Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Robert Neill and Jake Berry

Tuesday 12th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jake Berry]

Before coming to Parliament I was involved in a case in which the bank required an immediate repayment of a loan facility because of the reduction in its security, and the business had to close because it did not have immediate access to funds. My hon. Friend’s reasonable amendment suggests that payment should be made promptly to ensure that in such a situation there is a possibility of the business continuing. I would have thought that would be welcome.

[Robert Neill]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who I know has professional experience and expertise in this matter. Of all the amendments and new clauses in my name, I urge the Minister most strongly to pay urgent attention to this provision. As my hon. Friend said, this issue is the one thing that puts people out of business, and that cannot be in anybody’s interest, and I urge the Minister to look swiftly and urgently at the matter. Perhaps it does not require primary legislation, but it needs to be addressed. My hon. Friend is right—established firms have folded from time to time when the bank required a redemption, and people may need to increase their exposure and put up the family home, for example, to provide that security, which cannot be just under such circumstances. My hon. Friend effectively encapsulates the point of the amendment.

Finally, failing to pay advance compensation runs contrary to virtually all other commercial transactions, and it is an outlier that often puts people who have been compulsorily required to sell in a disadvantageous position compared with public bodies. It makes it really difficult for any landowner or businessperson to run their business efficiently against that backdrop, as they do not have the financial security they would otherwise have. That is the purpose of the amendment and I hope it will be looked on favourably by the Government. I am not fussed about the route. Achieving outcome and fairness is the most important thing. Amendment 77 is consequential to that amendment; they hang together.

On amendment 76, it is important not only to have prompt payment but a realistic level of compensation. That can be assessed through the current system, but there is the question of interest on late payment. The coalition Government and the current Government have rightly emphasised the importance of prompt payment to businesses, and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills set up codes to encourage prompt payment. The importance of prompt payment weighs particularly heavily on small and medium-sized enterprises, because they are more exposed than most to the need for external bank financing. They are not likely to be able to draw down on capital.

I recognise and welcome the Government’s increase—to 4% as I recall—in the rate paid. That is an important and valuable step forward, but, for exactly the same reasons that have already been referred to, I urge them to go further. When a compulsory purchase goes through, very often landholders find it difficult to secure the funding to move forward. In particular, it is important to have a realistic rate of interest. Even with the current proposed changes, the rate will lag behind what is effectively the market rate.

The nature of compulsory purchase means that the majority of compensation due is meant to be paid before entry. When it is, all well and good. When it is not, there ought to be some compensation for those held up by late payment. By and large, the Government have now proposed introducing an interest rate of 2% above the base rate on late payments. That is a step forward, but still well below the commercial rate.

On compensation due before entry but not paid on time, the amendments seek an interest rate of 8% above the base rate. That is in line with the rate of interest charged on the late payment of commercial transactions. The truth is that that would be no burden on acquiring authorities. All they have to do is pay on time. If they pay on time, they will not attract the punitive rate of interest. It is a spur to good behaviour by acquiring authorities. An 8% rate would be closer to the market rate than the 4% rate currently available.

We suggest that any compensation on a quantifiable amount should be at 8%, which would put it in line with interest on a judgment debt after a finding by a court or tribunal. Other payments, which are not always quantifiable immediately but become apparent, should attract an interest rate of 4% above the base rate. That would be in line with commercial lending rates. We are therefore simply saying to acquiring authorities, “Behave like any other commercial body would.” I say to those on the Opposition Front Bench that that would not undermine the compulsory purchase regime, but ensure fairness and efficiency from an acquiring authority. Those that are efficient would have nothing to fear: if they just pay up promptly they will not have to pay the rate. If they do not, why should a landowner who has been compulsorily acquired against be in a worse position than if the land had been acquired as a result of a commercial negotiation or a judgment of a court not under the compulsory purchase regime?

That is the point of the amendments. They may sound technical, but they are actually quite important to a lot of rural businesses. I can say that there is little constituency interest for me—I think we have one farm in Bromley and Chislehurst—but this is an important issue for many businesses in rural areas.

