemption in June 2019, and wishing to mitigate potential impact on these developers, commencement of this provision will be deferred and come into force (for retirement properties) 12 months after Royal Assent.

This announcement is the beginning of a programme of historic leasehold and property reforms. This package is only part of Government’s response to the Law Commission’s reports. The Government will respond to the Law Commission’s remaining recommendations on enfranchisement, commonhold and right to manage in due course. We will translate these measures into law as soon as possible, starting with legislation to set future ground rents to zero in the upcoming Session. This will be the first part of major two-part legislation to implement leasehold and commonhold reforms in this Parliament.

It is my ambition that together these fundamentally enhance the fairness of English property rights and be seen in the future as landmark reforms to the way we own homes.

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Provisional Local Government Finance Settlement

Robert Jenrick Excerpts
Thursday 17th December 2020

(3 years, 3 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Robert Jenrick Portrait The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Robert Jenrick)
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Today I have written to all local authorities in England thanking their councillors, officers and employees for their exceptional service this year. From carers to teachers to social workers to refuse collectors to council officers, as well as the elected members, they have worked tirelessly over the course of this pandemic to keep us safe, to provide support to the most vulnerable, to assist local businesses and to deliver public services under immense pressure. I think I speak for the whole House in saying a sincere thank you and in wishing them and their families a happy and peaceful Christmas.

From the start of the pandemic, we committed to ensuring that councils had the resources they needed to step up and support their communities. We have provided councils with more than £7.2 billion of additional funding for covid-19 expenditure. We have ensured that councils receive support to manage associated losses in income, including from sales, fees, charges, leisure centres and local taxes, and that is expected to amount to further billions of pounds of support. That commitment remains undimmed, and the settlement we are announcing today ensures that councils have the resources they need to continue that work next year, to play their part in the recovery of their communities and to deliver first-class public services.

As we look ahead to 2021 and 2022, the annual settlement makes an extra £2.2 billion available to fund the provision of critical public services including adult and children’s social care. Within that, we are giving authorities access to an additional £1 billion for adult and children’s social care, made up of £300 million of social care grant and the flexibility of a 3% adult social care precept. On average, English councils will see a 4.5% cash-terms increase in core spending power, which is also an increase in real terms. That is testament to the support that our local government deserves, and it comes off the back of three settlements in a row that have increased funding in real terms.

The £1 billion grant announced at last year’s spending review will continue, along with all other existing social care funding. Balancing the contributions of national and local taxpayers, we are giving councils increased flexibility through a 2% council tax referendum limit, with an extra 3% for social care authorities. Councils will, of course, want to take into account the financial circumstances of their residents and to protect households from excessive increases in bills. It is incumbent on councils to balance these competing pressures and reach the right decision for their local areas.

To help councils continue reducing council tax for those least able to pay, including households hit hard financially by the pandemic, I am making £670 million of new grant funding available outside the core settlement for local council tax support. Lower tier councils, including districts, will benefit from a new one-off £111 million lower tier services grant, and we are providing certainty and stability by confirming that the main funding allocations for the full range of council services will rise in line with inflation.

Our settlement also addresses the extra costs incurred by councils in rural areas, providing an extra £4 million to the rural services delivery grant—the highest contribution to date, at £85 million. We are also proposing a further £622 million of new homes bonus allocations, We will invite views on how we can reform the scheme next year to ensure that it is focused where homes are needed the most and where councils are ambitious to get on and deliver them.

Despite the arrival of vaccines, we will continue to live with covid-19 for some months. That is why, alongside the core settlement, I am announcing comprehensive measures, including £1.55 billion of additional, unring-fenced grant funding for covid expenditure. Our measures insure against funding shortfalls, and I am particularly pleased to confirm today the scope of and approach to our very well received scheme to reimburse councils for 75% of irrecoverable lost tax income from 2020-21.

As the cold weather sets in, the protection of those sleeping rough amid the pandemic continues to be one of my priorities. Our world-leading Everyone In initiative was and remains a powerful testament to what local and central Government can achieve together. We are building on that work to ensure that as few of the 29,000 people who were helped off the streets under that scheme, and subsequently, return to life on the streets, spending over £750 million next year to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping—a 60% increase on the previous you spending review. In addition, we are providing £165 million of new funding to councils for the troubled families programme, underlining our continued commitment to the most vulnerable in society. Following the passage of the Domestic Abuse Bill, we will provide £125 million funding next year to enable councils to meet their duties in full to provide the support that victims of domestic abuse and their children undoubtedly deserve.

Serious challenges remain, but the start of the vaccine roll-out last week offers us cause for optimism and allows us to at least begin to glimpse the world beyond the pandemic. We want to work with local councils to build a new country beyond covid—a country that is more prosperous, greener, safer and more neighbourly. Local government will be integral to the achievement of that shared vision. We will establish a new £4 billion levelling-up fund, building on the success of our £3.6 billion towns and high streets funds. Any local area will be eligible to apply directly to this fund, which will finance the everyday infrastructure, town centre regeneration and culture that communities need and local people want. The UK shared prosperity fund will help to level up and create opportunity across the UK. A UK-wide investment framework for that will be published by my Department early next year.

The Government are funding vital local infrastructure, with total capital spending at £100 billion. That will fund once-in-a-generation changes to local communities and deliver the highest sustained levels of public sector net investment since the 1970s, including the biggest hospital building programme in living memory, and £2.2 billion investment in our schools funding programme to rebuild 500 schools over the next decade. In addition, local councils will benefit from £1.7 billion for local roads maintenance and upgrades to tackle potholes, which will improve local connectivity and deliver better roads for our communities.

I want local government to emerge stronger, more sustainable and better able to meet the needs of those it serves. That means greater openness and accountability, and in a minority of cases it means better financial management and regard for taxpayers’ money. To that end, my Department is publishing today its response to Sir Tony Redmond’s excellent review of the effectiveness of external audit and transparency. We will provide councils with an additional £15 million next year to implement Sir Tony’s recommendations. We are preserving the ability of local authorities to invest in programmes to power growth by lowering Public Works Loan Board interest rates, but we must also protect taxpayers from unwise risky investments of the kind we have seen, sadly, in some councils in recent years. Those practices must now end.

When there is a clearer path ahead, we will work with the sector and Members across the House to seek a new consensus for broader reforms to local government, including the fair funding review and the business rates reset, and we will ensure that councils are set on a long-term trajectory of sustainable growth and fair resources.

This will, I hope, be viewed as a significant settlement that paves the way for a bright future for our local communities as they seek to bounce back from an exceptionally difficult year. The settlement will deliver £2.2 billion of extra funding, a 4.5% cash and real terms increase in core spending power, and it will further fund councils to ensure that they steer the course of the remaining months of the covid-19 pandemic with certainty and confidence. Building on last year’s settlement, which exceptionally received cross-party support, it puts councils, which were at the forefront of our response to the pandemic, at the forefront of our recovery, and I commend this statement to the House.

Steve Reed Portrait Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)
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I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement, and I echo his words of thanks to council staff for the sterling work they have carried out in the most daunting of circumstances. However, the Secretary of State’s announcement today leaves local authorities facing a vast funding gap that will inevitably lead to job losses, cuts in key frontline services, such as adult social care, and the closure of yet more treasured community assets such as libraries, youth centres and leisure centres.

Perhaps one of the most shocking aspects of the settlement is the Government’s plan to force councils to hike up council tax while the country still faces an unprecedented health crisis and the deepest recession for 300 years. The Government are proposing a council tax hike more than twice the rate of inflation. The Conservatives have decided to clobber hard-working families when their jobs and incomes are already under extreme pressure, and in return, those taxpayers will get fewer services.

Council tax is a regressive tax that hits families on average incomes harder than the wealthy. It also raises less money in poorer areas. A 5% increase in Surrey raises £38 million, while a 5% increase in Blackburn with Darwen raises just £2.8 million. An older person living in a less wealthy area, such as one of the red wall seats, will see their Conservative MP tax them more but cut the care services they rely on.

In his first speech as Prime Minister, Boris Johnson stood on the steps of Downing Street and said he would

“fix the crisis in social care once and for all with a clear plan we have prepared”.

No one has seen a dot or comma of that plan in the 18 months since. Costs for social care are soaring, yet today’s settlement will make the crisis worse and will hit older people living in less affluent areas hardest.

In 2011, the average band D council tax was £1,439. With the Conservative council tax bombshell announced today, the average bill for next year will be £1,909. That is a rise of 33% under this Conservative Government. The message to the public is clear: “Pay more but get less under the Conservatives, with Rishi Sunak’s council tax hike coming your way in the middle of the worst recession for three centuries.”

Can the Secretary of State please tell us how he expects families to afford a 5% council tax hike in the middle of an unprecedented economic crisis? When can we expect to see the Government’s plan to fix the social care crisis instead of leaving older people struggling without the support they need? Given the urgency of the pandemic, how much are the Government increasing the public health grant next year, and what does the Secretary of State expect councils to do about the 25% lost council tax and business rate income that he is not compensating them for?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
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I echo the hon. Gentleman’s thanks to local council workers across the country. He talks about our pledge to support local councils and to ensure that they are fully funded for the work that they have done during covid, and we have made good on that promise. We have provided £7.2 billion already. Local councils to date have reported that they have spent £4 billion and are projecting that they will spend almost £6.2 billion to the end of the year, so we will have provided local councils with as much, if not more, funding than they have reported.

The hon. Gentleman refers to funding for local council tax losses and for sales fees and charges. Our schemes are extremely generous in both regards, providing 75p in the pound of losses for local councils to ensure that they can weather the particular storm that they have been through this year. He refers to council tax costs. Local councils are not under any obligation to increase council taxes. We only have to look back at the record of the last Labour Government to see what happens under Labour. Under Labour, council tax doubled. Under this Conservative Government, council tax is lower in real terms today than it was in 2010-11.

It is difficult to see how the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues can pose as the guardians of taxpayer value. I appreciate that he is on what we might call a sticky wicket in this regard. We only have to look at his local Labour council in Croydon. It purchased a hotel above the asking price, which has now gone bankrupt. It created a housing company with a £200 million loan and it could not say whether it had built any houses. The cabinet has been described as acting like some kind of wrecking ball, except that the wrecking ball was directed at its own council. Or, indeed, we could look at Nottingham’s Labour council, which was described recently by its auditors as having “institutional blindness” to its financial mismanagement and ineptitude, which included creating an energy company called Robin Hood. That is a rather unusual definition of Robin Hood’s activities—instead of taking from the rich, it robbed off everyone.

The truth is that under Labour councils, it is the public who lose out. The public will pay the price in Croydon in lost jobs, poorer services and, ultimately, higher council taxes. We will continue to support local councils, the overwhelming majority of which, of all political persuasions, have done a sterling job this year, and we will ensure that they get the resources they need to continue that work into the new year.

Bob Blackman Portrait Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con) [V]
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In these exceptional times, we have another single-year statement—or single-year funding—and I am sure my right hon. Friend will wish to return to multi-year funding as soon as practically possible. I welcome the £8 billion that has been given in additional funding this year alone to councils to support them in the pandemic and the commitment to more than £3 billion for next year. Obviously a number of areas, particularly in London and the south-east, have gone into tier 3, which does mean additional costs and forgoing income that local authorities will need to try to balance their books not only in this current financial year but going into the next year. Will my right hon. Friend confirm what additional support will be available to local leaders in the areas that are facing the highest restrictions under covid-19?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
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My hon. Friend makes an important point, and I share his desire to have a multi-year settlement for local government. Obviously, this year has proved a unique one, in which the kaleidoscope has been shaken in many respects and will take time to settle. I hope that when we come to do the settlement next year it will indeed be a multi-year one. I believe that that is the expectation of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, but he will no doubt give confirmation in due course, as we see how 2021 turns out.

On local councils in tier 3, we are providing further funding for both councils themselves and their local business community, on a month-by-month basis, if they are in tier 2 or tier 3. The purpose of today’s settlement, in looking ahead to the likely covid expenditure that councils will face next year, is to ensure that both in respect of the month-by-month costs that councils are incurring, which have been about £500 million a month, and the losses they are incurring in sales, fees and charges, they at least have forward guidance to the middle point of the next calendar year. Of course we all hope that by Easter, and certainly by the summer, the position in the country and within councils will be dramatically different.

Clive Betts Portrait Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
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On behalf of the Select Committee, may I join both Front Benchers in thanking councils up and down the country for the brilliant job they have done in keeping services going and communities safe in the past few terrible months? The Government are forecasting a 4.5% increase in spending power for local authorities, and the assumption there is that councils will put up council tax by 5%, including the 3% for social care, all in one year. Although councils have the discretion to decide on that, will he confirm that the spending power in his statement assumes that all councils will put their council tax up by 5%? There is a forecast in here about ongoing covid costs. Does he accept that those costs might be greater? If they are, on an unforeseen basis, will the Government stand ready to provide extra money for councils if they can show that their costs are in excess of what the Government are so far calculating?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
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I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for all his work and that of his Committee over the year. He is right to say that the figures we quote of an up to 4.5% real-terms cash increase in core spending power are dependent on the choices that local councils make in the weeks and months ahead, but one would expect that; local councils and the local democratic process will have to balance up the competing interests of providing public services and ensuring that hard-working people are not facing excessive increases in local council tax, and those will be different judgments in different parts of the country.

