Building Safety Bill

Baroness Winterton of Doncaster Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Wednesday 20th April 2022 Commons Chamber

Queen’s and Prince of Wales’s consent signified.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I must draw the House’s attention to the fact that financial privilege is engaged by Lords amendments 6, 17, 22 to 30, 103, 104, 111 to 113, 116, 120 to 127, 137 and 138. If they are agreed to, I will cause the customary entry waiving Commons financial privilege to be entered in the Journal.

Before Clause 117

Remediation of certain defects

[The Minister for Housing (Stuart Andrew)]

I beg to move amendment (a) to Lords amendment 93.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Government amendment (b) to Lords amendment 93.

Lords amendment 94, and Government amendment (a) thereto.

Lords amendment 98, and Government amendments (a) to (c) thereto.

Lords amendment 107, and Government amendment (a) thereto.

Lords amendment 108, and Government amendment (a) thereto.

Lords amendment 109, and Government amendments (a) and (b) thereto.

Lords amendment 145, and Government amendment (a) thereto.

Lords amendment 184, Government amendments (a) and (b), amendment (e), Government amendments (c) and (d), and amendment (f) thereto.

Lords amendment 6, Government motion to disagree, and Government amendment (a) in lieu.

Lords amendments 1 to 5 and 7 to 25.

Lords amendment 26, and amendment (a) thereto.

Lords amendments 27 to 77.

Lords amendment 27, and Government consequential amendment (a).

Lords amendments 79 to 92, 95 to 97, 99 to 106 and 110.

Lords amendment 111, and amendment (a) thereto.

Lords amendments 112 to 144, 146 to 183 and 185 to 191.

[Stuart Andrew]

I must start with a reminder of where this journey started: 72 people lost their lives in the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which was the largest loss of life in a residential fire since the second world war. All our thoughts are with those families who have lost loved ones. The Government are determined to ensure that such a tragedy never happens again.

I thank the Members of this House, noble Lords, cladding groups and industry stakeholders who have worked tirelessly on this landmark legislation. I remind Members that the Bill not only creates an improved building safety regulatory system but protects leaseholders, who have become victims in the building safety crisis. We have stuck to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State’s principles on building safety, which are that we must make industry pay to fix the problems for which it is responsible; protect leaseholders; and restore common sense to the assessment of building safety risks, thereby speeding up the fixing of the highest-risk buildings and stopping buildings being declared unsafe unnecessarily .

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[Stuart Andrew]

The hon. Gentleman is right that it would not be appropriate for me to speak on behalf of the Welsh Government, and I do not think they would like that either. What is important is that all buildings across the United Kingdom are safe. I hope that we will all learn from each other to ensure that we achieve that objective, because the safety of the residents is paramount in this instance.

I hope that hon. Members will welcome all the changes that the Government have made, which I firmly believe address the key concerns that have been raised in Parliament. It is in all our interests to see this crucial Bill become law as quickly as possible. I hope that all hon. Members across the House will support the Government amendments, and look forward to seeing the Bill implemented so that we can get these buildings into a safe position and give the residents the reassurance that they need.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call shadow Minister Matthew Pennycook.

[Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

This Bill has been a long time in gestation. First published in July 2020, it was subject to extensive pre-legislative scrutiny and was examined in exhaustive detail over five long weeks in Committee in the autumn of last year. Then, in January this year, the Government accepted that the approach they had taken to the building safety crisis over a period of more than four years following the Grenfell fire had not worked, and they announced that it would change. We raised a series of questions and concerns about what that change of approach would mean in practice, but we welcomed the fact that it had finally happened. It is of course right that we seek to ensure that those who profited from the sale of unsafe buildings and construction products pay their fair share when it comes to putting things right, that every developer and freeholder who can shoulders the financial burden of fixing their own buildings, that we restore common sense and proportionality to the assessment of building safety in general, and that leaseholders are properly protected from the costs of remediating all historical cladding and non-cladding defects. Labour has urged the Government to act on all these fronts, and more, for years, and we are pleased that we are now finally making progress toward some semblance of a comprehensive solution to the building safety crisis.

However, the manner and the pace at which this already complex and technical Bill has been overhauled to reflect the Government’s belated change of heart has been deeply problematic. Large sections of the Bill have been completely rewritten on the basis of hundreds of Government amendments tabled in the other place that the noble Lords had relatively little time to consider carefully or properly scrutinise. We welcome many of those amendments, particularly the removal of the building safety charge and the abolition of building safety managers, and we also welcome the important concessions the Government made in the other place in response to Labour amendments—for example, to exempt social housing providers from the levy. But that does not detract from the fact that this is no way to make good law, and I want to put on record the Opposition’s serious misgivings about the way the Government have gone about revising the Bill. As a result of the way it has been modified, it is now, by all accounts, something of a mess, and the five pages of complex Government amendments tabled yesterday afternoon, which again provided hon. and right hon. Members in all parts of the House with little time to properly consider them, do little to remedy that fact.

Nevertheless, the Opposition have always maintained that we want to see a version of the Bill on the statute book as soon as possible. As such, our focus is now on ensuring that its most glaring remaining defects are addressed so that it can be passed in what remains of this Session. To that end, there are five specific issues to be considered today: the duties placed on the Building Safety Regulator with regard to reviewing safety and standards, protection for leaseholders in buildings below 11 metres in height, protection for leaseholders in enfranchised buildings, the issue of buildings held in trust, and the proposed leaseholder cap.

The first can be dealt with very quickly. As well as having the resource and capacity to perform all the complex tasks assigned to it, it is critically important that the new Building Safety Regulator within the Health and Safety Executive be clearly tasked in the early years of its operation with assessing the benefits and costs of a range of measures in relation to safety and standards. Lords amendment 6 specified four—fire suppression systems, the safety of stairways and ramps, the certification of electrical equipment, and provision for people with disabilities—and we supported it. Having maintained in the other place that the amendment was entirely unnecessary, the Government yesterday tabled an amendment in lieu of Lords amendment 6 that almost entirely mirrors its provisions. On that basis, we will support that Government amendment.

