Social Housing and Building Safety

Debate between Robert Neill and Clive Betts

Thursday 9th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

It is a privilege to speak in this debate. I, too, pay tribute to the families and survivors of the Grenfell tragedy, and I think all of us who served in Government at any time before that tragedy would join both Front Benches in the apology that is offered to them; there was a systemic failure that let them and many others down.

As the shadow Secretary of State generously said, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has shown real energy in seeking to address these matters now, and I pay tribute to him for that. We have therefore seen marked progress, which I welcome, but I also want to put on record some areas in which I know the Minister currently on the Front Bench, my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes), will be keen to press for yet further progress.

The first of them relates to cladding. We have come a long way, and my constituents are very grateful for that. We have had campaigns, which I have raised in this House, for the residents of Northpoint in my constituency, and others are affected in other buildings, too: Iconia House and Azzura House in Homesdale Road; and William House and Henry House in Ringers Road. They happen all to be in the centre of Bromley, so this is not purely an inner-London issue; it affects town centres and suburban centres across the country. It is therefore all the more important that we get it right.

Eventually, after a very long campaign, the remediation work is starting at Northpoint, but it will take perhaps a year or so to complete. The landlord of the occupiers of Northpoint was a property company that was an offshoot of the Tchenguiz family trust, not an organisation noted for its generosity towards its tenants. It stood upon its legal rights and insisted upon the flat owners—the lease- holders—covering the costs, for example of a waking watch.

It is certainly to be welcomed that future costs of waking watches and remediation will be picked up, but these leaseholders are out of pocket to the tune of tens of thousands of pounds for the waking watch that they installed because the London Fire Brigade, in exercise of its duty, issued a notice saying that without it the property would not be habitable. They were caught between the devil and the deep blue sea: what else were they to do but acquire that waking watch? Otherwise their homes would have been unsafe, which would have been unfair on them. The mental and health pressures on some of these people was immense. Their landlord was remote and frankly not possible to go after. It was not signed up to the scheme that the Secretary of State has worked so hard on and responsible developers have joined. The occupiers of Northpoint therefore had to dip into their own pockets when most of them already had mortgages, especially as many of them were first-time buyers, and when the flats were unmortgageable—they could not increase the mortgage on them because nobody would lend on them—and until this work was done they were effectively uninsurable too.

So these people had been left in a hopeless situation, and while it is right that the Government seek to recover every penny they can from developers and builders who fail to come up to the standards, where there has ultimately been a failure of governance in the broadest sense over a period of many years it is legitimate for the state to stand behind those who have lost out. Where there is such a corporate failure, the state must pick up the ultimate responsibility. So I hope the Minister will look again at means of coming to the aid of such people for retrospective costs where it is clearly not realistic to pursue the builder or developer. There will be a number of such cases. In this instance the freehold had been sold on many times. There will also be cases where developers who may be at fault will no longer be in business; they may have wound up or amalgamated. In those circumstances, the moral and corporate responsibility must fall on the state.

There are also areas where there has been progress but there is more to do. Members have referred to building insurance. There has been a marked increase in premiums across the board. People have had major—threefold or fourfold—increases in their premiums. Again, these people are often in flats that are unmortgageable and unsellable, and now, on top of their service cost charges to pay for steps such as a waking watch, they are facing massive increases in their insurance premiums. The question has to be raised—many of my constituents have done so—whether the market is operating effectively. How genuinely competitive is the market in these areas? There is a real concern that at the very least there is an excessive risk-averseness now: having gone from having too lax an approach in the past perhaps, now the insurers’ approach is too risk-averse, resulting in unrealistically and unfairly high premiums for many flat owners. That, too, is an area where it is legitimate for the Government and regulators to step in.

[Mr Betts]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Robert Neill]

Of course; I happily give way to the Chairman of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee.

[Mr Betts]

We raised the issue of insurers at the Select Committee. Premiums have gone up by ridiculous amounts, often for buildings that are now safer than before the premium increases. The Association of British Insurers could not tell us how much more the insurance companies have paid out in the last three or four years on high-rise blocks, so we have no idea how much has been paid out, but we do know there have been massive premiums increases. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we should encourage Ministers to take further action with the ABI and others to start sorting out these unreasonable premiums increases?

[Sir Robert Neill]

The hon. Gentleman is right, and I hope Ministers will do that. Again, the Secretary of State—who I am delighted to see back in his place—and his colleagues have shown real energy on this, but we need to keep the pressure on; that is key.

I am grateful to Lord Greenhalgh, who has been in correspondence with me a good deal on these matters. He pointed out that back in January the Financial Conduct Authority and the Competition and Markets Authority had been called upon

“to conduct a review of the buildings insurance market for medium and high-rise blocks of flats to get to the bottom”

of this concern. That is good of course, and the wider issue was recognised by Lord Greenhalgh, who wrote:

“Where the risk has demonstrably decreased, so should the premium.”

But that is not happening at the moment. While we want that review to be thorough, it must also be implemented in a timely fashion. I was advised by Lord Greenhalgh that the Department expects the FCA and the CMA

“to provide advice and recommendations within the next six months.”

He wrote that in a letter sent last month. I hope we can keep the pressure on so that it happens well within six months, rather than at the far end of that period. The risk, of course, is that some of the stakeholders in the industry will not have the greatest of incentives to move swiftly on this matter, so the duty therefore falls on the Government to do that. I know the Secretary of State has been more than willing to flex muscle with the sector when necessary to get movement, and I hope he will do so on this. I also hope that the Minister will confirm in winding up the debate that once the advice and recommendations from the CMA and FCA have been received, there will be prompt and urgent action to implement them in whatever form is necessary to address this genuine problem.

There is a related matter on the operation of EWS1 forms. In my constituency there is a firm called the Frankham Group. Steve Frankham MBE, a constituent of mine, has done a great deal of work in this field and has been recognised for his service in the industry and charitable works around these matters. His firm is anxious to do the right thing but it, and many others in the sector who have contacted me, are concerned about the real difficulty they are finding, as responsible contractors employed by the registered social landlord sector or the private sector to carry out the EWS1 surveys, in getting both accreditation and professional indemnity insurance.

At the beginning of the year, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors set up accreditation for technicians and surveyors who will be carrying out the scheme. Despite firms such as Frankham having participated in meetings and sent in assessment forms as required, nothing as yet has been forthcoming from RICS to set the scheme properly in place. At the same time, insurance premiums have increased exponentially, which is, in some cases, making large contracts less viable than would otherwise be the case.

The last thing we want is for rogue operators to come into the market and undercut the responsible contractors who carry out this essential work, so we need both a realistic and fair insurance market operating in the sphere and, in parallel, a proper accreditation scheme in place. Otherwise, the temptation for the cowboys to undercut responsible people will be the greater. We need urgent action on that. I will happily share with the Minister and the Secretary of State the correspondence that I have had from my constituents, with the technical detail that they set out on what they have been doing to try to get the scheme working. I had a look at an EWS1 form myself, and it is quite complicated. We could not expect a group of residents to deal with it—they need professional advice to do it properly—but we must ensure that the professionals are accredited and insured properly to be able to undertake the work. I hope that we can flag that up, because I am not sure that enough attention has been given to it.

The other matter that relates to specific building safety issues is the position of small landlords, who are sometimes referred to as portfolio landlords. I appreciate that there has been movement to improve the number of landlords included in the Government’s support schemes for remediation, but the current definition for those who can come into the scheme is those who have their own property but own only one other property, which they do not live in. Constituents have contacted me about that.

Let us say that a retired couple have bought four small flats, as many people may have done, all in their joint names. In retrospect, I suppose they could have put them in their sole names and had two each, but, perfectly straightforwardly, they chose to put them in joint names. Had they bought two larger flats, they might well have fallen within the scheme. As it is, because they happened to invest in that type of property, they fall outside the scheme’s scope. I wonder whether the Secretary of State could think again about the definition of a portfolio landlord. Most of us might think they are someone with 20, 30 or 40 flats for whom that is their principal business and think, “Well, they will have to take the commercial risk on that.” They are not the large-scale landlord chains that we see, either. They are generally small investors, often moving into semi-retirement, who are not in anything like the same position to bear the costs. The principle behind the scheme is admirable, and it would be a shame if the ship was spoiled for a ha’porth of tar, meaning that entirely straightforward people who were caught out are left bearing a cost when someone with a slightly different configuration of their retirement investment would be able to benefit.

Finally, I turn to a broad point that echoes one made by the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh). As well as dealing with the building safety situation, we need to look at the maintenance of much of our social housing estate. Constituents have been in touch with me repeatedly about the difficulty they have in particular with some of the large RSLs. They have also been in touch with the Secretary of State’s Department in relation to the largest RSL in my area, Clarion. I deal with Clarion, and I see that the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook), has come across it as well. We have also recently seen it in the press. It is one of the largest social landlords in the country, but, I am sorry to say that, despite sometimes having had constructive dealings with it, many of my constituents who are its tenants do not find it constructive to deal with. There is a continual issue of poor maintenance, with contractors who simply do not do the job properly and have to revisit time and again. In one estate in Mottingham in my constituency, we have had problems getting things done, which have been running for about four years—they are only partially done, then revisited and more is done. Clarion is quick to send removal notices for pot plants and garden sheds that may have been put in place without permission. It is sharp in doing that. It is also quite quick to serve statutory notices for the costs of significant capital works such as renewing roofs and other matters, but I am sorry to say that it is remarkably slow to sort out basic repairs, never mind some of the more serious issues such as when damp gets in.