Local Government Finance Bill

Debate between Robert Neill and Jake Berry

Wednesday 31st October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill]

All those authorities signed up to the concept of the joint authority. Any pooling will have to involve sensible negotiation between the various authorities about what is in their mutual interest. I would have thought that a degree of caution was perfectly understandable at this stage in the process. The important thing we are doing in this Bill is putting in place the legislative means to enable areas such as Manchester and other areas with pooling to take up more of the opportunities as, I hope, confidence grows. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will confirm that the ability to pool is yet another reason the Government have no intention of going down the route of imposing top-down unitary reorganisation—I am sure this is a timely moment at which to remind ourselves of that point. I hope that the opportunity to pool will also encourage other conurbations to develop a similar approach to that being taken in Greater Manchester. Pooling would provide a means of achieving many of the benefits of what were once described as city regions, without the need for the top-down imposition that went with those arrangements.

[Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend envisage pooling working across county boundaries? My constituency lies in the east Lancashire economic area—within which co-operation would work well—but quite a lot of the economic activity spreads over into Yorkshire. For example, a lot of businesses have their headquarters in Lancashire and premises in Yorkshire.

[Robert Neill]

I must confess that my view on that has shifted somewhat. I was initially sceptical about cross-county boundary pooling, because of the potential administrative complexities involved. For example, we would have to consider how to deal with the tier split where two-tier areas were involved. It might be easier to achieve where only adjoining unitaries were involved. We should not rule it out totally, however. It is important to recognise that the proposal that we are debating fits into the broader localism agenda, in that it recognises that economic geography might not follow the purely administrative geography of an area. I am in favour of maximum flexibility, and my hon. Friend has raised a good example. In my area, Bromley would probably fall within the area of Greater London, but there are some local authorities on the edge of London, such as Thurrock, Slough and Watford, whose economic geography would make them as much a part of the London economic area as of the shire county of which they are a part. I hope that the Government will consider this as an option, provided that the technical issues can be resolved. Perhaps the Minister will deal in detail with the important point that my hon. Friend has just raised.

It is particularly useful to explore that point in the context of the pool providing an opportunity to raise funding for infrastructure investment. Earlier this week, in our debate on the Public Service Pensions Bill, we discussed raising the cap on the amount of local authority pension funds that could be put into infrastructure investment. I favour raising the cap, as the Bill proposes. The proposal before us today would provide yet another means of raising revenue streams that could be put together to enhance the amount of a local authority’s investment leverage.

It is worth bearing it in mind that that happens elsewhere in Europe. We see a degree of it in the Federal Republic of Germany, but the area that I know best is in France. The French have developed quite sophisticated models of co-operation, known as communautés urbaines. They are generally similar to a Greater Manchester-style joint authority, stretching across a conurbation. An example that I know well is that of greater Toulouse, which, thanks to the pooling of resources, has been able to procure, invest and deliver infrastructure jointly. This has led to the development of a metro system in Toulouse, a tramway going out to the suburbs and improved road links to Blagnac airport. Toulouse is an historic city with a considerable learning pool in the centre, but it is also inextricably linked to Aérospatiale and the avionics industries around Blagnac, which are outside the municipal boundary. I am reminded that such co-operation was the logic behind local enterprise partnerships.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Neill]

I suppose it comes back to the technical issues that I mentioned on coping with tier splits in two-tier areas. We should not rule out the ability to try to achieve that, particularly if it can be done by agreement. It would be interesting to see if partial pooling could be achieved. It might not be something that happens at the beginning, but the point to remember about the whole of this local government finance reform is that it is making a major change in providing the legal mechanisms and the tools necessary for local authorities to use in relation to retained business rates. That is very important in itself, as this is, after all, the first time in many of our political lifetimes that the Treasury has forgone an element of revenue.

At the moment, all the business rates are, in effect, nationalised, taken back to the Treasury and distributed on a formulaic basis, which does not provide the sort of incentive for economic development and investment that we all wish to see. The Bill puts that right. I hope it will be possible to make pooling more attractive over time. As the deficit is paid down and the economy grows, the local share available to go into the pool can perhaps increase from its current 50% level. That would make retention as a whole and pooling more attractive, because the pot produced from the pool will, of course, be greater, and therefore even more attractive as a potential investment vehicle. I think we should examine the case with some care.

[Jake Berry]

As my hon. Friend develops his argument, I would be interested to hear how his views might relate to east Lancashire. When we formed the LEP, the borough council of Rossendale, which I represent, did not want to go into a wider Lancashire LEP. Eventually, it did so, however, and I think the then Housing Minister made absolutely the right decision on that occasion, as the arrangement has proved to be a great success. When it comes to the pooling of two-tier authorities, I could foresee a situation in which Rossendale council, which looks south towards Manchester for economic growth, would want to team up with the Associated Greater Manchester Authorities, but Lancashire county council could wish it to remain within Lancashire county for pooling purposes. In that exact situation, in my hon. Friend’s opinion, who would have sway and which argument would win?