The second issue is protection for leaseholders in buildings below 11 metres in height. As I argued on Report on 19 January, 18 metres was always a crude and arbitrary threshold that not only failed to adequately reflect the complexity of fire risk but was an entirely unsound basis for determining which blameless leaseholders were and were not protected by the state from the costs of remediation. The same argument applies to the 11-metre threshold. The blameless leaseholders who are trapped living in unsafe smaller buildings deserve the same protection as those in mid and high-rise unsafe buildings. As the Earl of Lytton argued in the other place:

“There seems no good reason for height exclusion on any moral, economic, safety or practical ground.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 29 March 2022; Vol. 820, c. 1508.]

The Government maintain—the Minister said as much again in his remarks—that there are no systemic building safety issues with buildings under 11 metres, yet we know from the devastating incident at Richmond House in Worcester Park in 2019 just how dangerous to life defective buildings under this height threshold can be. The Government further maintain that buildings under 11 metres in height that are dangerous are few in number. I suspect that is almost certainly the case, but all the more reason, then, to provide financial support to those blameless leaseholders who find themselves living in them rather than leaving them without protection. I noted what the Minister said when he gave a commitment that the Government would review such buildings on a case-by-case basis, but it begs the question: why will the Government not act by amending the Bill to cater for the exceptional circumstances that he spoke about?

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[Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op)]

I pay tribute to Members from right across the House for their support as this Bill has passed its various stages. I have spoken on this Bill a number of times, and it is fair to say that it is a very different piece of legislation from what was initially proposed. My constituents in Vauxhall, like others in constituencies around the country, have a basic right to live in a building that is safe, and it is a shame that it has taken nearly five years after the Grenfell tragedy for Ministers to implement this new regime. I welcome the establishment of the building regulator and the other measures in the Bill to protect lives, particularly the overdue safeguards for disabled occupants of high-rise flats; that is an issue that is not referenced enough.

Sadly, this is not just about safety; it is about who should pay for the mistakes that led to these buildings being unsafe in the first place. For too long, that has been left to innocent victims, with leaseholders and social housing providers having to pay while the developers and builders who are responsible have had their profits protected. I pay tribute to the many leaseholder campaigns and groups caught up in this, including many of my constituents in Vauxhall who have worked tirelessly on this issue for many years. Without them, we would not have reached this point.

The simple fact is that this crisis will not end until leaseholders in buildings of all heights are exempt from all fire safety costs, but that is still not the situation. Leaseholders can still have to pay up to £15,000 if funds cannot be recovered from the developer or freeholder, and leaseholders in buildings under 11 metres are entirely excluded. I place on record my support for retaining the two amendments, referenced by many Members, that were passed in the other place and that would solve these problems. Sadly, they have not been accepted by the Government. It is neither right nor fair that some leaseholders should pay while others are protected, and I hope the Minister will address that when he responds.

Lords amendment 155, tabled by my noble Friend Baroness Hayman, would abolish the unfair cap and legally protect leaseholders from all remediation costs. The Government claim that it is unnecessary to protect buildings under 11 metres, but fire does not discriminate. It does not care if a building is 11, 15 or 18 metres. I have heard from constituents in low-rise buildings in Vauxhall whose mortgage lenders still require a fire safety inspection. If that inspection finds problems, guess what? Those leaseholders in low-rise buildings will have to pay.

We must not allow the technical details of this debate to obscure the fundamental moral principle at the heart of it. Either the leaseholders are responsible for this crisis or they are not. The Government have said for many years that they are not, and I agree with that. I hope that Members will vote today for the amendments that will deliver our responsibility to fully protect leaseholders from all of the costs of the problems they did not cause. In the name of fairness and transparency, I urge all Members in this House to do that.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the Minister, Stuart Andrew.

[Stuart Andrew]

Once again, I thank all hon. Members for their contributions. They have raised lots of very serious points and questions and have clearly demonstrated a long-standing commitment not only to their constituents, but to this wider issue. I am grateful to right hon. and hon. Members for acknowledging that this piece of legislation is vastly different from what it was, and I apologise to the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook), for the necessity, I suppose, of the late amendments that we tabled. I hope that he agrees, however, that it is important for us to get the Bill on the statute book, and to start the process of making sure that people feel safe in their home. I was particularly struck by some of the contributions from my hon. Friends who mentioned that. I also thank all those who have been involved in campaigns; they have shown how hard-working campaigners can make a considerable contribution on a very serious issue such as this.

I will start by responding to some of the amendments that the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) tabled. I thank him and the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee for their prelegislative scrutiny of the Bill and their tireless scrutiny of the Government’s response since the fire at Grenfell Tower.

Amendment (e) to Lords amendment 184 states that no

“service charge is payable under a qualifying lease”

where the landlord is either a private registered provider of social housing or a local authority. It provides that funding to meet the costs concerned would come from the levy set out in clause 57. I reiterate the Government’s commitment to protecting leaseholders, but we will not be able to support the amendment. We are clear that those responsible for creating historical building safety defects need to pay to put them right. That principle should apply equally where the party responsible is a social housing provider or local authority. Social housing providers will not be subject to provisions that stipulate that building owners and landlords with a net worth of more than £2 million per in-scope building must pay all in-scope remediation costs. They will be required to pay in full only where they were involved in developing the building.

We are also introducing an ambitious toolkit of measures to allow those directly responsible for defective work to be pursued. Those measures include an extension to the limitation period under the Defective Premises Act 1972 to 30 years; a new course of action relating to product manufacturers; and provisions removing the protections afforded by special purpose vehicles and shell companies. We have been working closely with social housing providers to help them to understand the impact of these changes.

Amendment (f) to Lords amendment 184 provides that where

“the freeholder of a building is a local authority”,

remediation costs will be paid “in the first instance” by the developer of the building and otherwise through the levy set out in clause 57. Again, the Government will not be able to accept the amendment because developers are already expected to remediate their buildings, and as we have announced, developers have signed our pledge to commit to do that. We are also introducing the ambitious toolkit that I mentioned.

Non-commissioned Exempt Accommodation

Baroness Winterton of Doncaster Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Could I encourage people who are intending to speak to actually stand, because otherwise I will not know?

Levelling Up

Baroness Winterton of Doncaster Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

After all the delays, all the slogans and all the big promises, is this it? Is this really it? The sum total of ambition for our proud coastal and industrial—[Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. The Secretary of State was heard with respect. I do not expect the shadow Secretary of State to be shouted out.

[Lisa Nandy]

Conservative Members do not disrespect us when they chunter and jeer; they disrespect the people of this country.