That makes me wonder whether some of our RSLs have not in fact become too big to be accountable. The stock in Bromley was originally transferred by Bromley Council to an RSL called Broomleigh. Actually, it was one of the first RSLs, and that was one of the first stock transfers to take place. The whole point of Broomleigh was that it was locally based, with local directors and local offices. What we have seen over a period of time is a series of RSL mergers, so they have become much larger.

HOUSING, COMMUNITIES AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT COMMITTEE

Debate between Robert Neill and Clive Betts

Thursday 17th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Betts]

[Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con) [V]]

[Mr Betts]

Future of the Planning System in England

Debate between Robert Neill and Clive Betts

Thursday 17th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Betts]

I hear the problem. It was not one that the Committee specifically considered in our report, but the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that this is something that the Government could take into account in their legislative proposals.

[Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con) [V]]

I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I, too, congratulate the Chair of the Select Committee and his colleagues on an excellent report. I particularly welcome the emphasis that has been put today on the need for continuing involvement for elected representatives of local communities and the communities themselves, because, done properly, planning is not just about building, but about shaping communities and the infrastructure and other services that form part of them. Will he also help us on what might be done to increase the supply of qualified planners? Many local authorities struggle with their staffing levels. What more can we do to get good people into the system and keep them there?

[Mr Betts]

I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman: it is absolutely essential that we recognise the shortage of financial resources and the shortage of staff resources, particularly skilled expertise. In past years there has been an exodus of some of the younger, brighter people out of the planning system, often into private consultancies. The Government have promised that they are doing a strategic review of planning resources, including staffing expertise. The Minister said to us yesterday that that was something he was looking to give further information on, I think when the Government respond to the consultation on their proposals. We very much want to see that, because unless we get that right, there is not a chance of bringing any reforms into play and getting the system to work as it should.

Local Government Finance

Debate between Robert Neill and Clive Betts

Wednesday 22nd February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Betts]

I have some sympathy with the Secretary of State’s points about revaluation. I accept that it is fiscally neutral and that it reflects the change in property prices, but perhaps the Government did not help themselves by delaying it for two years. He has referred to the difference between business rates for high street premises and those for out-of-town shopping centres. Is he therefore considering a more fundamental review of the whole basis on which valuations are made, to try to better reflect the proper cost to businesses on the high street and in out-of-town centres?

[Robert Neill]

rose—

Human Rights Act

Debate between Robert Neill and Clive Betts

Tuesday 30th June 2015 Westminster Hall

[Robert Neill]

That is the question the Government need to answer. The phrase “based on the convention” is important. I do not say that every bit of the convention’s wording is absolutely perfect in modern terms, but I think most of us would say that we want the principles that underpin the convention to be incorporated in any proposals. For what it is worth, my early urging to the Government is that the closer they stick to the convention’s wording in anything incorporated into British law, the better, because that would give us great clarity and security. Then we must look at the point raised by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield and my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) about the unintended consequences that were not always seen through in the Act, to do with extraterritoriality and related matters. I hope we will get assurances from the Minister on that point.

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

I am reducing the time for speeches to four minutes, to try to get everyone in.

Devolution in England

Debate between Robert Neill and Clive Betts

Monday 2nd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Betts]

I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman.

[Robert Neill]

First, I assure—[Interruption.]

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Betts]

There are two aspects to that intervention. The first is that we did not look at income tax, although we said at the end of the report that, in terms of fiscal devolution, there is a case for considering income tax and VAT further. That is an issue for the future, but we recognise that it has to be addressed. The second issue probably strays into the area of English votes on English laws, which the Committee did not go into, but there is a case for devolution within England to more local areas irrespective of how Parliament addresses the other issue.

[Robert Neill]

The hon. Gentleman is making an important and powerful point. He is right to say that although accountability is critical, we should not get too hung up on issues of party political control. When, as the Minister, I signed off the Greater Manchester combined authority, it struck me that both Conservative-controlled Trafford and Liberal Democrat-led Stockport were able to live within the system that was set up. It is important to get the structure of devolution in place before we worry about other matters.

[Mr Betts]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Indeed, the Committee visited Manchester as part of the inquiry, and it found exactly the arrangements that he has described.

We also went to look at the arrangements in Lyon in France. Interestingly, it has attempted, with the development of the grande métropole, to pull authorities together into almost a combined authority arrangement. It currently has an indirectly elected mayor and it will eventually move to a directly elected mayor, so it will have two different governance arrangements in the same area within a short period. There are therefore clearly alternatives.

The report was agreed unanimously—it is a cross-party report—and it was very much written with the next Parliament in mind. The Government made a response, as they should to a Select Committee report. I would say to the Minister that responses are supposed to be made within eight weeks, not eight months. The response was rather a long time in coming, as though the Government could not quite get their collective view together about what should be done.

It was very good to hear the comment that the

“Government welcomes this report’s contribution to the ongoing public debate on the scope for devolution and decentralisation within England.”

That is welcome, at least as a contribution to the debate, but there were not many welcomes in the Government response to the Select Committee’s specific recommendations. I have obviously also read the briefing from those on the Opposition Front Bench. I would say to both Government and Opposition Front Benchers that they do not seem fully to have bought in to the level of change that the Select Committee has recommended and which I think we need. I am sure we will have an ongoing debate with them both over a period of time.

The report was written before the Scottish referendum, but it anticipated that more taxation and spending powers would be given to Scotland and Wales. Very simply, I think that what is right for Scotland and Wales is right for England, and we followed that very simple rule. The report was also written after the London Finance Commission report, which was supported by the Mayor and the London boroughs, as well as the eight Core Cities. All those bodies and the Local Government Association have welcomed our report. Indeed, the Mayor said that Ministers “could not ignore” the “excellent” findings, as it would

“provide England’s cities with the means, incentives and crucially the stability of funding to deliver much needed jobs, growth and infrastructure”.

The Mayor of London is clearly with us, and he is pushing Ministers a little bit further than they are currently inclined to go.

We have had subsequent reports from the Institute for Public Policy Research, ResPublica, the City Growth Commission, and we now have the Independent Commission on Local Government Finance from the Local Government Association and the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy. All have come to a similar direction of travel on devolution, perhaps with slight differences concerning how it should be done. We came to the conclusion that in England we should not be creating new bodies or regions, for example, and that we should base devolution on local authorities and combinations of local authorities—the Government have at least welcomed that fundamental recommendation.

Why not local authorities? Greater Manchester has a larger gross value added than Wales, and London has a larger GVA than Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland put together. Those are large economic entities, and there is no problem about devolving powers to them. We came to the conclusion that devolution was beneficial for growth, a way of delivering better public services that are better related to local need, and a possible way of re-energising the democratic process. People feel that we in Westminster are somewhat out of touch with what happens in their daily lives, and there is more chance of reconnecting politicians and the democratic process with people if decisions are taken at a more local level.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Betts]

It is possible for a Secretary of State to have reserve powers to intervene in extremis, as indeed the Secretary of State has powers to do now. [Interruption.] I hear a little whisper from my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) about what happens when the central Government behave in a completely irresponsible way—who can deal with them? At the local level, the local electorate can take a view.

[Robert Neill]

It might be worth bearing in mind the fact—for the benefit of my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart)—that even with significantly greater devolution, the local authority would still have to behave within the principles of public law, acting in Wednesbury reasonableness terms, and be subject to judicial review if it behaved wholly irrationally.

[Mr Betts]

I am sure lawyers will not be out of business any time soon on this matter The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. In our recommendations on extra borrowing powers as part of a devolution package—including the housing revenue account and using tax increment financing more actively as local authorities have complete control over business rates—we make it clear that all the borrowing has to be done within the prudential borrowing rules. That is absolutely clear.

There is one other major issue: the control total for total managed expenditure that central Government use. The Government have already had to accept that if the Scottish Parliament decides to raise more money and spend it, that has to come outside the total. If Scotland can vary it, there cannot be a total managed expenditure that is absolutely fixed, because it cannot be cut elsewhere to compensate for Scotland’s increase. The principle has been accepted, and the Treasury has to relax more about allowing local authorities to raise money for investment purposes at local level outside the controlled total.

Finally, let us return to what the Prime Minister said about devolution in Wales:

“That means those who spend taxpayers’ money must be more responsible for raising it.”

That is a fundamental point. It is why fiscal devolution, as well as spending devolution, is essential. As the Select Committee said:

“The point has been reached for the Government (and policy makers in other political parties) to make it clear whether they are committed in principle to large-scale and more comprehensive fiscal devolution in England.”

We as a Select Committee are, and we believe that all those on the Front Benches should be, too.

Local Government Finance

Debate between Robert Neill and Clive Betts

Tuesday 10th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill]

I have no doubt that we would also see the imposition of regional planning through the right hon. Gentleman’s delicately termed “county region authorities”. That would be another imposition on local authorities. The new homes bonus has enabled authorities that want to provide homes for their populations to deliver those homes and to pay for the services that such populations rightly demand. There is an inherent contradiction in the Opposition’s argument.

