Inter-City Rail Investment

Debate between Stephen Gilbert and Alison Seabeck

Thursday 9th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Gilbert]

I am surprised and shocked, as I am sure my hon. Friend is, and I can only assume that the Minister has heard his pleas and that that will be part of the ongoing discussions with the train operating companies. We need trains that are fit for the 21st century so that people can use them as part of their daily routine. Where businesses use them, we need to ensure that they have wi-fi, food, sockets and, of course, toilets.

I also welcome the project to refurbish the Night Riviera, which is the sleeper service between Paddington and Penzance. It is a vital service for the business community, allowing people to come to London for early-morning meetings, spend the day here and leave again. It is welcome that we are to have additional coaches, that they are to be upgraded and that there is to be a new lounge.

One of my frustrations when I have used the Night Riviera service, much like the one that my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Simon Kirby) mentioned, has been that there are no sockets inside the cabins. Someone can sit down on the train hoping that they might be able to do some work or watch a movie on their iPad, only to lose power and have no ability to charge up their device. That is a point of detail, but I hope that the Department might be able to raise it with the people who are designing the new sleeper carriages.

[Alison Seabeck]

The hon. Gentleman will also have noticed that, as those sleeper trains are currently designed, if someone wants to stretch out on the seats because they have not managed to get a berth, of which there are too few, they find that the arms of the seats are fixed. They have to spend their time sleeping either wrapped around a fixed metal arm or on the floor.

[Stephen Gilbert]

The hon. Lady will know that, often, what happens on the sleeper train must stay on the sleeper train, but she makes a good point about the comfort of the seated part of the service. If we are to invest significant money in that important service, we need to ensure that we get it right for the future. That includes moveable arms, as she says, and sockets to charge mobile and other devices.

The introduction of wi-fi, the revamped sleeper service and the intercity express programme, which will see more rolling stock delivered to the south-west, are all welcome. For too long now, customers on the Penzance to Paddington line have had to put up with a patchy service, often with no food aboard and with frequent delays and cancellations, out-of-date rolling stock, no wi-fi, as I have mentioned, and expensive ticket prices.

The Liberal Democrat party is clear that long-term investment in our rail network can secure an 8% dividend boost to the local economy in Cornwall. One key project that I hope the Minister will address is improving signalling in the south-west. Up to £15 million needs to be spent before 2017, which Cornwall council and the local transport board are keen to co-fund. That will improve capacity on the line by creating the prospect of a half-hourly main line service, improving journey times, and helping the route absorb the predicted increase in passenger numbers. I also put on record my support for the proposed Traincare centre in Penzance, which is a £14 million investment to house the new First Great Western rolling stock and the new sleeper. It will create up to 60 new jobs and move the maintenance of the bulk of the First Great Western fleet to Cornwall.

I will conclude with a couple of parochial points that I hope the Minister and I can correspond on in the future. There is a real need for improvements to St Austell station as there is currently no waiting room on the up platform, and no disabled access between the up and down platforms. The Minister’s predecessor and I were in correspondence about additional Government funding to make those renovations. The funding has been forthcoming but the project has not yet been delivered, so I hope the Minister will be able to return to his Department tomorrow and kick the necessary people into ensuring that the project stays on time and—excuse the pun—on track. People in Newquay value the fact that over the summer months a direct Newquay to other cities service comes through the branch line into Newquay, providing much relief for local traffic, particularly on the A30. That service needs to be maintained.

In summary, in recent years the south-west has fallen behind other parts of the country in terms of rail infrastructure. The Government have taken action through the extension of the franchise to encourage investment. I welcome much of that, but we continue to need a concerted long-term approach to ensure that the entire region—Cornwall, Devon and indeed the rest of south-west England—benefits from what our rail services could, and should, be.

Water Bill

Debate between Stephen Gilbert and Alison Seabeck

Monday 25th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Gilbert]

As with everything my hon. Friend says, her question was good in part—the first part was very good, but on the second part I am afraid I must disagree. The Liberal Democrats in Cornwall have certainly fought for many decades to redress the unfair water bills that my constituents and others in Cornwall suffer, and thanks to both parties coming together we were able to do that.