Seriously, is this it? The sum total of ambition for our coastal and industrial towns, our villages and our great cities is a history lesson on the rise of the Roman empire, and Ministers scurrying around Whitehall, shuffling the deckchairs and cobbling together a shopping list of recycled policies and fiddling the figures. Is this really it?

For some of us, this is personal. We have lived these failures every single day. We have watched good jobs go, our high streets boarded up and young people who have had to get out to get on. The Secretary of State talks about Bury FC. My step-dad was a lifelong supporter of Bury FC, a regular at Gigg Lane and his last words to my step-brother before he died were, “What’s the score?” If he were alive today, he would never forgive the Government for standing aside while this asset at the centre of Bury’s community was allowed to collapse.

This system is completely broken, and the Secretary of State has given us more of the same. This was meant to be the Prime Minister’s defining mission of Government. I am not surprised he was too embarrassed to come here today and defend it himself. It is so bad that even the Secretary of State has privately been saying that it is rubbish. They tell us to wait till 2030, but where have they been for the last 12 years? I will tell them where—in Whitehall, turbocharging the decline of our communities, and cutting off choices and chances for a generation of young people.

The Secretary of State talks about 12 missions, but this is 12 admissions of failure. Let us take one of them. Only two thirds of children leave primary school with the basic skills to get on. Forgive me if I have missed something, but was he not the Education Secretary for four years? What about this? The Government want to tackle crime, but on their watch fewer than one in 10 crimes are solved and nearly all rapes go unprosecuted. No one listening to this would think that he had been in charge of the Ministry of Justice.

This is a Government in free fall—out of ideas, out of energy—with recycled, watered-down ambitions. None of this is new. In fact, some of it is so old that one of the better announcements that caught my eye was actually made in 2008 by Gordon Brown and has been running ever since. Across our home towns, we have seen good jobs disappear and far too many young people who have had to get out to get on. This does nothing to address that.

The Secretary of State talks about a Medici-style renaissance, but can he not see what is happening in front of his eyes? Our high streets are struggling because the local economy is struggling. People do not have money to spend in our shops, our businesses and our high streets, and the Government are about to hike up their taxes. This does nothing to address that. What we needed was a plan to connect our towns and villages to jobs, to opportunities and to our family and friends, but they have halved the funding for buses and scrapped the rail promises to the north, and where is the digital Britain we were promised?

We do not need to look to Rome, Jericho or renaissance Florence for inspiration, because in Preston, Wigan and Grimsby, people are delivering real change for themselves, not because of their Government, but despite them. Imagine what we could do if they would get out of the way and give us back the power that we demand to make decisions for ourselves. [Laughter.] Well, Conservative Members laugh. They do laugh—they have been laughing at us for years—and here it goes again.

It is absurd that we have to go cap in hand to Westminster to do things that we know will work for us. Do not believe me; believe the former Mayor of London, who in 2013 demanded powers that are nowhere to be seen in this report. We asked for powers, and we got a process. Where are the powers we were promised? Seriously, we have the arrogance of a Chancellor sitting in Whitehall, drawing lines on a map, choosing which of us have earned the right to have some say on the decisions that affect not their lives, but our lives, our families and our communities.

The Secretary of State talks about London-style regeneration. My colleagues in London will talk proudly about the London they call home, but not every part of this country wants to be the same. We have our own identities. We are proud of our own places. We believe in our communities and we believe in our people, and we deserve a Government who back us, not the smoke and mirrors that we have been handed today.

The Government have given more to fraudsters than they have given to the north of England. For every £13 they have taken from us, they have given us £1 back. We get a partial refund and they expect us to be grateful. [Interruption.] I will give the House an example. The Mayor of Greater Manchester today raised broken promises on rail, and he was told by one of the Government’s MPs, “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”

It is not their money; it is ours. Imagine what we could achieve if we had a Government with an ambition for Britain that matched the ambition of the people in it. We could build good jobs in every community. There is a global race to create these jobs, and we will bring them here so that young people in our coastal and industrial towns can power us through the next generation, like their parents and grandparents powered us through the last. In every community in this country, people know that we can do so much better than this, with well-paid jobs and money back in people’s pockets to genuinely transform our high streets. We can reform business rates to back our bricks and mortar businesses. We can be buying, making and selling more in Britain and have an educational recovery plan that stands as a testament to our commitment to the young people who make this country what it is. That is our mission, and today we have learned one crucial thing: for all the spin and all the gloss, the Government will not do it, because they do not believe in this country—we will. [Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. I think you are preventing the Secretary of State from speaking. I suggest that a modicum of silence from those on the Back Benches would be welcome.

[Michael Gove]

I have enormous respect and affection for the hon. Lady, but at the end of her response, I do not think I heard a single question, nor did I hear her disagree with a single policy that we have put forward. She is in distinguished company; she joins other Labour colleagues who have welcomed the White Paper, such as Tracy Brabin, the Mayor of West Yorkshire, who said there is

“lots to be pleased about”

in it, and the Mayor of South Yorkshire, who said on Sunday that he warmly welcomed the support that we were giving to Sheffield and that it was

“much needed recognition of the potential”

of that great city. I am glad that the hon. Lady is in good Labour company in welcoming the White Paper.

The hon. Lady mentioned Bury FC, and she suggested that this Government had stood aside. I am sorry, but this Government provided £1 million to the fans of Bury FC so that they could take back control of the club. It was not Labour Bury Council but Tory Ministers who saved that football club for its fans.

She asks where we have been over the past 12 years and about my time as Education Secretary. My mother said self-praise is no honour, but since the hon. Lady asks, there were more good and outstanding schools as a result. We closed the gap between rich and poor, we extended opportunity and we ensured that illiteracy and innumeracy were tackled.

The hon. Lady also says that we need more good jobs. I completely agree. That is why we have a plan for growth and she has no plan. She says that we need to revive our high streets. I completely agree. That is why we have a plan for investment, and the Opposition have no plan. She says that she wants improved connectivity. That is why we have ensured that gigabit connectivity has gone from 10% to 60% in the past two years, and they have no plan. She says that she believes in devolution. We have nine county deals and powers for Mayors. The only devolution in England that Labour ever offered was to London. It did nothing for the north and midlands when it came to devolution. She said she wants safer town centres. Why is it, then, that every time we have brought forward policies for tougher sentences in this House, Labour has voted against? It has no plans, no idea and no answers.

