Planning Reform

Simon Clarke Excerpts

Wednesday 13th March 2024 Westminster Hall

[Sir Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered reform of the planning system.

The housing shortage that we face in this country is the great crisis facing the United Kingdom today. Since 1973, house prices have more than tripled in real terms, with the average house price today reaching over £284,000. Just in the last 20 years, the ratio of house prices to incomes has more than doubled. The average household faces paying more than seven times their annual income for a home to call their own; in 2000, it was three times their income. For the average individual, the statistics are even starker. The housing shortage means that the overwhelming majority of our young people simply cannot hope to afford a home. It means that people cannot move to be closer to work or to their family, and that people are stuck in cramped, unfit and often unsafe homes throughout the country.

The housing shortfall is strangling our economy and choking off the growth that we need to restore our economic fortunes. Put simply, the housing shortage is making us all much, much poorer. The only solution to this crisis is to build more homes. According to a Centre for Cities report, the UK has a shortfall of well over 4 million homes. Even with the Government’s target of building 300,000 homes a year, that deficit would take at least half a century to fill, and sadly we are nowhere near that number.

Evidence from around the world shows the power of home building to make lives better for people right across the income spectrum. In 2016, Auckland liberalised its planning system and precipitated a boom in housing construction, which resulted in significantly lower rents six years later. Across the Atlantic in the United States, new buildings attracting more affluent residents have freed up the homes that they used to live in, lowering demand and rents for homes across the entire market, even at lower income levels. A Swedish study found that the benefits of new housing are evenly distributed among residents from different income groups.

How we actually get to building more homes is clearly far from simple, but what we do know is that the planning system is not fit for purpose, so how do we reform it to get where we need to go? There is growing consensus across the House that the planning system is holding us back from delivering the homes that are needed. Fixing our outdated, top-down and restrictive processes must now be a priority for both main parties and, I hope, all parties in the House. But how do we do that?

The first and most important thing is to make home building more popular with the British public. When asked, people across the country broadly support the idea of new housing. The 2020 British social attitudes survey found that 58% of Britons want to see more home building, with only 25% inherently opposed, and yet, as colleagues will know, specific house building projects in one’s own constituency always seem to attract far more opposition. Some of that opposition is unthinking, knee-jerk nimbyism, and we should have no time for it, but not all of it is unreasonable. Despite the benefits of new homes, existing residents see very little immediate benefit when development comes to their home area. They do, however, experience real costs, ranging from crowded roads to overburdened GP surgeries, and sometimes they witness low-quality homes being unceremoniously dumped on the edge of their town.

[Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

I do not disagree with a number of my right hon. Friend’s points. One concern that people have at a local level in Suffolk, and more generally, about additional house building is that it very rarely comes with the additional infrastructure that he mentions. More houses are built, but more pressure is put on the local infrastructure—on schools, hospitals, GP surgeries and the roads. What does he suggest as a mechanism to change that, so that if people accept more house building, they actually get the infrastructure that is needed?

[Sir Simon Clarke]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I have seen that in my constituency, where a new GP surgery in Nunthorpe, a suburb in the south of the town, has changed people’s attitudes to new homes coming in. However, we need to institutionalise that sort of offer to residents. The planning system must deliver a worthwhile settlement that gives residents a reason to say yes to extra homes.

The Government have legislated for one important potential solution: community land auctions. CLAs allow local government to see a substantial share of the profits from new development, enabling local authorities to capture the uplift in value that comes from planning permission being granted. The value of agricultural land can rise by up to 80 or 100 times. The council getting their fair share of that increase in the underlying land value allows them to deliver benefits to local people, which they can then spend on the new infrastructure that my hon. Friend rightly says is essential to make new developments viable. Residents then get to see their fair share of the upside, too, while the country sees homes unlocked with more community support. I hope to see the Government press on and make the most of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 by getting trials of CLAs moving quickly, because they have huge potential.

[Sarah Dyke (Somerton and Frome) (LD)]

“Decisions and policies are most trusted when the people making them are representatives of the people affected by them”—that quote is from a civil service training manual. Does the right hon. Member agree that we need to ensure that localism remains in the planning process?

[Sir Simon Clarke]

I think localism as a principle of good Government is very important. I am a strong believer in the mayoral devolution of the kind that the Government have introduced in recent years. I will come to the hon. Lady’s question about how we can best address the balance between local and national Government. Local government can be a very good thing, but it can also become an obstacle to actually building homes anywhere at all, which is something we need to try to balance.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Simon Clarke]

Of course—it would not be a debate without the hon. Gentleman.

[Jim Shannon]

I commend the right hon. Gentleman for bringing this debate forward. Planning rules on the mainland are slightly different from those in Northern Ireland. The principles that he refers to are important, so I sympathise with his comments, particularly about the time that it takes for a planning application to be granted fully. I have a close relationship in my area with the local planners through the council and also with numerous developers and builders, because there is a tradition of building in my constituency. The frustration about timescales is understood. Does he agree that one of the most pivotal ways in which we could reform our planning system is by ensuring that councils are funded adequately to ensure a more robust planning approval process? Councils have a key role to play; let us make sure they are part of it.

[Sir Simon Clarke]

I totally agree. The hon. Gentleman is exactly right: councils need to have the planning departments to process the applications, and too often, as we know, good planners are poached by consultancies when they are needed in our local government system. The answer is to allow local authorities to capture more of the upside financially from new homes being built so that they can fund the requisite staff and expertise— I see the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper) nodding—to do exactly what the hon. Gentleman refers to.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

The right hon. Member will be aware that there is a Government-imposed cap on how much money local councils can charge big developers when they put in applications. That led to a situation in St Albans where the constituents of a district were subsidising big developers to the tune of £3 million a year. The Government have increased but not scrapped the cap, and councils can still not recoup the full cost of processing an application. Would he support a measure to scrap the cap altogether?

[Sir Simon Clarke]

That is a very reasonable question. I would need to look at the detail of the policy to see whether simply raising the cap further or scrapping it would be the best solution to the problem. Do I accept entirely that we need to make sure that councils are not cross-subsidising the cost of development, but are incentivised to welcome good development? Yes, I do.

Another important piece of the puzzle is leasehold reform, and I thought that the Minister for Housing, Planning and Building Safety spoke brilliantly on that issue in the House last week. Although nominally owners, the relationship between leaseholders and freeholders often resembles that of a landlord and tenant. There is too little protection against drastically increased service charges and few incentives for freeholders to properly maintain a building.

Secure and fair property rights are a core Conservative principle. The Government are making great strides with the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill. It is absolutely right that we fix the balance and ensure that once people get on the property ladder, their home is truly theirs. I encourage the Government to go further, and I welcome the commonhold system whereby leaseholders all own a share of the common development, but we must address the fact that leasehold reform is vital.

We should also address the fact that new homes in Britain are too often of low quality. Poor-quality designs leave new and existing residents feeling that new homes are too often nothing more than ugly boxes, and we should look seriously at how design codes can ameliorate that. For example, we could allow individual streets or areas to vote on a design code for new housing. Establishing pre-set and pre-approved design rules ahead of time would allow everyone on the street to see a large share of the potential uplift, while significantly increasing the number of homes built. Design codes could also increase housing through densification, rather than relying on outward suburban sprawl, which would also reduce the potential dependence on cars and would allow more green space to be preserved.

As we have discussed, even if the public are on board, local authorities need to be as well. Councils are vulnerable to particularly vocal activism, even if it is a minority opinion among residents. Any reform will need to empower councils to take long-term decisions in the interests of their area, giving them the tools to get the right outcome from new development and incentivising them to say yes where appropriate, while ensuring that a few bad apples cannot shirk their responsibility to allow more homes. As you know, Mr Betts, our councils really matter.

I recently had reason to feel considerable frustration at my own planning authority in Redcar and Cleveland, when the chair of that authority made the baffling decision to delay the consideration of the proposed new British Steel electric arc furnace at Redcar. That reflects the power that councils can have for good or for ill, and we certainly want to ensure that their natural incentives are to welcome investment.

To do that, we need to ensure that development plans are brought up to date everywhere. These plans allow builders a measure of certainty when deciding where to construct new homes, but they are often not up to date. Unfortunately, the consequences under current law if an authority does not have an up-to-date plan are often trivial.

One possible remedy comes from California—the so-called “builder’s remedy”. Under that policy, if an area fails to plan for enough homes, it must approve any housing project that contains at least 20% low-income or 100% middle-income housing. That solution can be extremely effective. A few weeks of the builder’s remedy in Santa Monica resulted in more affordable housing being approved than there had been in the previous seven years. I certainly favour restoring a presumption in favour of development wherever an up-to-date local plan is not in place.

[Sarah Dyke]

I would not be a Somerset representative if I did not mention the phosphate levels on the Somerset levels and moors Ramsar catchment area, caused by phosphates entering the water system. It is stymieing the building of new homes in parts of Somerset, so we no longer have that five-year housing land supply. That means that the local plans are effectively suspended, and the local planning authority is forced to approve inappropriate new housing development in areas where it would normally be refused. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that in those circumstances, the local planning authority should be afforded better protection from the five-year housing land supply requirements?

[Sir Simon Clarke]

I confess that I think the issues surrounding phosphate and nutrient neutrality need to be addressed—indeed, I commented on this with my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) this morning—by looking at the underlying causes of the problems and allowing mitigation measures to be put in place and counted forward so that homes can still be built where appropriate. That would mean that we do not end up in the situation where authorities either commission homes where they are not appropriate or do not commission homes at all. We need to resolve the Gordian knot of nutrient neutrality, because it is an irrational obstacle to building new homes. It is something that we have created through policy, and we need to resolve it through policy.

The Government have rightly said that development plans ought to prioritise building in cities. I welcome the exciting plans set out by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for major new developments in east London and Cambridge. That is precisely the kind of visionary development that we need and should welcome, and I think it will command broad support. Demand is obviously highest for homes close to city centres, where jobs are located, so those new homes often contribute disproportionately to economic growth. Building in cities also means that less money is required to support the infrastructure needs of new residents, and it is environmentally friendlier. Urban, dense communities inherently encourage lower usage of energy, because living in a smaller space means there is less to heat, and living in an apartment building means that there is natural insulation from other units, and so on.

Estate regeneration is also a win-win way to add more housing in cities and to deliver social justice. Too often, our post-war council estates are impractical and prohibitively expensive to rehabilitate. However, redeveloping an estate with new private housing that helps to cross-subsidise a wider improvement and redevelopment of social housing can result in a plan to deliver a really good outcome for all residents. Allowing tenants to vote on these plans would ensure that their rights were protected while providing new and renovated homes of a kind that is desperately needed.