[Alison Seabeck]

rose—

[Stephen Gilbert]

At the risk of breaking my earlier promise to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will give way once more.

[Alison Seabeck]

This rewriting of history is wonderful. The effort to get bills down in the south-west, led in no small part by my former colleague Linda Gilroy when she chaired the all-party group on water, was an all- party effort. The groundwork that enabled the coalition Government to introduce the £50 rebate was all done under the previous Labour Government, particularly through the Walker review.

[Stephen Gilbert]

The hon. Lady and I know each other well, and I certainly would not be so churlish as to deny the all-party effort in Cornwall and Devon to drive the issue forward, but unfortunately in Westminster for 13 years the Labour Government did nothing. It was the coalition Government who delivered that change.

To finish my points on the introduction of competition, I want to ask my hon. Friend the Minister about charities. It strikes me that charities can be run from people’s domestic residences. Many charities are small, as he will know from his constituency as much as I do from mine. Are there going to be size restrictions and criteria for qualifying for the introduction of competition in the market for charities? How big will they have to be, for example? I would appreciate some clarity on that, as would others across the country.

Finally, I want to mention Flood Re, following some of the comments from my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), whom I congratulate on his hard work to secure the renegotiation with the Association of British Insurers and the National Flood Forum. He and I crossed swords here when I tried to push him to accept a deal to ensure that flood insurance remained affordable and available for my constituents. I am delighted to welcome a deal that I think takes a huge step in that direction. I suspect that he and his colleagues played the Government’s hand as best they possibly could. Hopefully we have the rudiments of a deal that will be in place for the long term.

Three years ago this week parts of my constituency were under water and hundreds of businesses and homes had been damaged by flood water. I think that it is timely and right that the Government have brought forward these proposals, which will mean that people will still be able to insure their homes, sell their homes and, if disaster strikes, barring the loss of life, rebuild their homes and reassemble their lives.

However, some key issues remain. I seek assurance from the Minister that premiums for those people in flood risk areas will not be dissimilar to those for people in non-flood risk areas and that there will be some equivalent of the premium element on the household insurance policy that flood insurance will cover. In particular, I support the calls from other right hon. and hon. Members on excesses. I have constituents who were hit by the flood three years ago and had a £15,000 excess on their flood insurance. Clearly, if they do not have £15,000 in the bank, having insurance that requires them to pay £15,000 before being able to make a claim is nonsense. We must ensure that we drive down those excesses as far as possible. I welcome the figure of £250 to £500 that has been proposed.

I have one final question. The Secretary of State said that homes built after 2009 would not be included—I quote, I hope—“if built on floodplains.” Does that mean that homes built after 2009 which are not built on floodplains will be included? We need some clarification on that.

Overall, I think the Bill introduces long-overdue competition into the water market, driving down costs for business and, ultimately, I hope, for consumers. It delivers on one of my pledges to my constituents, which is that flood insurance will remain affordable and available.

Finance (No. 4) Bill

Debate between Stephen Gilbert and Alison Seabeck

Wednesday 18th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Gilbert]

My hon. Friend makes an entirely relevant point. Some 2,000 people in Cornwall are employed directly in the production of the 84 million pasties a year and that 2,000 does not count the many scores of others who work in bakeries on the high streets of many towns across Cornwall.

We know from YouGov research that 32% of people said that they would stop buying pasties altogether if the VAT extension went forward. Let us assume that one in three is too high a number and that there is a 20% fall in sales. What will that mean? The Cornish pasty producers will lose £30 million a year, £7.5 million will be lost in secondary spend in the Cornish economy and 400 jobs will be lost directly in the industry.

[Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman will appreciate that we also have a pasty industry in Devon. He is talking about job losses and I have already come across workers for pasty companies in Cornwall who live in Plymouth and who are already on a three-day week. It is already having an impact and it will get much worse.