I will of course keep the covid costs being incurred by local councils under review. We have made good on our promises time and again since the start of the pandemic. Early in the pandemic, the Local Government Association came before the hon. Gentleman’s Committee and estimated that costs incurred by local councils would be around £10 billion. We are going to end this financial year having provided local councils with, I suspect, about £10 billion, and we are providing further billions of pounds into next year. So we can see the Government’s commitment and determination to support local councils.

Bob Seely Portrait Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con) [V]
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First, I wish to thank the Minister for his decision on the housing algorithm, the statement today, and the very significant work that he, his Ministers, the Department and indeed the Isle of Wight Council has done during the pandemic, which has been vital. In the fair funding review, the Government for the first time recognised the additional cost of providing public services on the Isle of Wight— in effect, they recognised the Island as an island, and I am grateful for that. For understandable reasons, due to the covid pandemic, the review was put on hold. Does he accept that this delay has prevented Isle of Wight Council, despite its undoubted best efforts, from supporting Islanders to the same extent that mainland councils can support their residents? Finally, will he meet me and my local council to discuss funding these additional costs, as part of a consultation process and prior to the local government financial settlement for 2021-22?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
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I would be happy to meet my hon. Friend and the leader of his local council, as would, I am sure, the Minister for Regional Growth and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Luke Hall). I do not agree that the Isle of Wight has lacked the resources to respond to the pandemic; from what I have seen it has done a sterling job. The Isle of Wight has had significant amounts of additional support, and total covid-19 funding for the council so far has been £20.3 million. We have also provided support for the local business community amounting to £48 million, which has been brilliantly dispensed by my hon. Friend’s local council, supporting 4,500 small and medium-sized businesses on the Isle of Wight. I am pleased that my hon. Friend supports yesterday’s announcement on the local housing need question and that he will get on and build more homes on the Isle of Wight in the years ahead.

Stephen Timms Portrait Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
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Will the additional funding that the Secretary of State has announced for homelessness ensure that councils can continue to put a roof over the heads of people with no recourse to public funds? The local authorities that gave evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee last week welcomed the Government’s winter support package for hard-pressed families, but it runs only until March. Does the Secretary of State have longer-term plans for how councils can support vulnerable households, so that councils can make their plans for the future?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
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The right hon. Gentleman has a long-standing interest in this issue. It important that we set out long-term plans both to help the cohort of people who came in off the streets through Everybody In and to make further strides in our overall effort to reduce rough sleeping to the absolute minimum. In the summer we asked local councils, including the right hon. Gentleman’s, to draw up a plan for how they would assist those people who were in temporary accommodation into move-on accommodation, and then ultimately into either social housing or the private rental sector. We supported that with almost £100 million of funding.

The settlement announced today provides further funding for the next financial year that is the same as or greater than the amount of money that was available in this financial year, and it will be £750 million in total. We have also secured £430 million for new move-on accommodation and asked every local council in the country to bid for that so that they can invest in accommodation to help to support the people they have taken in off the streets.

On no recourse to public funds, we have taken a number of steps this year. We extended the derogation, not just to London but to the whole country, so that local councils can support European economic area nationals. There is of course, a cohort of people who are not EEA nationals, and we have allowed councils the discretion to support them when there is a risk to life. Many councils have chosen to do that throughout the pandemic and I am sure will do so this winter.

Lucy Allan Portrait Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)
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I thank my right hon. Friend for his statement and for the generous support that my local council has received during the pandemic. In particular, I wish to mention the £1 million rough sleepers fund and the £600,000 winter grant fund that we have received to support struggling families at this very difficult time. My local council staff have been doing a fantastic job, and my right hon. Friend is right to thank them for going above and beyond to serve our community.

My constituents are being told that in future they should expect council tax increases of 5% and that they should also expect to see cuts to vital services. Will my right hon. Friend please reassure my constituents that the generous funding settlement announced today, together with all the other measures, will mean that there will be no need for the council to choose to take such draconian measures as increasing council tax by 5% or making cuts to vital services?

--- Later in debate ---
Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
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I am happy to reassure my hon. Friend’s constituents in Telford that there should be no reason why her local council, Telford and Wrekin, should endanger local people’s services. We have provided Telford and Wrekin Council with £22.5 million of covid-19 funding this year, and we have provided £30 million for local businesses, supporting 2,500 businesses in my hon. Friend’s constituency. Of course, Telford is in the running for the towns fund and I have been to visit some of the fantastic proposals that my hon. Friend is championing in that respect. Earlier in the year we provided £1 million of accelerated funding, which I think has gone towards the brilliant bridge linking Telford railway station with the town centre and the new tech zone being created there, which will create good-quality, high-skilled jobs for the future. The Getting Building fund has provided £15 million to the marches so that Shropshire and Herefordshire can get building and create and sustain jobs.

Jeremy Corbyn Portrait Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind) [V]
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The reality of this statement is that the Minister has thanked local authorities for all the good work they have done during the covid crisis, and they can look forward to cuts in services and the loss of jobs next year. I have a specific question on housing. He did not really reply to the question from my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) on those with no recourse to public funds. Can he guarantee that the funding available to local authorities now to house all rough sleepers will become a permanent feature of Government policy and that instead of just saying that they should provide move-on accommodation, the Government will ensure that local authorities can build the social housing—the council housing—that is so necessary to deal with the housing crisis that affects every part of this country? Lastly, in his role as Secretary of State for Housing, will he introduce legislation to give greater security to those living in private rented accommodation, who are at the moment going through such stress through the fear of losing their home when the protections are lifted at the end of this coronavirus crisis? We need to give people security in affordable housing in the future in this country.

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
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I forgot to say in response to the shadow Minister that of course the first and most celebrated customer of Robin Hood Energy in Nottingham was the right hon. Gentleman, the former Leader of the Opposition. On his questions, I can absolutely answer that this Government are committed to ending rough sleeping and we can see from the 60% increase in funding in this settlement versus the last spending review the degree of resources that we are willing to put into this issue. It is not solely about money; it is also a crisis of health. There are issues to do with ex-offenders, law enforcement and immigration. We are doing everything we can, and I am working with my Cabinet colleagues to progress this issue. We are investing that £433 million into new, good-quality move-on accommodation , including in London, working with the GLA and local councils, including his own, as well as pan-London organisations such as Peabody to get that accommodation up and running by the end of this year. He asks about housing more generally, and I want to see more houses built in London as much as he does. He could go to his own council in Islington and ask it to do more. Its current local housing need is for 2,300 homes, and it is building on average 1,000, so less than half the amount of homes needed. Charity starts at home, and I suggest he goes to Islington and gets the council building to support the local community.

Peter Aldous Portrait Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)
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I thank my right hon. Friend for his statement. As chairman of the county all-party parliamentary group, I welcome his confirming a settlement that provides additional funding to provide stability for council finances next year. The county APPG has long campaigned for a more equitable methodology for distributing council funding that will promote levelling up and benefit not only historically underfunded counties such as Suffolk but metropolitan areas. I thus welcome the Secretary of State’s commitment to fair funding, but can he provide further details of when the Government will bring forward such proposals for consultation?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
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We all—certainly those of us on the Government Benches—would agree that we need an updated and fairer method for distributing public funds within local government. This year would have been the wrong time to bring that forward, I think. This is a one-year settlement in a period of almost unique instability in the sector. There might be an opportunity to do it next year, and my Department will work with the Treasury to review that. In the meantime, we have substantially increased the rural services delivery grant, taking that to £85 million, the highest amount to date, to support the delivery of public service in places such as Suffolk, where it is undoubtedly challenging and expensive.

Gareth Bacon Portrait Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)
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I thank my right hon. Friend for the generous settlement he has secured for 2021-22. My Orpington constituency is part of the London Borough of Bromley, which, like other local authorities, faces significant uncertainty about funding from 2022-23 onwards, dealing with rising demands and the new normal following the covid situation. This year, the NHS will receive a multi-year settlement. When can a commitment be made by the Government to provide three or four-year financial settlements, which will be crucial in providing value for money for residents and service users, for local government into the future?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
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As I have said in response to other questions, it would clearly be beneficial for the sector for there to be a multi-year settlement. This was not the opportunity to do so. I do not think that this would have been the right time when there is so much instability and uncertainty surrounding the delivery of public services by local councils. Perhaps next year—I will certainly be making representations to the Chancellor to encourage him to do so.

Wendy Chamberlain Portrait Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
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The Secretary of State has said that it is not the right time to pursue wholesale reform of local government finance, which will be a relief to many local authorities across England. However, the threat of the reform will hang over the heads of those authorities as they work to recover from the financial difficulties of the pandemic and longer-term budget cuts. Will the Secretary of State confirm when he plans the reform to take place?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
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I am not able to confirm when we will bring that forward. As I have said, it will not be on this occasion, but we will have to make a judgment, as to the position of local government, whether next year would be right for, as she says, an undoubtedly significant change.

Alicia Kearns Portrait Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con) [V]
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The rural services delivery grant helps local authorities in rural areas such as Rutland and Melton to provide vital local services and, under this Government, it is the highest that it has ever been. Can my right hon. Friend confirm his intention to maintain this rural services delivery grant next year, and will he incorporate those principles into the fairer funding review, which is vital for rural authorities and communities such as mine to get their fair share?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
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I shall certainly take my hon. Friend’s representations forward. I know that Leicestershire colleagues, both in local government and in the House, have long advocated a fairer distribution of public funds in local government. As I have said in answer to other questions, we will take careful consideration of that next year.

Mohammad Yasin Portrait Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab) [V]
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Covid-19 costs are expected to leave Bedford Borough Council with a funding gap of nearly £22 million by 2021-22. One councillor described the lack of a fair funding settlement as, “the Government expecting councils to set balanced budgets with both hands tied behind their backs while wearing a blindfold.” When will the Secretary of State realise that, to finally beat the pandemic and keep local economies going, the Government need to fund local authorities properly as promised?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
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It would not be right for me to say in public the self-reported estimate of costs provided to us by Bedford Borough Council because that has been done in confidence. None the less, across the whole country, as I have said, the sum of money that we have provided to local councils well exceeds their self-reported covid-19 expenditure. With respect to Bedford, I can say that the total funding provided this year has been £20.9 million so far. For Bedford’s businesses, we have provided £27.8 million, supporting 2,300 businesses. Looking to the future and the recovery of Bedford’s economy, it is likely to be a recipient of the towns fund, and it certainly has received £1 million in accelerated funding to support new infrastructure, skills, culture and business development.

Steve Double Portrait Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con) [V]
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May I welcome my right hon. Friend’s commitment to maintain the rural services delivery grant, which is so important in recognising the additional costs that rural councils face? Many of these councils have also seen a significant drop in income due to loss of revenue through things such as car parks and other services. Will he lay out what steps he will take to support these councils that have lost significant income during this year?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
- Hansard - -

I appreciate that this will have been a particular challenge to Cornwall Council with its array of car parks and other attractions for the tourist sector. That is why we created the sales fees and charges scheme earlier in the year, which provides 75p in the pound to councils for losses in that regard. Already, we have paid out, I think, more than £500 million to local councils. I am sure that Cornwall Council has already benefited and will do so in the future and it is expected that that scheme will provide over £1 billion, if not significantly more. It is without cap, and we have announced in the settlement today that we will be rolling that forward to the middle point of next year. Cornwall Council will be able to rely on that to plan its future to the summer of next year, and, of course, we all hope that people will be in Cornwall enjoying its beaches and attractions in the summer of 2021.

Olivia Blake Portrait Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)
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I am concerned that the revised housing targets will cause a north-south divide on green-belt building. These new targets could lead to a 35% increase for Sheffield. Will the Secretary of State confirm that, following the very successful consultation with the community in Sheffield to limit green-belt building, the new target will not be imposed on Sheffield? Instead of levelling up, is it his plan to level our glorious northern green belt?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
- Hansard - -

The hon. Lady makes an interesting argument, because we on the Government Benches want to see more private sector investment going into the great cities of the midlands and the north. We want to see more homes, more urban regeneration, and more brilliant and inspired schemes coming to constituencies such as hers. That is exactly the approach we have taken with respect to the local housing need, and I respectfully ask her to show a little bit more ambition for her community. The three-year annual delivery of homes in Sheffield is 2,500 homes; the new local housing need that we have proposed is 2,800 homes, so if the hon. Lady truly believes that 300 extra homes could not be built in a great city such as Sheffield, then I think she is talking it down, which I am sure is not her intention. However, through your auspices, Madam Deputy Speaker, can I offer her and, particularly, her mother—who has done a fantastic job leading her city over a very challenging year—a very happy Christmas?