However, although the brownfield-first policy is sensible, a brownfield-only policy cannot be, and no debate on planning would be complete without my referring to the completely uncontroversial subject of the green belt. The green belt was intended to prevent sprawl, but I would submit that it has done the opposite. Today’s green belt, which is three times larger than London itself, causes a leapfrog effect, whereby individuals wanting to live in London end up settling in distant commuter towns instead, which increases transportation and climate costs. Parts of the green belt—the disused car parks, the petrol stations and the dreary wastelands that make up what the right hon. and learned Leader of the Opposition rightly calls “the grey belt”—are far from the natural paradise that some would have us believe.

The green belt, in truth, has the best spin doctors around, encouraging a widespread misapprehension that it is all beautiful green land, when in fact 11% of the UK’s total brownfield land lies within the green belt.

[Daisy Cooper]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way on that point?

[Sir Simon Clarke]

I will give way, but then I should make progress.

[Daisy Cooper]

Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that some of us do not give or accept that portrayal of the green belt? Some of us are very clear that there are brownfield sites and there are developed sites within the green belt, and most of our concern is about the undeveloped green-belt sites that have natural habitats.

[Sir Simon Clarke]

In response to the hon. Lady’s point, I am strongly in favour of making sure that we can better enshrine the protections for the areas of genuine natural beauty and community amenity, rather than having a reductive debate that simply suggests that the entirety of the green belt is an untouchable verdant paradise, because it is not all like the front of a box of Yorkshire Tea; we all know that it is a mixed area of land. It was a crude line on a map drawn in the late 1940s, with good intention but adverse consequences today, and I would argue that we need to have a much more sophisticated debate about what is and is not tradeable in that context.

My own party needs to stop pretending that all of the green belt is valuable, which is bad policy and bad politics, and it is time that we started to look at releasing some grey-belt land to provide us with the housing that we desperately need. The hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh), who is a fellow PricedOut parliamentary champion and a friend, has done excellent work in pointing out that some of the worst areas of blight in her constituency are characterised as being green belt.

Of course, even where the planning system does allow developers to bring forward new homes, regulations that are too strict can still strangle supply and push up prices. Year after year, conditions and requirements are added at every level, driving up costs without necessarily delivering high quality. Perhaps the most egregious example of this comes from the Mayor of London’s London plan, where the dual aspect rules require every flat to have external windows on multiple walls. Clearly, indeed inherently, that is desirable, but it comes with a cost, and if it restricts the number of homes built, that intervention needs to be balanced against the wider social imperative of creating homes where they are most needed.

Minimum space standards are another example. While young people in other countries live on their own in flats of between 20 and 25 square metres, in the UK they are forced to live with strangers in overcrowded houses in multiple occupation because we have banned new flats of that size. Politicians need to be honest with the public and with ourselves about the options that exist in this area. In the middle of a generation-defining supply crunch, we cannot afford these rules. People would be much better off in small, modern and affordable flats of their own than in ageing, chopped-up homes built over a hundred years ago. We need to nuance this debate.

We also need to talk about tax. Our main real estate taxes often feel to those priced out of home ownership as though they add insult to injury. Stamp duty land tax and council tax both need fundamental reform. Stamp duty, as it is currently constituted, penalises people every time they move house, meaning that some households remain in homes that are too small for them when others remain in homes that are too large for them—in both cases for too long.

Council tax is regressive and unfair, and fails to compensate local councils properly for increases in land or property value, undermining the incentive to add more housing. Given that all parties are, frankly, terrified of the effects of a revaluation politically, and given that there has not been a revaluation since I was a child of seven, we need to look at fundamental reform of local government taxation. That is a major issue—I do not deny it—but at the moment it is worsening the planning system as well as acting irrationally in terms of the tax system. I submit that both those taxes should be replaced with a proportional property tax, which would save households an average of more than £500 a year and result in up to 600,000 extra new homes over the next five years.

I hope that this morning I have highlighted some easy, sometimes controversial but generally win-win solutions that we could use to help soothe our housing crisis. In the long run, there is no substitute for real root and branch reform of our planning system. Ultimately, I favour a rules-based system along the lines set out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark when he was Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government. It was unfortunate that the Opposition misrepresented those plans as a “developers’ charter”. If only they had been allowed to do anything of the kind!

Housing has an impact on every facet of our lives. Rising housing costs suppress productivity, increase wealth inequality, worsen climate change and increase homelessness. People need to be together. Bringing people physically together is a social good, but people need homes to do so. This is not an abstract debate; fixing the issue is a moral priority and it also ought to be a top political priority for my own party, as it always was under Prime Ministers as different as Harold Macmillan and Margaret Thatcher. I do not know how we can make the case for popular Conservatism when in too many areas of England people cannot accumulate capital in their own lives. I certainly feel that is why major political change may be brewing in parts of the country that we have long called our heartlands.

One need only contrast the recent success of the Canadian Conservatives to see the amazing difference that embracing pro-home-ownership policies can deliver, even among the youngest voters. The UK is falling behind in the quest for higher productivity and better wages, and at the moment we are only making ourselves poorer by refusing to meet one of our most basic human needs—a place to live. The UK needs innovation, we need infrastructure and most of all we need housing. We will not get enough of it under the current system. That is why the time for talking is over.

We have made too little progress on effective planning reform over the last 14 years and it has become clear to me that politicians are not holding ourselves sufficiently accountable on the issue. That is why I am delighted to announce that PricedOut, Britain’s largest campaign for affordable news homes, will publish an index of Members of Parliament in England running for re-election, ranking their performance on housing, planning and infrastructure issues. That will serve as a guide to voters up and down the country at the next election, showing just for whom the issue is a priority. PricedOut has my support in bringing all of us in this House to account. The country deserves a more serious debate than the one we have had, and we need it soon, before lasting harm is done to another generation by our collective unwillingness to deliver the serious planning reform the country needs.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Simon Clarke]

I thank the Minister for her gracious comments about giving me time to respond. This has been a very good debate and, despite the proximity of an election, a remarkably consensual one about a number of the issues that we know we need to overcome if we are to build the homes we need as a country. Clearly, there are areas of contention and big challenges that require significant political courage to be addressed.

I will briefly give credit to those who have spoken. I agreed with the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) about the importance of allowing local planning departments to be sufficiently resourced to do their job. I have more faith than he does in the ability of the market to fix these problems, but that is probably not an unusual distinction between us.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) for attending the debate. I wish him every success with bringing forward the Shrewsbury ring road—the 9 o’clock to 12 o’clock segment. Although I concentrated primarily on housing in this debate, it could equally well be extended to infrastructure. We must allow ourselves to build what we need to succeed. The Government need to address some of the obstacles that have progressively accreted and stop us from doing things that we know are in the national and often the local interest.

I welcome the ambition that the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper) set out for 380,000 homes a year, but that needs to be underpinned by robust methodology in terms of clear national targets. As the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook) said, local plans need to be up to date and we need to make sure that they are resourced appropriately so that they can be kept up to date. I count the shadow Minister as a friend in this place, and he is right that there are things that we need to do to give greater accountability for local authorities when it comes to their work. We obviously disagree on nutrient neutrality: I think Labour failed to put their money where their mouth has been when it comes to the importance of house building.

Finally, I thank the Minister. I welcome the fact that we are on track for 1 million homes a year. I would clearly like to see more of that home building and I look forward to discussing with her, as we approach the manifesto-writing process, how we can best deliver it.

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).

Draft North East Mayoral Combined Authority (Establishment and Functions) Order 2024

Simon Clarke Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2024 General Committees

[Jim McMahon]

Of course, the trains. In Greater Manchester, we are doing bus devolution; I know that Tracy Brabin in West Yorkshire is doing the same; and I know that Steve Rotheram is doing a significant amount on the train service and, like Greater Manchester, is looking for further devolution, particularly around the stations, and the potential development that could be attracted there.

As has been said, the deal creates a new combined authority that will have functions to grow the whole north-east economy, and we are hopeful that our candidate, Kim McGuinness, will soon be the Mayor of the north-east. Kim, like many others, will be keen to grow the local area and the local economy for all the people who live there and who have businesses there. The north-east requires dedication, commitment and focus. We hope that this measure is the start of that, because the area has significant challenges.

Current Government data for 2023 shows that youth homelessness is higher in the north-east than anywhere else in the UK. Almost one in five of the individuals who applied for and were due homelessness support were aged 18 to 24. Last week, at the Convention of the North, the Institute for Public Policy Research revealed that the healthy life expectancy data is stark. It found that the north-east is the worst performing region in England by that measure. In addition, in 2023, there was a record attainment gap between schools in the north-east and those in the south. More than 28% of entries by pupils in London were awarded grade 7 or higher, equivalent to A or A*, compared with just 18% of entries by pupils in the north-east.

There is a great deal to do to make sure that every person in the north-east realises their full potential. Action is required. So far, devolution under the current Government has been fragmented and piecemeal and has not gone far enough or fast enough. The powers and resources do not touch the sides of what is required for communities to have control over their areas and their own futures. Labour will push power out of Westminster with a take back control Act that gives communities a direct say in their future.

[Sir Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)]

As a former Secretary of State, albeit briefly, I owe it to the Committee to point out that the reason we do not have a Mayor of the north-east already is because the Labour councils in the north-east could not agree on establishing one sooner.

[The Chair]

I call the Minister. [Interruption.] Sorry; I call Jim McMahon.

Teesworks Joint Venture

Simon Clarke Excerpts

Monday 29th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Lee Rowley]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his valiant attempt to try to move the discussion on. The basic facts are that Opposition Front-Bench Members asked for a review, and they got a review. They inferred that there were significant problems, and it has been proven comprehensively through an independent review that there was no corruption and there was no illegality.

The hon. Gentleman asked why the report only surfaced today. We received the final report last week. To support the transparency that hon. Members in the House seek, and the comprehensiveness they wish for, we have sought to get the report out as quickly as possible, and it is here today for people to comment on and to misrepresent if they so choose. It appears that some may choose to do so.

The hon. Gentleman quoted from the report. I am also happy to quote from the report. As I indicated in my statement, the serious allegations that were the genesis of the report have been proven to be incorrect. Where there are things that can be improved, that will happen, and the Mayor of Tees Valley has already indicated that he will do that. But it is important that we put this in context. The hon. Gentleman talked about governance, and at paragraph 22.3 the report says:

“The Board largely feel engaged and make unanimous decisions.”

At paragraph 11.3, it says:

“The Panel noted the largely positive assurances provided by internal audit.”

Paragraph 22.3 says that

“there is much that does follow due process”.

Most crucially, given that the whole challenge was about ensuring that the benefits of Teesworks come to the people of the north-east at the earliest possible opportunity, the report says clearly at paragraph 22.1 that

“much has been achieved in a relatively short space of time”.

That is thanks to the Mayor of the Tees Valley and the Conservatives in the north-east.

[Sir Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)]

I am pleased that the report has been published today and thank the Minister for his statement. Teesworks is critical for my constituents and the whole of Teesside, and the report confirms that for every £1 of public money that has been invested, the taxpayer will receive £9.50 back, and that is on the basis that only 17% of the site has been developed.