[Stephen Gilbert]

The hon. Lady makes an accurate point. Pasty producers tell me that they are already feeling the squeeze. They are feeling the same pressures as us all through fuel costs and so on. They simply do not feel that they can reduce the net price and therefore absorb that extra 20% so there are serious concerns that it will add problems to an already damaged industry.

The Government’s change is supposed to be about simplification and replacing the subjective test of the purpose of selling the pasty under the current VAT rules with a much simpler test, but in fact we are only replacing one set of anomalies with another. VAT will be charged if the pasty is bought hot but not if it is bought cold. Will we have an army of HMRC inspectors going around with their standard issue thermometers and testing pasties?

Sex and Relationship Education

Debate between Stephen Gilbert and Alison Seabeck

Tuesday 25th October 2011 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Gilbert]

Again, I think my hon. Friend is trying to find disagreement where there may be none. As I said earlier, I think the materials should be appropriate and they need to be monitored. I like her suggestion of a classification system. However, I do not like her suggestion that parents could opt out of something that is so important and such a fundamental part of being a fully functioning human being in the 21st century.

[Alison Seabeck]

We are exploring a very important point. As the mother of two daughters—one of whom went on to teach in primary school and was responsible for sex education—I think it is important that we can trust our teachers to understand what is going on in the classroom and what the children can cope with. As a busy parent, I did not get to the Monday morning meetings either; I trusted my daughters’ teachers. Now we have access to the worldwide web, and there are very good sites to which parents could be pointed by the school, saying, “This is what we intend to teach your children. If you cannot come along, look at the internet.” A vast number of parents—certainly the working ones—would have access to a computer and be able to do that.

[Stephen Gilbert]

The hon. Lady makes an eloquent point. The explosion and proliferation of modern technology make such supervisory duties much easier for all of us. In future, perhaps she will be able to do so in the Chamber from her iPad.

Localism Bill

Debate between Stephen Gilbert and Alison Seabeck

Wednesday 18th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Alison Seabeck]

Yet again, this is all about discretion and saying, “Trust us.” I am afraid that we would like to see something clearer in the Bill.

Live-in siblings are another group for whom there should be statutory succession. Once again, we can all look at our constituency experience. During the passage of the Civil Partnership Act 2004, the Conservative Front-Bench spokesman said:

“It is profoundly unfair that carers and siblings who cohabit are disadvantaged on the death of one or other of them by being forced out of their home by their tenancy terms”.—[Official Report, 12 October 2004; Vol. 425, c. 188.]

That legislation was the wrong place for that debate. This Bill is the right place, and our amendments would address the issue. Something else that ought to be addressed, and which we sought to address in Committee, is the right of unmarried couples. I am pleased that the Government seem to have shelved the idea of giving £2 a week—or whatever it was—to get married. However, the Bill gives newlyweds more succession rights to a tenancy than a cohabiting unmarried couple who have shared a home for decades, even when those newlyweds have cohabited for only a matter of days. That is not fair or appropriate. If passed unamended, clause 134 would not reflect modern family life for many families in Britain.

The Minister said in Committee that there was some tidying up to be done. I acknowledge that Government amendments 194 to 201 try to improve the provisions and address the succession issues. In so far as they represent a degree of Government movement since Committee, I welcome those amendments. I also welcome the Minister’s acknowledgment at the time that the Bill was far from perfect. A host of Government amendments have been tabled—more than the norm on Report—which largely reflects the lack of pre-legislative scrutiny that the Bill received and the rushed consultations.

I shall try to get through our remaining amendments as quickly as possible. On the right of tenants to complain directly to the housing ombudsman, we oppose clause 153 and seek to remove it with amendment 278. Clause 153 would require tenants to seek permission and approval from their elected representatives to complain about their social landlord to the housing ombudsman. We support the National Housing Federation position on this issue. Amendment 278 would allow tenants the right to complain directly, as they can now. The National Housing Federation represents landlords, who possibly have the most to lose from the change, yet they are very relaxed about allowing tenants that direct link.