Ben Spencer Portrait Dr Ben Spencer (Runnymede and Weybridge) (Con)
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I thank my right hon. Friend for this much-needed further financial support for our local authorities, which lead the local response to covid. Local government staff in Runnymede and Elmbridge borough councils and Surrey County Council have worked tirelessly this year to provide essential services to my constituents, and will continue to do so over Christmas and the new year break and beyond. With Runnymede and Weybridge now entering tier 3 restrictions, will my right hon. Friend join me in thanking those staff for their efforts, and agree that we must continue to support our local authorities and the fantastic work they do for our communities?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
- Hansard - -

I would be delighted to join my hon. Friend in thanking the brilliant staff at his local councils. I have been consistently delighted and impressed by the fantastic work that staff at local councils have done across the country, including my own in Newark and Sherwood, Rushcliffe and Bassetlaw, and Nottinghamshire County Council. I am sure that all of us in the House want to join together to thank them and wish them a healthy and peaceful Christmas.

Bambos Charalambous Portrait Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
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While I welcome any funding for local government, it is not enough. Enfield Council has had £193 million of cuts to funding since 2010. It has had to spend £64 million in dealing with the covid-19 emergency, yet has only received less than half of that from the Government, and it has not been receiving its fair share of public health funding since 2013, receiving half of what neighbouring boroughs get. When will the Government level up for Enfield and give it the proper funding it deserves?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
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As Secretary of State for local government, I am familiar with people saying that there is not enough money; that, I think, is a refrain that all of my predecessors of all parties have known. However, I do not think it is fair with respect to Enfield this year. We have provided it with £43.6 million of covid-19 funding so far. We have provided it with £44 million for its local business community, and the settlement that we are setting out today provides a further £12.5 million, taking Enfield’s core spending power to a quarter of a billion pounds. That will be a 5.3% increase—a very substantial increase—for the benefit of the hon. Gentleman’s council and his constituents.

Scott Benton Portrait Scott Benton (Blackpool South) (Con)
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At the start of this pandemic, the Government stated that they would provide local authorities with all the support they needed to get through these challenging times. The total amount of additional Government support that Blackpool Council has received since March to support local services and businesses now stands at over £129 million, and my council’s finance officers can scarcely believe that the position is so healthy at this stage. In spite of this, the temptation of many Labour-run councils, including my own, will be to go for a hefty council tax increase next year. Will my right hon. Friend join me in urging those councils to demonstrate restraint, and to make sure we consider how to get value for money from local services?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
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My hon. Friend makes a very important point, and I am very happy to give him my full support. When providing public services, local councils will need to balance their individual financial positions with the needs of their own constituents and residents—hard-working people whose incomes will be under pressure.

With respect to Blackpool Council, as my hon. Friend says, we provided it with an exceptional degree of support over the course of this year. Its core spending power is £148 million, so the sum that he quotes is very significant in that context. Some £26 billion has gone to pay for that council’s covid-19 expenditure, and it is also, of course, the recipient of our first towns fund town deal, amounting to £39.5 million of investment into Blackpool. That will, I think, go in part to ensure that the Blackpool illuminations are back and brighter than ever next year.

Clive Efford Portrait Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab) [V]
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Council tax increases have become a stealth tax for this Government. Council tax now makes up 60% of core spending in local authorities—up from 49% just five years ago. Does the Secretary of State acknowledge that raising council tax year on year, as this Government have done, without recognising deprivation levels is, far from levelling up, leaving local authorities with high deprivation, such as mine in Greenwich, further and further behind?

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Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
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As I said in answer to the shadow Minister’s remarks, the Government have seen a real-terms decrease in council tax compared with the position when we came to power in 2010. It was the last Labour Government that doubled council tax bills for residents throughout the country. Of course we are aware of the different tax bases of different local authorities and that is why we have consistently provided grants to ensure that there is equalisation across the country. In this settlement, we are providing £270 million of equalisation grants to ensure that each part of the country, regardless of how wealthy or otherwise it may be, has the resources it needs to properly fund adult and children’s social care and all the other important public services.

Robert Neill Portrait Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con) [V]
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The additional funding for local authorities like Bromley is very welcome and I also welcome my right hon. Friend’s desire to move back to multi-year settlements as soon as possible. However, for those of us whose councils have social services responsibilities, the ongoing upward pressure of adult social care costs is perhaps the single biggest cause of financial uncertainty. There was talk and a promise of a social care Green Paper as far back as 2018, but we have not seen it yet. When will we tackle the difficult but essential task of reforming social care funding? Without that, it will be difficult to find a sustainable financial base for our authorities with those responsibilities.

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
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My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care will bring forward proposals in due course. We will meet our manifesto commitment to introduce the long-term reforms that this country urgently needs on social care. I think today’s settlement provides local government with the sustainable finances it needs for social care. It has been widely praised by the sector as meeting the demographic changes that my right hon. Friend mentioned. We are also ensuring that councils such as his have the funding that they need. Bromley will have a 5.5% increase in core spending power from the previous year, in which there was a 4.7% increase. That is two successive years of increases in council funding for his local authority area.

Briefly, in other news for my right hon. Friend, today we have announced funding for waking watches, partly inspired by brilliant campaigners in his constituency.

Kevan Jones Portrait Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
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I add my thanks to council staff and councillors for their work during this last year, particularly those at Durham County Council. I particularly thank the chief executive, Terry Collins, who is retiring at the end of the year after 43 years in local government.

The Secretary of State’s announcement is mainly made up of local council tax increases in core spending. Durham County Council has 50% of its council tax properties in band A, which limits its ability to raise large amounts of council tax compared with councils in the south, which have larger numbers of higher band council tax properties. That will mean that Durham County Council has no option but to increase its council tax to the maximum. The Secretary of State and the Government talk about levelling up, but today he is clearly punishing northern council tax payers while rewarding southern council tax payers.

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Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
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I join the right hon. Gentleman in thanking and praising the staff of his local council and wishing Mr Collins a happy retirement. With respect to the balance of funding across the country, I am afraid that the right hon. Gentleman is mistaken. This settlement will ensure that funding is there for all councils in all parts of the country. We have taken particular care to address the issue that he raises. In fact, County Durham will receive £5.2 million in equalisation payments. That will ensure that it has a 4.5% cash and real-terms increase in core spending power, which comes on top of a 7% increase last year—very substantial increases to ensure that his constituents get good-quality public services.

Andy Carter Portrait Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement, and particularly the review of the effectiveness of local authority external audits. Warrington Borough Council’s accounts dating back to 2017-18 still have not been signed off. Given the recent news from Croydon Council, which was effectively declared bankrupt when it issued a section 114 notice last month, does he share my concerns about Labour-controlled Warrington Council, which has debt of around £1.6 billion? Similarly to Croydon, it has used the funds to purchase a shopping centre, offices, a bank and—guess what?—an energy company. Does he agree that it is time for a Government inquiry into the level of council borrowing, which puts local services at risk and loads huge debt on to council tax payers such as my constituents in Warrington South?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
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My hon. Friend makes a very important point. We all want to see councils have access to funding at low interest rates to fund housing and regeneration within their own boundaries. We do not expect local councils to indulge in risky financial ventures, either within their own area or beyond. That is a mistake. Many local councils quite clearly do not have the financial management skills to do that. My hon. Friend highlights at least two egregious examples of that, in Nottingham and Croydon. Warrington may well be another; I will look it up myself after this statement. We need to bear down on those councils that appear to be using taxpayers’ money as if it were Monopoly money and respect the individuals who actually pay the bills at the end of the day.

Christian Matheson Portrait Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)
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We get the usual fundamental dishonesty in the Government’s position: they herald an increase in spending power, but that is entirely predicated on increases in council tax, and when those increases are made, they attack councils politically for having made those increases. Can we just have a bit of honesty from the Government about the position they are driving councils to? Cheshire West and Chester has coped very well with the coronavirus pandemic, but we are still £1 million in the red. Will the Government support us with that debt?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
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I will happily look into the issue that the hon. Gentleman raises, but £1 million is not a great deal of money in the context of the £39.8 million that the Government have provided to Cheshire West and Chester Council to meet its covid-19 expenditure. If that is correct, it rather suggests that we have made good on our promise to ensure that that council, like every other, gets the resources it needs. In case the hon. Gentleman would like to know, the settlement for next year for Cheshire West and Chester ensures a 4.1% cash and real-terms increase in core spending power, which builds on a 6% increase last year.

Alberto Costa Portrait Alberto Costa (South Leicestershire) (Con) [V]
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Conservative-led Blaby District Council is one of the best-run councils in our country. Conservative council leader Terry Richardson asked me today how the Government will compensate councils such as Blaby for the loss of the new homes bonus. For context, that is a loss to Blaby District Council of more than £1 million. If the Secretary of State does not have the answer to that specific point, will he undertake to write to me with a specific response on the data that Blaby has to work on?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
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I will happily write to my hon. Friend with the full details with respect to Blaby District Council. Across the country, we have announced today that we will be doing a further year of the new homes bonus, backed by over £600 million of Government money, but we will also be consulting on the future of the new homes bonus. The new homes bonus is an important part of the finances of many local councils, but it is widely perceived to be a poor incentive for councils to get on and build homes, so the consultation will ask how we can develop a new incentive that supports those councils that need to build homes and those that have high ambitions to get on and build. Fortunately for my hon. Friend, his council and those that surround it in Leicestershire are among the most ambitious councils in the country when it comes to house building.

Debbie Abrahams Portrait Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab) [V]
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Like others, I am very concerned that the increase in local authority budgets is largely predicated on an assumption of a rise in council tax and the social care precept. This tax is highly inappropriate in the current circumstances and fails to recognise the different needs of local economies such as mine in Oldham and Saddleworth. To be frank, it is just not good enough for the Secretary of State to say that it is up to local authorities what they do. When is he going to reimburse Oldham Council for its covid-associated deficit, forecast at more than £10 million in 2021-22? What will he do to fulfil the Conservative manifesto pledge to level up regarding council funding, given the disproportionate cuts that northern local authorities have faced over the last 10 years?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
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As I said in answer to the hon. Member for Bedford (Mohammad Yasin), it would not be right for me to say publicly how much a local council has self-reported as having spent on covid-19 expenditure, but across the whole country, we have more than compensated local councils for the costs they have incurred. We have provided Oldham with £33.5 million so far. In addition, it will be making use of the sales, fees and charges scheme, which provides 75p in the pound, and the council tax and business rates scheme that we have announced today, which does the same thing, so I rather suspect that Oldham will receive as much money as it requires over the course of the year. The hon. Lady did not welcome the fact that Oldham is part of the towns fund—I look forward to seeing the proposals that it brings forward—or that we provided £1 million to Oldham earlier in the year, so that it can get on and take forward some of those exciting ideas as soon as possible.

Felicity Buchan Portrait Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

I thank my right hon. Friend for all the support that my council has received during coronavirus. One issue that my council faces is that we raise an awful lot in business rates, given the high property values in Kensington. We get very little of that back, yet our high streets are really suffering because of the crippling level of business rates. Does he agree that we need a fundamental review of business rates?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
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I join my hon. Friend in praising her local council, and in particular the excellent local council leader she is lucky to have, Elizabeth Campbell, whom it has been my pleasure to work with this year on many different issues.

My hon. Friend is right to say that business rates are a challenge. Of course, this year the Chancellor has provided a business rates holiday, which so many businesses on our local high streets have benefited from. It will be for him to decide whether or in what form that should continue into the next financial year, and no doubt he will bring forward further details on that next year. There will be a fundamental review of the future of business rates, and I am sure she will contribute to that in due course.

Lyn Brown Portrait Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab) [V]
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

Merry Christmas, Madam Deputy Speaker. As the Secretary of State knows full well, Newham has the highest level of homelessness in the country and the second worst level of child poverty in the country, and more than half of Newham residents are either on furlough or out of work. The crisis is getting worse. Our food banks have never known times this bad, and despite fantastic work by local charities, many of our children will be going without this Christmas. Our council has suffered drastic cuts over the past 10 years and has even been underfunded for covid impacts by about £20 million. Can he assure me that the settlement will right that wrong, and if not, will he meet me and my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) to discuss?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
- Hansard - -

I certainly can give the hon. Member that assurance, but equally, I would be more than happy to meet her and her right hon. Friend. She raises a number of different points. Her local council has received a great deal of money from the Government over the course of this year. It has received almost £50 million in covid-19 expenditure alone so far, in addition to the schemes I have already referred to, which will no doubt amount to many further millions of pounds. The Government have provided the council with £56 million to support 4,000 of her local businesses. She also mentions homelessness and rough sleeping, on which we have worked very closely with Newham Council—I visited a brilliant move-on accommodation site in her constituency earlier this year with the mayor—and we will be providing it with further funding next year, thanks to the £750 million that we are investing in our campaign to end rough sleeping.

Robert Halfon Portrait Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con) [V]
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

Madam Deputy Speaker, may I wish you, as my brilliant constituency neighbour across the border in Epping Forest, a happy Christmas?

My right hon. Friend knows that we are in the process of bidding for the £25 million towns fund to regenerate Harlow. Coupled with the recently announced £50 million Harlow investment fund, does he agree that this regeneration money will completely transform our town to build an even better Harlow? Does he also agree that these regeneration funds are all the more important given the struggle that local businesses and shopkeepers have had to face because of the coronavirus pandemic, and will he confirm that every possible financial support will be given to the residents of Harlow to help us through this pandemic?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
- Hansard - -

Can I thank my right hon. Friend for his hard work over the course of this year and for the campaigns we have worked on together? Not least of those is the decision he campaigned on for many years to institute national space standards for new homes built under permitted development rights, which I think will make a great deal of difference in Harlow, as across the country. He is right to highlight the many ways in which the Government are supporting Harlow—through the towns fund, which is bringing forward very exciting and welcome proposals, and also through the work of Homes England in my Department, which is putting £240 million against the new garden village to provide much-needed housing and further town centre regeneration for his local community. I look forward to visiting Harlow, I am sure, next year and seeing the results.