As my hon. Friend the Minister said, the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) alleged “industrial-scale corruption” in the House. He did so for overtly political reasons, which sadly Opposition Front-Bench Members have repeated today. Labour wants Teesworks to fail.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

Nonsense!

[Sir Simon Clarke]

Labour puts politics before people, and the furious denials of the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) do nothing to disguise the fact that he and his colleagues have connived in making malicious allegations that this afternoon have been fundamentally proven to be false. The independent review confirmed that no illegality occurred. Does my hon. Friend agree that the hon. Member for Middlesbrough ought to apologise to the House, and to all those who were named in the report and falsely accused by him? Does he also agree that the hon. Member for Middlesbrough should resign for acting against the interests of the constituency that he serves and, indeed, against the interest of the whole Tees Valley?

[Lee Rowley]

My right hon. Friend speaks loudly for Teesside and his constituency. I will take the steer of Madam Deputy Speaker and keep my remarks solely to the statements made previously. The hon. Member for Middlesbrough stated clearly, on 20 April in this place, that there had been

“truly shocking, industrial-scale corruption on Teesside.”—[Official Report, 20 April 2023; Vol. 731, c. 383.]

In the same business questions session, he repeated “industrial-scale corruption”. A few days later, in another business questions, he referred to “dubious dealings”. Those remarks have proven to be incorrect, and I hope that he withdraws them as soon as he is able to do so.

Nutrient Neutrality: Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Simon Clarke Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Maclean]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his questions and remarks. I take them to mean that he will support the measures when they come before the House. I am delighted to hear his support for our sensible, practical and pragmatic approach to unblock much needed housing across the country. He asked about our engagement with Natural England; we have had detailed discussions. He asked about the current legal framework; we have looked at and discussed a number of options to make the changes, and we are taking what we believe is the right approach to unblock planning permissions more quickly than the current situation allows.

The hon. Gentleman referred to nature markets; he is right to highlight the groundbreaking work we are doing across that piece. We are continuing with our commitment to those nature markets, which are a very important part of the Government’s plan to keep our environment, protect it and leave it in a better state than we found it. That is what the Conservative Government have always been committed to and continue to be.

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that we have spoken to developers, who, of course, support our objectives. We have very constructive dialogue with the developers, who are happy to contribute. We will have those discussions with industry, as I am sure he has heard from developers, because I know he has spoken to them all. We are on the side of those builders. It is important to say that the developers most affected by the disproportionate ruling from the European Court of Justice are not the big developers but the small and medium-sized enterprises—the small builders—some of which have gone bust. It is right that we stand behind them.

[Sir Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)]

I warmly congratulate the Government on taking action on this very serious issue. I welcome sincerely the remarks from the Opposition spokesperson offering qualified support for what is being done. We have an issue whereby 100,000 homes, spanning 74 council areas, are being blocked. Those homes have planning permission already granted, but cannot be built because of the perverse legacy ruling. More to the point, could my hon. Friend confirm that there is no environmental impact, because we are doubling investment in the nutrient mitigation scheme? That is as well as developing protected site strategies for those catchment areas affected most severely by the nutrients issue, which overwhelmingly is not caused by new housing. Does she agree that the real challenge should be laid down to the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) on what she would say to all the hundreds of thousands of young families out there who cannot buy a home in the places they need and want, at a price they can afford?

[Rachel Maclean]

My right hon. Friend has considerable expertise in this matter. He is right to focus on the mechanisms we need to bring forward to enable the much needed planning permission to take effect. His region in particular is affected by this issue, and I know his constituents and people across the region will be desperate to see those homes built, to allow people a step on the property ladder. We are about building a property-owning democracy.

My right hon. Friend is also right to say that we can do that at the same time as protecting the environment, which is why we have doubled the funding for Natural England’s nutrient mitigation scheme. We are investing £200 million in slurry management infrastructure and we are helping farmers with a £25 million sustainable package to help them invest in innovative farming techniques to manage their nutrients more sustainably, which can be of benefit to their farms and agricultural processes. We are going much further on those protected sites, so that we deal with the problem at source. That is what we need to focus on.

Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill

Simon Clarke Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 3rd July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

Absolutely. Nothing in the Bill conflicts with any aspect of the ECHR, not least article 10.

[Sir Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)]

I welcome the fact that my right hon. Friend is bringing this legislation to the House today. He rightly mentioned the unsavoury connotations of much of the criticism that the Bill is facing, particularly in connection with the BDS movement. On that point, could he clarify his thoughts on Richard Hermer KC, who has provided advice to the shadow Front-Bench team on this legislation? Mr Hermer has previously authored a chapter in a book called “Corporate complicity in Israel’s occupation: evidence from the London session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine”, which is edited by some extremely interesting people—I fear that they are interesting in the most negative sense. Is this really the calibre of individual who should be advising the official Opposition?

[Michael Gove]

My right hon. Friend raises an important question because the Opposition have tabled a reasoned amendment. I believe they have done so in good faith. As the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) pointed out, some lawyers take a different view from the Government. One of those lawyers was commissioned by the Labour party to produce a legal opinion, but the gentleman concerned, a distinguished KC, has a record in this area—a record of political commitments that everyone can see clearly predispose him towards a political and particular view on this question.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)]

I thank the Government for bringing forward this important Bill. In my former role as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, I took the Public Service Pensions and Judicial Offices Act 2022 through the House, and that marked the first legislative step against BDS. It was a landmark moment, legally enforcing the principle that BDS has no place in the investment decisions of local authorities. I strongly welcome our fulfilling our manifesto commitment to extend that principle.

Put simply, local authorities have no business running a foreign policy parallel to that of His Majesty’s Government. That remit is absolutely within our gift, not theirs. Their role is to deliver local services for the communities they represent, to innovate and to deliver best value. I say that as someone who is a convinced believer in devolution. I believe that we should empower mayors to lead areas of the country in a way that will unlock their economic potential, but I do not want them opining on the rights and wrongs of the behaviour of different countries. It is emphatically unhelpful for local authorities to hinder our country’s export trade, damage our foreign relations and act in a way that is to the detriment of our international or economic security.

Much of the specific concern in this debate is about Israel, and that is because it is always about Israel. This is the point that we cannot elide and that sits at the heart of the reason why Israel needs to be mentioned on the face of the Bill. There are Members arguing against Israel being named specifically in this Bill for whom I have great respect and whom I count as personal friends. But we cannot be oblivious to why Israel needs this protection. The overwhelming focus of the BDS movement is, of course, on this one small state. The BDS movement is not arguing against the horrors perpetrated in Russia, China, Iran or any number of other countries—we could list for hours those countries that perpetrate grotesque wrongs against their people—and I do not see local authorities acting against those countries, either. I see them acting consistently against our ally Israel. There can be no doubt, as my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) said, that the motivation of some in the BDS movement is dark, sinister and unashamedly linked to the antisemitism that we have seen in our society over recent years, perhaps particularly and most shamefully in our universities. It is disgusting and it is hard not to see aspects of it in the attempt to enforce some of these boycotts and divestments. They simply have no place in modern Britain. It is right that we should act against this and remind local government of its proper responsibilities, which are large and growing under this Government. I certainly believe that that should be its focus.

I come to this debate without any significant minority community in my constituency. I simply see a wrong that we should right, an offence that we should not give, and money, energy and time that our local authorities should be spending to better effect on their significant responsibilities. Foreign affairs should be left to this place, not to town halls.

Teesworks: Accountability and Scrutiny

Simon Clarke Excerpts

Wednesday 7th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty, that he will be graciously pleased to give directions that the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities provide all papers, advice and correspondence involving Ministers, senior officials and special advisers, including submissions and electronic communications, relating to the decision by the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and the Prime Minister to commission a review into the Tees Valley Combined Authority’s oversight of the South Tees Development Corporation and the Teesworks joint venture, including papers relating to the decision that this review should not be led by the National Audit Office.

Let me start by saying that I am really disappointed that it has come to this. Devolution was meant to empower people in every part of Britain to “take charge of their own destiny”. This Government were elected on exactly that promise and exactly those words, and here we are standing in the House of Commons trying to persuade the Government to come clean about why they have chosen to block an independent inquiry that would help us get to the bottom of the use of public assets and funds on Teesside in the wake of some of the most serious allegations I have ever seen in my time in Parliament.

For nine years, since the Government accepted Greater Manchester’s case for greater devolution, I and many others on all sides of this House have been pressing the Government to respect the right of people in every part of Britain to know how their assets and money are being used and to close the gap that currently exists by inviting people back into the conversation, and by building a system of local and national scrutiny and accountability that is fit for purpose, backed by a Government who are willing to open the books.

[Mr Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)]

I think the key point in this debate was aired in what the hon. Lady said a moment ago, when she said that some of the most serious allegations she has ever heard aired in this House have been made. Will she stand with those allegations? At the moment, the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) has alleged “industrial-scale corruption”. The hon. Lady has been very careful in all her public utterances, as indeed has he outside this Chamber, to avoid repeating that claim. Does she agree with him, or does she not?

[Lisa Nandy]

The problem, as the right hon. Member well knows, is that Members of this House and, more importantly, people on Teesside simply do not know the answer to that question. Serious allegations have been raised not just by Members on the Opposition Benches, but by respected national journalists who have conducted meticulous investigations, and the point of holding an independent inquiry is that these serious allegations and the questions that have been raised need to be answered.

At every juncture and at every level of Government, when it comes to fair and reasonable questions about the South Tees development corporation, accountability, scrutiny and democratic control have broken down. It is only because of my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) and some tenacious, meticulous journalists, such as Jennifer Williams of the Financial Times, that we even know the bare facts of what has unfolded. People on Teesside should not have to rely on a national newspaper to discover what has been done with their assets, their community and their civic inheritance.

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[Lisa Nandy]

The hon. Gentleman might want to take that up with his colleague, the Mayor in question, who has referred himself and asked for a National Audit Office investigation. I do not know why Members on the Government Benches think his judgment is so poor that he should not have done that, but we believe he is absolutely right to have done that and we stand firmly behind him in asking for a proper investigation.

Incredibly, even by the standards of this shambolic Government, the terms of reference and the names of the panel members for this inquiry were sent to me seven minutes before this debate began. That genuinely is no way to conduct government. I assume that is where the Secretary of State is right now: sitting behind his desk knocking out terms of reference on the back of a fag packet. Clearly, I have not had much time, Madam Deputy Speaker, to read them, but on first sight what he has sent me looks like a system-focused review, rather than an investigation into what has happened. Ministers have still failed to give us an explanation as to why the National Audit Office cannot conduct its own investigation, a body that has capacity, resources and expertise, and is widely respected across the political spectrum. Instead, we are having a bizarre argument about the remit of a respected organisation that is patently able to conduct the investigation required. Can the Minister not see why the public would rightly raise an eyebrow?

