Local Services: London Suburbs
Debate between Rupa Huq and Jake Berry(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Jake Berry
We absolutely do continue to give that attention. It is a real London issue but certainly not a London-only issue—it is a metropolitan issue—but I am afraid to say that when I entered Parliament in 2010, the benefits system had lost public trust. The benefits system has to be fair for those people who, quite rightly, rely on it—any of us at any point in our lives could fall through the gaps and need a safety net to catch us, and I am proud to live in a country where that safety net exists—but it also has to be fair for taxpayers, who get up in the morning, go to work and pay their taxes to fund the benefits system. My personal opinion is that, in 2010, what brought forward the benefits cap was the lack of fairness in the system. We could probably have a separate debate about that. We would certainly need more than a brief half-hour debate to get to the bottom of it.
The link between planning permissions and biodiversity is a hugely important issue. I commend the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton for picking up on that issue from the Queen’s Speech. Tackling the climate emergency is probably the greatest challenge that any of us will face in our time in Parliament. The hon. Lady will of course be aware that the national planning policy framework currently has biodiversity net gain as one of its planning principles. Should the Government go further? Yes, and we will, and that is why we brought forward the additional protections that we talked about, including protecting nature by mandating biodiversity net gain into the planning system; ensuring that houses are not built at the expense of nature; and delivering viable natural spaces for communities. We will make sure that we improve and protect habitats and that areas have a local nature recovery strategy. We want to give local communities a greater say through the planning system and our planning White Paper, not least so they can have a greater say on protecting local trees, which, as hon. Members know, is often an issue that exercises our constituents, and quite rightly so.
The hon. Lady also raised concerns about density and high-rise development. Of course, all local planning decisions are a matter for the local council, in many ways in concert with the Mayor of London. If we look across the country, however, we see that such communities are a great way of tackling the housing shortage across the UK, and that they often lead to better communities with a greater concentration of services in one place. Often, people prefer to live in a more dense, as opposed to sparse, community, although many people may decide to move to the suburbs for the exact opposite reason. That is why planning is driven locally.
In terms of business rates and protection for suburban high streets, business rate localisation is again about giving those who are on local councils power to drive the ambition that they will know better than any Government Minister—maybe not better than the local Member of Parliament, but certainly better than any Government Minister. However, there is a wider agenda about protecting high streets and ensuring that they thrive, which we are addressing through the future high streets fund. In the prospectus, we acknowledged that suburban high streets could bid for that fund. They are a very important community asset and the Government should rightly ensure that they are protected.
The hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) spoke about youth funding and youth clubs. If she has read our manifesto, she will have seen that it made a significant financial commitment to a youth fund, which will come forward with many millions of pounds to ensure that we can increase youth provision in our communities. The Blackburn Youth Zone is on the border of my constituency and I know the huge contribution it makes to people’s lives. We must build on that.
Hon. Members also raised the issue of crime. It is correct that we seek to protect all communities, and we will do that by increasing the number of police officers on the street.
On the cross-London suburban taskforce—
Jake Berry
Right. On the cross-departmental suburban taskforce, I think the idea has merit. The hon. Lady said that one of her famous constituents is called Naughty Boy—I don’t think she was referring to me. On the basis that the Government are not currently proposing such a taskforce, why does the hon. Lady not be a bit naughty and set it up herself? Once it is up and running with some recommendations, I will happily meet her and other members of the taskforce to discuss how we can drive that agenda across Government.
Question put and agreed to.