John Cryer Portrait John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

Would the Secretary of State look again at suspending, even if temporarily, the no recourse to public funds rule? He mentioned a number of groups who have been removed from that rule. I still deal with constituents day in and day out who have that rule inflicted upon them, and of course many are on zero-hours contracts, which means their work disappears literally overnight.

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
- Hansard - -

I am very alive to this issue. The Government’s position has not changed and the law remains as it has been, but as I said in answer to a previous question, we have done two things this year that are significant: first, extending the derogation, which enables councils to support EEA nationals in this country who find themselves on the streets, and also allowing councils to use the discretion they have under the law to support those where there is a risk to life. Many councils, I suspect the hon. Member’s among them, have used that discretion to support vulnerable rough sleepers who do not have recourse to public funds during the virus. Many of the 29,000 individuals we brought in off the streets under Everyone In were people who lacked recourse to public funds, and those people are by and large being supported by councils to this day.

Nigel Mills Portrait Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con) [V]
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

I thank the Secretary of State for his statement, and for his announcement a couple of days ago about support for councils with outsourced leisure centres. Even with that income Amber Valley Borough Council’s finances are in a pretty terrible state. Does he believe that the two-tier council system will survive this crisis, and will he be encouraging areas to work out how upper and lower-tier councils can work together more closely to save money?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
- Hansard - -

Earlier in the year, I laid a written ministerial statement that set out the Government’s position with respect to local government reorganisation. It remains my view that, where there is local support, councils should consider further reorganisation to drive the sorts of efficiencies my hon. Friend speaks of, but there must be support for that within the local community. It is not the Government’s intention to impose that on parts of the country where it does not work for the character and nature of local government. We have taken forward three propositions—one in Cumbria, one in Somerset and one in North Yorkshire. Bids for those have been submitted to me, and my hon. Friend the Minister for Regional Growth and Local Government and I will be making decisions on that early in the new year.

Steve McCabe Portrait Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

Public health teams have been a key part of the response to the covid crisis, but the King’s Fund reports that the public health grant settlement last year was 22% lower per head than it was for 2015-16. How does the Secretary of State plan to address that?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
- Hansard - -

We have provided exceptional resources both to the NHS and to local authorities over the course of the year, so the suggestion that public health has not been resourced this year is not correct. We have been providing huge sums of money to support the increasingly important role of directors of public health in local councils and the teams that are around them. With respect to Birmingham, we have provided £177 million of covid-19 expenditure funding already, much of which will have gone to support the sort of work that the hon. Gentleman is talking about, including through the infection control programmes.

Nick Fletcher Portrait Nick Fletcher (Don Valley) (Con)
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

I thank the Minister for providing his statement today. May I ask him to inform the House how local authorities such as Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council can continue to benefit from local settlement schemes? Furthermore, what steps is his Department taking to encourage local councils such as DMBC to ensure that they bid for funding in a timely manner and spend money in an equitable way?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
- Hansard - -

The resettlement programme is resuming early in the new year after an understandable pause as a result of covid-19, and we will ensure that it is properly resourced so that it can continue to fulfil its important function. With respect to local councils, it is important that they apply for the funds that are made available to them. We have produced a number of schemes over the last couple of years, including the towns fund and the high streets fund. Next year, we will be bringing forward the £4 billion levelling-up fund, and it is my intention that we make the application and competition procedures as simple as possible so that local councils can succeed. My hon. Friend has a good council in his constituency, and I have worked closely with Damian Allen, its excellent chief executive. It has benefited from the towns fund on two occasions, and I hope to support it in future.

Liz Twist Portrait Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

I want to start by thanking all the staff at Gateshead Council, who have done an absolutely magnificent job in responding to the pandemic and being hugely flexible, so thanks to them. I also want to return to the theme of public health that my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) raised, because this year more than any other has shown the importance of public health services. They have been vital in helping to limit the spread of covid-19 and responding to the pandemic. We know that the pandemic has exposed the impact of health inequalities on those who contract covid-19 and on their response to it, yet there is nothing in the statement about public health. Can the Secretary of State tell the House what conversations he has had with Cabinet colleagues about public health funding for next year?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
- Hansard - -

The question that the hon. Lady asks is primarily for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, but what I would say, building on my remarks of a few moments ago, is that public health has been significantly invested in over the course of this year as a result of the covid-19 pandemic. The public health grant provided to local councils has to be viewed in the round, including the sums of money that we have been providing to directors of public health for infection control, for personal protective equipment and for support for care homes across the country, including in her own local council, which has received £28 million of covid-19 expenditure already.

Kate Kniveton Portrait Kate Griffiths (Burton) (Con) [V]
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for the continued generous financial support offered to our local authorities. Burton has recently submitted its town investment plan, which is a joined-up plan to renew our high street, expand sustainable travel and enhance the skills of our young people. Will my right hon. Friend grant us our £25 million Christmas wish, which would truly level up Burton for the future?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
- Hansard - -

I look forward to receiving the proposals for my hon. Friend’s towns fund bid. We will be making further announcements on that early next year, and nothing would give me greater pleasure than to support the towns in her constituency.

Florence Eshalomi Portrait Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op) [V]
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

I want to ask the Secretary of State about funding for our hard-working firefighters, including the London Fire Brigade. They have seen a 38% cut in central Government funding since 2010 and 11,200 fewer firefighters during the same period. The workload for our firefighters continues to increase as they are now expected to monitor and keep safe a built environment with previously unidentified risk, inspecting over 8,000 high rises, including many in my Vauxhall constituency. So is it fair that the Government are forcing the LFB and other fire authorities to shoulder these costs?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
- Hansard - -

I think the hon. Lady’s question is better directed to the Minister with responsibility for the fire service, who laid a written ministerial statement earlier today specifically with respect to the police and fire settlements. More broadly, I join her in thanking fire and rescue services across the country for the fantastic work they do day in, day out and have done throughout the pandemic, and the work they are doing with my Department with respect to building safety issues.

I heard the hon. Lady’s question earlier to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House with respect to waking watch. She might like to know that earlier today we announced a £30 million fund, which will be available to any building faced with egregious waking watch costs, so they can pay for fire alarm systems to be installed. That should bring those costs to an end, or at the very least significantly reduce them, and be the beginning of the end of terrible rip-off practices that have put huge stress and anxiety on to leaseholders.

Virtual participation in proceedings concluded (Order, 4 June).

Building Safety Update

Robert Jenrick Excerpts
Thursday 17th December 2020

(3 years, 3 months ago)

Written Statements
Read Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Robert Jenrick Portrait The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Robert Jenrick)
- Hansard - -

I have today announced the next set of measures as part of our ongoing support to the thousands of leaseholders who have found themselves living in unsafe buildings through no fault of their own.

These measures support our unwavering commitment to improve the safety of buildings across the country, which will be enshrined in law next year through the Building Safety Bill.

£30 million waking watch relief fund

Research undertaken and published by my Department has illustrated clearly the excessive costs some leaseholders are facing to fund interim safety measures such as waking watches. Such excessive costs are a national scandal, and it is right that we step in to support leaseholders in this position.

That is why today I have announced a new £30 million fund for leaseholders in England to pay for the installation of fire alarm systems in high-rise buildings with cladding, removing or reducing the need for costly interim safety measures such as waking watches. Our research suggests that this will save individual leaseholders an average of £137 per month and collectively over £3 million per month.

This step is supported by the National Fire Chiefs Council, who have been clear in their updated October guidance that building owners should move to install common fire alarms as quickly as possible to reduce or remove dependence on waking watch.

The fund will open in January, but importantly, will also provide immediate, emergency support to Wicker Riverside apartments in Sheffield to ensure that the 35 evacuated families should be able to return to their homes before Christmas. They were told to evacuate after the building failed fire safety tests.

This intervention will help worried leaseholders by providing financial support and delivering a better, long-term fire safety system in their buildings.

Building safety fund

In May we launched the £1 billion building safety fund to accelerate the removal of unsafe non-ACM cladding systems on high-rise residential buildings, taking the Government’s total funding for cladding remediation to £1.6 billion.

Demand for this fund has been significant, receiving over 2,700 registrations since opening. My Department has been working at pace and with building owners to process these registrations and ensure that as many buildings as possible can access the fund—a task that has been made challenging by the failure of many buildings to provide basic eligibility information.

It has become clear that many building owners will be unable to complete applications by our intended deadline of 31 December 2020, adding to the concerns of many leaseholders. To address this, I have announced that building owners will now have until 30 June 2021 to complete their applications.

This means that hundreds more buildings will be remediated and thousands of residents will be protected from costs. We are also making good progress on applications already received and expect many more to be agreed before Christmas.

ACM cladding remediation

Today we have also published the latest data setting out our progress in removing the most dangerous “Grenfell-type” ACM cladding.

We have continued to prioritise this vital safety work throughout the pandemic, seeing a 50% increase in buildings where workers have started on site this year compared to December 2019 and an increase of 58% in fully remediated buildings. This work is particularly challenging due to the complex construction issues affecting many buildings which must be overcome to ensure they are remediated safely.

Final figures for the year will be published in January, and we expect this to show that around 95% of high-rise buildings with ACM cladding identified last year will have started remediation works by the end of 2020. This is significant progress that we will continue to drive forward to meet our commitment that these buildings should be fully remediated by 2022.

Ongoing work to support leaseholders

Today’s measures are another important step in our ongoing work to support leaseholders, and they build on progress we have already made. This includes securing agreement that owners of flats in buildings without cladding do not need an EWS1 form to sell or re-mortgage their property—benefiting nearly 450,000 homeowners. Real progress has been made in an incredibly challenging and complex area.

We have been clear that the building industry must contribute towards the costs of making homes safe and set right decades of unsafe practices. Work continues at pace to develop further financial solutions to protect leaseholders. I look forward to announcing further details in the new year.

[HCWS685]

Local Government Update

Robert Jenrick Excerpts
Thursday 17th December 2020

(3 years, 3 months ago)

Written Statements
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Robert Jenrick Portrait The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Robert Jenrick)
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It is a matter of public record that Merseyside Police have for many months been conducting an investigation which has resulted in a number of arrests made on suspicion of fraud, bribery, corruption and misconduct in public office, both in December 2019 and in September 2020. Further arrests were made on 4 December 2020 in connection with offences of bribery and witness intimidation. This investigation involves a significant connection to Liverpool City Council.

This raises significant concerns as to whether the authority is currently complying with its best value duty under section 3 of the Local Government Act 1999.

Having carefully considered the evidence available to me, including information provided by the city council in response to requests from my Department, it is clear that the council has taken significant steps to improve governance and assurance processes within the council, with respect to the authority’s planning, highways, regeneration and property management functions. However, given the seriousness of the issues identified through the police investigation, and to support the council to continue to strengthen its governance, and deliver services for the people of the city, I would like to have direct, independent assurance that the council is compliant with its best value duty. I have therefore today decided to exercise the powers granted to me by Parliament under the Local Government Act 1999 to appoint Max Caller CBE to carry out an inspection of the authority’s compliance with its best value duty. The matters to be covered by the inspection will be the authority’s planning, highways, regeneration and property management functions and the strength of associated audit and governance arrangements.

I have asked Max Caller CBE to report findings to me by 31 March 2021, or such later date as he agrees with me.

I hope honourable Members will appreciate that we cannot be drawn into more detail while investigations are ongoing. Once the inspection is complete, I will carefully consider the inspection report. If it shows that the authority is in breach of its best value duty, I will then consider whether or not to exercise my powers of intervention under section 15 of the 1999 Act.

At this challenging time with respect to the covid-19 pandemic, it is critical that Liverpool City Council continues to deliver public services and carry out its other statutory duties as effectively as possible, and I thank those working in the council for all they have done to date. My Department is committed to providing the local authority with whatever support it may need to address these issues. Honourable Members and the people of Liverpool can be assured that the Government will do all we can to support the city of Liverpool.

[HCWS681]

Housing

Robert Jenrick Excerpts
Wednesday 16th December 2020

(3 years, 3 months ago)

Written Statements
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Robert Jenrick Portrait The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Robert Jenrick)
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Today the Government are publishing the response to the consultation on the standard method for assessing local housing need and setting out further steps in our plan to increase housing delivery as we recover from the covid-19 pandemic.

Our manifesto set out that we would deliver a million homes over the course of this Parliament and that we would seek to increase house building towards 300,000 new homes a year. We have made strong progress towards this goal, with more homes built in the last year than at any time since 1987, taking the total delivered since 2010 to over 1.8 million. We want to build more homes as a matter of social justice, of inter-generational fairness and as one of the best proven ways of creating jobs and economic growth.