The Opposition also ask about new money. Do they not remember that Liam Byrne wrote in 2010 when the Labour Government left office that there was no money left? Now, they are so fiscally inconstant that they say they want simultaneously not to have a national insurance increase and to cut other taxes, and at the same time to increase public spending. Our commitment to abolish innumeracy cannot come quickly enough, starting with the Labour Front Benchers. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor has committed £500 million to tackling adult innumeracy; we know where that funding should go first. If they had their way, borrowing would go up, interest rates would go up, and the poorest in the north and midlands would lose out; instead of levelling up, they would bring the economy crashing down. That is why we never need to have those Front Benchers in power in this country ever.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. A little reminder that the Secretary of State should not refer to hon. Members by name.

It is going to require a lot of self-discipline if we are to have any chance of getting everybody in, so I ask for very short questions. The Father of the House will provide a marvellous example of that, I am sure: Sir Peter Bottomley.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I say to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State that those in the south-east hope this will be successful, giving individuals opportunity and changing the economic geography of the parts of this country that need to be connected to the thriving country we hope to create together. Will he heed council leaders such as Councillor Kevin Jenkins in Worthing, who wants Ministers to pay attention to things that they could do that would help and to stop doing things that do not help, because all over the country we need Ministers to pay more attention to local leaders?

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[Michael Gove]

My right hon. Friend was a brilliant Secretary of State both for Communities and Local Government and for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. He was, more than anyone else—apart from the former Chancellor, the former right hon. Member for Tatton—responsible for extending devolution across England. He is absolutely right: this is a model that works and on which we can build. He is also absolutely right to say that higher education is critical to the economic future of the north and the midlands, where we have outstanding universities. The increased research and development spending that we are announcing today will be directed towards those excellent institutions. Whether for life sciences in Newcastle, renewables in Teesside or materials in Manchester, we will be working with those universities to revive the north and the midlands.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee.

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

I thank the Secretary of State for an advance copy of the White Paper, although I have to admit that I have not quite read it all yet.

When the Select Committee has looked at this issue in the past, we have agreed that local councils have to be key to delivering a levelling-up agenda, and that means a devolution framework, with all councils getting real new powers and real new resources to deliver. When I looked at page 140, I saw the words “devolution framework”, and I was encouraged. Will the Secretary of State confirm, however, that in that list of powers, there is not a single new power? All the powers in there are already available to at least some local authorities, and all this framework does is enable more local authorities to have those powers. What is certainly not set out is a list of new resources that will be available to enable the spread of existing powers to more local authorities to be delivered in practice. Will he confirm those two things?

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[Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)]

The Secretary of State will know that Herefordshire has one of the smallest and sparsest populations and some of the lowest gross value added in this country. He will also know of my passion for the New Model Institute for Technology and Engineering, which promises to offer entirely new forms of learning and teaching, lower drop-out rates, lower levels of mental ill health, and much greater inclusiveness for young people in skills-based higher education—it is the small modular nuclear reactor of higher education. Will the Secretary of State encourage this model, and will he consider, call for and initiate a review of higher education in order to regenerate cities and towns across the UK?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. It is important for Members to be very brief, because otherwise we will not get everyone in.

[Michael Gove]

My right hon. Friend’s new model institute is a perfect model of what was envisaged by the former Member of Parliament for Orpington when he was the higher education Minister and introduced reform to ensure that we improved access to higher education, but with a particular focus on skills and jobs. I look forward to working with him and the Education Secretary to spread this model through across the UK.

--- Later in debate ---

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his visit to my constituency on Monday. He will recall the excellent fish and chip lunch that we shared. During that lunch, a number of points were raised. First, can he ensure that LNER delivers on its promise of a direct rail service from Cleethorpes through to King’s Cross? Urgent decision making was also referred to, and the way to help delivery of that would be to create a level 3 authority in the county.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

One question at a time.

[Michael Gove]

Those are very good points. We do need a direct train service to Grimsby and Cleethorpes. My hon. Friend’s other points are absolutely well made and well understood. I enjoyed the delicious fish and chips from Papa’s, with a side order of what I understand is called guacamole à la Mandelson.

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[Michael Gove]

The west midlands is succeeding at last under Conservative leadership, such as that provided by Andy Street and my hon. Friend.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. We really cannot have long preambles: one question to the Secretary of State, please.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

In South Shields: freeport bid—rejected; levelling-up bid—rejected; towns fund bid—rejected; transport funding—rejected. We have suffered Tory cuts of nearly £200 million. Tinkering with our governance alone will not change a thing. The Secretary of State once praised policies that, in his own words, meant

“the happy south stamps over the cruel, dirty, toothless face of the northerner”.

Is he proud that he has managed to do exactly the same again today?

--- Later in debate ---

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. I am afraid that we must bring this statement to an end. I am sorry that we have not been able to get everyone in, but we did manage about 70 in the hour and a half that was allocated. We have more business to move on to, but I thank the Secretary of State for his statement.

Holocaust Memorial Day

Baroness Winterton of Doncaster Excerpts

Thursday 27th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Fleur Anderson]

I thank my hon. Friend for her praise for peacebuilders. Peacebuilding is not easy. It sounds like it is a nice, cuddly thing to do, but it is actually very difficult, especially in areas of conflict. I have seen how hard it is in different areas of Africa in which I have worked. It is hard here, it is hard anywhere, so we must thank, praise and support peacebuilders around the world,

There were clear risk factors in Srebrenica leading up to the day when 8,372 men and boys were taken out in July 1995 and killed. That was one day of horror, but many days led up to that event. Right now in Tigray, thousands have been killed and rape is being used as a systematic weapon of war, and people from Tigray are being taken off the streets of Addis Ababa and detained. It is all based on ethnicity, and it is happening right now. These things are preventable. The holocaust was preventable, and these disasters and crimes against humanity are preventable.

I want to highlight four things that we can do. First, we must fulfil existing obligations in the United Nations genocide convention and the International Criminal Court Act 2001. I remind the House that the UN genocide convention places on the UK these responsibilities: an obligation not to commit genocide; an obligation to prevent genocide, which, according to the International Court of Justice, has an extraterritorial scope, so it is not just about what happens here in the UK; and an obligation to punish genocide. We have been hearing that there are war criminals in the UK who are not being taken to justice—that must end. The UK also has an obligation to enact the necessary legislation to give effect to the provisions of the convention.

