Robert Neill
Main Page: Robert Neill (Conservative - Bromley and Chislehurst)(13 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)
2. What steps the Government are taking to encourage local authorities to promote sustainable rural development through an integrated approach to employment and housing in rural communities.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Robert Neill)
The Government are committed to integrating national planning policy on the rural economy and housing in the streamlined national planning policy framework, which will include a presumption in favour of sustainable development. Through neighbourhood planning, we will also enable local authorities to have greater control over the delivery of the services, jobs and homes that their areas need.
George Freeman
After a decade of neglect under the previous Government, large swathes of rural Britain have suffered as post offices, pubs and small businesses have closed. Is it not key to rural communities to get jobs and small housing developments back into our rural villages, and will not the excellent Localism Bill help us to change the sustainability rules introduced by Labour that have made that impossible?
Robert Neill
The Bill will introduce neighbourhood planning measures and the community right to build, which will enable the incremental growth of villages. This will empower local communities, particularly in rural areas. Also, as I have said, we are revising the whole national planning priority framework, which will enable us to ensure that we have genuine sustainability—the right development in the right places to meet the right needs—while removing the top-down targets that have often resulted in inappropriate development being foisted on rural areas.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
3. What recent estimate he has made of the likely change in aggregate levels of employment among local authorities in the next four years.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Robert Neill)
No estimate has been made of the change in aggregate employment levels among local authorities in the next four years. It is for individual councils to make their own decisions about how their local work forces are organised and managed to ensure the efficient delivery of services for local taxpayers.
Stephen Timms
I think there should have been such an estimate. The Office for Budget Responsibility has projected a net loss of 40,000 in public sector employment in the next financial year, yet the Conservative-led Local Government Association says that 100,000 jobs will be lost in local government alone in the coming financial year. How have the Government got this calculation so badly wrong?
Robert Neill
It is precisely because it is down to local authorities to configure their work forces to meet local needs and priorities that the Government have not sought to make a calculation and therefore cannot get any such calculation wrong. The right hon. Gentleman might also like to reflect on the fact that some of the figures being bandied about relate not to actual reductions in jobs but to consultations on potential changes that might not come to pass.
Greg Hands (Chelsea and Fulham) (Con)
Will the Minister join me in congratulating Hammersmith and Fulham council, which, in four years of Conservative control, has reduced its staff by a third, from 4,087 to 2,787, with almost no redundancies? It has cut the communications staff by half and reduced the human resources headcount from 100 to 47, all at a time when its services are rated among the highest in the country.
Robert Neill
Hammersmith and Fulham is an exemplar of how councils with imagination and political courage can deal with the matter. My hon. Friend is right to point out that it has done so—without any significant redundancy—by deleting needless posts.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
Following a detailed survey of 202 councils, the Local Government Association has confirmed that, because of the scale and speed of the cuts imposed on local government, it stands by its prediction that 140,000 jobs will be lost. This was dismissed by the Secretary of State as a calculation on the back of a fag packet. The calculation includes Tory Hampshire, with 1,200 job losses; Tory Norfolk, with 1,500; and Birmingham, with 2,700 losses in next year alone. Sadly, the LGA got it right and the Secretary of State got it wrong. Will he now apologise?
Robert Neill
There is nothing to apologise for, because the error lies with those—including the GMB—who have calculated these scaremongering figures on the basis of HR1 forms, which relate to consultations on possible deletions of vacant posts, changes in work force patterns and voluntary redundancies. They bear no relation at all to compulsory job reductions; the hon. Gentleman should know better.
Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
4. What assessment he has made of the effects of reductions in formula grant funding on local authorities in the most deprived areas.
Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)
15. What recent assessment he has made of the effects on fire authorities of the planned reductions in grants to local government.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Robert Neill)
As part of the local government settlement for 2011-12 and the provisional settlement for 2012-13, an assessment of the reduction in spending power for individual, single-purpose fire and rescue authorities was published and is available in the Library.
Rosie Cooper
Since 2004, Lancashire fire authority has successfully reduced expenditure without jeopardising public safety—incidents of arson and fire casualties have been reduced by more than a quarter. Lancashire faces cuts of 4% next year and there are fears that the back-loaded cuts at the end of the comprehensive spending review period will mean a 15% reduction. What reassurances can the Minister give to my constituents and firefighters that those latest cuts will not jeopardise or threaten their safety?
Robert Neill
Bearing in mind that the formula grant amounts to some 50% of the income of single-purpose fire and rescue authorities, which therefore have other sources of income through council tax or reserves, the reduction in spending power for Lancashire in the current year is 1%, and next year it will see an increase in spending power of 0.1%.
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
It strikes me as a bit bonkers that many communities have separate fire, ambulance and police stations, many of which have been built recently. What is the Minister doing to encourage emergency services to work together to cut costs and to get rid of three lots of electricity bills and the such like? Also, what is he doing to ensure that they work together so that when one service is pressed, another can help and support it?
Robert Neill
In fairness, a good deal of work is already being done at local level on closer collaboration and joint working between fire authorities and other emergency services, and I commend that. At the time of the settlement, I wrote to the chairmen of all fire and rescue authorities and their chief officers to set out the way in which closer joint working, collaboration, better procurement and the stripping out of back-office services could save money that could be made available to the front line.
Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)
The Minister knows that I have surveyed every fire and rescue service in the country about the impact of this year’s financial settlement. Fire chiefs have told me that his cuts to their budgets will result in fire stations being closed, fire appliances being taken out of service and more than 1,000 firefighters losing their jobs in the next 12 months alone. Is he confident that his cuts will not compromise public safety? Will he accept that the feedback from fire chiefs proves that he has singularly failed to deliver on his commitment to give some protection to fire and rescue services? Will he come clean and admit that his cuts—
Mr Speaker
Order. Three questions is too many; the hon. Gentleman must resume his seat.
Robert Neill
I do not accept the hon. Gentleman’s proposition at all. The fire service is protected because its reduction in spending power is 2.2% in the current year and 0.5% in the next year. I have pointed out exactly the measures that many local authorities are taking to save money in the back office and to concentrate on the front line, and I hope that he will encourage authorities to do the same and that he will not engage in scaremongering.
Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
16. What plans he has to take into account work completed on existing local development frameworks in his proposals for the reform of planning law.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
T9. Once the financial year has started, will the Secretary of State give us a report on the reduction in local authority employment over the past year?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Robert Neill)
I have already indicated to the right hon. Gentleman that it is for local authorities to decide how best they configure their work force. Let us see what eventually happens. It is important to remember that some of the figures that have been quoted do not bear in mind the fact that the HR1 forms, which are necessary for the purposes of consultation, do not result in job losses. Furthermore, job reconfiguration takes place by many other means that do not result in the figures suggested.
Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)
T8. I welcome the scrapping of the previous Government’s top-down housing targets, which caused so much inappropriate development, particularly in my constituency. As the Localism Bill goes through Parliament, however, some developers are land-banking brownfield sites so that they can gain planning permission successfully at appeal on greenfield sites. What are the Government doing to protect such sites in this interim period? Will they consider re-introducing the sequential approach to planning?
Robert Neill
My hon. Friend is right. The mixture of top-down regional targets, together with the removal of a specific reference to a sequential test in planning policy statement 3, did put pressure on greenfield sites. The Government have already changed the definition of brownfield sites to exclude gardens, and in the Localism Bill we have introduced proposals to abolish top-down targets from the regional strategies. The fact that that Bill is making progress through the Commons is a material consideration for developers to bear in mind.
Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)
I recently submitted to the House a petition of more than 2,500 constituents calling on the Government to help to protect the local Kingswood green belt, which is still being threatened by the previous Government’s disastrous regional spatial strategy. What reassurance can the Minister give to my constituents, who are rightly concerned and wish to protect our local green belt?
Robert Neill
I warmly commend my hon. Friend for that petition and the work that he has done to protect the green belt in his constituency. As I said in response to earlier questions, the Government propose to remove the top-down pressure of the regional spatial strategies and will maintain statutory green belt protection. Such decisions should be taken by local people to reflect the local needs of their communities.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
Today, a bus full of Nottingham people has travelled down to Westminster to highlight the devastating impact that cuts to local authority funding will have on them, their families, their communities and our city. Will the Minister or a member of his team come and meet them in Committee Room 5 after questions to explain how it is fair that a city such as ours with a high level of need is suffering some of the largest reductions in funding?
Mr Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab)
The Secretary of State will be aware that as a result of his policies and funding settlement, Hartlepool borough council is cutting much-needed local services and making 89 people redundant, but its chief executive has taken an £11,000 increase in his salary, making his pay £168,000. I have written to the chief executive asking him, in the current climate, to waive that salary increase in back pay, but I have received an unrepentant and defiant response from him saying that
“mob rule seems to have been the order of the day”.
What can the Secretary of State do to curb such an arrogant sense of entitlement from some senior executives in local government with regard to pay?
Robert Neill
As I was quoted in the hon. Gentleman’s paper as well, he and I clearly make a fairly large mob. In the Localism Bill, we are proposing to require local authorities to set out a senior pay policy statement that will have to be debated and approved by the full council meeting so that every individual member of the authority must tell the public what their policy is on how much people are going to be paid, and why, and must put their names to it and then be accountable for it.
David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)
My constituents around Burbage and Hinckley have serious concerns about planning applications that have gone to appeal regarding green wedges around the towns. What reassurances can my hon. Friend give me that the Localism Bill will help to protect green wedges?
Robert Neill
This is yet another instance in which the pressures of the top-down regional spatial strategies have threatened green areas, be they green belt or green wedge, as it is sometimes called around towns. The removal of those top-down targets through the Localism Bill and the abolition of the regional spatial strategies will place back in the hands of local, democratically accountable authorities the power to decide the spatial future of their areas.
John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
What discussions has the Secretary of State had with the chairman of the London fire authority about the 27 missing fire pumps, which the chairman nicked from across Greater London? Will the Secretary of State explain to him that he is putting lives in danger by stealing fire pumps, and tell him to return them straight away?
Robert Neill
The hon. Gentleman knows about these matters and therefore really should know better. The 27 pumps were kept by the fire authority as part of a contingency reserve at the time of industrial action by the London fire brigade. I am glad that that action has now been settled.
Amber Rudd (Hastings and Rye) (Con)
Will the Secretary of State join me in congratulating Conservative-run East Sussex county council, which, after a disappointing grant from the Department for Education, has stepped in with £12 million of capital that it had not planned to give to ensure that the St Leonards academy is rebuilt to provide better education in Hastings?