The Government “Planning for the Future” White Paper published on 6 August outlined a set of reforms that are intended to lay the foundations for future house building and economic development, while meeting our commitments to the environment and climate. These reforms will create a planning system that is simpler and more certain, and that supports more homes to be built and drives a more diverse and competitive housing sector. As more homes are delivered under the new system, they will be built to higher standards, putting an emphasis on design, beauty, heritage and sustainability at the heart of the planning system. And that system will be a digital one that is more accessible and understandable for citizens and developers alike. We are currently analysing the 40,000 consultation responses and will publish a response in the spring which will set out our decisions on the proposed way forward, including to prepare for legislation, should we so decide, in the autumn.

In August, we also set out a proposal for a new standard method for assessing local housing need to ensure that all local authorities were planning to build enough new homes.

There were many consultation responses which did not fully recognise that the standard method does not present a “target” in plan-making, but instead provides a starting point for determining the level of need for housing in an area. It is only after consideration of this, alongside what constraints areas face, such as the green belt, and the land that is actually available for development, that the decision on how many homes should be planned for is made. It is crucial that planning is more certain and more transparent, so we will explore how we can make this clearer through our longer-term planning reforms, including considering the right name for this approach.

There is widespread support for ensuring enough homes are built across England to ensure the needs of our communities are met. We heard clearly through the consultation that the building of these homes should not come at the expense of harming our precious green spaces. We also heard views that this need can be better met in existing urban areas.

There are good reasons for this. First, our urban centres are the best served by existing infrastructure, with schools, shops and medical facilities.

Secondly, building more homes in our cities and urban centres will mean making the best use of brownfield land, of which many cities and urban centres continue to have large quantities, and protecting our countryside as much as possible.

Thirdly, building homes around our transport hubs will help us to deliver our ambition to tackle climate change by offering greater access to more sustainable forms of transport and reducing unnecessary journeys.

In the months since we consulted, the profound impact of covid-19 on our towns and cities has become even clearer. It has magnified and accelerated patterns that already existed and while it is too soon to know for certain the scale of the long-term impact, it is very likely to present a generational challenge and opportunity to repurpose more commercial centres, offices and retail spaces into housing and mixed uses.

We recognised these changes in the summer when we brought forward reforms to the use classes order and new permitted development rights to regenerate vacant buildings, to provide the greatest flexibility possible to meet this moment and to repurpose and recycle buildings for public good. These significant changes were enacted at pace and are now available for use by individuals and businesses.

This Government were elected on a pledge to level up all parts of the country. It was clear from the responses that people supported this ambition and wanted to see housing delivery play a significant part in achieving this goal. We want to see more public and, in particular, private sector investment in housing in our nation’s great cities, regenerating these areas, improving the quality of housing stock and driving up living standards. This is vital for ensuring a better quality of life for existing residents and for attracting and retaining aspirational families.

We want to play our part in realising these goals by building more homes in cities and urban centres, encouraging interest by developers and institutional investors in these places, setting them on a path to greater prosperity and to a more economically balanced country, and providing the certainty that is needed to support areas to recover after covid-19.

For this reason, we plan to leave the standard method as it was created in 2017 for the majority of the country. We have seen that these levels are beginning to create ambitious plans in many parts of the country, which we expect to drive housing delivery beyond its current near record levels. It is also clear that the standard method does not act as a ceiling for the ambitions of some local authorities, with some planning to exceed their local figures to meet the needs of their residents, create jobs and drive economic growth in their areas. We strongly welcome this ambition and will support these local authorities to achieve their goals, including through specifically directing public investment to them through the £7.1 billion national home building fund we are establishing.

We recognise that we need to go further than the previous standard method to achieve the ambition to build more in urban areas. So we will be increasing local housing need above current levels by 35% for authorities which contain the largest proportion of the 20 most populated cities and urban centres in England.

Many of these places are already delivering or have a plan to deliver at or around this level. For example, Nottingham, Hull, Liverpool, Newcastle and Stoke have all delivered more homes on average across the last three years than the revised standard method assesses their annual need to be. But others will need to go further than they do today.

They will not be alone in this task. To help support our cities and urban centres we are announcing several measures. First, we are establishing an urban centres recovery taskforce, which will bring together the leading experts in the field, like Sir Howard Bernstein, Sir George Iacobescu and Dame Alison Nimmo, to consider what actions the Government could take to support urban centres as they recover from covid-19.

Second, we intend to revise the current“80:20” rule which guides how much Government housing infrastructure funding is available in all parts of the country, so that it is at the service of the most ambitious local authorities and those who want to tackle unaffordability. This will establish a new principle that helps to better support our levelling up and home-building objectives.

Third, we will invest public funds to support areas to regenerate brownfield land. We are establishing a £7.1 billion national home building fund: brownfield remediation, urban regeneration and infrastructure for housing will be the significant components of its mission. Today, we are announcing £67 million of funding from this to help the west midlands and Greater Manchester mayoral combined authorities to deliver new homes on brownfield land, helping to breathe new life into sites such as Longbridge in Birmingham. And we have launched a new £100 million brownfield land release fund for local authorities to encourage similar ambitions.

We recognise that to meet the housing needs of the country, London needs to build more homes. Delivery in the capital remains far too low, creating acute affordability changes for its residents, as well as putting severe pressure on the wider south-east.

In the short term we expect to agree the London plan with the Mayor early in the new year which will set his plan for, amongst other things, meeting London’s housing need. This will support greater ambition in London, but alone will not go nearly far enough to meet need in London. We now need to focus on the medium and long term and create a plan to better address London’s housing needs, while protecting the character of London’s communities, particularly in outer London, and London as a place for families.

We will consider how Homes England can play an active role in London, working with the GLA and directly with ambitious London boroughs for the first time. There are clear areas for development in London, including Nine Elms, Old Oak Common and more broadly in inner east London where there is significant brownfield land for development. A new role for Homes England will ensure robust bids are prepared for the national home building fund and the right types of homes are built in the right places.

We hope that this approach will find broad support. We want to make sure that all areas of the country take seriously the need to build more homes and we will focus public funding on supporting our aspirations for home building, whilst also supporting a renewed national effort to regenerate and level up by increasing housing delivery and private sector investment in our cities. There is now an opportunity for a new trajectory for our great cities. We hope that these changes will mark the first step along the path to forging a new country beyond covid-19, which is healthier, more beautiful, more sustainable and more neighbourly, and one in which more of our fellow citizens, regardless of age or wealth, enjoy the dignity and security of a home of their own.

[HCWS660]

High Streets: Rent Arrears Moratorium

Robert Jenrick Excerpts
Wednesday 9th December 2020

(3 years, 3 months ago)

Written Statements
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Robert Jenrick Portrait The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Robert Jenrick)
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I have today laid a statutory instrument that will extend the moratorium on commercial landlords’ right to forfeit a lease due to the non-payment of rent until 31 March 2021.

This will also automatically amend the commercial rent arrears recovery measures led by the Ministry of Justice, through which landlords can seize goods in lieu of unpaid rent. To ensure alignment between this measure and the moratorium, from the next quarter date on 25 December the total number of days’ outstanding rent required for this tool to be used will be increased to 366 days, and this will be in place until 31 March. Accompanying restrictions on the service of statutory demands and winding-up petitions, currently in place until 31 December, are also being extended until 31 March 2021. This means formal demands for the repayment of debt and requests to the courts to liquidate a business owing rent, cannot be made until after the final moratorium comes to an end.

The moratorium was established via section 82 of the Coronavirus Act 2020 and was due to expire on 31 December 2020. It has now been extended for a final time by three months and will expire on 31 March 2021.

The objective of this extension is to protect businesses unable to pay their full rent from eviction until March 2021, taking the length of these measures to one year. This will give them time to start to recover from the impact of the pandemic, plan for the future and protect jobs. The Government have brought forward this measure to support the businesses struggling the most during the pandemic, such as those in hospitality. We are clear that those able to pay their rent, must do so.

We recognise the impact that this extension has on landlords and lenders, therefore Government are being clear that this is the final extension to this temporary measure. We expect both sides of the sector to use this time to negotiate and the Government will issue further guidance to facilitate constructive discussions.

We are aware of concerns that some tenants who could pay rent are refusing to do so. The Government are clear that this measure is not a rent holiday: where a tenant is unable to pay in full, landlords and tenants should be coming together to negotiate in good faith, using the principles set out in the voluntary code of practice we published in June. This recommends that those tenants who can pay in full should do so, those who cannot should pay what they can and those landlords who are able to grant concessions should do so. This code of practice and approach was supported by a wide range of sector bodies representing tenants and landlords.

While we have seen many constructive discussions happening between landlords and tenants, I am aware there are growing concerns that the current commercial leasehold legislation has not kept pace with the commercial realities of the sector.

I am therefore also announcing we will be launching a review of the commercial landlord and tenant relationship in the new year. The review will make recommendations to the Government on how to ensure a flexible and fit-for-purpose legislative framework that enables sustainable occupation of thriving high streets/town centres in the future. It will consider a broad range of issues including the Landlord & Tenant Act 1954 part II, different models of rent payment, and the impact of coronavirus on the market; for example if we can improve the experience of UK businesses by ensuring that foreign-based landlords have an agent operating in the UK. Both landlords and tenants have previously called for such a review and I will make further announcements on the detail, including a timeline and full scope, in due course.

England, Northern Ireland and Wales are covered by the protection from forfeiture in the Coronavirus Act. Section 82 relates to England and Wales, and the Welsh Government are currently considering an extension to their equivalent moratorium. Section 83 relates to Northern Ireland, who are also considering a similar extension. The Scottish Government passed separate emergency legislation to implement similar measures.

[HCWS633]

Spending Review: Local Government Finance

Robert Jenrick Excerpts
Monday 7th December 2020

(3 years, 3 months ago)

Written Statements
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Robert Jenrick Portrait The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Robert Jenrick)
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The spending review, announced by the Chancellor on 25 November, contained significant announcements for local government. The Government confirmed that councils’ core spending power would rise by an estimated 4.5% in cash terms in 2021-22—worth £2.2 billion—a real-terms increase. This will support the services that the public relies on, including children’s and adult social care.

Alongside this, we announced a package of measures to support local government in its response to the pandemic. For 2020-21, Government have delivered on their commitment to apportion irrecoverable tax losses from this year, by confirming that they will compensate councils for 75% of such losses. For 2021-22 we will provide un-ring-fenced grant funding of £1.55 billion; £670 million in recognition of the additional costs of providing local council tax support resulting from increased unemployment; and we will extend the existing sales, fees and charges scheme to include the first three months of 2021-22. We have good reasons to be optimistic about overcoming the spread of the virus. Nevertheless, we will continue to keep the covid-19 package under review.

I intend to bring forward proposals for the allocation of this funding in the provisional local government finance settlement, before the Christmas recess.

[HCWS627]

Retail Opening Hours: Christmas and Covid-19

Robert Jenrick Excerpts
Monday 30th November 2020

(3 years, 4 months ago)

Written Statements
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Robert Jenrick Portrait The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Robert Jenrick)
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I wish to update the House on relaxing local restrictions to enable retail opening hours to be extended in England for Christmas.



On Monday 23 November, the Government published their covid-19 winter plan which will see the return to a regional tier approach to restrictions in England from 2 December. In all tiers, shops will be allowed to reopen, giving people the opportunity to shop for gifts for family and friends in the run up to Christmas. The Government recognise the efforts and investment that retailers have made to ensure their premises are covid-secure; this has been reflected by the fact that the best available Public Health England and NHS Track and Trace data shows there is at present no evidence of significant increased risk of virus transmission in retail premises. Government asked non-essential retailers to close as part of wider restrictions to limit social mixing in November, once those restrictions have been lifted consumers and retail staff can have confidence to return to our high streets.



We have been working closely with senior representatives from the retail sector, local authorities, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and Public Health England to plan for a safe and successful reopening of non-essential retail on 2 December. To ensure the reopening of shops is safe and in line with social distancing rules given the high volume of shoppers expected before Christmas and the subsequent sales in January, the Government want to see retailers given the option to extend their daily opening hours from Monday to Saturday. This will help to spread footfall, ease transport pressures and make shopping in a socially distanced way easier by giving shoppers greater flexibility to choose when they shop and avoid peak times.



Restrictions on shop opening hours on weekday and Saturdays were removed by section 23 of the Deregulation and Contracting Out Act 1994. However, many retailers are subject to local controls through planning conditions which restrict opening times, particularly in the early morning, evening and at night, to make the development acceptable to local residents who might otherwise suffer from noise and other local amenity issues.



Given the exceptional circumstances as a result of the coronavirus, the purpose of this written ministerial statement, which comes into effect from 2 December, is to make clear that, as a matter of urgency, local planning authorities should take a positive approach to their engagement with retailers to ensure planning controls are not a barrier to the temporary extension of retail opening times in December and January.



In particular, local planning authorities, having regard to their legal obligations, should not seek to undertake planning enforcement action which would result in the unnecessary restriction of retail hours during this period. The national planning policy framework already emphasises that planning enforcement is a discretionary activity, and local planning authorities should act proportionately in responding to suspected breaches of planning control.



Where appropriate, local planning authorities should also highlight this temporary relaxation to retailers in their area so that they can take advantage of longer opening hours if they wish to do so.