That is a profound and wide-ranging set of obligations. Can the UK honestly say that it is living up to them? Have we had a review of our obligations under the convention? Can we look at what we are doing and take action to increase our efforts?

Secondly, we need to approach genocide and crimes against humanity as actionable events, not just consequences of existing conflict and warfare. The action we can take includes establishing the means to identify risk factors and assess threat levels posed by genocide and crimes against humanity. We can monitor at-risk countries, acting swiftly when risk factors are identified, be that through trade, defence, foreign or domestic policies. We can also resource and take seriously our responsibility to investigate, arrest and try or extradite genocide suspects living at large in the UK.

Thirdly—this is what we have been learning about most in the all-party parliamentary group for the prevention of genocide and crimes against humanity—there is the need for a national atrocity prevention strategy, a national Government-wide strategy on the prevention of genocide that includes domestic and foreign policy, putting in place institutional infrastructure to prevent genocide happening in the future. America, for example, has the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act of 2018. It set up a mass atrocities taskforce, with mandates for an annual report to the President. We do not have an equivalent of that, but we should. Without such a strategy and without political leadership in the face of today’s genocides and campaigns of atrocity crimes, opportunities for the UK to influence, mitigate, prevent and protect will continue to be missed and Britain’s promises of “never again” remain unfulfilled. Fourthly, we need to support holocaust education and wider education about other crimes against humanity and genocides.

Finally, we need to equip the next generation to address the genocides of the future, but we also need to take action now. I have to believe that one day there will be no more genocide, but that means that this day we have to take more action.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

The hon. Lady mentioned the ceremony which starts at, I think, just after 4 o’clock. I have warned the Front Benchers that it might be appropriate for us to all be able to go to that, so perhaps just bear that in mind.

Building Safety Bill

Baroness Winterton of Doncaster Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 19th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. Before I call the next speaker, I just want to say that we have a fair number of people who want to speak and not an enormous amount of time, so please bear that in mind. I call Sir Peter Bottomley.

Budget Resolutions

Baroness Winterton of Doncaster Excerpts

Monday 1st November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. I just point out that the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) was a shining example of keeping to the five minutes while taking an intervention. There is absolutely no problem with interventions as long as we keep to the five minutes, in which case we might be able to get everybody in.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ed Davey]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. I think I am supposed to respond to a point of order. That was not really a point of order, however; it was a matter of continued debate.

[Ed Davey]

I am very happy to debate fracking, and my record and the Government’s record on it. Thanks to the tough environmental regulation that we passed, particularly the seismicity regulation, we in the Liberal Democrats did more to stop fracking. I had Conservative Ministers shouting their case, day in and day out, saying that I should go faster, but I slowed it down and it is not happening. The record will show not only that there is no fracking industry in the UK but that there is a massive renewables industry, and that is thanks to the Liberal Democrats.

As we debate the need to level up—[Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order.

[Ed Davey]

Conservative Members do not like it, Madam Deputy Speaker, but they are going to have to learn to live with it.

As we debate the need to level up, anyone would have thought that the Government would want to save jobs in our energy-intensive industries, most of which are big employers outside London and the south-east. But no; there was no help at all in the Budget for the energy-intensive industries. The Government could have used money from a windfall tax on gas producers, as we would have done, to help those industries to decarbonise and to invest in the technologies of the future. This is yet another missed opportunity on climate change from the Conservatives. We can have a greener and fairer society, investing in climate action and helping the fuel poor, but we will not get it with this Conservative Chancellor and this Conservative Government.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

That last speech demonstrates what I have always believed: the Liberal Democrats will say one thing to one person and completely the opposite to other people.

I welcome the measures in the Chancellor’s Budget that pertained to local government spending, including the additional funding of £1.6 billion a year for adult social care. The reality is that most of the people who work in adult social care are on the lowest possible wages, so the increase in wages that they will receive and the opportunity to earn more money are good news, and I am glad that the Government are funding this appropriately. However, it is important for the Government to spell out the full detail of how adult social care will be funded not just for this year but for the years ahead. That is vital.

We know that as a result of the pandemic, an estimated 300,000 people who are renting privately are in serious arrears and at risk of losing their homes. The key here is the funding programme for housing, and particularly the affordable housing programme. I am delighted that we will see 1 million new homes created. I hope that it will be 1 million new houses, instead of multi-storey high-density flats that are unacceptable for people with families to live in. I also want to see the Government build 100,000 new homes for social rent, so that people can afford their rent rather than having to rely on benefits. The corollary of that is that we should reboot the right to buy, so that when people move into those homes, they are given the opportunity to buy them at the price that applies on the day they move in, however long it takes them to be able to afford to buy their own home.

The Government are to be commended for their work on combating rough sleeping. The Everyone In programme was a remarkable achievement, but we must ensure that we build on that and end rough sleeping for good by 2024. After all, that is the Government’s commitment. As I have said, Housing First needs to be funded and rolled out right across the UK. The reality is that every case of homelessness is unique, and everyone will need particular help and guidance. Some people just need a pointer in the right direction; others need a network of help and support to rebuild their lives.

I also welcome the confirmation of the £5 billion for replacing unsafe cladding. However, I remind Ministers that there was a promise not only of the £5 billion but of the details of the forced loan scheme for those people in low-rise blocks. We have still had no answer from the Chancellor as to how that funding will be made, the conditions that will be imposed or the mechanism by which it will take place. While the funding is welcome, and so is the tax on developers, it will not raise sufficient money to combat the amount of money that is having to be paid out. Equally, people still face the challenge of receiving huge bills for the replacement of unsafe cladding, and there is a huge backlog of that work still to be done.

I will raise two other matters before I sit down. The first is my disappointment that, after much lobbying, the Chancellor has still not seen fit to put right the long-term problem of refunding Equitable Life policyholders, who are still owed more than £2.8 billion. This issue is not going to go away; we will campaign on it until such time as the Chancellor comes up with the money that was promised in the first place.