It is significant that Opposition Members are talking about greater devolution. I, too, hope that there will be an increase in the retained element of business rates. Interestingly, that never happened throughout the whole of the Labour party’s watch. They only started to move towards a devolutionary stance after my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State introduced the retention of some of the additional business rate. We have a track record of delivering policies, but they are simply saying that they would do the reverse of whatever they did in the past, which seems fairly normal for the Labour party at the moment.

[Mr Betts]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Robert Neill]

I will of course give way to the Chair of the Select Committee.

[Mr Betts]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman on the business rate—the direction of travel is right, and it is sensible to move towards total retention—but is there any evidence that the new homes bonus has led to the building of one additional home?

[Robert Neill]

Yes, it is very clear that more new homes are being built. The right hon. Member for Leeds Central talked about need. One of the biggest recipients of the new homes bonus has been the inner-London borough of Tower Hamlets. It has built homes in a needy area, and it has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the new homes bonus. There is therefore a direct correlation, and that correlation also relates to need. With respect to the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), his point was not the best he has made in debates in the Chamber.

It is worth observing that local authorities have calculated that they will see an increase in business rate income in 2014-15, thanks to the Government’s economic policies. Some 91% of local authorities anticipate that their business rate income will grow during 2014-15, because we are starting to get the economy back on track. Having record levels of jobs and economic activity would be prejudiced by the Labour party, but that is the real way to create sustainable funding for local government, not a culture dependent on tweaking handouts.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch and Upminster (Dame Angela Watkinson) made an important point about why we need to move away from the culture of dependency. Historically, there were disparate levels of resourcing between inner and outer-London boroughs. Once upon a time, that to some degree reflected the demography of London, but that demography has changed significantly. As I know from the experience of my London borough of Bromley, the pressures facing outer-London boroughs are now much closer to those of inner-London boroughs. As my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) observed, the artificial inflation of the weight given to density has made the problem worse in some cases. Throughout this Parliament, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and his ministerial team have gradually sought to rectify such wrongs, and I hope that in the next Parliament we can build on the very solid foundations built so far.

At the end of the day, I hope that we can move away from the artificial argument about dependence on the central Government grant. We should give local government the tools to invest, which is why the new homes bonus and the retention of business rates are so important. A fairer and more transparent basis for funding is critical, and that is what the coalition Government have delivered.

There is still more to do, although none of us would disagree that local government is probably the most efficient part of the public sector. That is why I was pleased to see the excellent work done through the better care fund. I represent a top-tier authority, and most such authorities regard adult social care as one of their principal funding pressures. Once the better care fund is established, I hope that much more work will be done to align adult social care with health services. Local authorities can often deliver many of the health-related aspects of services for elderly people more efficiently than the traditional health service model. Again, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is to be congratulated on opening up that new opportunity, which sensible authorities, such as mine in Bromley, have already seized. We must ensure that health authorities and commissioning groups understand that too, and that they fully co-operate and do not seek artificially to hang on to money—often, their local government colleagues may be best placed to get the best bang for local residents from the available buck. I hope we will see more of that important development.

Although not directly part of the grant settlement, I hope my right hon. Friend will continue to point out to colleagues in the Department for Education that we could look for greater flexibility in the operation of the dedicated schools grant. That is a good thing in itself, but some types of educational spending currently fall outside its parameters, and we could consider that issue for the future.

None of that takes away from the fact that every local government Minister has to do a balancing act when they set out the local government finance settlement. I believe that the DCLG ministerial team has done a good job, and above all we must keep bearing down on the deficit and keep public finances under control. Equally, we should continue to reward councils that do the right thing. In due course, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) was hinting—I will say this in a way that does not make me out of order, Madam Deputy Speaker—I hope that as we consider future funding arrangements for the whole United Kingdom, we will be able to give more weight to councils such as Bromley that have historically shown high levels of efficiency. Bromley delivers its services at the lowest unit cost per head of any London borough, and it also happens to have the second lowest level of central Government grant. The more we remove local authorities from the need to depend on that ratio of central government grant the better, and the more likely it is that they will profit from their own efficiency. That is the way forward.

I hope that in the short term we will look again at some elements of the way the grant is calculated and give greater weight to efficiency. It is probably right that there should be a greater relationship in local government between behaviour and out-turns, and between behaviour and consequences. The best thing would be to ensure that a higher percentage of local government spend is raised locally, and the Government are on course for that. They have made a good start but can always continue to do further work in future. At least we are able to offer local government a realistic programme as we go into the general election, building on achievements that have been delivered, rather than on the inherently contradictory flights of fancy from Opposition Members. We respect local government—I spent many years of my life in local government, and there are good people and authorities of all colours. For all the words of the right hon. Member for Leeds Central, imposed centralism is not the answer, and we must build incrementally—as the Secretary of State rightly has done—to return powers increasingly to local government. This finance report is consistent with that path, and I hope the House will support it.

communities and local government committee

Debate between Robert Neill and Clive Betts

Thursday 18th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Betts]

The hon. Gentleman will recognise that I cannot comment on or have knowledge of every particular planning development throughout the country. Clearly, there are issues of contention where housing need in one area has to be met by putting housing in another area. The duty to co-operate, which should resolve that, has not been working in all circumstances. We went to Gloucestershire and found three councils working very well together, but even they said that they did not always have terribly good relationships with the councils next door that were not part of their process. A look needs to be taken at the whole issue of co-operation and how it can be improved.

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

May I join in the congratulations to the hon. Gentleman and his Committee on this very good and useful report? I have a lot of sympathy for many of its recommendations. On partial adoption of plans and the statutory duty, has the Committee considered what might be done specifically to simplify the plan development process? Councils have sometimes had eight-plus years to develop local plans. If we are going to impose a duty, should we not also consider how we can reduce the amount of information that goes into the plans; how they can be made more strategic rather than needlessly complicated; and how in particular we can deal with the delays that are sometimes caused to planning authorities by statutory consultees? If there are going to be penalties for planning authorities, should there not also be penalties for statutory consultees when they delay the process?

[Mr Betts]

The hon. Gentleman’s last point is a very good one. We did not take particular evidence on it, but it does aggravate councils up and down the country. We made a recommendation that a look should be taken at how the process could be simplified. We did not go into the specifics, but boxes of documents at the Planning Inspectorate for one local plan for a relatively small district showed how complicated the process has become. At a time of spending and resource constraints, many councils are struggling to finish that complicated process. We think that the Government, the Planning Inspectorate and local government should sit down together and revise and simplify the process.

Financial Sustainability (Local Government)

Debate between Robert Neill and Clive Betts

Tuesday 7th January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby. I am slightly disappointed at the outcome of the debate, although I congratulate the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) on the thoughtful way in which she introduced it. The subject of the debate deserves a little better than some of the contributions that have been made. I agree with the hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh) that we must use the debate as an opportunity to think about the sustainability of local government finance in the longer term.

Some of the matters that have been raised relate, I suggest, to symptoms rather than disease. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston hinted at the real problem with financial sustainability in local government, which is that the state in this country is highly centralised. That needs to change. I gently say that that is not the construct of any one party; it has happened over about 50 years. In fairness, it must be said that this Government have taken important steps to seek to reverse that.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) that Ministers should be congratulated on the devolutionary steps they have taken at the same time as having to make significant spending reductions to meet the economic crisis we inherited. We cannot have sustainable financing for local government, which accounts for some 25% of the spend on public services, without a sustainable economy for the public finances as a whole. I do not accept lectures from Opposition Members who suggest that we should exempt local government from the necessary spending reductions.

In the longer term, we need to tackle the real problem, namely that local government has historically been too dependent on central Government grant for its finance. The Government have taken important steps to address that, but the degree of the problem is highlighted by the London Finance Commission. I represent a suburban London seat, which falls somewhere between the two poles when it comes to the matters that are being discussed. The LFC report, which the Mayor of London commissioned and endorsed, points out that some 7% of all the tax paid by London residents and businesses is retained locally, as opposed to, say, New York, where the picture is some 50%.

I am not saying that it is realistic to change those figures overnight, because we come from different constitutional and historical traditions, but we can move in that direction. In that regard, the Minister and the Government—I might have a slight interest in this—are to be commended for providing other financial levers to local authorities beyond pure dependency on central Government grant or council tax. The new homes bonus was an important additional income stream from central Government.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

Recycled money.

[Robert Neill]

The hon. Gentleman rather misses the point. During the whole time that the Labour party was in government, it made no such devolutionary steps in local government finance. It ill behoves the Labour party to criticise the steps that the Government have taken against a background of financial stringency.

Secondly, the retention of business rates, particularly if we follow it through in due course and increase the local share, has a real opportunity to reduce dependency on central Government grant. Currently, for understandable reasons such as deficit reduction, the local share has to be constrained. The primary legislation is drafted in such a way as to permit the local share to increase as the economy grows. I hope that happens, and I think hon. Members would do better in the longer term at finding financial sustainability for local government if they were to support that growth on a cross-party basis rather than seek to make short-term points about the funding of individual local authorities.

“Councillors on the Frontline”

Debate between Robert Neill and Clive Betts

Thursday 5th September 2013 Westminster Hall

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Brooke, though it is perhaps a source of regret that, for the first time in as long as I can remember, we have a local government debate in which you are not participating. It is a pleasure none the less to see you presiding over us instead.