New clauses 24 and 25 seek to clamp down on loopholes in housing law that can be exploited by fraudsters and to deal with the issue of fairness—on which the Minister, he say yes! I am grateful to him for acknowledging that we brought to his attention something on which he thinks he can build. I look forward to seeing further amendments in the other place. When it comes to fairness in the allocation of homes and the transparency of the process, we felt that the local authorities in the cases that we highlighted needed a right of redress. Neither case is sub judice. They were highlighted for us by Arden Chambers, and they are Birmingham v. Qasim and Newport v. Charles. We would be grateful if both cases could be looked at in detail and amendments brought forward.

There are a host of issues concerning homelessness that, given enough time, deserve to be debated properly on the Floor of the House. However, given the constraints on Report, it is neither appropriate nor possible to give them another airing or vote on them all, as we did in Committee. I am sure that a number of those issues will be raised again in another place, given the depth of expertise there. In Committee, we sought a requirement for better standards in the private rented sector—a point touched on by the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Stephen Gilbert)—through proposals for an accreditation scheme. I would support any move in the other place to resurrect that and look at it in more detail.

[Stephen Gilbert]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for indicating her party’s support for such a proposal. It could be quite transformative if the Government, while discharging the homelessness duties into the private rented sector, were to become a big purchaser of services in that sector, and we could drive up standards through an accreditation scheme. Does she agree with me on that?

[Alison Seabeck]

The hon. Gentleman knows that I agree. I tabled the amendments in Committee proposing exactly that, so the answer is yes. We tabled those amendments because we wanted to see an end to homeless applicants being placed in sub-standard or unsafe accommodation. Sadly, the Government rejected those amendments, and we shall have to wait to see how the matter pans out in the other place.

In Committee, we also sought to improve the advice offered to people presenting as homeless, but that, too, was rejected, as was our amendment to ensure that the Government’s changes to housing benefit would not leave families intentionally homeless. The Government also rejected our amendment to ensure that any private sector accommodation into which homeless applicants were placed should be deemed to be affordable, although the Minister has mentioned taking affordability into account. An amendment seeking to prevent homelessness through better advice, with statutory guarantees on the quality of that advice, was also rejected. The hon. Members for Bradford East (Mr Ward) and for St Austell and Newquay expressed similar concerns, but sadly, they withdrew all their amendments and held the coalition line. I hope that we will be able to convince some Members on the Government Benches to join us in the Lobby today because of the Government’s failure to listen to the arguments that we and they made in Committee. I am sure that their colleagues in the Lords will also look closely at these issues.

More than 160,000 people presented as homeless last year, and I am disappointed that a Bill that will have a profoundly negative impact on the lives of hundreds of thousands of people has returned to the Floor of the House after its Committee stage, and after a lengthy pause, with no amendments to address the criticisms and concerns of charities and experts who deal with homelessness on a day-to-day basis. Two very good reports have been published in the past fortnight. One from Crisis, on single homelessness, flags up the areas in which the most can and should be done to prevent homelessness. The other, from the Homeless People’s Commission, points out that offering better advice will save the Exchequer money.

The Bill is a retrograde step. Homeless applicants found to be in priority need and unintentionally homeless will no longer be able to draw on the security and stability of a social home with security of tenure. Instead, they will be placed directly into the private rented sector and if they refuse an offer, for whatever reason, the local authority will no longer have a duty to house them. They would then have almost nowhere to turn for help. It does not take much to realise the circumstances in which an offer might be unacceptable to an applicant. The accommodation might be too expensive, too far away from their child’s school—a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter)—or too close to an abusive ex-partner. It might also be damp, mouldy or unsafe—the list goes on. Key among all this is the insecurity that a private rented sector offer can sometimes bring. There was a very good article in Inside Housing this week, following a survey that clearly showed that a homeless person placed in the private rented sector was likely to face eviction very early, and to be turned around and around in a circle of homelessness.