Finally, I will just mention one tax increase in the Budget that is extremely welcome: the tax on tobacco. Often, we do not hear that announced from the Dispatch Box, but I am glad the Chancellor went there, increased the tax and carried on with the escalator. The fact is that smoking-related diseases cost the national health service £2.6 billion a year and the care budget £1.2 billion a year. I would like to see a levy put on the profits of the tobacco companies and the money put into smoking cessation services. That would be a welcome tax, and something we could do because we now sit outside the European Union. We would not have to pass that tax on to the smokers; we would hit the profits of the big tobacco companies.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

What with interventions and points of order, we are not really doing that well. After the next speaker, I will reduce the time limit to four minutes. I call Clive Betts.

Elections Bill (Instruction)

Baroness Winterton of Doncaster Excerpts

Instruction
Monday 20th September 2021 Commons Chamber

8.17 pm

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Before I call the Minister to move the motion, I should confirm that the amendment has not been selected.

[The Minister of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Christopher Pincher)]

I beg to move,

That it be an instruction to the Elections Bill Committee that it has power to make provision in the Bill about the use of the simple majority voting system in elections for the return of—

(a) the Mayor of London;

(b) an elected mayor of a local authority in England;

(c) a mayor of a combined authority area; and

(d) a police and crime commissioner.

The motion seeks to widen the scope of the Bill to provide for these measures to be introduced. I do not intend to outline the purpose and effect of the proposed amendments in detail, because the House will be well versed in parliamentary procedure and will doubtless remind us that this debate focuses on the motion before us. If the motion is agreed tonight, we will have the opportunity to debate the substantive issues fully as the Bill progresses through Committee and its other remaining stages.

However, it may help hon. Members if I briefly set out the Government’s reasons for the change, without prejudice, of course, to the outcome of any substantive debate we may subsequently have on the amendments themselves.

Building Safety

Baroness Winterton of Doncaster Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2021 Commons Chamber

(3) a further sum, not exceeding £16,461,164,000 be granted to Her Majesty to be issued by the Treasury out of the Consolidated Fund and applied for expenditure on the use of resources authorised by Parliament.—(Scott Mann.)

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Before I call Clive Betts, the Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, to open the debate, let me inform the House that, as there are clearly a lot of Members who want to speak, there will be a five-minute time limit on speeches, which will be on the screens.

Rating (Coronavirus) and Directors Disqualification (Dissolved Companies) Bill

Baroness Winterton of Doncaster Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 28th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

The reasoned amendment in the name of the Liberal Democrats has been selected.

[The Minister for Regional Growth and Local Government (Luke Hall)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be read a Second time.

The Bill contains two halves: first, a measure that changes the valuation assumptions that are applied when making business rate determinations in the light of covid-19; and secondly, a measure that will provide for the disqualification of unfit directors of dissolved companies. I will start with the first measure before moving on to the second.

The pandemic has presented significant challenges for businesses in all sectors. Our response has been of a similarly unprecedented scale, with more than £280 billion provided throughout the pandemic to protect millions of jobs and businesses. In this year’s Budget, the Chancellor announced an extra £65 billion of support for 2020-21 and 2021-22. The support we have provided for businesses included 100% business rate relief for all eligible retail, hospitality, leisure and military properties for 2020-21, at a cost of £10 billion. Combined with those eligible for small business rate relief, this means that more than half of ratepayers in England will have paid no rates in 2020-21.

At this year’s Budget, we confirmed a further three-month extension to the full 100% business rate relief for retail, hospitality and leisure businesses, followed by a further nine-month period of relief at 66% subject to the cash cap, at a further cost of £6 billion. That takes the total level of support provided to businesses by Government through relief from business rates since the start of the pandemic to over £16 billion.

That is an important context for the Bill, because as well as helping businesses through the pandemic, it is also important that we support local government with the critical role it has in supporting our communities. A vital part of that is the income that it receives from business rates, so while it is necessary to provide rates relief to businesses, it is important that we do so in a way that is targeted and that ensures that those who can still contribute continue to pay this tax.

With that in mind, clause 1 is concerned with how rateable values should be assessed during the pandemic. A business rates bill is calculated by multiplying the rateable value of the property by the multiplier, or the tax rate, and then applying the reliefs. The rateable value of a property is therefore, broadly speaking, its annual rental value at a set valuation date, which in the current rating list is 1 April 2015. All rateable values should therefore reflect annual rental values at 1 April 2015. This provides a consistent tax base for all businesses.

Of course, it is necessary to update the tax base, which is done at regular revaluations undertaken by the Valuation Office Agency. The next revaluation was originally scheduled for 1 April 2021, based on values at 1 April 2019, but last year we took the step of postponing it to 1 April 2023 to ensure that it better reflected the impact of the pandemic; Parliament approved that change by passing the Non-Domestic Rating (Lists) Act 2021. The Act received cross-party support, for which we were extremely grateful.

Outside those general revaluations, a ratepayer can still submit a challenge to the VOA on their property’s rateable value between revaluations for a number of reasons, such as to correct factual errors or reflect a material change in circumstances. If not satisfied with the outcome of the challenge, the ratepayer can appeal the VOA’s decision to the valuation tribunal. It has been an established principle of the business rates system that a material change in circumstances challenge can be made on the basis of a physical change to a property or its locality. For example, a successful MCC challenge could be made following the partial demolition of a property, or significant roadworks near a property that might affect its value.

However, following the pandemic, the VOA received high numbers of MCC challenges seeking a reduction in rateable value to reflect the impact of the pandemic. Of course, the MCC legislation, as first set out in the Local Government Finance Act 1988, was not designed with covid-19 in mind, and the MCC system has never been used in response to economy-wide impacts or shocks. It has therefore become necessary to clarify, as clause 1 does, the treatment of covid-19 in assessing rateable values.

We have been clear that relying on the MCC system to help businesses that need further support in the light of the pandemic is not the right mechanism. It would mean significant taxpayer support going to businesses with properties such as offices, many of which might be able to operate normally throughout the pandemic, at a time when we have provided significant support to those most affected.

For example, the workforce of a consultancy firm based in central London that was previously entirely office-based is likely to have been working largely from home since the start of the pandemic, but the business itself may have continued to operate throughout. Under the business rates appeal regime, it could have argued that its office space had undergone a material change of circumstances due to the reduced occupancy.