It is completely unacceptable for the Government to hide from proper scrutiny. I remember a time when the Secretary of State could not wait to get to his place in this House. Nowadays, we barely see him. Where is he today? There is no clear justification for not ordering a comprehensive independent investigation from the National Audit Office. It cannot be right that hundreds of millions of pounds of public money have been handed over to a company that is now 90% in private ownership, and it appears that the Department has handed over that money and then simply walked away. This is a matter that has profound implications for people on Teesside, who rightly expect this site, through which they contributed so much to our country over so many years, to continue to benefit them and their community for years to come.

There is much we do not know about what has happened—that is the reason we need an independent investigation—but here is what we do know. When the 140-year-old steel industry on Teesside collapsed in 2015, thousands of jobs were lost along with a key political, social and economic asset for the communities of the north-east of England. In 2017, the South Tees Development Corporation began to collate over 4,500 acres of industrial land, including the site of the former steelworks, off the back of a Conservative Government promising hundreds of millions of pounds in taxpayer funding for the project, something we had championed and welcomed. In the face of losing that key economic and social asset, it is absolutely right that all options were considered about how to build a wide programme of regeneration around the site and that the combined authority was given the autonomy to determine the strategy to regenerate the site. Even where we have strong disagreements about policy, strategy and direction, that point is not, and will never be, in dispute.

However, in May, an extensive report by the Financial Times detailed how the Government had spent hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money to support a project in which two private developers now hold a 90% stake. The deal never went through a public tender process. There was no consultation. There was no announcement. It also reports that those developers have secured £45 million already in dividends, despite failing apparently to invest a single penny of their own money in the project. In return for their role in securing the site, the South Tees Development Corporation awarded companies owned by the developers a 50% stake in the joint venture that would operate the project—a share transfer that also took place without any public tender. The new operating company, eventually named Teesworks Ltd, controlled the entire 4,500-acre site and its assets, including 500,000 tonnes of scrap metal. It was also given the option to buy any parcel of land on the site at market rate.

The announcement that freeport status was being awarded led the South Tees Development Corporation to fundamentally change its business model, according to documents obtained under freedom of information laws and published by Private Eye. Following that, in a complex two-stage process, the two developers ended up with a 90% stake in the project, also without ever going through public bidding. According to emails received again under freedom of information from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy—the Department with responsibility for the project in Government—one official only became aware of the deal via the media in January 2022 and expressed “concern” and “surprise”. The Financial Times reports that an official at the Department’s office in the north-east responded that he had received “verbal” assurance locally that the deal was value for money. Can the Minister see why such serious concerns have been raised on both sides of the House, including by respected Members such as the Chairs of the Select Committees?

It is at this point that we called for the National Audit Office to investigate this matter in its entirety, to restore confidence for investors and the public in what was an increasingly murky affair. Indeed, the former chief executive of the Audit Commission, a public body that examined local government entities before it was disbanded by the Conservative Government, says the evidence

“calls for a full and thorough investigation by the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee, as the situation now appears far remote from the business case originally agreed with Government”.

[Mr Simon Clarke]

It is important to be clear that he is himself a former Labour councillor. The point in this debate is that we are offering an independent inquiry. As we have heard, an inquiry is under way and the reasons the NAO is not the appropriate body were set out very clearly by the Secretary of State in his letter.

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[Mr Simon Clarke]

Will the Minister give way?

[Lee Rowley]

I will give way to my right hon. Friend, who actually knows what he is talking about on this issue.

[Mr Clarke]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight the fact that it is Labour’s own regime that we are applying, but can we also get on record the fact that Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities officials do not believe that the threshold for a best value investigation has been met in this case? That is to say, the civil service does not believe that such an investigation is merited. We are doing it to dispel the allegations and smears from the Opposition.

[Lee Rowley]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for clarifying that important point, particularly in respect of the Department.

It is important, given the inferences by the Opposition, to highlight what has actually been put in place. The specific terms of reference and the announcement that was made long before today are clear about the intention of the Government to clarify this matter. The review will be led by Angie Ridgwell, who is currently chief executive of Lancashire County Council and has over 30 years of experience across local government, central Government and the private sector. She will be supported by Quentin Baker, a qualified solicitor and director of law and governance at Hertfordshire County Council, and by Richard Paver, who brings significant financial experience and knowledge of combined authorities from his previous role as the first treasurer of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority. They bring significant experience of senior public leadership, specific financial and legal expertise, and confidence of detailed scrutiny. All Members of the House should support their important work so that they can proceed quickly and free from partisan comments.

There is still time for Labour Members to articulate why they are suddenly so keen on NAO-led inquiries in local government when they have not been keen on them before. When there are challenges or potential questions, there is a long-standing precedent of someone other than the NAO reviewing and assessing those concerns. Why should Labour Members know this? Because, as I said, they endorsed this process in the Local Government Act 1999. They confirmed that the Secretary of State could determine the approach where there were questions about local government bodies, and as far as I am aware, they have not critiqued the use of those powers when they have been used multiple times before, including in the last few weeks. Perhaps Labour Members could tell me which parts of the Local Government Act 1999—their Act, their decisions, their choices—they have randomly, abruptly and arbitrarily decided, simply for the purposes of an Opposition day debate, that they no longer wish the Government to apply.

If Labour Members are deciding that they no longer want to use the established regime, perhaps they could tell me which of the established reviews, inquiries, panels or commissioners they wish to switch into their newly preferred process. I do not remember this being requested when the Secretary of State intervened following an external review of Labour-led Sandwell Council in 2021, following allegations of serious misconduct by members and officers that painted a deeply troubling picture of mismanagement. Should we move that to an NAO review?

I do not remember Labour suggesting this approach when the then Secretary of State determined to appoint experts to carry out an inspection at Labour-led Liverpool City Council in 2020 as a result of arrests made on suspicion of fraud, bribery, corruption and misconduct in public office. [Interruption.] There is a lot of chuntering on the Opposition Benches, but are they seeking to bring the NAO into that? The hon. Member for Wigan talks about hand-picking, but the Labour party appointed its own inquiry into the wrongdoing. That inquiry was led by a former Labour MP, supported by a peer newly ennobled by the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer). And I cannot remember the Labour party requesting an NAO review of Labour-led Croydon Council after a number of serious concerns about the council’s governance and risk management were outlined in a public interest report by external auditors in 2020.

The cold, hard facts are these: the Mayor of Tees Valley has had much success over the past half a decade in bringing jobs, growth and economic development to an area that is now on the up and thriving again, thanks to its Conservative leadership and its engaged and constructive Conservative Members of Parliament. On this specific issue, the Government agreed to a request from the Mayor for a review, which is being set up in a similar way to other reviews. Those who will be involved have been appointed as others have been appointed in the past. The terms of reference have been published using a similar process and, if there is an issue, we will deal with it in the normal way. The experts who are giving of their time and expertise should now be given the time to get on with the job, in the normal way, and to present their conclusions when they are ready.

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[Mr Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)]

I am proud to speak today in support of Teesworks and our Tees Valley Mayor, Ben Houchen, as well as the process that the Government have put in place, of which more in a moment.

Teesside is being transformed, from our airport, saved after Labour let it drift to the brink of closure, to our town centres of Middlesbrough, Guisborough and Loftus benefiting from tens of millions of pounds of direct investment. We have the new mayoral development corporation to turbocharge the regeneration of Hartlepool. We have the Treasury’s northern campus in Darlington and we have the UK’s largest freeport on the Tees. Overshadowing, and indeed uniting, all of this is Teesworks, the largest brown-field remediation project in the country, and the beating heart of our industrial future. The site of the former Redcar steelworks was costing the taxpayer £1 a second as long as it stood idle. It is right that the Government and our Mayor have brought it back to life. Government investment of £246 million has been put in, but as we know, the cost of total remediation is some £482. 6 million, as independently assessed. That is the reason for the joint venture established with the private sector.

It is important to clarify exactly what has happened. The first point is that the site has never been a public asset. The private sector Teeswork partners brokered a deal to take back control of the land from the Thai banks. It brought the deal and the land to the South Tees Development Corporation, not the other way round. That is why the Opposition’s talk of no public tendering process having taken place is such a red herring.

The public-private partnership was agreed, moreover, by the TVCA cabinet, the STDC board, the Department for Business and the Treasury. Bob Cook, the Labour leader of Stockton council, voted in favour. The hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) stated on the BBC’s “Sunday Politics” that he understood the reasons for a 50:50 split. A lot of revisionism is going on now.

[Alex Cunningham]

I have spoken to the leader of Stockton borough council and he has had no part in any decision relating to the transfer of those assets from the public to the private sector. He is a member of the combined authority, not a member of the STDC board. It is important that the right hon. Member recognises that.

[Mr Clarke]

The hon. Gentleman is completely wrong. Mr Cook voted for this structure and he cannot change that vote.

There is no credible suggestion that wrongdoing has occurred. Teesworks is double audited, first by Mazars and then by Azets, two separate auditors. There is then an audit committee for Teesworks. Here we come to the truly jaw-dropping fact that that audit committee is chaired by none other than Councillor Matthew Storey, the leader of Middlesbrough Council’s Labour group and the head of the parliamentary office of the hon. Member for Middlesbrough. He chairs that audit committee —what concerns has he raised? He is part of the audit structure that is now being cast into doubt.

It is noteworthy that in the speech by the shadow Secretary of State we heard nothing that amounted to a substantive allegation. We heard a series of inferences and questions that amount to nothing more than the same tittle-tattle that has characterised this process, with the exception of the allegation of industrial-scale corruption that has been made but never substantiated, because the hon. Member for Middlesbrough knows that he would be sued for libel if he repeated it.

[Clive Efford]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Could you confirm the rules regarding declarations of interest? If a Member has a declaration of interest on the register, should they not refer to it when they stand up and take part in debates in this House?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

It is up to each individual Member to determine whether their declaration of interest should be made during a debate. Clearly, processes are available should a Member not do so and other Members believe that they should have.

[Mr Clarke]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I can confirm that no such interest exists, despite desperate attempts to insinuate to the contrary.

Who speaks for the Labour party in this debate? We have the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), clear that she is making no allegations, but we had the hon. Member for Middlesbrough making very pointed, very serious allegations of criminal wrongdoing. There is a yawning gulf between the two.

The next key point I wish to raise is about the process that the Government have adopted to set up the independent investigation that has been announced this afternoon. As the Minister set out very clearly at the Dispatch Box, that is the legal structure for investigating when a best-value investigation is triggered. The irony here, of course, is that the civil service does not believe that that threshold has been met and has advised Ministers to that effect. [Interruption.] I have spoken to Ministers about this point and, as Ministers have made clear, that is the case. It is not Ministers asserting that this threshold has not been met: the civil service does not believe that that standard has been met.