The third biggest cause of statutory homelessness last year was the loss of an assured shorthold tenancy. As I said earlier, stability is vital in order to prevent what people have referred to as the revolving door of homelessness. With tenancies in the private rented sector being less stable and of a shorter duration, the risk of recurring homelessness is greater, so the need for stronger statutory protection increases. Amendments 273, 274, 275, 276 and 360, taken together, would extend the period within which the homelessness duty would recur from two years to five years when the applicant was placed in the private rented sector. They would also provide, during that five year period, that a household accepted as homeless should receive “reasonable preference” on their local authority’s housing allocation scheme.

Under amendment 269, the duty of local authorities to find temporary accommodation for a period that enables the homeless person to find accommodation themselves would be extended to intentionally and unintentionally homeless people who were not in priority need. It is important to note that this duty to accommodate for long enough to give reasonable opportunities to secure other accommodation is distinct from the main homelessness duty. Extending this provision to those not in priority need would help an individual facing a crisis who might just need some short-term accommodation to get back on their feet. It would give the individual and the authority the opportunity to work towards resolving their homelessness, perhaps outside the social sector, helping to ensure that no one faced a situation with no option but to sleep rough.

Communities and Local Government (CSR)

Debate between Stephen Gilbert and Alison Seabeck

Thursday 13th January 2011 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Gilbert (St Austell and Newquay) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Robertson. I will try to heed your earlier comments about brevity. It is clear to everyone here that local government has had one of the toughest settlements for many years. As we tackle the largest deficit in our peacetime history and face up to the legacy that has been left to this coalition Government, the sector will come under pressure. The hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) set out his perceptions of some of those concerns, but he failed to mention how big a role his party played in getting us into the position where some of these measures are necessary. There is no doubt that the settlement will be extremely challenging for local councils. However, there are some aspects of it that should be welcomed.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) said, it is clear that the ministerial team has worked extremely hard to soften the impact of the inevitable impact of the spending reductions. Indeed the Department here in Whitehall is taking a significant budget hit, which will, no doubt, be keenly felt, but it is being done to ensure that as much money as possible can make it out to local authorities in the country. What is also welcome—the Chairman of the Select Committee acknowledged this—is the fact that £85 million of transitional funding will help the 37 authorities that would otherwise have seen sharp falls in their spending power.

Like most Members, I welcome the ending of the ring-fencing of most grants. I also welcome the new public health grant and the streamlining of other grant funding. The fact that there were more than 90 individual grants was clearly a symptom of the centralising, top-down, “Whitehall knows best” approach of the last Government. As a result of actions taken by this Government, councils will have more freedom to spend the money that they receive on the things that matter to the communities they represent, although clearly that will have to be done in the context of a very challenging funding settlement. It is my view—I hope it is shared by other Members in Westminster Hall today—not only that it is better that decision making happens at the most local level possible but that, in most cases, better decisions are taken at that level.

As my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) has already done, I welcome the Government’s commitment to a council tax freeze. The fact that £650 million has been made available by the coalition to achieve that freeze in councils that opt for it will take the pressure off many hard-working families who are struggling to make ends meet.

However, I would like to put on the record my concerns about the possible impact of the spending reductions on three areas, particularly in view of continued increases in cost pressures. Those areas are housing, adult social care and flood defences, all of which are key issues in my constituency of St Austell and Newquay and I am sure in many other constituencies.

I fundamentally believe that Governments of all political persuasions have failed on housing policy. Today, 1.8 million families in this country languish on social housing waiting lists. If the first duty of any Government is to protect their citizens, in my view the second duty is to ensure that people are able to access decent, secure accommodation at a price that they can afford. I therefore welcome the Government’s commitment to spend £4.5 billion on delivering 150,000 new affordable homes during the next four years, including £2 billion for the new affordable rent programme. Of course, that is not nearly enough but it is a vast improvement on recent years. Indeed, right hon. and hon. Members might be surprised to learn that this coalition Government will be the first Government to make a net addition of homes to the social housing sector since 1979. The reform of housing finance, to give financial independence to council landlords, is also a significant step forward. However, I share the concern that the hon. Member for Sheffield South East expressed—

[Alison Seabeck]

I acknowledge the hon. Gentleman’s point about net additions to social housing stock, but will he acknowledge that the reason there has been no net addition has been the right-to-buy policy? Under the last Conservative Administrations, twice the number of social homes were lost under that policy than were lost under Labour.