The Government recognise that longer retail opening hours could have a temporary impact on local residents, but this needs to be balanced by the significant public interest in ensuring there is a safe retail environment during this busy period; in helping local residents undertake Christmas shopping given many shops have been closed over the last month; and in supporting the commercial viability of local shops in England’s high streets and town centres during this challenging period.



This written ministerial statement also confirms that my previous statement to the House of 13 March 2020 about planning enforcement and the delivery of food and other essential goods to retailers during the coronavirus pandemic will remain in place until 31 March 2021 because continued flexibility is necessary to ensure access to food and essential goods in light of ongoing impacts of coronavirus. The statement made on 13 March 2020 is withdrawn with effect from the beginning of 1 April 2021, unless circumstances justify its further extension, in which case a further statement would be made to the House.

[HCWS609]

Towns Fund

Robert Jenrick Excerpts
Wednesday 18th November 2020

(3 years, 4 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.

Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.

This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record

Justin Madders Portrait Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government if he will make a statement on the towns fund.

Robert Jenrick Portrait The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Robert Jenrick)
- Hansard - -

The towns fund is one element of this Government’s mission to spread opportunity and to level up by investing in towns and smaller cities—places to support businesses and communities so that we can help them to thrive.

Last year we announced that 101 places had been invited to develop proposals for a town deal as part of the £3.6 billion towns fund. These towns are spread across the country. Many are birthplaces of industry and centres of commerce. Others are bastions of the maritime economy or the pleasures of the English seaside. Others are great agricultural and market towns. They are all different. But what they do have in common is that they have been underinvested in and undervalued by central Government for too long as too much investment has been centred on our big cities.

Town deals are about reversing that trend. They are about providing investment and confidence at a crucial time for these communities. Through town deals, we are driving economic regeneration and growth, raising living standards and boosting productivity. We are investing in new uses for often derelict and unloved spaces. We are creating new cultural and economic assets that will benefit those communities not just today but for generations to come. We are connecting people through better infrastructure both digital and physical, such as the new walking and cycling routes planned for Torquay and the creation of the new digi-tech factory in Norwich.

We have already made some investments as a rapid response to the effects of covid-19 where towns are particularly vulnerable. Up-front grants of up to £1 million are being spent in places such Burton-on-Trent, on its new main shopping centre to allow greater access for pedestrians and cyclists, or on demolishing and rebuilding unloved buildings in places like Newcastle-under-Lyme. Many towns are repurposing empty shops into vibrant community and business spaces that will help them to bounce back when covid is done.

Each town selected to bid for a town deal is eligible for an investment of up to £25 million. Of course, that is not guaranteed, and all proposals are rigorously assessed by officials in my Department. In exceptional circumstances, such as the nationally significant plans for the great town of Blackpool, we will invest more. I am particularly excited by Blackpool’s plans to make its illuminations even more impressive and attract more visitors when they are back next year.

Town deals are about more than simply investment. They are about the whole town coming together, to create and share a genuine vision for the future of that place. We have just offered Barrow-in-Furness a town deal that will help to address the skills gap, create better housing and support local businesses to grow and employ more people. I am hugely excited by these deals. They offer a chance to turn around the fortunes of many, many places.

This is just the start. The Government are committed to levelling up all parts of the country. We want everyone, wherever they live, to benefit from increased economic growth and prosperity. Town deals are but one way to achieve that. All Members of the House will agree that places such as Blackpool, Barrow and Darlington need and deserve investment, and they will have it under this Government. The work of the towns fund is just beginning.

Justin Madders Portrait Justin Madders
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

Thank you for granting the urgent question, Madam Deputy Speaker. I thank the Secretary of State for his response, although many questions remain unanswered. He discussed the Blackpool illuminations, and we certainly need illumination on this side of the House about exactly why particular towns were chosen and not others. Can he tell us what was in his mind when he ignored civil servants’ advice and allocated funding to low-priority towns? Was it really a complete coincidence that all the low-priority towns that he chose happened to be in Tory-held or target seats? We have heard nothing to convince us that it is anything other than a deliberate ploy.

Serious concerns have been expressed, not just by Opposition Members but by the National Audit Office and the cross-party Public Accounts Committee. We are told that we are making the issue party political, but I remind Government Members that we are not the only ones who question this process. This is party political because the Government made it so in the first place by gerrymandering the fund. Can the Secretary of State give us assurances that the whole rationale for these decisions will be published and that any future rounds of the towns fund will be dealt with solely on merit?

I want to know whether Ellesmere Port will get a fair crack of the whip next time round. Before the scheme was announced we were told that we were well placed for the next round of funding. If the funds had been allocated on the scores alone there is no doubt that we would have qualified for support, and we would have put that money to good use, because there are ambitious plans for the town, ready to go, that only need Government support to be realised. When is the next opportunity, and will funding be allocated on a transparent and impartial basis? Does the Secretary of State accept that the pandemic has accelerated the challenges that many towns face and urgent action is needed? There can be no levelling up if one structural bias is replaced by another. There can be no levelling up if the playing field is uneven, and there can be no levelling up if large parts of the country are ignored just because they voted the wrong way.

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
- Hansard - -

I look forward to receiving a bid from Ellesmere Port in the competitive phase next year. It seems as if the hon. Gentleman wants more of the towns fund, not less, and we can all agree that this is an important investment opportunity for places throughout the country.

A rigorous and robust procedure was put in place by the Department, before I or any other Minister set foot in the Department. That was then followed; we followed the advice of our excellent civil servants in the Department —it is a pity that the Opposition tried to cast aspersions on them—by selecting the 40 most highly ranked towns and smaller cities that their methodology drew up. It is surprising that the hon. Gentleman has such great enthusiasm for algorithm-based policy making. We have learned in the past year that a degree of judgment and qualitative analysis is also useful. The officials advised just that. They said that in addition to those 40 places we should use our judgment to select other places for inclusion from the list informed by the information and advice that they provided to us, because many of those places were quite finely balanced.

That is entirely consistent, and is set out in the work that the Department has shared with the National Audit Office. I have seen the recommendations from the Public Accounts Committee and, in the usual way, the Department will respond. The permanent secretary of my Department has made it clear that Ministers followed a rigorous and robust procedure in full. That is quite right, and that is how we will approach the next round of funding.

All of us on both sides of the House should be able to agree that this fund is important and that these places need investment. We are working very well with Labour councils in these places. The hon. Gentleman says that these are Conservative-voting places. I am afraid that it is not the towns fund that is responsible for the way people have voted in those communities—it is the fact that Labour MPs and successive Labour Governments have let down those communities for too long. More than 60% of the towns and smaller cities that we have invested in have Labour councils, and we are working extremely well with them, whether that is Wolverhampton or St Helens; I am sure we will hear other examples today. I look forward to working with Members on both sides of the House to continue to invest and level up.

Jane Stevenson Portrait Jane Stevenson (Wolverhampton North East) (Con)
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

I am disappointed to see an attempt to score political points over a fantastic policy that is hopefully bringing investment to places such as Wolverhampton. In Wolverhampton, we have worked very constructively on our really rounded bid with MPs of both parties, under a Labour-led council, and local stakeholders. This policy has been met with unanimous positivity in the city of Wolverhampton, so I thank the Secretary of State for it. We are anxiously awaiting the result of our bid. One element of our bid that is very important to me is Wednesfield, a town in my constituency that has felt ignored for a number of decades. I would like reassurance that any money allocated to Wednesfield from this bid will be ring-fenced and will not be spent on other elements of the towns fund.

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
- Hansard - -

I think the rules of the towns fund allow for funding to be devoted to a project anywhere within the boundaries that are agreed between my Department and the city or town concerned. I encourage my hon. Friend or officials from Wolverhampton City Council to get in touch with my officials to agree whether funding can be devoted to Wednesfield, because she makes a strong case for that. She made the point well that we are working extremely productively with local councils across the country of all political persuasions. I have spoken to the Labour leader of Wolverhampton City Council a number of times over the last year. He and his fellow councillors of all party persuasions support the towns fund and are in the process of putting in some strong proposals, and I look forward to a successful result in due course.

Steve Reed Portrait Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

The Secretary of State is accused today of blocking funding from the £3.6 billion towns fund going to the most deprived towns for which it was intended, and instead funnelling it into marginal Conservative party seats ahead of the general election, including to help his own re-election campaign. This clearly is not about levelling up, so let us see whether he will level with the British people about what really went on.

Did the Secretary of State discuss which towns would receive funding with No. 10 or any Conservative party employee before making the allocations, and will he publish any correspondence? Why did he tell his constituents,

“I helped to secure a £25 million town deal which…will…make the town centre a more attractive place to spend time in”,

despite claiming not to have been involved in any decision about Newark on “The Andrew Marr Show” on 11 October 2020? Was he present when his junior Minister made decisions about his constituency, and will he publish all minutes from that meeting, in which they both chose 61 towns that would benefit from funding?

What did the Secretary of State mean when he said that the Government would “only” commit £25 million to Stapleford in the constituency of Broxtowe if the Conservative party candidate, Darren Henry, was elected? Newark and Sherwood District Council removed the Secretary of State from its board “following conversations with Government”. What were those conversations, and did they take place before or after he saw the damning NAO report?

Finally, will the Secretary of State clear this up and publish in full the accounting officer’s assessment of the towns fund and the full criteria that he and his Ministers used to select towns when they chose to override civil servants’ advice? If he refuses to publish, the public can only conclude that it is because they have something to hide.

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
- Hansard - -

Once again, the hon. Gentleman seeks to sow discord where there is none. We followed a very clear and robust procedure. The permanent secretary of my Department made that very clear when he appeared before the Public Accounts Committee. Again, I think it is disappointing that the hon. Gentleman chooses to cast aspersions upon distinguished civil servants.

With respect to the accounting officer’s advice, such advice is not routinely published. That is a decision not for Ministers, but for civil servants. Once again, the hon. Gentleman is highly misleading in his remarks, because the accounting officer’s advice was shared in full with the National Audit Office when it produced its report for the PAC. The Chair of the PAC asked to see the report and, in line with usual practice, the permanent secretary wrote a comprehensive summary of the advice. I have asked him once again to check that advice, and he says that the summary was comprehensive and covered all the points. The Chair of the Public Accounts Committee has all the information at her fingertips, as I suspect she knows perfectly well, because she is a highly experienced Member of this House.

With respect to Newark, I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman shows such interest in my constituency. Perhaps he could come up and visit us, but he does not like to go north of the M25 very often. If he did, he would know that Newark was the 16th most highly ranked town in the east midlands to be a beneficiary of the fund, and we supported 19 places in the east midlands. There is absolutely no reason why a Minister should disadvantage their constituency. We are both Ministers and constituency MPs, which is one of the great virtues of our political system, but it is right that those decisions are not taken by that particular Minister and, in the usual way, the decision was taken by a colleague.

With respect to the hon. Gentleman’s question about why I had said on the campaign trail that the fund’s future would be in question if there were a Labour Government, I think he has made that point for us today. He does not support the towns fund. The 101 places that are benefiting from it would be poorer if they had been under a Labour Government.

The message from the Labour party is very clear today: while we want to level up, it wants to score pointless political points. The shadow Secretary of State cannot talk about local government because his own Labour council has gone bankrupt with debts of £1.5 billion. He cannot talk about communities, because the committee on antisemitism has called him out, along with the majority of the members of the community team on the Labour Front Bench, for antisemitic incidents—quite how he can stay in position after that, I do not know. He cannot talk about housing because he has said that his team has no housing policies, and it will be years before he produces any. He cannot talk about housing because we are building more homes than any Government have done for the past 30 years. We will keep on building homes, we will keep on levelling up, and we will keep on investing in the communities that need it.

Lee Anderson Portrait Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con) [V]
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

The towns fund will help reverse the decline in places such as Ashfield and other ex-Labour strongholds in the midlands and the north, where, during decades of Labour MPs and Labour councils, the only thing on offer was more decline and more broken promises. The £1.5 million accelerated towns funding is already being put to good use in my area. Does my right hon. Friend agree that Labour should be supporting our plans to level up in the old industrial towns in the north, and will he meet me to discuss how I can get the town of Eastwood on my patch to be included in the next round of funding?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
- Hansard - -

I have to say that I do not recall my hon. Friend’s predecessor coming to me to lobby for investment in his community. What a refreshing difference it is to have a Conservative MP in Ashfield who is fighting for investment for that community. I would be delighted to meet him and discuss his plans to take Ashfield forward.

David Linden Portrait David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) on securing today’s urgent question. During Monday’s departmental questions, I raised my concerns about the lack of clarity on the Barnettisation of towns funding and received the usual “jam tomorrow” answer that Scotland has become so accustomed to hearing from Whitehall, but what we are increasingly seeing from this Conservative Government is cronyism and sleaze, particularly from the Secretary of State’s Department. First, we have the Westferry scandal calling into question the Secretary of State’s inappropriate contact with Tory donor and property developer, Richard Desmond. Secondly, the coronavirus pandemic has seen the British Government award £1.5 billion of taxpayers’ money to companies linked to the Tories. Finally, last week we saw a damning report from the Public Accounts Committee, which said on the subject of towns funding that the Government

“has also not been open about the process it followed and it did not disclose the reasoning for selecting or excluding towns. This lack of transparency has fuelled accusations of political bias in the selection process”.

