Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Roberta Blackman-Woods and Grant Shapps

Monday 2nd July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

Business rates are always a heavy cost and people like me who started our businesses in shops are familiar with that heavy burden. We have taken 300,000 of the smallest businesses out of paying any business rates at all and, in addition, we have spread the rise, which is only an inflation-level rise, for other businesses over up to three years. We will continue to look at ways to help businesses, and particularly the smaller shops, with their rates bills.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

What plans does the Minister have to assist areas with high shop vacancy rates, such as Grimsby, which has 28.3% vacant, West Bromwich, which also has 28.3% vacant, Stoke-on-Trent, which has 25% vacant, and Sunderland, which has 23% vacant? Those areas, so far overlooked for Government funding, have an average unemployment rate of more than 10%, which is way above average. Can we expect there to be more weighting towards disadvantaged areas in the next round of Portas pilots?

[Grant Shapps]

One of the useful changes we have made through the Localism Act 2011 is to allow local authorities to vary the rates downwards, which means that local authorities can look at their high streets and try to help them. I rather brushed over a point earlier. Those on the Opposition Front Bench have previously called for £5 million to be spent on bringing those empty shops back into use—I remind the hon. Lady that those calls came from her own Front Benchers—and we have doubled that and spent £10 million to assist.

Regeneration

Debate between Roberta Blackman-Woods and Grant Shapps

Thursday 19th April 2012 Westminster Hall

[Grant Shapps]

Perhaps the hon. Lady is not aware of just how much time I have spent with and energy I have expended in these communities over the five years for which I have been either the shadow or the actual Housing Minister. I appreciate that she is right to say that people were left abandoned and stranded in empty streets after the disastrous demolition and managed decline programme that was housing market renewal. The Government managed to bring in money to close that programme and ensure that anyone who lives in a street that is largely empty will now be rescued from that situation. It was very much a rescue programme for a disastrous Government scheme.

I disagree with the conclusion that some people have drawn that the toolkit of different methods available—now open—to all local areas to manage the problem left by housing market renewal and failed regeneration in the past can be ignored. I am talking about the heart of where these problems exist—places such as Sefton—where at local level people have decided to use programmes such as the new homes bonus so that they can borrow against that money, flatten an area and bring in developers to create new housing there. That is being done not through some enormous Government scheme, with money that we cannot afford, but by using the initiatives that are in place. The initiatives are in the toolkit—initiatives such as TIF 1 and TIF 2.

Another initiative is the regional growth fund, much discussed this afternoon. I noticed that it was entirely dismissed by Opposition Members. That is quite bizarre. We know that, for example, both Hull and Wakefield—housing market renewal areas—have been specifically helped by that funding. It is not true to say that only 20% of that funding has been pledged or allocated; £1.7 billion has been allocated or is under provisional allocation, so that figure is entirely inaccurate.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

I want to clarify that I was not suggesting that round 1 money had not been allocated. I was pointing out that although the money has been allocated, it has not necessarily been received by the intended recipients.

[Grant Shapps]

I can bring the hon. Lady right up to date on this. There have been 176 bids in relation to the first 2 rounds, and conditional allocations of £1.4 billion. She may well be right to say that not all the money has been paid out. Just as it takes time, as she argued earlier, to do regeneration, it also takes time, as she well knows, to spend money even on very worthwhile causes. None the less, the purpose of the regional growth fund is of course to try to rebalance the economy. If people do not accept, as the Government do, that we have to fundamentally shift and change the dynamics of the economy to make areas that have been regenerated continue to work in the future, perhaps it is difficult for them to understand why we think that the regional growth fund is essential.

It does not stop there, however. We have talked about the £35 million doubled up to £70 million of public money that has gone into bringing the disastrous HMR programme to an end. We are in the process of legislating to localise business rates. That is an enormous potential benefit for towns, cities and areas across the country. It will not, as it has sometimes been characterised, disadvantage deprived areas of the country. In preparation for the debate, I got hold of this list. We can look back at previous changes that would have occurred if business rates had been localised and look at the additional power that the measure will therefore give local areas. It is interesting to note that Liverpool would have had a 37.2% change in its business rates from 2005-06 to 2009-10. If it were able to keep that money, it would be 37% better off than under the old system, whereby all the money is centralised and then doled out. The figure is 38.2% for Knowsley, 36.3% for South Tyneside, 31.1% for Manchester, 26.9% for Sunderland, 26.8% for Sefton, 26% for Doncaster, 25.1% for Middlesbrough. The point that I am trying to make with those figures, very graphically, is that another policy that will provide the tools to local areas to enable them to regenerate in a manner appropriate to them is the localisation of business rates. It is absolutely critical to regeneration and, for some reason, entirely overlooked in the response.

Local Government Financing

Debate between Roberta Blackman-Woods and Grant Shapps

Tuesday 29th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

Which is new money and was announced last week. No doubt the hon. Lady in her next intervention will welcome that money, which would presumably go to areas such as that the one she describes.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that that £1 billion is additional funding—on top of the money that would already have been made available to RDAs and to local councils in order to support regeneration in their areas?

[Grant Shapps]

I may be living in a parallel universe, but I and Government Members were here last week for the Budget, when all that was described in a great deal of detail, including in the Red Book, which explains that the fund is new and comes out of the total spending envelope. It is fairly straightforward.

Let us make some progress. We will scrap Labour’s plans for new bin taxes, which meant even higher tax bills for local families and harmed the environment by encouraging more fly-tipping and more backyard burning. We need to go green, but we cannot have the bin bullies and the town hall Taliban who seemed to look after town halls before. Instead, we are going to embrace opt-in schemes, such as Windsor and Maidenhead’s recycle bank initiative, through which families are rewarded for recycling and doing the right thing. We will encourage people to do the right thing, rather than punish them when they do not.

Incentives can work for councils, too. Let us reward local authorities for driving economic performance in their area, and for building new homes. Incentives can work for councils in all sorts of ways.