[Robert Neill]

If I were a lawyer, like my hon. Friend, I would be advising the parties to try to come to some negotiation rather than litigating, if I might put it that way, as it would not be in the authorities’ interest to get into a dispute. The general approach has been, of course, that in the two-tier areas the bulk of the incentive should rightly go to the planning authority, as its members have to take the decision to allow development that may sometimes be controversial. It is right for such an authority to say to its electors, or to the people who sometimes complain about what the planning authorities do, that there are benefits to come from looking at the bigger picture, some of which will be captured for the local communities. I can see why that would be a sensible development, but it does not mean that I have become an advocate of unitary restructuring. It might be simpler, but the fact remains that the two-tier option has been taken into account in respect of the structures put in place by the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Neill]

When I was in the Department, we did not get into the issue of pooling council tax, for the simple reason that we were dealing with the business rates element. As I saw it, the first step in the equation was to secure the return of a significant amount of business rates revenue to local authorities, rather than for it to be taken back through the nationalised system, as I might call it, whereby it goes to the Treasury and is then redistributed through the formula grant, the point being that over a period of time we would be able to make local authorities less dependent on formula grant as the principal source of their income.

Interestingly, we should perhaps explore, as a future step along the road, the means whereby local authorities might voluntarily—I stress that this must have a voluntary basis—examine ways of aligning their council tax receipts. After all, authorities can seek to pool the product of that in their investment decisions at the moment. I referred to the success of the communautés urbaines in France, which has come about because they have been able to set up joint investment funds and procure directly. In a sense, they have been putting together the product of their local taxes, and we might able to do that. We must remember that the billing authority sets the level of council tax in any given place, but there is no reason now why local authorities in an area could not deliberately align their council tax levels if they wished to do so to make sure that their area was not disadvantaged economically by having different rates within what might be almost the same built-up area. That is important. The level of the business rate is not changed by these proposals, because the multiplier continues to be set nationally, but the incentive is in retaining the product. The amendment provides us with the important tool of giving maximum flexibility in the pooling of the product to get the maximum benefit from investment for the area, particularly in economic development terms.

[Jake Berry]

On the amendment and its effect on enterprise zones, I have been an advocate of the do-it-yourself enterprise zone, which I hope could be achieved in east Lancashire, along the M65 corridor, by using the localisation of business rates. Local authorities would be able to give rate holidays to people who set up new businesses within a DIY enterprise zone. This amendment allows a deduction for rates which should have been in the enterprise zone. Would that preclude the DIY enterprise zone or encourage such a zone?

[Robert Neill]

It ought to be a means of encouraging that type of zone. That seems to be the logic of the proposal. Being able to offset and make the deduction is necessary in ensuring that there is an incentive. I am sure that the Minister will be able to confirm that position. My hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen makes an important point about the interaction of pooling and enterprise zones: it is important not to create a disincentive to having an enterprise zone. Equally, we must not create a distortion in the local economy whereby investment is purely sucked into an enterprise zone because of the benefits, and other parts of the local authority area or the conurbation, which happen not to be in an enterprise zone but have real development opportunities, are set at a disadvantage. It is important to make sure that we get that interaction right.

[Jake Berry]

We have heard today how Lord Heseltine has produced an excellent report, and we must remember that he was the first proponent of enterprise zones. Does my hon. Friend believe that if the amendment is agreed to there will be a peppering of mini enterprise zones, which could be run by local authorities or groups of local authorities by pooling business rates and enabling advantages locally? There could be, for example, a mini silicon valley in Rossendale. Does he think that is the likely outcome?

[Robert Neill]

I hope that if there is the political and economic will to do that, we will see it; I favour the maximum diversity in these measures. We should seek to give the maximum flexibility to local authorities on how they use these various tools, because that is genuinely localist. What will be appropriate in Rossendale will probably not be appropriate in Bromley, but it is sensible that those alternatives are available. I want an emphasis on outcomes, rather than on structure or process. Breaking down the barriers that can sometimes be an impediment is an important part of that. My hon. Friend the Member for Bedford talked about a mindset. Just as breaking that down is important, so, too, is breaking down the structural impediments that might stifle the initiative that I am increasingly finding local authorities want to take up through the opportunities that come from business rates retention. That is an important part of the mix that we must introduce.