If that business’s appeal had been successful, it would have been awarded a business rates reduction, but it would not have been right for it to have a reduced tax liability on that basis, given that it had not actually suffered an economic impact. Relying on the MCC system to support businesses would also mean resolving disputes through the courts, which could take years and create additional uncertainty both for businesses and for local government, which relies on income from business rates to deliver vital local services.

The Bill will therefore ensure that the coronavirus and the restrictions put in place in response to it cannot be used as the basis for a successful MCC challenge or appeal. It will ensure that changes to the physical state of a property can continue to be reflected in rateable values as and when they occur, irrespective of whether they are a result of the coronavirus, but that the general impact of the pandemic on the property market will not be reflected until the next revaluation in 2023. Until then, all rateable values will continue to be based on the property market as at 1 April 2015. This approach is supported by the Public Accounts Committee, which has welcomed the financial certainty that such a measure gives to councils.

Clause 1 applies in England. Business rates policy is fully devolved, so whether the same legislation is necessary in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland is a matter for their respective Governments, but we have been working closely with the devolved Administrations regarding the Bill. Although the law in Wales is similar to that in England, different legislation applies in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Of course, the impact of the coronavirus may have been different, so whether the devolved Administrations choose to follow the measures set out in clause 1 will depend on the individual circumstances and choices made in those countries.

We have also supported businesses. We have put £16 billion of support into business rates for the pandemic, and we have announced a relief worth an additional £1.5 billion for ratepayers impacted by the pandemic who have not been able to access business rate reliefs. These new reliefs will be administered by local authorities and will be distributed according to which sectors have suffered the most economically, rather than on the basis of temporary falls in property value. This will ensure that support is provided to businesses in England in the fastest and fairest way possible, and we will continue to work with and support councils and local government to enable ratepayers to apply for the new reliefs as soon as possible.

The second part of the Bill deals with the abuse of the process whereby companies are removed from the register and dissolved. The large majority of company directors are responsible, passionate about their businesses and diligent. They act as effective stewards of the companies to which they are appointed, and I pay tribute to the directors who make such a valuable contribution to our economy and who have fought so hard over the past year to ensure their company’s survival, preserving the jobs and livelihoods of so many within their business and beyond.

Unfortunately there are exceptions, and the business community and the wider public must be protected from those individuals who abuse the privilege of limited liability. Those directors who act recklessly, irresponsibly or even criminally should expect to have to answer for their conduct. That means expecting to have their conduct investigated and, if they had done wrong, facing the possibility of being disqualified from acting as a company director for up to 15 years, depending on the severity of their misconduct. Disqualification protects the public from the actions of those who have demonstrated they are unfit to hold the position of a director of a company, and acts as a deterrent to reckless or culpable behaviour.

Evidence to support disqualification action comes from the investigation of companies and the conduct of their directors. The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy may investigate live companies through the powers contained in the Companies Act 1985, and also the conduct of the directors of insolvent companies through similar powers in the Insolvency Act 1986 and the Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986. If such investigations reveal evidence that a director’s conduct has fallen below the standards expected of someone in their position, a period of disqualification can be sought, either through a court application or through an under- taking given by the person to the Secretary of State. A period of disqualification protects the business community and the wider public by preventing the person from acting in the promotion, formation or management of a limited company. Breach of a disqualification order is a criminal offence, and an extremely serious matter.

As things stand, though, there is a loophole in the disqualification regime that some irresponsible directors have been able to exploit. It concerns the situation where a company has been dissolved without entering insolvency proceedings. Dissolution should not be used as an alternative to insolvency proceedings, but there is evidence that some directors have been using the process both as a way of fraudulently dodging the payment of company debts and of avoiding insolvency proceedings and the scrutiny of their behaviour that comes with that.

Affordable and Safe Housing for All

Baroness Winterton of Doncaster Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. I am going to have to reduce the time limit to four minutes if we are to have any chance of getting everybody in. I remind Members that, if they take interventions, they should take them within the time limit. I know it is difficult, because we have a lot of speakers, but if those who did not put in to speak intervene, it prevents those who did put in to speak from making their speeches. I am sorry about this, but I will reduce the limit to four minutes, and if people take interventions, please try to stay within the limits that we have set.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Streatham) (Lab)]

Members of Parliament right across this House—certainly my colleagues representing constituencies in London—will know that most of the casework we receive relates to housing. A secure and safe home is the most basic need that is denied to far too many. The Government repeatedly talk about levelling up, but, knowing this need, they continue to fail on all fronts those who are most in need.

The proposed leasehold reforms mean that new leaseholders will not be subject to high and escalating ground rents, but what about the 4.5 million existing leaseholders? Just look at safety and security. The Government have promised to protect leaseholders from cladding costs no less than, I believe, 17 times, but we are now four years on from Grenfell and up to 11 million people are still living in homes with unsafe or unsuitable cladding. Leaseholders continue to be hit by profiteering at every single stage of this scandal. As well as having to pay to remove dangerous cladding at their own expense and all the other safety issues that have now arisen, this Government continue to fail them as they are hit with sky-high insurance premiums and extortionate waking watch costs.

This issue affects an estimated 12,000 people across Lambeth alone, where my constituency is. It is very clear that the Government must provide upfront funding to make these homes safe, and be clear that neither interim nor remediation costs will fall on leaseholders. But again and again, this Government fail to deliver. That is why I am so pleased that Labour has tabled an amendment to set binding targets to remove all cladding by June 2020 and to protect leaseholders from these costs. If the Government want to actually keep a promise for once, they might consider walking through the Lobby with us today.

We certainly need more housing and the capacity to build it. We need so much more right across the country, but at what cost? Handing more power to developers, reducing the amount of real affordable housing—not what we currently call affordable—and taking power away from local government does not make much sense to me. Social housing providers have already expressed concerns that these changes to planning will actually reduce housing affordability. I do not understand how that is levelling up.

The Local Government Information Unit says that the changes would

“leave local government with the political liability on planning whilst depriving them…of the powers to manage it effectively.”

From planning to leasehold reform, I just cannot see how this Government can reconcile what they call building safe and affordable housing with these measures, which leave many with a guarantee of neither.

As we come out of this pandemic, the Government will have missed a major opportunity: their own target to decarbonise by 2050. Even doing this by 2050 is not good enough, so why are there no specific measures in the Queen’s Speech about driving forward all our plans on protecting the environment? We have so little time and we should be doing so much more as a country.