I congratulate the Chair and the members of the Select Committee on the production of the report. I noticed that there are some useful and interesting statistical appendices, one of which demonstrates that some 46% of Members of this House have, at one time or another, served as local councillors, and I am one of that number. If we include those hon. Members who were present at the beginning of the debate, we will find that in the case of this debate we are up to 90%, but I do not want my hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mark Menzies) to feel at all embarrassed about that, for he is, none the less, an excellent Parliamentary Private Secretary and is doing a fine job of supporting my hon. Friend the Minister.

It is instructive and worth recognising that a high percentage of people have moved from local government to Westminster. That is a healthy thing—I would say that, wouldn’t I? However, I think that we would all say that. I agree with the hon. Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed) that there is real opportunity for a cross-fertilisation of knowledge between the two tiers. However, as will become apparent, there are other matters on which I do not agree with him. Nevertheless, he made a perfectly fair point, which we all recognise.

The report is useful. I had the pleasure of giving evidence to the Select Committee on behalf of my party, so I am in the odd position of being a participant both in the report and in the debate. There was an interesting exchange about how we make councillors more representative. I was elected to a London borough when I was just short of my 22nd birthday.

[Mr Betts]

A few years ago then.

[Robert Neill]

It was very recent, as the hon. Gentleman rightly says. Like me, he will remember that it was at a time when the Association of Municipal Corporations was still going. I had just qualified as a barrister, and I was doing criminal work in and around London and Essex, which comes back to the point that I made to my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) that a lot of us in those days were in full-time employment of one kind or another. As I was self-employed, I was not earning if I was not in court, so there was a particular pressure there. We dealt with it in our council—granted we were near London, so many of our councillors had to commute—by insisting that, save in very exceptional circumstances, the meetings were held in the evening. I accept that the situation varies from place to place, depending on geography and demography, but we have to adjust to that.

Throughout the time I was a councillor, I managed to hold significant positions of responsibility including the majority party’s chief whip—in a coalition at one point I might add—chairman of social services and environmental services and leader of the fire authority. As there was political will and agreement between all parts of the council, we all managed to carry out such functions without its becoming a full-time job, which is important.

I value the role of the councillors. That does not necessarily mean that I think that their actions should always be immune from criticism, but I value them and the role of local government. The point about the role of the councillor, and the whole added value that it brings, is precisely that it is not a full-time profession.

I had slight worries about the suggestion that we should remunerate councillors on the basis that they are, in effect, pursuing a full-time career, and I had even more worries about the gloss that some hon. Members and other commentators put on it, hence all the conversation around pensions and so on. The reality is that, whatever the level of commitment, that is not what it should be and not, I think, what the public wants it to be. That is not to say that we should not be professional and that people should not be recompensed for the moneys that they often sacrifice when they carry out such public service.

At a time when the public is sceptical of career politicians at any level, including those in this House, it would be wrong to send out a message that once someone goes on to a council, they do that full time, regardless of the size of the authority. Moreover, such a move would not reflect the reality on the ground that the size of local authorities and the commitment that members put in varies greatly. There is a world of difference between serving as a back-bench councillor on a small district council and serving as an executive mayor or the leader or a cabinet member of a unitary authority. We must accept that there is a range of differences, and that a national template cannot be imposed on them. An error that the earlier Councillors Commission made—I am glad to say that the report has not made it—was to try to impose national minimums for remuneration and so on. The Government are right to say that allowing councils to outsource their remuneration policies to an independent body—although it is useful to have such a body to advise—runs the risk that it does not then calibrate effectively to that change in local circumstances. We must always be honest and up front about that.

I accept that being a councillor was not always a selling point. When I was a barrister, my clerks did not generally put on what was the equivalent to the chambers website that I was a councillor, apart from those couple of occasions when I was instructed either to prosecute or defend members or officers of local authorities for breaches of the criminal law. I accept, therefore, that there is a bit of an issue, but people deal with that in a common-sense way.

It struck me throughout my time on Havering council, which was an authority that changed hands from time to time, that there was a certain refreshment or turning over of the membership without its being imposed in any hugely structured way. That is why our discussion about what the political parties can do to get a better representation of the community in councils was helpful, but it is right to come to the fairly nuanced conclusion that we cannot impose such a move from above. I passionately want to see more women and more members of our black and ethnic minority communities involved in public life. Although I know that I, as vice-chairman of my party, have a bit of work to do to help my colleagues achieve that, I do not believe that an imposed model works, not least because the way in which individual political parties operate varies. Some are more decentralised than others, and that is true of both the Conservative and the Liberal Democrat parties.

Imposing such a practice through quotas does not work. Furthermore, it is almost counter-productive, because it is important that someone should be able to say that they came to this House or to the council on their merit. They should be able to say, “People voted for me because they thought that I was the best candidate.” We do not want to undermine that at any level. That is why I am wary of too rigid an approach to remuneration and pensions. I do not want to get to a situation where a professional and often time-consuming piece of voluntary public service is treated as a career, but that would be the message that went out if we followed the route that is hinted at in some parts of this report.

Most members of the public would be surprised to find that councillors are members of the local government pension scheme—arguments relating to such membership can be made either way. Sometimes analogies are drawn with Members of this House, and we must take them on board when we discuss the matter. I am a member of the local government pension scheme, as most members of the London Assembly were, but I am now a retired member as my pension was frozen as soon as I left—I simply say that for the record. That was because the previous Government decided that the devolved bodies, of which the London Assembly was one, should have full-time salaried posts, so there is a distinction there.

[Mr Betts]

Generally, I find that I agree with the hon. Gentleman, apart from on pensions. If a councillor is not full-time but has to spend a day a week away from work—that is not unusual for many councillors—and therefore has to give up their pay from work and their pensionable element of that pay, they are effectively getting only 80% of their pension value for working for that week. Is it unreasonable to have a system that allows them to replace that element of lost pension provision by paying in to another scheme that simply reflects that situation and gives them that element, so that they do not lose out on pension for the time they have served on a local authority? Is that unreasonable?

[Robert Neill]

There are two things that we can think about that; I understand—superficially—where the view comes from, but there are things that we should look at. First, there is the question of entitlement to paid time off to enable people to do their work, which we ought to think about. Secondly, and this is something I had to think about as somebody who was self-employed, if I was not earning a fee, whatever percentage of that fee I might have put towards my pension arrangements, I would have to make up elsewhere.

What we can do, and this would be permissible under the Government’s proposal, is say that there is no reason why a councillor cannot put a portion of their allowances, which are set locally, towards a private pension. Then, of course, they could claim the tax relief, which is part of that process. So people are not prevented from making some provision.

I accept that this is a difficult issue, but I think that there is a general feeling among the public that—if anything—we will have to be rather more cautious in our approach to pensions right across the public sector. That applies to Members of this House—our pension scheme is being revised, including for Ministers; the ministerial pension scheme is being revised—and it is happening to civil service pensions and to local government officers’ pensions. We cannot escape the fact that doing otherwise would send a message that is rather at variance with the general thrust of the approach towards pensions in the public sector. The Government’s actions are consistent with saying that, for a raft of reasons, we must recognise that we can perhaps no longer adopt the same approach towards pensions as we did before.

As I say, I accept that this is a difficult and controversial issue, and I have tried to use pretty moderate and non-partisan terms. I understand the arguments either way, but we have to be realistic about things.

As I have said, the great value of councillors is that they are not officers. I would not want—even by accident and inadvertence, if you like—to get to a stage where we do something else that reinforces the idea that councillors are part of the payroll. We would not make councillors more effective at being councillors by making them more like officers. The whole idea is that they are different and separate, and the fact that very often they have employment and experience in the private sector is part of the added value that they bring in as a different dimension to the council.

Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Robert Neill and Clive Betts

Tuesday 16th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill]

I understand my hon. Friend’s genuine concerns—I do not doubt the good faith with which they are raised—but, equally, I hope he accepts that my problem with the Lords amendment is that it would import a blanket approach to something that has always been adjusted nationally, although however much it should or should not be is a matter for debate. If we are going to change that, we ought to give it rather more consideration.

My other difficulty with the Lords amendment is that it would make a very significant shift in policy by adopting that blanket opt-out approach, without any consideration of that in the consultation. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State’s stance will enable that to take place.

[Mr Betts]

The Select Committee looked at the Government’s proposals and we concluded that the case for the change to permitted development rights for domestic extensions has not been made. The Government’s impact assessment estimates costs of between £5 million and £100 million, which shows the lack of clarity in their thinking. The impact assessment made no estimate of the social and environmental impacts. Reference has been made to the 90% of proposals that currently gain planning permission, but of those some are changed because of representations on the consultation arrangements that are made as part of the planning consideration. We should be concerned not only about the 10% that are turned down but would be accepted under permitted development rights, but those that are never submitted for planning permission because they are so awful that people know they would be turned down if they were submitted.

On localist issues, what can be more local than an extension to a house? This has no national significance. The Planning Minister has accepted that it will not have any significant impact on economic growth in the country as a whole—it is a local matter. In that case, why not accept amendment 7? The Secretary of State has argued for the use of article 4 instead. Article 4 is time consuming, cumbersome, subject to challenge and potentially costly. It is really meant to be used as an exception rather than as a general rule. The Secretary of State must clarify whether article 4 will achieve the same effect for local authorities as amendment 7, and, if not, what is the difference between them. If the same effect can be achieved under article 4 as under amendment 7, then why not retain amendment 7?