As both the former Secretary of State and the former Minister of State for Local Government, I can say with total assurance that this process is normal and straightforward. In his letter to Ben Houchen a fortnight ago, the Secretary of State set out why one would not want to seek to extend the remit of the NAO in the way that is being proposed. We have the long-standing, Labour-instigated system of commissioning these independent inquiries under the Local Government Act 1999. The key point here, of course, is that it is not just public confidence but investor confidence that is being undermined by the Labour party. It is doubly ironic, therefore, that we have never seen Labour calling for a similar process anywhere else— as we heard from the Minister, not even in Labour-run Liverpool when actual criminal wrongdoing had taken place. To add insult to injury, was the Labour party’s own investigation into its people’s conduct in Liverpool independently led? No: it was investigated by one of Labour’s own former MPs and a former council leader.

So we return to the purpose of this campaign—this vendetta. It is an attempt to systematically smear Ben Houchen, destroy Teesworks and make Teesside poorer. We have seen this movie before: earlier this year, not one but two independent reviews led by some of the most eminent scientists in the country thoroughly rebutted the idea that marine deaths were anything to do with the dredging at Teesworks, but just moments ago, we heard the hon. Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) again dredging up those allegations—you will pardon the pun, Mr Deputy Speaker—knowing full well that they are baseless. Labour will seize on any excuse and take any chance to try to talk down my region. I am sick to death of it, and so are the people of Teesside, because it is not in the public interest: it is in the Labour party’s interest. That is why Labour pursues these wrecking campaigns.

Teesside has been rescued from a cycle of secular decline with some bold leadership and private sector investment, and the public back it. That is why, in 2021, Ben Houchen received 73% of the vote to carry on with his mission. I ask shadow Front Benchers to confirm whether they will respect the impartiality of the senior officials from the local government family who have now been tasked with conducting this investigation, and I ask the hon. Member for Middlesbrough to confirm that in his speech, too. If they do not respect the integrity and impartiality of those officials, why do they not do so? What is wrong with the investigation that has been instigated this afternoon?

I directly challenge the hon. Member for Middlesbrough on this point, too—if it is established by that inquiry that his allegations of “industrial-scale corruption” are baseless, as I firmly believe them to be, will he come to this House and withdraw the allegations that he has made here? If he does not, it will amount to one of the most flagrant abuses of parliamentary privilege that I can conceive of, and I believe that he should be ordered to this House by Mr Speaker in the event that he declines to do so.

This is a cynical, shameless, seedy attempt to talk down Teesside, to imply wrongdoing and to damage the interests of the very deprived communities that I am proud to represent. I look forward to the report of the independent inquiry. I will be voting against Labour’s motion today. It is time to draw a line in the sand against this game playing by the Labour party. Labour Members have done it before—they have done it on the crabs, they have done it with the Teesside police and crime commissioner, and they have done it to the former Mayor of Middlesbrough. They know full well what they are doing. They abuse this place to make allegations, rely on others to amplify them outside and then feed off the clouds of suspicion and miasma of doubt that they create. All they have to offer is slander, negativity and decline—all the hallmarks of their toxic legacy on Teesside. Enough.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

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[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

Secrecy is a disease that is threatening a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the people of Teesside—an opportunity of thousands of high-quality jobs and a share of the dividend from hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money. It is secrecy that drives the suspicions, questions and doubts about how the Tory Tees Valley Mayor, Ministers and their cronies do business not just at the Teesworks site, but at our publicly owned Teesside International airport, which continues to lose millions of pounds and has twice been bailed out to the tune of £10 million using taxpayers’ money.

Tomorrow will be the 13th anniversary of my maiden speech in this House. I was happy that day to tell the world how proud I was to be an adopted Teessider, and that remains very much the case today. We have a wealth of resources, from our people to our amazing cultural offer. We have our beautiful countryside, our coast and our amazing industrial base, which has created so much of our country’s wealth, but we deserve so much more.

My hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) and I have been consistent in demanding openness and comprehensive scrutiny of decisions and the use of hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money by the Tees Mayor and his close-knit band of supporters and partners. The fact that several national newspapers, led by Private Eye magazine, have made front-page news of how business is done on the mayoral projects on Teesside warrants a completely independent investigation not by a group appointed and favoured by the Secretary of State, but by the National Audit Office, which has confirmed that it could do one if given the green light by Ministers. The Tees Mayor is up for it; why are the Government not?

Similarly, I hope to see Ministers withdraw their opposition to the inquiry proposed by the Select Committee on Business and Trade, which would have the power to scrutinise in a way so far denied by all those concerned. It could also summon people here to give evidence. I have had all manner of concerns over the years as the Mayor has been aided and abetted by Ministers as senior as the Prime Minister himself, hiding not just the decisions made about the airport and the Teesworks site, but how those decisions were reached, who was involved and who was excluded.

I do not know whether you have heard of the Darwin’s bark spider, Mr Deputy Speaker. It weaves the largest and most dense webs in the world. They can be as large as 28,000 sq cm, but that spider has nothing on the Tees Mayor when it comes to creating dense webs of secrecy, with organisations, companies and even charities created in an attempt to dodge full and proper scrutiny of how he and his mates do business and spend public money on what is referred to as the UK’s biggest levelling-up project.

As has been alluded to, things came to a head last year when a record posted with Companies House showed that the once public asset that is the Teesworks site is now 90% owned by a small group of local businessmen, the shares having been transferred to them by the Tees Mayor and the board of the South Tees Development Corporation, but we still do not know why such a decision was taken and who exactly was party to it. For certain, it was not taken by the Tees Valley Combined Authority, made up of the elected Mayor and the elected leaders of the five local authorities. They were not even consulted, as far as I know.

The Mayor thinks he had to do business with two men in particular, Chris Musgrave and Martin Corney, because they owned what can only be described as a ransom strip of land on the Teesworks site and they would take on the liability of the hundreds of millions still needed to remediate the site. I have an issue with both his reasons, or perhaps “excuses” is a better word. The Tees Mayor took on the might of the Thai banks, which owned most of the site after SSI walked out on Teesside and ended over 100 years of steel production. He decided he would go as far as a compulsory purchase order, and to his credit, he acquired the site for the public. Why, then, did he not take similar action against the two local businessmen who were holding the public to ransom? He will not answer that question, but perhaps the Minister can help.

The Minister may also be able to help over the costs of the remediation of the site. The Government get no accolades for allowing the steel industry to die on Teesside, but I do give them credit for agreeing to fund the remediation of the site so it could be fully developed. During his short-lived tenure as the Government investment tsar for the Tees Valley, Lord Michael Heseltine—I am quoting him directly—said:

“The money to clean up the site will be what it costs. No-one knows what the condition of the site is and although there have been estimates, they are estimates based on guess work. So it is much better to make it clear”—

and I agree that it is much better to make it clear that—

“central government will pay the clean-up costs and underwrite them whatever the bill comes to.”

Successive promises were made by Government Minsters that the Treasury would fund that work, so there was never any need to find private capital.

We have heard the Tees Mayor claim that he may have been naive in some of his dealings, but never did anything illegal. That may well be the case, but that naivety has cost our communities on Teesside the chance to share the dividends from the site and the public money invested in it. Sadly, however, we go back to the word “secrecy”. Were other companies and organisations considered for partnering with the Teesworks site? Were other offers made for the land? I have heard of one, and that was increased. What were the criteria and business case for selecting partners? It is all very much a secret, and none of the decision-making bodies is subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

I do not want to repeat all the accusations laid at the doors of the Mayor and his friends by the FT, The Times, the Daily Mirror and The Guardian, but I do hope we can get a fully independent investigation by the NAO into the wholesale transfer of assets, including the tens of millions of pounds of on-site scrap, to the private sector. That includes the Private Eye claim—a claim yet to be denied by the Mayor or anyone else—that Orion Kotrri, Mr Musgrave’s son-in-law, has been running the scrap operation. The South Tees Development Corporation has refused to say why he was selected for the role, who employs him or how he is paid. It is no secret that the business is being kept in the family.

The media and others are right that there are critical questions over how a bunch of local businessmen could already have extracted around £50 million in cash and assets from Britain’s biggest levelling-up project before a single business has begun operating on the site, and apparently without investing themselves. Perhaps all those concerned with the scrap should meet the challenge from The Northern Echo, which has said:

“There must be a ledger showing how much scrap has been sold which can put the facts in the open and enable people to judge whether there is any truth in the rumour”—

that is, the rumour of poor management.

[Mr Simon Clarke]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Alex Cunningham]

I will not.

Is the Minister aware of any such ledger of what are public assets, of where they have gone, and of what cost and value? Private Eye has established that decisions have been pushed through a board of the South Tees Development Corporation dominated by Houchen placemen and women in unrecorded discussions. Surely Ministers will recognise that they have some cleaning up to do. All we are seeking is for the truth to come to light. If the claims are not true, why is the Mayor not coming forward to publish all the relevant documents? Why is he not challenging, through the courts if necessary, all these media claims that he simply dismisses?

I would love to see the promises made by the Tees Mayor come to fruition. I want our communities to benefit from the jobs, but from much more than that too. Just as London boroughs benefit from the massive council tax base, those on Teesside could benefit from the dividends from Teesworks, and goodness knows we need it. Our community in the Tees Valley faces soaring levels of hardship compared with the national average. Research released on Monday by the End Child Poverty coalition showed that, in Stockton-on-Tees alone, over 40,000 children are living below the poverty line.

The picture is the same across all of the constituencies of Members from Teesside represented in the Chamber, but time and again we have seen the Mayor and his Government fail our area. They failed to do anything to retain steelmaking on Teesside. Despite claims of help on the way, they allowed our historic and world-leading Cleveland Bridge and Engineering Company to go to the wall, with the loss of hundreds of highly skilled jobs. When the Sirius mine got into cash-flow difficulties, the Mayor promised help, but his Government brokered a deal for a multinational company to take over, leaving thousands of local investors with very little. Many of them were former steelworkers who had invested their redundancy pay in the venture. Who knows what could have been done if business had been handled in a different way on Teesside, with public benefit being the focus.

We need assets on Teesside. We need investment. We need to know what is going on with people’s existing assets and how they are being disposed of. If there are huge profits to be made from Teesworks—the scrap alone is said to be worth £100 million—surely they should be going into our communities for development and quality services and not almost exclusively into the pockets of private companies. We need answers. We need openness and transparency. We need to see an end to this secrecy.

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[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

I start my brief contribution by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) on his forensic representation of this murky saga at Teesworks. The abuse and attacks will not deter him from unearthing the answers, as we can see from his fantastic speech. People need to back off and treat this issue extremely seriously. I give thanks and credit to Private Eye and the Financial Times for their fantastic journalism.

[Mr Simon Clarke]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Ian Lavery]

I will give way if the right hon. Gentleman says whether he or his party will seek recompense from Private Eye, the Financial Times and, perhaps, The Northern Echo for libel.

[Mr Clarke]

It would be helpful if the hon. Gentleman clarified that every single person cited in that Financial Times report, on which so much credence is being placed, is a Labour politician.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ashley Dalton (West Lancashire) (Lab)]

In autumn 2021, the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, on a visit to Teesside, said:

“If you want to see what levelling up looks like, come to Teesside.”