That report was signed off by Conservative MPs. Why can the Secretary of State not see, as everybody else can, that this stinks to high heaven and that sunlight—producing those accounting reports—is the best disinfectant?

The UK stronger towns fund is only 10% of what the UK would have received from EU cohesion funds if it had remained in the EU. Can the Secretary of State confirm that other towns funds and schemes will make up the shortfall from the stronger towns fund?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
- Hansard - -

I already responded at departmental questions that the question of Barnettisation of the fund will be a matter for the spending review. The hon. Gentleman I think said erroneously at departmental questions that it had taken us a number of weeks or even months to respond to him. That was not the case; actually, we responded immediately to his question at the previous departmental questions. I am happy to resend him a copy of that if he seems to have mislaid it.

With respect to the hon. Gentleman’s wider questions, I have already answered that we followed a robust procedure. That has been set out by the Department. My permanent secretary, in giving evidence to the Public Accounts Committee, made that abundantly clear.

Andy Carter Portrait Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con) [V]
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

May I congratulate Warrington’s town deal board, which is cross-party, private and public sector, for its tremendous collaboration in securing £22 million for this area? Does my right hon. Friend agree that the shadow Communities Secretary, who pretends to be concerned about taxpayers’ money, should look closer to home, where his friends in Croydon have bankrupted the local council through terrible investment and financial mismanagement?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
- Hansard - -

My hon. Friend makes a good point. If we are looking to the shadow Secretary of State as the guardian of value for money and the Exchequer, I think the public will be sorely disappointed. It is probably about time that he spoke out about the activities of Croydon Council. Croydon Council’s mismanagement of public money has been, frankly, catastrophic and shocking. Who will lose out as a result? It will be the people of Croydon, who will see their services reduced and will have to deal for years to come with the toxic legacy of a Labour council that the shadow Secretary of State has fastidiously supported.

Cat Smith Portrait Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

Who authorised the 18 taxpayer-funded adverts that were placed on Facebook by the Secretary of State’s Department and were subsequently removed by Facebook?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
- Hansard - -

All spending by the Department is approved, by definition, by the Department, through the accounting officer and the permanent secretary.

Danny Kruger Portrait Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

I very much support the towns fund, but I support even more the principle of the town deal, which lies behind it. That is the right way to level up the country—not just by allocating dollops of funding from Whitehall but by working with local leaders, councils and local enterprise partnerships that have a vision for their town to develop a plan to invest in it. Does my right hon. Friend agree, though, that we need to go beyond just councils and LEPs and ensure that money and power go directly to civil society and community groups that have a more granular vision for their place?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
- Hansard - -

My hon. Friend has been a champion of this for some time, and his brilliant report published earlier in the year made the case once again. One of the ideas behind the town deal is, exactly as he describes, not just for central Government to work directly with a particular local council—although, as I say, relations with local councils have been uniformly excellent in this process—but to broaden it out by bringing in members of the business community, members of civil society and Members of Parliament of all political persuasions. That is happening across the country. On Friday, I had the pleasure of joining a Zoom call with St Helens Council and the local community of St Helens, including the two Members of Parliament for St Helens, to hear their brilliant proposals and to offer my support and that of my Department as they bring them forward to fruition.

Mark Jenkinson Portrait Mark Jenkinson (Workington) (Con)
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

In my constituency, Workington will hopefully receive £25 million from the towns deal and Maryport £17 million from the future high streets fund. These figures will make a tangible difference to communities such as mine that have previously been let down by their political leadership. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Opposition Benches might not be so empty if Labour had done more for its communities when it held those seats and local councils?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
- Hansard - -

I welcome the fact that Workington has the opportunity to bid for the funding. It will make a difference. The communities that my hon. Friend represents are exactly the sorts of places that we set out to support when we created the towns fund and the future high streets fund. These are places that have not routinely received substantial amounts of Government funding, and that extra investment for skills, for culture, for digital and transport infrastructure and for the revitalisation of places and high streets will be really welcomed by local people. As I have said to other colleagues, I very much look forward to seeing the plans come to fruition if Workington is successful.

Nick Smith Portrait Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

Contrary to the Secretary of State’s remarks, the Public Accounts Committee says that the criteria for funding the towns fund were insufficient and “vague”. So, once again, I ask the Minister to release in full the accounting officer’s assessment of the scheme.

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
- Hansard - -

I know that the hon. Gentleman is an experienced Member of the House, but I do not think he understands what accounting officer’s advice is and how it corresponds with advice from the permanent secretary before the Public Accounts Committee. The permanent secretary is—[Interruption.] Well, I’m afraid that says it all. A member of the Committee himself does not know. The permanent secretary is the accounting officer. The permanent secretary at the time wrote the advice. The permanent secretary gave evidence before the hon. Gentleman’s Committee and shared a summary of the accounting officer’s advice with the Committee that the hon. Gentleman is a member of, so I am rather confused about what his point is.

Mark Pritchard Portrait Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

I welcome the £1 million already given to Telford and Wrekin as part of the accelerated delivery fund—a Labour council, by the way. I just wonder whether the Secretary of State will have time to look at the excellent proposals from Telford’s town board, particularly around maths and digital education and the ambitions for links into local manufacturing. Can I put in a very strong plea that, while we want to level up northern towns, we do not forget the west midlands towns? Can I also put in a very strong bid for the full £25 million, please?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
- Hansard - -

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. I had the pleasure of visiting Telford recently, and I met the chief executive of Telford and Wrekin Council and members of the town board, who showed me some of their exciting proposals, including the beautiful new bridge linking Telford railway station with the town centre and the science and technology section of the town that they are hoping to build adjacent to the shopping centre. That seemed a very strong proposal to me, but of course I look forward to receiving the proposals in due course.

Jamie Stone Portrait Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD) [V]
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

Clearly, this issue is just as big north of the border as it is in the rest of the UK. If I look out of the window of my office in my home town of Tain, I can see many formerly prosperous businesses and shops that are now boarded up and gone. I would not be surprised to see tumbleweed blowing down Tain’s high street sometime in the future. May I ask the Secretary of State two things? First, is this going to be recognised by means of Barnett consequentials—that is, with the money going to the Scottish Government? If so, will he use his good offices to persuade the Scottish Government to spend the money where it desperately needs to be spent—that is, in the town centres the length and breadth of Scotland that are falling into ruination and disrepair?

Eleanor Laing Portrait Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

I have allowed the hon. Gentleman to ask two things, but let me just point out that we must have one question per person, or else we will be here all day.

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
- Hansard - -

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I shall try to be swift. As I said in an earlier answer, the question of Barnettisation will be settled at the spending review, and hon. Members do not have very long to wait for the answers there. On the hon. Gentleman’s broader point, he is absolutely right. The challenges facing smaller cities and towns are consistent across the whole of the United Kingdom. That is the reason we set up the towns fund, and that is why we having been doing town and city deals in all parts of the UK, including a large number in Scotland.

Dehenna Davison Portrait Dehenna Davison (Bishop Auckland) (Con)
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

I think it shows how far Labour has fallen from its natural home that it is essentially condemning funding going into some of the most deprived communities in our nation. That is absolutely astonishing to witness. The residents of Bishop Auckland are incredibly grateful to have been shortlisted not only for the towns fund but for the future high streets fund, and to have received £750,000 of accelerated funding. We are doing some incredible cross-party and cross-community working on our towns board to secure that deal, and I look forward to that bid going in. My question to the Secretary of State is: if the towns fund is opened up in future, will he seriously consider including Spennymoor in that, because Bishop Auckland is a tale of four towns, and Spennymoor deserves its fair share?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
- Hansard - -

I thank my hon. Friend, who has been a fantastic champion for her constituency since she was elected just a short time ago. As she says, it is a reflection on the Labour party—at least in Westminster—that it wants to pour cold water on a fund that is doing so much good work in communities across the country. Fortunately, that is quite a different picture from what we are seeing from local councils of all political persuasions elsewhere, which really want to get on board and make a huge success of these proposals. We will be doing a competitive phase next year, and I look forward to an application from the other parts of my hon. Friend’s constituency.

Kerry McCarthy Portrait Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab) [V]
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

From this towns fund being handed out to Tory seats, to the money being squandered on covid contracts and the ferry contract being awarded to a company with no ferries, this is all part of a very murky picture, is it not? How can my constituents have any confidence at all that public money is being well spent when cronyism, mates’ rates and political manoeuvring seem to be at the heart of so much Government decision making, not to mention downright incompetence?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
- Hansard - -

Well, I did not detect a question there, other than a whole series of pointless innuendos. We are going to keep focusing on what the public want us to do, which is investing and levelling up in the communities that need it the most despite all the challenges of covid, and that is exactly what this fund does.

James Davies Portrait Dr James Davies (Vale of Clwyd) (Con)
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

The towns fund is, of course, an England-only fund, but the Government’s levelling-up agenda means supporting towns right across the UK, including Rhyl in my constituency. Will my right hon. Friend commit to exploring opportunities for the shared prosperity fund and other sources of financial assistance to help redevelop Rhyl’s Queen’s Market?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
- Hansard - -

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that the shared prosperity fund will be a great opportunity for the whole United Kingdom to come together; for us to be doing work not dissimilar to the activities of the towns fund and the high streets fund, investing in skills, transport, technology and in place in a way we simply have not been able to do while those funds have been directed through the bureaucracy and regulation of the European Union. As we design the UK’s shared prosperity fund and bring it to fruition in the early part of next year, I will certainly be listening to my hon. Friend and his colleagues in Wales.

Peter Grant Portrait Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP) [V]
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

Among the damning judgments issued last week by the Public Accounts Committee was that

“we are not convinced by the rationales for selecting some towns and not others. The justification offered by ministers…are vague and based on sweeping assumptions. In some cases, towns were chosen by ministers despite being identified by officials as the very lowest priority… The Department has also not been open about the process it followed… This lack of transparency has fuelled accusations of political bias in the selection process”.

That is just a selection of findings from one page of a 21-page report. I have seen the summary accounting officer assessment provided in confidence to the Public Accounts Committee, which most Members taking part in today’s session have not, and I do not think that summary exonerates Ministers in anything like the way the Secretary of State is claiming. Why will his Department not allow that summary to be published, so that hon. Members can do their job and decide for themselves?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
- Hansard - -

I think I have already answered that point: the accounting officer’s advice is not routinely published within Whitehall. That is a matter for the Department and the civil service more generally. However, it has been shared with the Public Accounts Committee, and I am pleased to see that at least one member of the Committee actually bothered to read it, unlike others present in the Chamber. It is a fair summary, and my permanent secretary has attested to that.

Bob Blackman Portrait Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con) [V]
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

I thank my right hon. Friend for the answers he has given thus far. London is effectively a network of towns and villages, not just the centre of London. What hope can he give to parts of London that are suffering from deprivation, and need capital and revenue investment just to get them started on the route to recovery?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
- Hansard - -

We have actually included communities within larger cities in both the towns fund and the future high streets fund, because my hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that there can be a world of difference between Birmingham city centre and the high street in Brierley Hill, and we want to support those places as well. There were beneficiaries of the future high streets fund in London, for example: I recall Putney putting in a bid that will now be considered by the Department, and it is absolutely right that we do that. Covid has of course brought profound challenges even to some of our most robust city centres, including London, Manchester and Birmingham, so it will be a focus of my Department’s work in the weeks and months ahead. We will give what support we can, working with Mayors, city council leaders and the GLA to provide further support for the renewal and adaptation of those places.

Jo Gideon Portrait Jo Gideon (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Con)
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

Stoke-on-Trent is a city of six towns and three highly motivated Conservative Members of Parliament. As my right hon. Friend knows, we work together to ensure joined-up strategic thinking and maximum benefit for everyone in Stoke-on-Trent. On behalf of all three Stoke-on-Trent MPs, will he ensure that the bid process for the next round of town deals will allow for a Stoke deal featuring three of our towns, Hanley, Longton and Tunstall, and will recognise the importance of investment in our towns in the future vision for our city as a whole?

--- Later in debate ---
Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
- Hansard - -

My hon. Friend and I have discussed this previously. The criteria designed by the Department for the towns fund placed an upper limit on the size of communities that were able to benefit from it, because it was supposed to support towns and smaller cities. I appreciate that the circumstances of Stoke are unusual because, although a city, it is a collection of historical towns, so it was not able to be considered as part of the process. When we design the criteria for the competitive phase, we will take into consideration her view that collections of towns, even within a broader city, might be eligible.

Christian Matheson Portrait Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

When I consider the constituencies of the hon. Members on the Government Benches who have contributed so far—indeed, the constituencies of other hon. Members who are in their places—such as Wolverhampton North East, Ashfield, Warrington South, Workington and Bishop Auckland, and I see the hon. Members for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell) and for Shipley (Philip Davies), every single one of those constituencies scored less than Ellesmere Port and Neston in the same borough as the City of Chester, and yet they were awarded the money and Ellesmere Port was not. We know that rankings are important, because the Secretary of State used the ranking of Newark in the east midlands to justify money being awarded to his own constituency. Let me ask him specifically: who took the decision to exclude Ellesmere Port town centre from the money allocation, and what criteria were used?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
- Hansard - -

I have been very clear that, on the advice of civil servants, we gave the opportunity to bid for a town deal to the 40 most highly ranked. Then, in accordance with the advice of civil servants, we applied a qualitative judgment in coming to conclusions on the others. As the civil servants made clear, some of those communities were very finely balanced, and it was important to take a geographical spread and a spread of different types of community, whether ex-coalfield, seaside, market towns, or sub-high streets and communities within great cities.