[Stephen Gilbert]

I thank the hon. Lady for her contribution. However, as she will know only too well, the reality is that under the last Labour Government there was a net loss of 43,000 social homes in 13 years. That is not a record to be proud of; it is a shameful record and I hope that she may be able to share some of the regret that her hon. Friend the hon. Member for Sheffield South East expressed when he said that he felt that the last Government had not gone far enough in tackling that problem. In fact, I was about to agree with the hon. Member for Sheffield South East again—I will try not to make a habit of it—by saying that I remain concerned that the Treasury will continue to retain 75% of receipts from future right-to-buy sales and I would appreciate it if the Minister could explain the thinking behind that approach.

I also want to take the opportunity to give a bit of a plug for the Department for Communities and Local Government. The Government’s consultation on housing ends on Monday and I encourage Members here today and those who may be watching these proceedings to make their views known.

On adult social care, we know that the transfer of learning disability funding from health care to social care is being achieved through the introduction of a specific grant. All other funding related to adult social care has been rolled into the formula grant, including Supporting People funding. Also, a welcome £l billion of extra funding for personal social services was announced in the spending review.

However, despite the measures that the coalition Government have taken to protect vulnerable people, Cornwall county council has decided to cut spending on Supporting People services by 40% and is pressing ahead with those cuts despite having healthy reserves. In addition to terminating several contracts completely, the council has written to providers of somewhere between 70 and 80 services, cutting the contract prices by 40%, and has given providers of the remaining 15 services to understand that they will be subject to similar cuts shortly. That is likely to lead to a massive hit for vital services that are provided to very vulnerable people, such as those provided by Cosgarne hall in St Austell, which is dedicated to the alleviation of homelessness among vulnerable and socially excluded people. Most of those services will find that hit difficult to absorb and some will find it impossible.

I do not pretend to be an expert in local government finance; indeed, I have yet to meet anybody who does pretend to be an expert in local government finance. [Laughter.] However, I have studied Robert Davies and Shehla Husain’s letter of 22 December on the DCLG website, which explains the workings of the formula grant in relation to the Supporting People grant; and the settlement figures. From that, it seems to be the case that the amount of formula grant that Cornwall will receive for 2011-12 that is attributable to the Supporting People programme will be somewhere between £13.8 million and £14.3 million, which is almost no change on the figure for 2010-11 of £14.2 million.

In that context, the cut of 40% by Cornwall county council is utterly disproportionate to the change that the coalition Government have made to the council’s funding. The savage cuts that the council are carrying out will deprive many hundreds of the most vulnerable people in Cornwall of the vital services on which they depend. I do not believe that that is fair. Indeed, it represents very short-sighted decision making, as money spent on supporting vulnerable people is likely to save money in the long run. Indeed, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has said on the record:

“Most sensible local authorities will come to the conclusion that every pound spent on Supporting People is probably going to save them five or six quid further down the line.”

I do not expect the Minister to respond to me today about whether I have correctly interpreted those figures; I stand ready to be corrected, because as I have said I am certainly not an expert in local government finance. However, I would appreciate it if he could take a look at the issue in Cornwall and drop me a line about it.

Finally, I want to mention flood defences. As Members will no doubt be aware, my constituency suffered from severe flooding just a few weeks ago. Following the Flood Water and Management Act 2010, a new grant of £20.9 million in 2011-12, rising to £36 million in 2012-13, will be paid to reflect the new responsibilities that have been given to local authorities. That is a welcome step forward. However, it seems that although the Government are giving with one hand they are taking away with the other. There will be a transfer away from the formula grant of £21.5 million in 2011-12 and £42 million in 2012-13, to reflect assumed savings on the maintenance of private sewers. From October this year, when the Act comes into force, those sewers will be the responsibility of utility companies.