So let us have a look. Hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money has been invested to bring forward local regeneration and jobs creation. The Tees Valley Mayor says that £2 billion of private sector investment has been leveraged and that almost 3,000 jobs have been created. What we do not yet know is how the joint venture partners in Teesworks were selected, why they were selected, and how or if any other potential joint venture partners had the chance to express an interest in being selected.

What outputs projects may have delivered is not the subject of this debate. What matters here is whether this is value for money, who is benefiting and how. It seems to have gone quite well for the joint venture partners. In the space of a few years, they have gone from having a 50% stake in the company to having a 90% stake. According to the Financial Times, they have also received £45 million in dividends and, as far as we can tell, they have not had to invest any of their own money in the project yet. The initial share transfer of 50% took place without any public tender process; the decision to transfer a further 40% stake also took place without any public tender process.

None of that is sure-fire evidence of anything untoward having happened. However, although we cannot demonstrate that anything untoward has taken place, there is inadequate transparency and accountability to give the people of Teesside, and taxpayers across the country, any confidence whatever that their money and their assets have not been inappropriately or unfairly spent.

I spent 25 years as an officer in local government and it was impossible to buy a ream of paper without a transparently awarded procurement framework, never mind appoint regeneration partners and transfer public assets worth millions of pounds. In my personal experience, the procurement and partnership rules in local government, and the need for open and transparent public tender processes and procedures, often draw groans of frustration from officers. However, it is also my personal experience that local government officers are acutely aware of the responsibility upon them not only to spend public money appropriately, but to be explicitly seen to do so.

Arguably, Teesside is the Government’s beacon of levelling up. South Tees Development Corporation was the first ever mayoral development corporation to be set up outside London. More recently, the Tees Valley Mayor has been entrusted with another new development corporation, in Hartlepool, and, despite opposition from Middlesbrough Council, a new development corporation in Middlesbrough. So can we take it that the Secretary of State has confidence in the ability of the Tees Valley Mayor to set up and work with mayoral development corporations?

[Mr Simon Clarke]

On that point—

[Hon. Members]

No.

[Ashley Dalton]

I will give way. Go on—I am intrigued.

[Mr Clarke]

I am grateful to the hon . Lady for giving way because it has been reported this afternoon that the Middlesbrough Labour party is pulling the rug from under the Middlesbrough Development Corporation, which was established just a few weeks ago. Can she explain why that is the case and why it is forgoing the £18 million of Government support that that would bring, as well as the private sector support it would unlock? That seems to be a profoundly retrograde step for my town.

[Ashley Dalton]

It seems that quite a few of us believe that we should be looking far more into a wide range of these development corporations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to close for the Opposition in this debate.

Let me start by bringing us back to first principles. The Mayor of Teesside himself has requested a National Audit Office investigation into the Teesworks joint venture. That is backed by the Chairs of three parliamentary Select Committees. The Opposition, as hon. Members have heard, support it. The media support it. The only people who disagree with this are Ministers on the Treasury Bench and their Back Benchers. The purpose of the motion and the debate is to establish why the Government have taken the eccentric course of rejecting an NAO-led review. Is there a sound public policy reason or is it a partisan decision?

My colleagues have made very strong cases. My hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) set out in significant detail the pain the north-east has felt over 30 years of austerity; I would have thought that Conservative Members would have reflected on that, but they did not. My hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) reflected on the region’s potential, which makes that pain doubly saddening. My hon. Friends the Members for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), for West Lancashire (Ashley Dalton) and for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) raised a range of very serious questions that simply must be addressed by a review that everybody can have confidence in.

I associate myself with what my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) said about journalism and the courage of those various journalists who have taken this issue on. Despite all the criticism they have had from the players involved, they have stood up, done their job and shone a light on the issue, and we are having this debate today in part because of that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) set out an extraordinary, deep and detailed case, worth listening to by those colleagues who have sought to shout him down, both today and previously. He has shown incredible courage, knowing what is right for his constituents and doing what is right for his community when it would have been easier for him not to. There will have been days when he got out of bed, knowing the barrage that he was going to face, and it would have been easier not to, but he has too much courage to do that, and I salute that.

I turn to colleagues on the Government Benches. The hon. Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell) said it was inconvenient that we were bringing this motion today. I understand that, but I gently say that it is for the Opposition to ask the questions and for the Government to answer them—they cannot ask the questions as well. The hon. Member for Hartlepool (Jill Mortimer) hit the nail on the head when she said that the Mayor has asked for this audit. It is not so unreasonable that we should ask for such an intervention when the Mayor himself has done so.

The hon. Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers) asked, as did the Minister in his opening speech: why are we departing from established practice? This is the first time such a thing has happened. We have never had such an incident involving an elected Mayor or a mayoral development corporation. Of course whatever we do will be a new and novel approach, because we have never done it before. Falling back on false equivalence simply does not work.

I turn now to the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke), who made a bombshell contribution to this debate when he made it clear that he was basing his decision today on the discussions he has had with civil servants and the advice they were able to give him as a Back Bencher—advice that he knows we have not had any access to. At the root of the motion is the point that we need to know the information that is clearly available to some but not to others.

[Mr Simon Clarke]

I am afraid the hon. Gentleman has misunderstood what I was saying. I was saying that Ministers have not been advised by the civil service that the threshold has been met. That is a matter of public record. It is in the letter the Secretary of State sent to Ben Houchen at the end of last month and it was repeated by my hon. Friend the Minister at the Dispatch Box during his opening remarks. Ministers have been advised by the civil service that no such threshold for a best-value investigation has been met. That is not our view; it is the civil service’s view.

[Alex Norris]

I chirped during the right hon. Gentleman’s earlier contribution to ask him how he knew. I took from that—if I am wrong, the record will show otherwise—that he had had those conversations. Frankly, I think that that muddle is at the root of the issue.

Of course, this issue cannot be decoupled from the Government’s supposed commitment to levelling up the country—a commitment on which, as has become increasingly clear over the past 18 months, the Government cannot and will not deliver. We have seen a levelling-up White Paper which talks more about a Medici-style renaissance that a real commitment to our communities; a bodged levelling-up fund that locked deprived areas out from getting the money that they need; and much-heralded levelling-up directors quietly canned even though they were supposed to champion the revitalisation of our nations and regions. What a waste. What a waste of the pent-up potential of our regions, towns and cities which is waiting to be unleashed if only the Government were serious about delivering on their promise. Once again from this Department, it is all press releases, no delivery.

Teesside was supposed to be the flagship, the proof of concept, which makes the concerns expressed today all the more crucial. If this is what levelling up is, who benefits from it? Who is it for? The questions keep mounting up, as colleagues have said. Reports in the media outline how millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money have supported a project in which two private developers now hold a 90% stake despite seemingly never having entered a competitive process, and how those developers have taken significant dividends, outsizing their investment in the project. People rightly wonder how that has happened, who sanctioned it, whether value for money has been delivered, whether these concerns are legitimate, and if so, why has it taken dogged reporting on the issue, and colleagues in this place, for them to come to light?

Those are crucial questions that require answers, but rather than call in the National Audit Office, as the Mayor himself asked for, the Secretary of State has chosen to set up his own review, set the terms of that review and appoint the panel himself. We are now in the ridiculous situation where a flagship Government project that is facing serious allegations of failures in accountability is subject to a review set up and appointed by the Government themselves, and we are told that that will give the public the reassurance that they need. How can the Secretary of State expect the public to have confidence in that process? It is no wonder he did not come today and stand up for it, and instead sent the Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley), whom I hold in high regard, into an impossible situation.

Let us face it: the Government are on their way to court for a statutory review that they themselves set up, because they are doing anything they can to avoid being candid in it. Now, they ask us to trust them and put our confidence in a review that has not even those safeguards and powers, and they are surprised when we, the media and the public say that that is simply not good enough. We have waited for the answer today; it has not been forthcoming.

It is critical to public trust that the Government are transparent about the decision making that led to this process being adopted. The motion before us seeks to do just that by calling on the Government to release correspondence and communications pertaining to the decision not to order an independent NAO-led investigation and instead to commission their own review. For the sake of public confidence that all decisions have been made in good faith, and with the express intent to get the answers that the people of Teesside deserve, the Government should be open about how they reached their decision. That is all the more important because this does not relate to Teesside alone; it is the first project of its kind, with far-reaching implications for Mayors, combined authorities and development corporations. We need to know the truth now so that we can learn the lessons later.

The Government have had the chance today to establish a credible public policy reason why the Mayor’s own self-referral to the NAO, supported by everyone but the Government, was rejected. We did not hear any such reason from the Minister; we heard false equivalence about processes pertaining to different public bodies. Unless the Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade, the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) takes this opportunity to change course, we must use Parliament to compel the release of the information behind the decision. We must vote for the motion.

New Housing Supply

Simon Clarke Excerpts

Monday 5th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)]

It has been a genuine pleasure to be part of this evening’s debate, and I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) in his absence on securing it. I pay particular tribute to the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Andrew Western) for what I thought was an exemplary speech, in which I really could not find anything to disagree with. I say that with deep admiration.

We must confront the stark reality that we are facing a severe shortfall in housing because of the policy choices of successive Governments, a dearth of political leadership at both local and national level, and a lack of honesty with the public about the consequences every time a Member of this House, a local councillor or a local campaign group celebrates blocking new homes. The Centre for Cities estimates that our shortfall is as great as 4.3 million homes. That crisis is stunting our economic growth, leaving young people without the space to start a family, and trapping renters in unsafe accommodation. At our aimed-for build rate of 300,000 homes a year, it would take us some 50 years to put that right, and we are not getting anywhere near that build rate.

Of course, historically we did much better. Home ownership was a moral mission for the Macmillan Government, and it may not have escaped the attention of Conservative Members that his achievements underpinned his huge election victory in 1959, in the way that Mrs Thatcher won huge support through her right-to-buy policy. The contrast with the 1960s could hardly be more stark: in that decade, we built 3.6 million homes, more than we have built in total since the turn of the century. We have created a supply and demand feedback loop of the worst possible kind.

I am afraid that I must take issue with the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) when she says that the planning system is not the problem. I am afraid that it is: that system is fundamentally broken. It is what is driving the fact that someone buying their first home now faces paying nine times their income for it. In the 1980s, the figure was just three times the average salary.

[Helen Morgan]

I would just like to clarify: it is not the only problem. We give planning permission for all these houses, but we do not build them. We need to address the build-out problem as well as the planning issue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Clarke]

I think the issue of land banking is something of a straw man in these debates, because I have never seen compelling evidence that it happens. I think the reality is that developers need a predictable land supply in order to have a programme of forward build, and that is what largely accounts for that question.