Local Government Finance Bill

Debate between Robert Neill and Clive Betts

Wednesday 31st October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill]

The words of Little Sir Echo from the Opposition Benches!

My hon. Friend the Minister is absolutely right. The decision to use the default scheme is a local choice. The ability to design schemes in different ways is, and should be, a local choice. It is strange that there should be any objection to that. The Government have provided help, of course, and not only through the transitional scheme, which I regard not as a mark of weakness but as a mature and sensible reflection on how to proceed in a constructive way. [Interruption.] Again, that sense of unreality wafts across from the Opposition Benches. They prefer to exist in this land of denial where nothing is wrong with the current system, when it is manifestly failing.

[Mr Betts]

Given that the hon. Gentleman was previously the Minister in charge of the Bill, will he explain why, if it was a mature and sensible reflection, he did not have it a year ago? How can it possibly strike him as mature and sensible halfway through the period when local authorities are consulting on the policies they are trying to develop?

Local Government Finance Bill

Debate between Robert Neill and Clive Betts

Monday 21st May 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Robert Neill)]

I agree with the point that the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) makes: local authority funding is complex. I spent 16 years in a local authority and another eight on the Greater London authority dealing with funding issues, so I say to her gently, because I recognise the sincerity of her point, that the instance to which she refers occurred on the previous Government’s watch. Despite her indication that it was a risk in the system, it was a risk because of the opacity and complication of the funding system and the operation of the formula grant, which this Government inherited and are changing. I understand that there is a problem, but this Government are fixing it.

[Mr Betts]

Will the Minister give way?

[Robert Neill]

I am going to make some progress if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me—[Interruption.] Very well, I will give way on that point, but I may not again.

[Mr Betts]

The Minister says that the system is being reformed because of the complications of the current system. The Secretary of State, in his initial statement to the House, said that the Government’s objective was to create a new and simpler system. Does the Minister think that the Government have achieved that objective?

[Robert Neill]

Compared with formula grant that the Labour Government left behind, yes I do. That view was shared by the Lyons inquiry, which the previous Government very conveniently buried because it did not suit their purposes.

Might I now turn, Mr Deputy Speaker, specifically to the two sets of amendments and new clauses before us? I am sorry that the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) is not in his place, because he made a thoughtful and well considered speech. I had the pleasure of shadowing him for a time and I respect his concern about the matter, so in fairness to his arguments, I will deal with the points he made.

New clause 1 relates to the operation of set-aside and the position of tax increment financing schemes—TIFs. The Government are committed to making TIFs option 2, which is what we are talking about, successful. I am glad to learn that when he was in government the right hon. Gentleman was an advocate of TIFs. He was not, unfortunately, able to persuade those further up the governmental pay scale to introduce them, but I do not doubt that he tried hard. This Government are doing what everybody asked and succeeding in introducing them. He is quite right that for TIFs to operate properly there has to be a degree of certainty, but the change he proposes is not necessary because the provisions in the Bill already enable that to happen.

The Government’s intention, as indicated in the White Paper, is that a ring fence exempts TIFs from the calculations of the levy, the set-aside and any reset, and the Bill already permits that. We also intend that, under the system, the additional uplift in rates retained be disregarded when setting tariffs and top-ups, not only in relation to the option 2 TIF scheme, but in respect of enterprise zones. That is why “proportion” is used in the regulations about which the right hon. Gentleman is concerned. The intention for TIFs is 100% ring-fencing, but in relation to enterprise zones, as hon. Members will know, the uplift in rates is retained from a starting point, so there is a proportion. The wording is used simply to cover both types of scheme and to enable both to be ring-fenced.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Robert Neill and Clive Betts

Monday 12th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill]

The apology should come from those who created the record deficit in the first place. The hon. Lady might also like to apologise for the inconsistency in standing at the last general election on a manifesto that promised to cut housing benefit when she says nothing now about how she would make reductions and nothing about how one can reform housing benefit without reforming council tax benefit, which goes hand in hand with it.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Betts]

I am sure that the Minister will be aware that his proposals on council tax benefits potentially affect Stretford and Urmston and other constituencies up and down the country. The Minister is aware that Capita wrote to local authorities on 12 January, saying it had real concerns about its ability to deliver IT systems in time to meet the changes proposed for April next year. Is the Minister not aware that authorities could end up with a real risk of system failure, affecting tens of thousands of low-income families? Is not the real answer to delay these measures for at least 12 months?

[Robert Neill]

I have in front of me the letter that Capita sent to all local authorities in the country, and it points out that the reforms are deliverable if we can bring forward the regulations and detailed schemes in time. To that end, we have set up an officer-level working group to discuss these matters with officials from the local government sector.

Local Government Finance

Debate between Robert Neill and Clive Betts

Wednesday 8th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

I was in a bit of agreement with the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), another member of the Select Committee, until he made his final comment, when we reached the point of complete disagreement.

First, the issue to which we return today is very much the issue that we debated in the House a year ago. It is about funding for local government, whereby the Government have an overall policy of cutting public expenditure by 19% but have decided that local government expenditure can be cut by 28%. That is the reality. Local government has been singled out for much larger cuts than the rest of the public services, presumably because Ministers believe that the services that local government provides are less important. That must be the reality.

[Robert Neill]

indicated dissent.

[Mr Betts]

The Minister begins to shake his head, but, if he does not believe in that, why is he prepared to support the local authority grant reductions, which are so much larger than the reductions in other Government expenditure? That is the question to which Ministers have never really addressed themselves.

[Robert Neill]

The Department’s reduction in central costs and administrative expenditure is in excess of 30% and, in total administrative costs, rises to about 40%. We have put our money where our mouth is and reduced our costs more.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Betts]

I agree with that point without in any way saying that Sheffield city council spends a great deal of money on pot plants; of course it does not.

[Robert Neill]

We know who does, don’t we?

[Mr Betts]

I am sure that the Minister will provide some figures in due course.

We have heard from Ministers all the ways in which councils can save money. Of course there are many ways in which that can happen without front-line services being affected; the reality is that councils have been very good at that over the years. Through the period of the Labour Government, councils were forced to find about 2% in efficiency savings, year on year. Over the past 20 years, in fact, they have generally been much better at that than central Government. Councils have a good track record.

If the cuts were not so front-loaded, councils would have had more time to prepare and consider efficiency savings. Cuts to services cannot just be dreamed up overnight; they are often the product of complex negotiations between councils and other public bodies to make sure that the agreements are proper and genuinely deliver savings.

I have just had information about what is going on in Sheffield. Together with Government Departments and other public agencies, Sheffield city council is embarking on a look at the whole public estate—the buildings that the public sector owns or leases, and operates. With central Government Departments and agencies, the council is trying to get better value for money from the whole public estate.

That programme cannot be delivered overnight. There could be very large savings if it is carried out properly, but it must be done in a considered way, with everyone working together. The council cannot simply click its fingers and say that a certain number of millions of pounds in savings are coming next year. The process takes time. Many of us have been trying to argue that the savings can probably come about, but that they will take time.

In the meantime, front-line services are being hit. Concessionary bus fares for young people in Sheffield increased from 40p to 50p this year and will go up to 60p next year. Young people always appear to be getting the brunt of the cuts—tuition fees, the education maintenance allowance and the cuts to youth and career services. The other day, people at a school that I was visiting said that work experience has now stopped because Government funding to assist it has stopped and employers are not responding.

All those things are happening to young people. Sixty pence for a bus fare may not seem a lot, but when the Youth Parliament in Sheffield did an assessment of young people’s needs two or three years ago, buses came out as top of the list of things that are important to young people, as they mean mobility, independence and not having to rely on other people to get around.

Of course, we are seeing cuts in care services for the elderly. Let us congratulate councils such as Sheffield, which is cutting those services by only 5%, when 11% is coming off its total budget, and it is trying to concentrate on administration, management and back-room services. The council is trying to prioritise cuts on back-room services—15% in human resources, 14% in legal services and 26% in IT. But do not let us pretend that legal services, IT and other such services can simply be cut with no eventual impact on front-line services. If we are to make all the changes to the public estate that I mentioned, we will need legal officers in the council. Back-room services are important for the delivery of an efficient front line.

Sheffield council has decided to move to fortnightly refuse collections and to improve its recycling offer. That will save £2.5 million a year, and although it cannot simply exempt those services from the savings, it will try and improve its recycling. The Secretary of State has a view—presumably shared by Ministers—that such matters are all about localism until he has a particular policy or pet project that he wants to see implemented. He believes in weekly bin collection. That is up to him. The idea is that having abolished the vast majority of ring-fenced grants—and I support the Government’s policy on that—we should suddenly invent a new ring-fenced grant for this one issue. It is not quite a new ring-fenced grant, however, because the grant is not in place. Perhaps we may call it a new ring-fenced idea.

Local authorities now have to draw up budgets and decide what to do. They must be prudent, but when considering how their services will be delivered next year, they cannot take account of money that may arrive under a scheme that has not yet been announced. How on earth do Ministers expect local authorities to respond to their view of the world regarding refuse collection if they trail a grant in advance that will perhaps no longer be in place when councils start to formulate their budgets? Councils have no idea whether they will get any money, what will be the criteria for the scheme, how much money there will be in the first, second and third years, and when the money will run out, leaving them to pick up the bill.