With respect to Ellesmere Port, I look forward to receiving a bid in the competitive phase to come. I point out that the Department chose Ellesmere Port to be one of the 14 pilots for our high streets taskforce. I hope that the significant amounts of money that we are investing and spending in Ellesmere Port are making a difference and regenerating its high street.

Jason McCartney Portrait Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

I have been watching on with great admiration at the way in which Labour-run Kirklees Council has been working closely with my hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury (Mark Eastwood) on their transformational bid to the towns fund for the town of Dewsbury in the constituency neighbouring mine. The Secretary of State kindly visited Holmfirth, one of my market towns, a year ago. Will he look at another round of the towns fund and, if so, may I share that around my numerous communities, so not just Holmfirth but Marsden, Slaithwaite, Milnsbridge and Lindley, to do something similar to what they are doing in Dewsbury?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
- Hansard - -

I had a very enjoyable visit to Holmfirth, one of the most special places in Yorkshire. I will be delighted to consider proposals from the town in the future. We will be bringing forward a competitive phase next year, as I said. From comments across the House today, we have heard loud and clear that there is great support for the towns fund. Colleagues of all political persuasions want to see more towns benefiting from it, so I will be taking that message to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor.

Derek Twigg Portrait Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

I am a member of the Runcorn town board, and I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury), present on the Front Bench, is also supportive of the bid being developed for Runcorn. The time and the bid are exciting, because we have seen the development of the Runcorn station quarter and we have a fantastic community initiative to restore the locks of the Bridgewater canal and the link back to the Manchester ship canal. Given what has been said today, will the Secretary of State give us an assurance, that Runcorn will not be treated less favourably than other town centres in Conservative constituencies?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
- Hansard - -

Absolutely not.

Aaron Bell Portrait Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

I thank the Secretary of State for his answers so far and, indeed, for giving Newcastle-under-Lyme a shout-out in his initial answer. The £1 million we have had so far has been put to good use. We also have the future high streets funding and the rest of our town deal bid to come. That will represent more investment in Newcastle-under-Lyme than it had in 100 years of Labour MPs and many Labour Governments during that time.

I have to tell the Secretary of State, however, that the coronavirus pandemic is having a lasting effect on our town centre. Many retail units are closing and seem unlikely to reopen. Does he agree that this pandemic in fact presents an opportunity to rethink our town centres and, particularly in Newcastle-under-Lyme, to ensure that they thrive, by repurposing retail space into, potentially, office or residential space?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
- Hansard - -

I should say, just to clarify my answer to the hon. Member for Halton (Derek Twigg), because he seemed confused by it, that the point I was making was that absolutely, his bid will be treated with all fairness and I hope it is successful.

With respect to my hon. Friend’s question, Newcastle-under-Lyme is a town that I know very well and I can see the great proposals coming forward there. He makes the same very important point that a number of colleagues have made today—namely, that covid will accelerate market forces in our towns and city centres. It will make investment of this kind more important than ever and even more prescient than when these funds were created. I hope that they will be a shot in the arm—a boost of confidence—for communities as they begin to recover from the covid pandemic, and that they will help them to adapt and evolve, turning empty shops into homes, and beautiful buildings back to the uses that they were made for.

Andrew Gwynne Portrait Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab) [V]
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

I support boosting towns. The Secretary of State talks about a robust procedure and fine balance. There are plenty of communities in Stockport that would be worthy recipients of towns fund money, including Reddish, so what instead attracted him to Cheadle? Was it its unemployment rate, at 3% below the north-west average? Was it its deprivation ranking, decile seven, making it one of the north’s least deprived areas? Was it its low shop vacancy rate? Was it his Department’s assessment ranking it the 535th priority out of 541 towns? Or was it the Tory majority of just 2,366? [Interruption.]

Eleanor Laing Portrait Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

Order. No clapping from the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden). If he wishes to make some audible sound, that is a different matter.

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
- Hansard - -

Well, it is not a terribly good look for the Labour party to say that it does not want investment to go into Cheadle. I think that the good people of Cheadle will welcome the fact that they are part of the town deal, and I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mary Robinson) will be working very hard with her town board to bring forward exciting proposals for the place. We are working extremely well with Labour councils and MPs throughout the north-west, though perhaps not with the hon. Gentleman, to bring forward proposals, and we have just heard from one in Cheshire.

Philip Davies Portrait Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

May I urge the Secretary of State to ignore the siren voices on the Opposition Benches and thank him for including Shipley in the towns fund, which is very much needed? I am sure my constituents will be very interested to hear that the Labour party seems to be indicating that it does not think that Shipley should have been included in the towns fund. May I ask the Secretary of State to go further? Although it is very much needed and welcomed in Shipley, my towns of Bingley and Baildon would also very much welcome this funding and very much need it. I hope that he will do future towns funds and that Baildon and Bingley will both be included.

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
- Hansard - -

I thank my hon. Friend and will bear that in mind when we come to the competitive phase of the process. He makes the broader point very powerfully—namely, that from what we have heard this afternoon, Labour Front Benchers are now explicitly opposed to investment in these 100 places. He can take back to the people of Shipley and Bradford that, if there were a Labour Government, this funding would certainly not be flowing to their communities.

Jim Shannon Portrait Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

I thank the Secretary of State for his responses so far. Secretary of State, it is my understanding that local enterprise partnerships—

Jim Shannon Portrait Jim Shannon
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is my understanding that local enterprise partnerships and investment promotion agencies across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland were invited to submit nominations for the second round of the high potential opportunities scheme by 17 April 2020. I would be anxious to know the success of Northern Ireland applications for the towns fund.

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
- Hansard - -

From memory, the fund he is referring to was established by the Secretary of State at the Department for International Trade, but I will take his representations to my right hon. Friend and ensure that he gets a fulsome answer as quickly as possible.

Gavin Newlands Portrait Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I have to rush off after the Secretary of State’s answer for a Westminster Hall debate. The Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions estimated that Scotland will lose out on €840 million by 2027 due to the loss of access to EU regional development funds. Can the Secretary of State confirm that the funds apportioned to Scotland, assuming that they will be, from the stronger towns fund and the shared prosperity fund will make up that gap and that Scotland will not lose out on this substantial funding?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
- Hansard - -

We have made a manifesto commitment that I have repeated many times in this place that we will be bringing forward a UK shared prosperity fund. Further details on that will be set out at the spending review. It will ensure that all the nations of the United Kingdom receive the same level of funding in this Parliament as they received from the EU structural funds that we are moving away from.

Antony Higginbotham Portrait Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

I have spoken to businesses across Burnley and Padiham, and they are as excited as I am about the prospect of a towns deal. It will bring together the strength of the private sector with Government investment to level up and spur on our economy. I urge the Secretary of State to move at pace to release the next tranche of towns fund deals, so that we can get Burnley’s bid in.

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
- Hansard - -

My hon. Friend makes a strong case for Burnley. As I say, we will bring forward that competitive phase early next year, and before the end of this year, I hope to be announcing the successful bidders for the future high streets fund, where we will be ensuring that up to £25 million of investment flows to dozens of communities across the country. It is another fund designed before covid, but it will be ever more important as we see the pressures wreaked on our high streets by the pandemic.

Chi Onwurah Portrait Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

It was really distressing to see such critical funding for our regions mired in political favouritism. What steps is the Secretary of State taking to ensure that the shared prosperity fund does not suffer the same fate? Will he confirm that the north-east will receive from the shared prosperity fund at least the £1 billion that it would have got from the European structural funds?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
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As I have already said, a fair and robust procedure was used to determine the places, and many places adjacent to the hon. Lady’s constituency have benefited. I think of Blyth, for example—a community that needed investment. It saw very little of it under the last Labour Government and will now, I hope, be benefiting. She represents a great city. That was not the primary focus of the towns fund, as the name rather suggests.

With the UK shared prosperity fund, we will be ensuring that each of the nations of the United Kingdom receives the same funding as they did under the EU structural funds. We fundamentally believe that we can design better, more outcomes-focused funding streams than the European Union was ever able to do during our long years of membership. We will bring forward more details on that very soon.

Christopher Chope Portrait Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
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May I ask my right hon. Friend to comment on the element of the Public Accounts Committee report that says his Department misrepresented the National Audit Office by falsely asserting that it had concluded that the selection process had been robust? I ask that because it is important, surely, that the Government respect the work of the National Audit Office—now more than ever, when we are in an enormous public expenditure crisis. Will my right hon. Friend assure the House that he and other Ministers will respect the work of the National Audit Office?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
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As a former member of the Public Accounts Committee and a former Treasury Minister, I hold our colleagues at the National Audit Office in the highest esteem. They prepared a report that informed the hearing that was held by the Public Accounts Committee. At the Committee hearing, the permanent secretary of my Department gave evidence, answered questions and made it very clear that, in his opinion, a robust procedure had been followed. In my opinion, it was disappointing that the Chair of the Committee chose to give comments even before she had held that hearing, as that rather suggested that her approach was more partisan than one would expect from the Chair of that Committee.

Bill Esterson Portrait Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
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Officials advised the Secretary of State to choose “relatively few” low priority towns. My constituents in Crosby accept that Crosby did not qualify because it was just outside the top 100. What they do not understand is why Southport—456 on the list—qualified and met the criteria that the Secretary of State described earlier. Will he confirm once and for all that the only politicisation on view today is the allocation of the towns fund to Tory key seats such as Southport?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
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The hon. Gentleman is quite wrong. One only has to look at his neighbours to see good examples of that. I think of Birkenhead, for example, which I do not think was high on the list of Conservative targets at the last election, but which is now the proud beneficiary of the right to bid for a town deal. I think of St Helens, where, as I have said, I met his Labour party colleagues—two fantastic MPs who are working hard on their town deal board to bring forward great proposals for the benefit of their local communities. A small number of places were chosen from what was deemed to be the low priority category, and that was exactly—

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
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No. The hon. Gentleman has a bit of a habit of saying things in the House of Commons that are not exactly accurate. Sixty communities were not chosen from the low priority category; 17 such communities were chosen. [Interruption.] From his sudden change of demeanour, I take it that he is apologising for his remarks.

Eleanor Laing Portrait Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
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Order. Whether or not the hon. Member for Croydon North (Steve Reed) is apologising for his remarks is not a matter for me, but remarks should not be made while hon. Members are sitting down and do not have the floor, especially not from the Front Bench.

James Wild Portrait James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)
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As a member of the Public Accounts Committee, I have read the summary of the accounting officer’s assessment, and can also confirm that our report says that the permanent secretary

“was satisfied the selection process met the requirements of propriety and regularity”.

In King’s Lynn, we welcome the opportunity to benefit from £25 million of investment. Will my right hon. Friend visit King’s Lynn to talk about our ambitious plan to create more opportunities for young people and innovative businesses, for an enhanced town centre with more cycling and walking, and that builds on our historic court and waterfront?

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
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Madam Deputy Speaker, I apologise; I spoke in error a moment ago. It was not 17 communities that were chosen from the low priority category, but 12 —even fewer than I said a moment ago.

I am pleased that my hon. Friend was able to read the accounting officer’s advice and that he considers it to be a fair summary that sets the record straight in terms of some comments that we have heard today. I would be delighted to visit King’s Lynn. It is exactly the sort of community that should be benefiting from these funds, and its bid for the future high streets fund will be considered carefully in the coming weeks.

Virtual participation in proceedings concluded (Order, 4 June).

Points of Order

Robert Jenrick Excerpts
Wednesday 18th November 2020

(3 years, 4 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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David Linden Portrait David Linden
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On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I seek your guidance and clarification. In response to my earlier point, the Housing, Communities and Local Government Secretary suggested that it did not take his Department four months to respond to me and confirm that the stronger towns fund would be subject to the Barnettisation process. I actually have in my hand the letter from the Department in June responding to my letter in February and apologising for the delay in doing so. Is it appropriate for me to place a copy of this in the Library, and would it be appropriate in this circumstance for the Secretary of State to come to the Dispatch Box and apologise for inadvertently misleading the House?

Eleanor Laing Portrait Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
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Ah, further to that point of order—Secretary of State.

Robert Jenrick Portrait Robert Jenrick
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Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I would be delighted to respond to that point of order. The point that I was making was that the hon. Gentleman had implied that after he had raised it at our last questions session, it had taken four months to reply. As he can see, my private office—as soon as alerted to it by the hon. Gentleman at questions—responded immediately, so he was actually speaking in error himself.

Eleanor Laing Portrait Madam Deputy Speaker
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The point of order is clearly not a point of order for me, but an exchange—a further exchange—between the hon. Gentleman and the right hon. Gentleman. It has been satisfied, as far as I am concerned, in procedural terms. Whether it has been satisfied in political terms is not a matter for the Chair.