I do not want to make this a starkly political debate, but I am very conscious that it is often the hon. Lady’s party that is—I am afraid to say it—the worst offender when it comes to campaigning cynically against the development that we need. I refer colleagues across the House to the Chesham and Amersham by-election a few years ago to see just how detrimental that policy has been to the wider debate. Arguably, it was that election result that led to the disastrous removal of targets, which I think is what is driving tonight’s debate in the first place.

[Bob Seely]

My right hon. Friend talks about the planning system being the problem, not land banking per se. Does he accept the figures from Lichfields, which show that from getting planning permission, it takes eight and a half years for a first house to be built on a large housing estate, and that on average, a 2,000-home housing estate is built out by developers at a rate of 160 homes a year? It takes the best part of two decades to build out a 2,000-home housing estate. Is my right hon. Friend really saying that the development industry is not the problem?

[Mr Clarke]

I think it is much more about the developers seeking to make sure that they can sell the homes that they are building and about their having a supply of land predictably available to allow them to build into the future. Developers are obviously very constrained at the moment by the scarcity of supply.

The consequence of where we find ourselves is that, according to Schroders, the last time house prices were this expensive relative to earnings was 1876, the year that Victoria became Empress of India. That should make us all reflect on what kind of society we have become. Clearly, part of the problem is that we need to control immigration more strictly, and I strongly believe that the numbers announced just before recess were unsustainably high, but this is fundamentally a home-grown problem. Our society does not build the homes that we need to accommodate our existing population, and therefore we need to establish clear targets for housing supply. Doing so is not some kind of Stalinist five-year plan; it is the best way we have yet identified to prevent councils from backsliding on their responsibilities and caving in to what are often small, if noisy, pressure groups. It is my view that the regrettable decision taken by the Prime Minister last year to weaken those targets by removing their legal force was a mistake that has already had far-reaching consequences.

I am prepared to have a sensible debate about how we set our housing targets. We could change our approach and take as our starting point the existing occupied housing stock of an area and apply a rate at which it should be increased in line with the national house building target of 300,000 homes a year. Urban areas would see the highest levels of need, allowing a brownfield-focused policy, and no part of the country would be asked to contribute more than its fair share. This stock-led starting point for a standard method would remove the reliance on discredited housing projections, and it could be nuanced with carve-outs for AONBs, sites of special scientific interest and places with high concentrations of holiday lets or, indeed, where historic drivers of demand, such as university expansion, have ceased to exist.

One thing I would say is that we cannot insist that the green belt should be out of bounds wholly and completely, as the Prime Minister implied recently. The green belt was a 1940s mechanism to prevent urban expansion, pretty crudely drawn on the map. It is not—I repeat, not—a sophisticated environmental protection measure. It is, however, the beneficiary of effective branding. We have to raise awareness that about 11% of our brownfield land lies within the green belt and that 35% of the green belt is intensive agricultural land of minimal environmental significance. The public deserve to know that. Perhaps areas of the green belt that do not have genuine environmental value could be designated as orange or amber belt, capable of being developed in exchange for substitution elsewhere.

There are other things I could talk about. I could talk about the onerous nutrient neutrality rules, which are blocking huge swathes of housing from the Solent up to Darlington.

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

indicated assent.

[Mr Clarke]

I can see my hon. Friend the Minister nodding from the Front Bench. I urge the Government to act on this issue. There could be a grand bargain, whereby we carve house building out of the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017 in exchange for more robust action on the actual polluters—that is to say, our water companies and bad farming practice. I will say no more on that.

As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson), we need the appropriate infrastructure to make sure that new developments succeed. That is certainly something I want to see in Coulby Newham in my constituency, where new homes are in contemplation at scale. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) on the importance of aesthetics. We need to build beautifully to win the argument with communities that we can build well. I also agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden about new garden towns and cities. Where is the ambition that led to Welwyn Garden City or Milton Keynes? It is vital that we try to concentrate developments where they can make the most difference, which will often be around the capital.

My final point—I crave your indulgence on this, Madam Deputy Speaker—is that this is a cross-party issue. It is an area where we need to work together and not take cynical advantage where politicians or councils of the opposite party try to do the right thing, because it is the easiest campaign in the world to fight new house building, but it is against the interests of this country. We risk becoming a profoundly unequal society, fractured on the twin fault lines of low home ownership and unaffordable rents for cramped, undesirable properties. That is not progress. That is not something of which any of us can be proud. I do sense that the mood in the House is changing on this question. I profoundly hope that Government policy will follow suit.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Simon Clarke Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I think it is Newcastle-under-Lyme, not Newcastle-upon-Lyme, but as someone who lived in Gosforth for five happy months, I am always happy to talk about Newcastle with the hon. Lady.

[Mr Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Michael Gove]

However, I am even happier to give way to my right hon. Friend.

[Mr Clarke]

My right hon. Friend is exactly right in what he says about the recent vote at Middlesbrough Council. Does he agree that effective devolution to the structures of local government, which can deliver change most effectively—including, in Middlesbrough’s case, a development corporation led by the Mayor, but with full democratic accountability ensured by its membership—is the right way to make sure that left-behind communities in towns such as Middlesbrough are not ignored and forgotten, as they were for far too long?

[Michael Gove]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. All the communities of Teesside—Redcar, Normanby, Eston, Middlesbrough, Stockton, Darlington—are benefiting as a result of Conservative leadership, but in particular, the development corporation that the Mayor is bringing forward is the right thing to do.

I must draw my remarks to a close in a minute, but before I do, because I think it is always right to offer praise to members of other parties who have done the right thing, I want to thank all those across local government who have contributed to the extension of devolution that we saw in the Chancellor’s statement. I have known the Chancellor since we both entered the House of Commons in 2005, and he has long been a champion of devolution, decentralisation and empowering local government. It was thanks to his leadership and the support of the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and the Prime Minister that we were able to secure two significant trailblazer deals with the Mayors of the West Midlands and of Greater Manchester. We hope to emulate that by having further powers devolved to Mayors in mayoral combined authorities across the United Kingdom.

Of course, the Chancellor of the Exchequer is underpinning that investment with the money that he has secured for innovation accelerators in Glasgow, Manchester and Birmingham, and through the eight investment zones designated for England and the four in other parts of the United Kingdom. However, today I want to thank the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, who has signed a devolution deal—a new trailblazer deal. Mayor Burnham says that this deal marks

“a new era for English devolution”.

I know that some Conservatives will not always necessarily want to hear praise for Mayor Burnham, but I think it is important that all of us across the House recognise that, if we want to see our country operate in a way that gives us truly sustainable growth, we need to empower local leaders. We need to have central Government investing in science and technology, in changes to the labour market and in our children’s future, as with the changes to childcare, education and skills that this Budget brings.

I opened my remarks by reminding us how much we owe to Lord Heseltine of Thenford. His determination to work across party boundaries and across the United Kingdom to raise the hopes and the ambitions of people in areas that had been overlooked and undervalued contributed to an economic renaissance from Liverpool to Canary Wharf. It is a similar spirit that animates our Prime Minister and our Chancellor in this Budget, and I commend it to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)]

The shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), said in his speech that by their choices you will know their priorities. He was absolutely right. The Chancellor showed last week that his priorities are the priorities of Teesside. The Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) said in his speech that he would take anyone who wanted on a tour of Teesside to see our freeport and the fantastic progress being made there. Many Opposition Members would benefit from such a tour, because they would see the transformative impact of the carbon capture and storage investment that the Chancellor reaffirmed last week.

Contrary to what the shadow Secretary of State said in his closing remarks, Net Zero Teesside is a reality. It is going up as we speak, backed by Shell, Equinor and BP—real companies investing in a real project that is transformational not just for the industries of the future, but our existing industrial base in steel, chemicals, plastics and all those industries which emit carbon dioxide as an intrinsic part of their production, not just in terms of the emissions released as part of energy generation, but as a by-product. That is why carbon capture is so vital. That is why it was so welcome that it was backed strongly in the Budget last week. We had a welcome decision on new nuclear and its classification as a sustainable technology, which is absolutely right and vital for the future. I welcome warmly the position to keep Hartlepool nuclear power station producing for two more years.

Critically, there was direct investment in our communities—£20 million secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Jacob Young) for Eston Square, which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State rightly celebrated in his remarks. That follows the £15 million for Guisborough in my constituency, the £6 million for Loftus and the £36 million for the Middlesbrough town deal. That is investment in the economic drivers of growth and in the communities that need it. By the time we go to the polls in 2024, the Government’s levelling up plan will have transformed people’s lives—that is a good sign.

There was much else to welcome in the Budget including, critically, the announcements on childcare—something that the group Next Gen Tories has been campaigning hard for. We all know across this House that the cost of childcare is unsustainably high and deeply unfair. The campaign group Pregnant Then Screwed has reported that for two thirds of families, childcare costs are as much as their mortgage. That is totally unjust and clearly an obstacle not just for the economy but for our having the children we need as a society. It is right that the Chancellor has taken bold action to address it.

I also welcome the abolition of the lifetime allowance on pensions, which will have a major impact on our retaining the doctors we need. The response of the British Medical Association says a lot more than that of shadow Front Benchers, who we have seen in complete chaos, with the shadow Chancellor and the shadow Health Secretary utterly at odds about this important measure.

As we heard from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, there is bold action on worklessness. The OBR estimates that 110,000 more people will be supported into the workplace by 2027-28. That is exactly what we need—the combination of challenge and support that people across the country want from the welfare state and our excellent jobcentres. It is an absolute scandal that too many people have their lives written off as economically inactive owing to health conditions, when they could work. There is all the support and ingenuity that can be deployed available to help with that vital process. All that was to be welcomed in the Budget.

There were some aspects of the Budget that I wish had been different. I have made no secret of my deep concern about the decisions surrounding the future of our corporation tax increase. I think that we have seen the consequences already with the decision of AstraZeneca to choose the Republic of Ireland over the UK for its next investment. I welcome the offsetting benefits of the full expensing that the Chancellor announced. If that is to work, it is vital that it is a permanent decision rather than simply a temporary relief, otherwise it will have a distorting effect on business investment. I very much hope that the Chancellor will make that permanent if the headroom is there to enable it, as he said he would. That will be vital to ensure that the measure is a success.

It will not surprise Members across the House that I believe that we need to do more on the generators of growth more generally. I point out the importance of housing, which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State mentioned. In the end, the only sustainable way to improve our economic activity in this space—and the social justice of our housing debate—is to build more homes, addressing the challenges of nimbyism and nutrient neutrality. I hope and believe that there will be more progress on that in the months ahead.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)]

I call the Scottish National party spokesperson. No time limit.

Middlesbrough Development Corporation

Simon Clarke Excerpts

Tuesday 14th March 2023 Westminster Hall

[Mr Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for giving way, and I am conscious that he has given me his consent to speak momentarily. Does he recognise that the planning powers and funding have been made available precisely because the Government have confidence that the development corporation will be a vehicle for regeneration and renewal of a sort that Middlesbrough Council has, I am afraid, sadly not proved capable of offering for too many years?