Is it not a disgrace for Ministers to trail such a scheme, and then criticise councils—just as the Deputy Prime Minister criticised Sheffield council—for moving to a fortnightly refuse collection? Ministers say that councils should instead take advantage of Government money that has not yet been announced. That is a ridiculous way to run anything. If a parish council ran its affairs in such a way, Ministers would be on their feet, proclaiming that it was inefficient and incompetent. Labour Members can therefore say that this Government are inefficient and incompetent in their handling of this issue.

One or two other points have been raised. Of course we want to see the voluntary sector contribute, whether to the big society or to the delivery of better services for their communities. Again, I congratulate Sheffield council because it is cutting money to the voluntary sector by just 5% this year, compared with the 11% cut to the total council budget.

The voluntary sector depends on public sector employees working with it to deliver services. All the volunteers in my constituency who take part in environmental improvement schemes rely on two council officers, with a bit of seed money to provide training and materials. That is how it works. We cannot divorce the voluntary sector from the rest of the council services.

Neither can we divorce private jobs from public jobs. More than 550 public sector employees in Sheffield city council will lose their jobs, or posts will be held vacant, as a result of the council’s budget proposals. Fortnightly bin collections, however, are outsourced to Veolia, so it will be not public sector workers who lose their jobs but those in the private sector who are employed by that company. We cannot divorce the public and private sectors. The cuts that have necessarily been made by councils up and down the country will affect private sector employment as well as public sector employment. Orders from councils will be reduced as they will have less money to spend, and private sector companies will suffer as a result. The idea that private sector companies will grow jobs on the back of the cuts is fallacious. That is why the economy is heading for recession.

I conclude with one further point about the fire service. The other day, we went to see the Minister with responsibility for the fire service, who is responding to this debate. He kindly agreed to meet a delegation, and I hope that he listened carefully to the fact that the cuts to the fire service grants of the metropolitan fire authorities are twice the level of those for other fire authorities in the country. Fire chiefs are saying that if the cuts continue for a third and fourth year, they will not be able to deliver appropriate fire cover in their areas.

In my constituency, three fire stations are being closed and will be replaced by just two. That may be a more efficient way of delivering fire cover, but it will result in slower response times to some of the large industrial plants in Sheffield that still operate in the steel industry and other related industries. People are worried that if that happens, it could create greater risks at a time when we hope to see great Sheffield firms such as Sheffield Forgemasters continue. We would not want them to be put at greater risk by reduced fire cover. We hope that Ministers will listen to those concerns.

This settlement is unfair to many councils, and those in the greatest need are receiving the biggest cuts. In total, it demonstrates that the Government value the services provided by local councils less highly than other public expenditure, and I will certainly be in the Lobby with my right hon. and hon. Friends to vote against it this evening.

Local Government Finance Bill

Debate between Robert Neill and Clive Betts

Wednesday 18th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Betts]

I want to speak about set-aside—the principle and the calculations—and, in particular, to draw attention to my amendments 44 and 45. This is the first opportunity that I have had during the Committee stage to talk about the new, simplified system of local government finance that the Government are proposing. [Interruption.] Is that a smile from the Minister? We have to have a laugh about the terminology, but it was the terminology that the Secretary of State used when introducing the consultation proposals. He called it a simplified system, but I do not think that anybody, even—

[Robert Neill]

rose—

[Mr Betts]

Perhaps the Minister is going to talk about the new, simplified system.

[Robert Neill]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will be glad to know that I was smiling just to say how pleased we are to see the Chairman of the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government among us.

[Mr Betts]

It is very nice of the Minister to say so, so I will smile in return. However, even he could not rise now and say that this is a simplified system. It is a new system—it is a radical departure—but it is certainly no less complicated than what went before it; rather, it is complicated in a different way.

Let us talk about transparency. By that I mean the possibility that when a development is put forward in part of a local authority area, it is possible to say to residents, “If that development is granted, these will be the financial consequences.” There is no chance of that happening with this piece of legislation. It will be very difficult for local authority treasurers to explain to their members collectively what the implications of the new legislation are, let alone for a local councillor to tell residents looking at a planning application, “These are the financial consequences of accepting this proposal.”

I have no problem with the principle behind the Bill; indeed, I think there is a shared principle across the Committee. We all realise that there must be more incentives in the system to reward local authorities for encouraging and promoting growth in their areas. There is no problem with that principle at all. The difficulty, which is reflected in the responses to the consultation on the legislation that we are considering today, is that the authorities with a relatively high business rate base, or the potential to develop one and grow their business rate relatively easily, are obviously all arguing for lower tariffs and top-ups, whereas those that have lower business rate bases and more difficulty in attracting growth to their areas, perhaps including those with the greatest need, are arguing for more top-ups and tariffs.

As I said on Second Reading, the Government have a fundamental problem. Because of the effective removal of Government grant to local authorities from 2013-14, they are now trying to use the business rate to do two potentially contradictory things. They are trying to use the business rate as a mechanism to encourage growth and development, rewarding authorities by allowing them to keep the business rates that are raised from development and growth, but they are also trying to use it as a method of redistribution to help authorities that cannot achieve development and growth easily, and that have problems of deprivation. The Government are trying to do two things with one tax, which is a problem. That is why we have such a complicated arrangement.

If there was a separate element of Government grant that could be used for redistribution and if authorities were then allowed to keep their business rates, separately—as was the case with the old system, which we have just discussed with the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman)—that would be relatively easy. There would be a business rate that was an incentive and a Government grant for redistribution. The fact is that we do not have the second of those; complications thus arise.

Some of us can remember the GREAs—the grant related expenditure assessments—the SSAs or standard spending assessments and other complicated arrangements like regression analysis that used to be done on all these matters. On every consultation, local authorities in various parts of the country would have different views about the allocation of resources and the finance system—of course they did, and the same applies on this occasion. What the Secretary of State and this Government have managed to do this time, however, is to unite the whole of local government on one fundamental issue—a feat that I do not think has been achieved before by any Government or any Secretary of State in relation to local authority finance.

Every local authority association and every local authority in the country has united against the principle of set-aside. They all view this as central Government putting their hands into the local authority pot and taking money out of it for themselves. When we used to debate local government finance, as we still do, most people rightly assumed that it was a debate about finance for local government. Now the debate is going to be about finance from local government, as local government will be contributing to national Government and the national Treasury. We will no longer talk about a business rate that is collected locally and distributed nationally, but a business rate that is collected locally and spent nationally. That does not strike me as a terribly localist move.

The Government have created a fundamental problem for themselves with set-aside. One can see the Secretary of State sat in his office, snaffling local government resources and getting into the Chancellor’s good books by passing those resources over and saying, “Look, I’ve done it again, Chancellor. I’m the good guy in all this; I’m giving you lots more money to spend.” Perhaps it is more like good cop, bad cop. We generally see the Secretary of State coming along to join the Minister for these debates, with the Secretary of State doing the broad sweep and the Minister knowing the detail. Perhaps they will go along to the Local Government Association in future when the pantomime season is in bloom. The Minister will go along as the wicked uncle, describing how much the set-aside is going to be worth in that year and how much is going to be taken away, while the Secretary of State will come along as the fairy godmother to say, “Look at all the goodies I’m going to give you back when I spend the set-aside. The problem is that when I wave my magic wand, what you get might not be what you thought you were going to get, because the money is going to be spent on things for which you would previously have had a grant.” This is the delusion being created.

The reaction on the part of local government is obvious. It says, “You are asking us to accept 28% cuts to Government funding over a four-year period and to cut our fundamental services.” Despite what the Minister said to the Select Committee today, there is not a local authority in the country that is not having to cut social services and social care. That is what is happening. At the same time as local authorities are being asked to make profound cuts to front-line services—it is happening to authorities of all persuasions up and down the country—the Government are saying, “By the way, we are now going to take away from local government resources that could be spent on local services, by means of the set-aside.”

All this explains why I tabled the amendments. Amendment 44, for example, is an attempt to make the point that something must be wrong when a Government say that they are going to take the set-aside away—irrespective of the real needs of local authorities, which they are clearly unable to meet in the current financial situation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Neill]

I understand my hon. Friend’s point. He refers to the council tax, which is a separate part of the income stream from the business rates. Of course, we have ourselves removed capping and substituted the ability, even under current circumstances, for a local authority to go to its voters by way of a referendum, which is a move in the direction of giving greater flexibility. It is the authority’s local call. In relation to the business rates element of its income, I restate that it is our desire to ensure that there is flexibility for the future. This is not intended to be a system that lasts for two or three years. I am in favour of multiple-year funding settlements, which I think we all agree on, but our system is intended to last for a much longer period. I hope that that reassures hon. Members.

[Mr Betts]

I thank the Minister for the slight reassurances about his thinking on the future of the set-aside, but will he reflect on the fact that many countries manage a different relationship between central and local government with more flexibility for local government? Can he think of any other advanced western democracy where local government taxes are used by central Government for their own purposes, rather than for those of local authorities?

[Robert Neill]

It is perfectly fair to observe that the local government finance system in this country is highly centralised, and many of us have often said that we want to make it less so. The Bill will do precisely that. I am reminded of the old phrase, “Half a loaf is better than none.” As the hon. Gentleman will know, the Lyons inquiry into local government, which the previous Government established, found that the system was too centralised, but Opposition Members conveniently ignored that when in government. We are doing something about it, so his ambition is being met at least in part.