I was extremely disappointed to find that the Queen’s Speech did not specifically provide more funding for homelessness. I would like to see the Everyone In scheme turned into long-term policy. We saw how much we were able to deliver during the pandemic for those who are homeless. Ultimately, we should be removing the Vagrancy Act 1824, which criminalises the homeless, and doing all that we can to support them. Under this Government, buying a home has become the preserve of the rich, and nothing in the Queen’s Speech is doing anything to change that.

Overall, the legislative proposals in the Queen’s Speech and the laws that have already been put forward, including the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Act 2021 and the spy cops Act—the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Act 2021—all point towards a new type of authoritarian Government. I certainly did not expect this Government to be a champion of civil rights, but all this put together is something else. From the Bill that will disenfranchise millions of voters by barring those—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. I am afraid that the hon. Lady’s time is up.

--- Later in debate ---

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con) [V]]

I note that we, Madam Deputy Speaker, have just entered our 25th year of service in the House. In all that time, I have been clear that there is no more important issue to the residents of the constituency of Reigate than planning. Crucially, the protection of our environment hangs on the fact that we are London’s green belt.

I just want to pose a couple of warnings for my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench. They might have noticed that in the last set of local elections only the Borough of Reigate and Banstead remains a district or borough council in Conservative control. These cases almost always turn on people feeling disenfranchised and remote from the planning process. Unless things change, it is only going to get worse. There is also the issue—despite our right hon. Friend the Paymaster General’s machine-gunning at the Dispatch Box of the deputy Leader of the Opposition—of the noise around the developer connection with the Conservative party. The delivery of a developer-led system of house provision will haunt us in future if we do not address it.

I want to point my hon. Friend the Minister to the comments made by our hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) about enabling a plan-led system. If the local authority is coming forward with its own plans, of course it should not need planning permission. The local authority will have produced a plan, which developers would then bid to build.

Within that, however, we need a more important national debate about where housing is to go and about how we are to deliver levelling up so that we can get good houses, good jobs and good infrastructure in those parts of the country where people have drifted away—provincial towns in the midlands and the north—to seek employment elsewhere. I draw my hon. Friend the Minister’s attention to the excellent article in The Times today by our former leader, our noble Friend Lord Hague. We need to address the levelling-up agenda, and we can do it within the planning system, but if we do not, we will be in the deepest trouble, because we will not be able to deliver our principal political objectives.

I want to make two other points. First, I draw the attention of my hon. Friend and his colleagues in the Department to the concern about the building safety fund and how it affects the leaseholders of Nobel House. I have written to the Secretary of State urgently, and I have now had two letters from his colleague, the noble Lord Greenhalgh. Unhappily, the last letter, which arrived today, was in response to my letter to the Secretary of State of 17 December 2020—I did have a previous response to a letter I sent a month later—but this is now absolutely urgent. These leaseholders are in the deepest trouble because of the failure of Avon Estates properly to register a claim for the building safety fund and, indeed, for the waking watch fund.

Finally, on another element of the Queen’s Speech, the welcome ban on conversion therapy lacks any detail on how it will work. The accompanying notes imply that people who are inflicting it at the moment might get protected. We need assurance on that very shortly.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Nominations closed at 5 o’clock this afternoon for candidates for the post of Chair of the Backbench Business Committee. One nomination has been received, and a ballot will therefore not be held. I congratulate Ian Mearns on his re-election as Chair of the Backbench Business Committee.

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[James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)]

Back to housing, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I welcome the Queen’s Speech last week and remain very enthused by what lies ahead in the Planning Bill. There is no question but that the UK needs to build more affordable homes. In my humble opinion, we should all aspire to a much higher rate of home ownership so that everyone can take an equity share in their future. Having a place to live that we call home is surely one of the most fundamental rights that we have.

The Government are really investing in this. We have a new £11.5 billion affordable homes programme, a new mortgage guarantee scheme, discounts for first-time buyers, the abolition of section 21 of the Housing Act 1988 on no-fault evictions, the extra £140 million in discretionary housing payments, plus much more. It is a good news story.

However, the thrust of my argument today is that while there is a clear need for new housing, it needs to be in areas that have the capacity to absorb it. To put it bluntly, it cannot be at the expense of the quality of life that our constituents enjoy, notably in the south-east, and it must not include building on the green belt, eroding what is left of our open spaces or ripping the heart out of our rural communities. I therefore urge the Government to take note of what my constituents in Bracknell and Wokingham are telling me.

In Bracknell Forest, a total of 1,688 new houses were built last year, a 123% increase over the previous year. Of those, 404—23% of the overall target—are affordable homes, with 125 for affordable home ownership and 279 for affordable rent, as well as 107 new houses for the elderly. So we are doing it, but it is wrong that councils should be forced to build on whatever scraps of land are left over. It is a similar picture in Wokingham, where the council was almost powerless to stop the activities of speculative developers.

I therefore urge the Government please to consider the following. The ripping up of the Lichfield table was a welcome step, but I would now propose a new formula that focuses on residual land availability as a percentage of the total area. If there is nothing left in a constituency except for residual farmland, golf courses or school playgrounds, do not build on it. We must also build on urban and brownfield sites, and we should build up, not out. Areas such as the midlands, the north-west and the north-east are full of such potential development sites and investment is needed there.

I am led to believe that up to 1 million homes across the UK are currently unoccupied. Councils must make the best use of them. Permissions for a further 1 million homes have already been granted too, so let us do this with a time limit. We also need extra protections for farmland, so let us please impose punitive and progressive taxes on those who seek to build on what is left of it in our constituencies. To be frank, the net zero argument is daft. If we concrete over trees, fields and hedgerows and then plant a few daisies, do not be surprised if the oxygen stops flowing.

We must allow our councils to honour existing local plans and not have extra targets forced upon them. We need to allow them the autonomy to say no and give our communities a proper voice. Democratic consent must therefore be implicit in any new Bill, and it must not become a weapon for the big state. Finally, there is no moral justification for concreting over our green and pleasant land with yet more dark satanic mills. Not only will we continue to haemorrhage loyal voters who have simply had enough, as we saw last week in the council elections, but we will never get that land back, so let us please ensure that the Planning Bill becomes what we would wish it to be.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

In order to accommodate all speakers who have applied, after the next speaker I will reduce the time limit to three minutes.