[Andy McDonald]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. I do not share his confidence, and I will set out the reasons why the structure that has been set out is incredibly dangerous. I share his observations about how Middlesbrough Council has been run of late. I will come back to that, but perhaps it is shared territory for us.

Critically, however, the council will have no say on how any development goes ahead or how decisions are made. That is more akin to a protection racket than to good government. Those decisions about development will be made not by the council, but by an unelected board appointed by Ben Houchen, the Conservative Tees Valley Mayor. He will decide who goes on the board, not the people of Middlesbrough or its elected council.

Much is said about devolution, whereby power and resources should be pushed down and be in the gift of the most local possible form of democratic representation. Here, the opposite is being proposed. This is not devolution; it is gangster politics, taking power and control away from the people, while the elected independent Mayor of Middlesbrough and his Tory deputy will be on the board. It seems—

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy McDonald]

On the point the hon. Gentleman made about Darlington, the Labour party often gets the charge that it is somehow anti-growth. That is utter tosh. It is the most pathetic jibe, and Conservative Members would be better served by engaging in intelligent debate.

On his original point, if the hon. Gentleman genuinely wants to talk about crime, disorder and public order on our streets, I suggest that that is what the police should be doing. I do not expect them to be serving on regeneration boards. They should get out, do their job and ensure they have people on our streets looking after our businesses and making sure people are safe. Serving on regeneration boards is not their function, and they should get on and do the job they were put there to do.

There are lots of questions emerging about how the South Tees development corporation and others have operated. My clear preference would be for the much-needed urban regeneration in central Middlesborough to sit with the elected council. In turn, the council can rely on its internal officer expertise, and, where necessary, external expertise from established professional organisations with track records of successful urban regeneration. Dealing with regeneration in that way ought ordinarily to ensure accountability and transparency.

Although I share the concerns expressed by the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke) about how duties have been discharged by the current political leadership of Middlesborough Council, which runs until May of this year, I fear that the likelihood of there being proper scrutiny and accountability of the proposed MDC is very low. Yet again on Teesside, a board made up of hand-picked individuals will be making important decisions about how valuable public funds are used without any meaningful accountability or scrutiny. Indeed, the MDC will acquire planning powers that currently—and rightly—belong to the council, which will now lose valuable fee income and business rates. That will inevitably place more pressure on the council, which could lead to further cuts.

[Mr Simon Clarke]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andy McDonald]

No; the right hon. Gentleman will get his say. He asked me if he could participate in the debate, and I said yes. I will not give way any further, because I want to give him the opportunity to make his contribution.

Those pressures could lead to further cuts in Middlesbrough. We could be walking into yet another public-private joint venture that will end up transferring assets out of the domain of the MDC and into private hands, as per the recent shenanigans at the South Tees development corporation.

Of course I want investment in Middlesbrough. After 13 years of this Government, almost half the children in our town live in poverty. The town mayor and the executive have just voted through a budget that will turn off the street lights, reduce our libraries and seriously deplete our warden service. I see economic growth and development as one of the key levers to turn that around. In addition, we need a more equitable settlement from central Government, but that is a debate for another day.

We have done some great work in Middlesbrough, despite difficult economic times. Here are some examples of the significant successes. TeesAMP, next to Newport bridge, is a state-of-the-art advanced manufacturing park. It hosts many high-quality businesses at the cutting edge of their respective industries, providing high-quality, high-wage jobs. Boho Digital City is a great success story, with over a decade of starting up and sustaining digital businesses. Centre Square in Middlesbrough brings in the likes of GB Bank and AXA UK, to name but two. The historic quarter around Exchange Square works with Historic England, which has funded some wonderful work. The regeneration and redevelopment of our railway station—a subject very dear to my heart—brings better connections and opportunities for the much-needed economic growth of our town.

All those achievements were begun under previous administrations. The clear evidence is that we already have the systems in place to make this work and to enable Middlesbrough to attract investment. It makes little sense, in my mind, to create another layer of bureaucracy. All those achievements were made by people working together through the various democratic institutions. In particular, they were often in partnership and co-operation with the Tees Valley Combined Authority—from when it was set up before Mr Houchen was elected by what were then five Labour councils across the Tees valley, and continuing subsequent to his election.

There is no reason to suppose that those sorts of arrangements could not work again. We should deploy funds in a way that works, and that holds in our institutions of local democracy. All too often, the rules on good governance, integrity and sound money are undermined, with democratic and accountable control taken away from the people and given to chosen individuals to enable them to use vast quantities of public money as they see fit. I fully anticipate that the Government will plough on regardless, but they need to know that the MDC, despite the absence of transparency and democratic integrity within its structure and architecture, will be held to account by the people of Middlesborough for its decisions. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Paisley; that is very kind. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) for giving me his consent to speak.

To be in politics is to choose, and I choose progress. I want to put on record why the Middlesbrough Development Corporation is so important. It will turn around those parts of Middlesbrough where decay and decline have unfortunately set in deep for many decades. We need the MDC to deliver a strategic vision and accelerated planning powers that will unlock the growth and reform that we all want. Crucially, it will enable not only Government investment but hopefully private sector investment, which will transform areas such as Gresham and Middlehaven. The Labour party in Hartlepool knows that is a model that will work for the town, and so voted for it just last month; every independent and Conservative councillor in Middlesbrough knows it is right for our town, and has expressed that view. They are joined in that by independent, third-party organisations, such as Teesside University.

The Labour party in Middlesbrough alone opposes these plans. Its reasons against them are, I am afraid, sophistry. The Tees Valley Mayor, Ben Houchen, has given the commitment that the council will be no worse off financially for giving away the assets concerned. There is no democratic deficit; as my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Jill Mortimer) has said, if the town’s mayor and deputy mayor were Labour councillors, they would sit on the board if they were to win the election in May. A majority of the councillors in the town have written to the Secretary of State supporting the plans.

Notwithstanding the innuendo we have heard, there will be no asset stripping; there are very few assets in Gresham and Middlehaven to be stripped, sadly. These are areas that need help, support, investment and regeneration, and that is what we will give them. Labour tried to close our airport; Labour tried to close our freeport; Labour tried to stop the Treasury opening in Darlington; Labour tried to stop the Brexit that Teesside voted for by two to one; and now it is trying to stop desperately needed regeneration in Middlesbrough. It is unacceptable, and it needs to be called out today.

For the first time in my lifetime, good things are happening in our town. A steady stream of important new developments is ensuring that the future of the town is brighter than it has been for decades. Tomorrow’s Budget will hopefully bring further good news in the form of an investment zone—a pro-growth zone of the kind that I was proud to work on while a Minister in the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, and which our Mayor, Ben Houchen, has been so helpful in developing the proposition for.

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for the strong support he has provided in ensuring that the MDC will go ahead, despite the best efforts of Labour to wreck the proposition. I am equally grateful for the tireless work of our Mayor, Ben Houchen, and my Conservative colleagues in the Tees Valley, as well as all those people in Middlesbrough who have contacted me to express their disappointment and outrage at the actions of the Labour party—the wreckers, the enemies of progress, and the enemies of investment.

As I said at the outset, to be in politics is to take a side. Labour has once again sided against investment, progress and Middlesbrough’s best interests, and today we expose that sorry legacy. I urge everyone in our town to reflect closely, before the pivotal elections on 4 May, on what is truly in their best interests, and who is truly on their side.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Simon Clarke Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 13th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I will have to start with a five-minute time limit for Back-Bench speeches, I am afraid. I call Simon Clarke.

[Mr Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)]

I pay tribute to all who were involved in the creation of this Bill, which I had the pleasure of overseeing briefly as Secretary of State. Let me also express my appreciation for the Government’s work in relation to last week’s commitment to a new approach to the permitting of onshore wind, enshrining community consent as the key guiding principle when it comes to whether new developments, or indeed existing ones, can be set up. That is a hugely welcome change, and one that I believe can and should unite the House. As a result, I have withdrawn what was new clause 90 today, although I thank all those who supported it, particularly my right hon. Friend the Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma).

The hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook) mentioned the consultation which we look forward to seeing in due course. I am confident that it will be a robust, credible mechanism which will establish how we can measure community consent and how we can unlock developments when communities wish to support them, while, obviously, protecting places that do not wish to host onshore wind.

There is much that I commend in the Government’s new clauses, new schedule and amendments, just as there was on the first day’s debate on devolution. I particularly welcome new clause 69, on street votes, and clause 50, on community land auctions. Both are classic supply-side reforms of the kind that we badly need if we are to liberalise house building. That has clearly been a central issue of contention in recent debates on the Bill, but there are some welcome new proposals that we should also consider. I especially commend the new clauses tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose), which I think would successfully complement the wider liberalisation set out in the Bill.

We should recap some of the fundamental points that we need to recognise when it comes to not just today’s debate, but all debates in the House about intergenerational fairness and opportunities. Since the 1950s and 1960s the rate at which we expand our housing supply has halved, even as the population has risen. In London it would take the average worker more than 15 years to afford a deposit. To put it simply, we need more homes—as many as we can possibly build—and we should enable the free market through every possible mechanism at our disposal.

It is to the Government’s credit that we have been building at the fastest rate for some 30 years, but for too many people under 50, the dream of an opportunity society is receding rather than coming closer. As recently as 1991, 78% of those aged between 25 and 44 were owner-occupiers; the figure today is 56%. For those aged between 25 and 34, it has fallen from 67% to 41%. So many of the long-term concerns that we confront in this Chamber—inequality, productivity, even fertility—are linked with our fundamental problem of not being able to build enough homes for it to be affordable for too many young people to rent, let alone buy.

I happen to believe that enabling home ownership is an existential priority for my party, but Members on both sides of the House should welcome innovative new measures in the Bill, such as street votes and community land auctions, which can progress that agenda. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has said with regard to street votes—and, as so often, I cannot phrase this better than him—

“Arithmetic is important but so is beauty, so is belonging, so is democracy, and so is making sure that we are building communities.”

I think that these measures will help us to realise that.

However, there are issues on which I believe we ought to go further. I am conscious of the limited time that we have today, but I will touch on the issue of nutrient neutrality. I believe that, although the Bill makes welcome progress to try to unlock this thorny problem—which is blocking 100,000 new planning permissions from being realised—we can and should go further. That potentially includes derogating from the habitat regulations, while imposing tighter restrictions on the root causes of pollution: bad farming practices, and poor management of waste water by our waterworks.



Most fundamentally, I want to go back to that point in regard to the need for us to build the homes that this country requires, and that takes us back to the underlying issue of targets and the new clauses tabled in this regard by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) and my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely). It is critical that, as the national planning policy framework is redrawn, we keep making the case for good, high-quality developments with the right infrastructure and rational incentives for communities to welcome new homes. If we do not, it will be a social and economic disaster for this country and a terrible problem for my party as we seek to make the case for a property-owning democracy and popular capitalism.