I will say something about how this will operate. The central and local shares will have to be set out in the annual local government finance report. We will consult local government on the draft report, as we currently do, which will then be laid before the House and subject to the rigour of parliamentary scrutiny. A statutory consultation, as proposed in amendment 38, is unnecessary, as that will happen as a matter of course. We do not envisage that the shares, once they have been set at the outset, will be changed from year to year. That gives certainty that the uprating for the top-ups and tariffs will be protected until we come to a reset. We have already debated what will be the most appropriate period before a reset. That is why amendment 37 does not give any greater clarity.

The Government’s intention is that the money that comes into the central share will be returned in its entirety to local government, as currently required by the Finance Act 1988. We will do so by funding local government by grant that is outside what is currently formula grant and will now be in the rates retention scheme. There are plenty of examples of localised grants that are made in that way—for example those relating to neighbourhood policing and homelessness grants. The suggestion, from the authors of the current system, that that is centralising should win the award for chutzpah of the year so far, although it is only 18 January.

These changes are an important step towards localisation. There is a great deal of detail and we have undertaken to consult on the regulations, and I assure hon. Members that they will be subject to the scrutiny procedures of the House. As I said earlier, we have set up a working group at official level to talk through the details with the local government sector.

I have a great deal of respect for the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne, who is no longer in his place but, for the reasons I have set out, I do not believe that amendment 46 is necessary to achieve a degree of fairness in the system. It would have a perverse effect, as it would prevent any of the central share money from being used to fund transitional protection arrangements under the transitional rate relief scheme. Schedule 1, as drafted, permits that, which means that transitional payments under the rate relief scheme would not fall on local government. Central Government would be in a position to pick up the cost if disparities arose. Under the amendments, the costs would have to fall on local government, which is not his intention. I hope that he will consider withdrawing the amendment before we come to vote.

I will turn briefly to the two Government amendments in the group. They relate to seriously technical parts of the schedule. I apologise for that, but they are important. First, they increase the amount that can be debited from the main rating account to include payments received in respect of central list contributions and payments that are made as contributions in aid. Those payments are made directly to the Secretary of State.

Communities and Local Government (CSR)

Debate between Robert Neill and Clive Betts

Thursday 13th January 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Betts]

I said at the beginning that I do not want to get into a long debate about the overall nature of deficit reduction, apart from saying that the Labour party has a different view about the scale—reducing the deficit by half, not totally eliminating it, over the four-year period—and the pace, which would not have been as great. We would not have started the cuts in this financial year, before the economy had properly started growing. There are differences.

However, I come back to the point that, whatever the average level of cuts across Government, there still has to be a justification as to why spending on local government—the money passed on by central Government to local government—is taking a hit that is much bigger than the average for all Departments. Why is that happening, particularly when local government has a good track record in making efficiency savings? If one looks at government as a whole, it was local government that led the way, even under the previous Government: 2% year-on-year efficiency savings were built into its budgets.

If one looks at the impact of government services as a whole, the services that are provided by local government are some of the most immediate to our constituents. They include services to the disadvantaged and those in need: social services care provision, aids and adaptations. They are about the quality of life: things such as parks, libraries and sports centres. They are about essential provision for daily life from which everyone benefits, whether it be refuse collection, street cleaning, highway maintenance, street lights—the kinds of things that everyone benefits from in terms of the taxes that they pay and the services that they get. Why put those immediate services for most of our constituents at more risk than the average in terms of cuts of Government spending as a whole? The Government must answer that question.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Robert Neill)]

In fact, the figures show that revenue support for local authorities reduces by 26%, and that happens to coincide with the percentage of public sector spend that local government takes. However, the independent Office for Budget Responsibility has made it clear that because local authorities have forms of income other than the central Government grant—council tax, for example—the actual reduction in spending power is 14%, which is considerably less than that of central Government Departments.

[Mr Betts]

I accept what the Minister says about the different ways in which figures have been presented, and I shall come to that in a second. I am not going to complain about or disagree with how that was done, because it is important to look at spending power, but I come back to the point that I made. If central Government are looking to cut their spending, why have they cut the resources that they pass on to local government by more than the average cut in central Government spending as a whole? That seems a reasonable question, irrespective of the issue of local authorities’ spending power.

The second issue is: why have spending reductions been so front-loaded? Local government has rightly complained about that. There is no doubt at all that there is front-loading: of the 28%, 10% is in the first year and 8% in the second. Local authorities, not just the councillors but the officials, say that the immediacy of the actions they have to take means that decisions will be less well made and there will almost certainly be less opportunity for the transformation of service delivery, which we all agree can make savings without the need for service cuts. It also means that local authorities will be pushed back into the salami-slicing approach, which Ministers say they do not want. I am not making a party political point. Authorities of all political persuasions—Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Labour councillors in the Local Government Association—will all say the same thing: that the pressure of front-loading will lead to a less effective and less efficient use of the available resources.

The front-loading will also mean that authorities have less chance to use natural wastage to save money, and will be forced, to a greater extent, into making compulsory redundancies, which are expensive; the money used to pay people to leave and to enable cuts to be made, could have been used to provide service delivery. We know there is an argument there. In the evidence session, the Secretary of State said he thought that the LGA figure of 140,000 job losses in the next year was wrong, but we never quite got from him what the right figure was. Nevertheless, there will be significant job losses.

The Government believe that £200 million of capitalisation will be sufficient to cover redundancy costs; the LGA says £2 billion. Even if the figure is somewhere in between, local authorities will struggle if redundancy costs are of that scale, because getting rid of people in the first year might not make savings and might actually become a cost. The offer that I think the Secretary of State made, that if he had to provide another £1 billion of capitalisation he would cut the revenue grant by a further £600 million, does not seem to be the best offer that local government has ever had from central Government on such matters. Indeed, I think the rather angry response to the evidence that the Committee received from Baroness Eaton on behalf of the LGA has been circulated. In it she states that her recollection of the discussions with the Secretary of State on capitalisation was slightly different to that of which he had informed the Select Committee. She could not understand why, if local government had to make necessary redundancies and wanted to capitalise that cost further, it would be penalised by the Government’s reducing the revenue grant. It would be helpful to have some comments from the Minister, bearing in mind the LGA’s response.

There is a very big issue here of the speed of the cuts and their front-loading, and the effect of that on local authorities’ ability to digest the cuts into their systems and make sense out of them, as opposed to having to salami-slice at least an element of the cuts and having to pay quite a bit of money out for redundancy costs that would otherwise not have been necessary.

I shall now respond to the Minister’s point about how the announcement was phrased. The Secretary of State obviously tries to get the figures down in his announcements, and I happen to agree that looking at spending power rather than at simply grant allocation is the proper approach. We still should look at the grant that central Government give as opposed to what they are doing to cut spending elsewhere in central Government, but it does matter in the end how much local authorities have to spend. When we look at the figures, however, we see a difference between the 8.9% maximum reduction in spending power that any authority has to face and the 0.1% increase that Dorset has managed to receive.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Paul Farrelly) mentioned, there is a significant difference in the level of cuts and the reductions in spending power between the most and least deprived authorities. The figures that came out of the Library from the Scrutiny Unit show that the 10% most deprived single unitary authorities lost 8.4% of spending power and the least deprived 10% lost 2.2%. That is a significant difference. We have had a discussion about the Scrutiny Unit’s figures, and those figures clearly show a correlation between authority deprivation levels and how much spending would be cut. I do not think it is fair, but I accept, to a degree, that it is more difficult to protect authorities that have large grants because they are deprived, when grant cuts happen. I accept that the Government have done something, at least at the beginning of the process, with the £85 million transitional money to mitigate the problem, but whether that money will be available later in the spending round remains to be seen.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Robert Neill)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson, and I will endeavour to encompass as much of this interesting, well-informed and wide-ranging debate as I can in the time available. I congratulate the Back-Bench Committee on selecting and nominating this subject for debate, and the Chairman of the Communities and Local Government Committee, the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), on the thoughtful way in which he introduced it. He and I do not always agree about everything, but I never doubt his knowledge and interest in local government. I also pay tribute to that Committee; it does great work and a number of hon. Members who sit on it have spoken today.

Perhaps I can deal briefly with the background and then with some of the specifics in the contributions. I will not seek to make a lengthy issue of the economic background, save to say that it is the reality that no one can escape. In relation to the more partisan comments that were made, I have to say that it gives pleasure to no Government of any kind to find that they have to reduce the spending available for various services. However, as has been observed and, I think, accepted in varying degrees on both sides of the House, it was trailed well to everyone in local government and to the public that sadly, whatever the outcome of the general election, the country’s financial circumstances meant that reductions in public spending would be necessary.

When the coalition Government came to office and saw the extent of the problem, they concluded, rightly, that swift action was necessary to reduce the deficit. Otherwise, there were real risks to the economic health of the country and to the country’s international credibility. If that were not tackled and there were a serious economic downturn, which was a real risk, it would be an even greater threat to public services in the long term. A destroyed economy would make it all the harder to deliver the public services that we all want.

There may be a difference between us, but I say to those Opposition Members who criticise the speed and scale of the steps that we have taken that it behoves them—as they are, I regret to have to say, primarily responsible for the mess—to say what they would have done instead. Simply to criticise the Government, who are doing something that is starting to turn things around, is, in the circumstances, not good enough.

We have had to deal with the situation that confronted local government in a way that was fair and proportionate. I want to set the record straight on one or two matters that were raised. First, in relation to the settlement for local government as a whole and the picture compared to the rest of Whitehall, it is important to make it clear that against the 2010-11 baseline, the Department for Communities and Local Government will be making savings of some 33% on resource, but we will also be moving some £6.7 billion into formula grant. That is money that we are ceding to local authorities.

I think that it is some of those differences in the figures that produced the difference in the figures that the hon. Member for Sheffield South East was calculating. He referred to a 68% cut in the CLG budget. No, that is the combined total reduction in resource and capital funding by 2014-15. The resource funding was reduced by 33%, but we have chosen to devolve extra money by putting it into formula grant, rather than keeping it in the Department. So we have passed money down, within a tight settlement, to local government as a whole. In fact, our departmental resource support for local government will reduce by 22% compared with 33% for CLG as a whole, so we are protecting local government as opposed to the central Government elements of our spend. Similarly, although we have had to reduce capital support to local government, that reduces by a lower percentage than is the case for the CLG’s central departmental expenditure limit—the DEL, as it is called.

Against that background, we have endeavoured to support important programmes. We are putting £6.5 billion into the Supporting People programme. That constitutes a reduction of only 12% compared with the CLG’s 33% resource reduction overall. That is why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was right to tell the Select Committee that we had sought, in the circumstances, to protect Supporting People.

We have sought to make the settlement itself more progressive. I shall come to the imperfections of the formula in a minute, but within the formula that we have, we have increased the weighting given to the needs element to 83%. That is an increase from where it was before and will help more deprived authorities. Also, a number of authorities with significant problems faced the loss of the working neighbourhoods fund, which the previous Government set up but were terminating because it was a three-year programme. The present Government, recognising the difficulty, set up the transitional grant that has been referred to by hon. Members, so we have helped to cushion the loss of the WNF that the previous Government proposed to impose. Therefore, it cannot be said that we have not sought to be fair in the circumstances.

The hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie), who is no longer in his place, made some comments about fairness and referred to the House of Commons Library paper. I am afraid that that paper was quoted selectively. The analysis also said:

“Excluding London, northern regions will receive more grant per head than their southern counterparts”.

It confirmed that formula grant per head in the north-east is, at £696, approaching double that in the south-east, which is £374, and that reductions in formula grant for the north-east and north-west were “clearly less” than those in the south-east and the eastern regions. Therefore, it cannot be said that the Government have sought unfairly to discriminate against areas where, we accept, there are difficulties. I hope that that puts some of the comments in context.

Let me deal with a couple of other points raised by the hon. Member for Sheffield South East. He specifically asked about business rates exceeding formula grant by 2013-14. For reasons that I shall come to, by 2013-14 the landscape will indeed look very different as a result of the local government resource review. As he knows, the review will consider allowing local authorities to retain business rates, and obviously we shall have to look at that in the context of the implications for resource equalisation and redistribution. There is a legal obligation to redistribute the business rate, and we do not intend to change that. The assumption was made that there would be a sudden pot of money and that there was no change to what the Government were doing. That is not the case: we have already announced our intention to make a change.

We are making the change because, as was pointed out in the powerful and impressive speeches of my hon. Friends the Members for Peterborough (Mr Jackson), for Meon Valley (George Hollingbery), for Halesowen and Rowley Regis (James Morris), for St Austell and Newquay (Stephen Gilbert) and for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), the formula no longer works. They all queued up, rightly, to say that.

We have recognised that there is a need for significant change to the formula and, rather than beating about the bush, we have established a local government resource review. I expect that the consultation documents will be sent out before the end of this month. We hope to do it from January through to June, and central to it is enabling local authorities to retain the business rates that they collect. Of course, there would also be an incentive for them to grow their tax base by growing their business rate base. That would enable us to rethink the operation of grant. Formula grant would no longer be operating in the same system. I totally accept the point made by hon. Members that in those reforms, it is crucial that we find something that is much more transparent than the Schleswig-Holstein question. Actually, this issue probably makes the Schleswig-Holstein question seem comparatively simple. So that is what we are doing.

[Mr Betts]

I hope that the Minister responds specifically to this question; it is an important one. Is he saying that when the Government go out to consultation on a new method of funding for local government, including local authorities keeping their business rate, they will also deal with the question of how, in that context, redistribution in terms of need and resources can also be achieved?

[Robert Neill]

It is intended to be a comprehensive review of local government resource. We shall have to consider all those issues. The hon. Gentleman will have to wait for the document itself. He will understand why I cannot go into detail; I am sure that we shall be laying a statement before the House about the content of the document. However, it is intended to be a comprehensive review of the resource, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be satisfied with what he sees in terms of its parameters. I know that the Select Committee will certainly want to discuss with the Department the way in which we carry the review forward, and we will welcome that. Against that background, the Government have sought to achieve a balance.

I accept the points made by my hon. Friends: we must be prepared to be a little less conservative with a small c in our approach to delivering local services. I do not think that small c conservatism is generally found on this side of the Chamber at the moment. Local authorities have worked hard to produce efficiencies—I accept that—but it is clear that yet more can be done. For example, the CBI has pointed out the considerable further savings that could be made by local authorities banding together to use their procurement powers. Baroness Eaton and her colleagues are up for doing that, and I am sure they will. It is not a question of chief executive pay, for example, closing the funding gap, but at times such as these, it is not illegitimate for the Government to say that if we have to prioritise, the message that pay sends is important. It is fair and proper to look at these matters in that context.

I take on board the important points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East, who was my old comrade-in-arms in the London Assembly. Given the Mayor we had, “comrade” was probably appropriate from time to time. I also agree with a comrade from the opposite side of the London Assembly, the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), about support for the voluntary sector. It is hugely important, which is why the Secretary of State has repeatedly said that in these difficult times it is important that local councils do not fall back on the usual suspects in their approach to reductions, such as salami-slicing. They get rid of the voluntary sector grants first because they are the easiest, but often it is those voluntary sector groups that deliver public services in the most imaginative and innovative manner. That is where remuneration comes in and is why we are increasing transparency for the public over remuneration in the Localism Bill—that is the right way.

I hope that a director or chief executive on a six-figure salary signing off a report for a council recommending cutting a six-figure grant from voluntary groups will not feel entirely comfortable in doing so when looking at their comparative positions. That is a legitimate point in the context of this debate. We will all have to constrain expenditure that is not directed at the front line. That is not to rubbish the work done in local government, but it is right to accept that people are surprised when they see the salary inflation at that level; people are right to question whether that is the best way to spend the money. That is how the Department has looked forward.

We are, of course, keen to assist local authorities to grow their economies and to rebalance them. That is why, as well as the Supporting People programme, to which I have already referred, we are spending more than £2 billion on the decent homes programme, and continuing to support the disabled facilities grant and to facilitate the passage of the vulnerable into work in the community. The regional growth fund of £1.4 billion taken together with the local enterprise partnerships, set up with business and local councils as key partners, affords an opportunity to refocus economies. We seek to align that regional growth with the equal sum in the European regional development fund. Work is being done to channel such resource as we can afford into areas that will make the most difference.

References were made to housing funding and the benefit changes. It is worth remembering that even with the changes, a third of homes in London will remain affordable. About 17,000 households may be affected, but the choice they will be left with is no different to the choice that the low-waged who are not on benefits face. We cannot continue with a situation in which expenditure on housing benefits has risen from £14 billion to £21 billion. It is about getting the balance right. Of course, we will continue to liaise with our colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions on those issues.

I see that time is creeping round, and I know that my hon. Friends raised other specific points. With your permission, Mr Robertson, I will respond to them by letter. Detailed matters, such as private sewers, are probably best dealt with in that manner.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Robert Neill and Clive Betts

Thursday 21st October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill]

Localising decision making and planning is central to the Government’s policy. Ministers have made it clear that they will exercise the power to call in only very sparingly where matters of significant national interest and policy are concerned.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

Is the Minister aware that in looking at the abolition of the regional spatial strategies, the Select Committee is receiving evidence that because those strategies had an evidential base—not merely in respect of house building numbers, but in many other matters on which local development frameworks were based—many local authorities are now having to go back and redo that evidential base at a local level, causing an enormous amount of work and inconvenience to them? Did the Minister take account of those extra burdens when he decided to abolish the regional spatial strategies?

[Robert Neill]

The vast majority of local authorities I have spoken to greatly welcome the abolition of those strategies, which imposed undemocratic targets on them. There is no need to rework the evidence base—it is already there. We have given local authorities the power to revise the figures that were arbitrarily imposed on them from above.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Robert Neill and Clive Betts

Thursday 10th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

Regarding today’s written statement, does the Minister not accept that local authorities have been at the forefront of making efficiency savings—2% year on year—so to ask for a further 1% part way through the year, on top of the 2% to which they are already committed, will effectively mean cuts in local authority spending part way through the year of about 4% to 5%? Rather than being about efficiency savings, this is surely the first round of the savage cuts for local authorities that Ministers promised us.

[Robert Neill]

The hon. Gentleman, who is experienced in these matters, well knows the dire financial straits the country is in and the need for all sectors to save money. However, he ought to put that in the context of what we have had to do because of the legacy of his party’s Government. We have taken steps to protect formula grant, to un-ring-fence a good deal of grant to give local authorities more financial flexibility and to remove burdens such as the expensive comprehensive area assessment inspection regime.