The impact assessment for the draft Bill and the subsequent Act by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs calculated that local authorities spend more than £50 million a year on private sewers across various departments, including environmental health, technical services, building control, engineering, housing and planning. That assessment was based on a 2002 survey of only 12% of authorities, which supplied mainly estimated figures, which at the time even DEFRA advised should be used only as a guide. No local authority that I have been in contact with recognises the figures that have been used in DEFRA’s calculations or agrees that their authority is spending anything like the assumed cost. There is very little clarity about DEFRA’s base data or the methodology used to assess current costs.

Mr Robertson, you might wonder—indeed, you might wonder quite rightly—why I am mentioning that assessment in a debate about the Department for Communities and Local Government, but there is a clear implication for local government funding in the future. I hope that the Minister will ask his colleagues at DEFRA to revisit the survey of costs to authorities, in order to get a better picture. In my constituency, we have quite clearly seen that the first responsive organisation is the local authority and we must ensure that it has the tools and resources not only to deal with floods after they have happened but hopefully to prevent them.

To conclude, there is no doubt that local government will face a challenging period now and in the next couple of years and it is more important than ever that this Government live up to their rhetoric on localism. I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to take heed of some of the concerns about front-loading of the proposed reductions and to look with vigour at the potential savings from place-based budgeting. There is much to welcome in the Government’s approach to the funding settlement and the broader localism agenda, which in my view will finally take Whitehall out of the town hall. However, I for one am anxious that we get that approach right, both for local authorities and for the vulnerable people that they represent.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison Seabeck]

Manchester city council said that it will try to achieve voluntary redundancies, but even those may be hard to bear, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman will agree. Manchester is one of the best performing councils in the country, despite being the fourth most deprived, and for years has worked to increase efficiency and to share back-office work with other local authorities throughout the region.

My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), Chair of the Communities and Local Government Committee, made, as ever, a well-informed and well-argued opening speech in which he highlighted comments made during the evidence session. The Committee was clearly as bemused as local authorities are about the reasons and logic behind the CLG taking a 28% hit overall. I suspect that comments made by the Secretary of State, in which he indicated that he was prepared to pass on the pain to local councils, have never been gainsaid and I would be interested to know whether the Minister is willing to do that today.

My hon. Friend also raised the issue of business rates, and that was followed up by the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman). If that policy is pursued, there is clearly a question about whether there should be some sort of redistribution. We also heard contributions from the hon. Members for Peterborough (Mr Jackson), for Halesowen and Rowley Regis (James Morris), for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson), and for Meon Valley (George Hollingbery). They all showed experience, expertise and interest, and provided a thoughtful consideration of the difficult challenges faced by authorities across the country. There is clearly cross-party concern in some areas, and the Labour party would like to see further exploration of those issues. In some areas, however, the gulf between the parties is huge and difficult to cross.

The hon. Member for Harrow East spoke about the redistribution of reserves, and I would be interested to hear the Minister’s comments on that idea. My colleague from the south-west, the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Stephen Gilbert), said that he wanted Whitehall out of the town hall. That is a good sound bite, but his speech was slightly contradictory. He sought direct interference from the Minister in what Cornwall county council is doing with the Supporting People programme. He cannot have it both ways.

[Stephen Gilbert]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Alison Seabeck]

I will not give way at the moment; I may return to the hon. Gentleman later. He also raised genuine concerns about the future cost implications for CLG of the private sewer network. I urge the Minister to look at that; I thoroughly support what the hon. Gentleman was saying. Costs are coming.

My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie), who is sadly no longer in his place, touched on the Supporting People programme. He must wonder what the Secretary of State was thinking when he said during the evidence session:

“I’m glad you have noticed that we have protected Supporting People.”

That is clearly not the case in Nottingham.

The comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) reflected a deep understanding of his constituency and the people he represents. Having lived in Tottenham and worked in Tottenham high road for many years during the 1970s, I understand the area well. His point about the importance of local authority services to community cohesion cannot be ignored.

In the negotiations between Whitehall Departments and the Treasury, the Secretary of State simply did not step up to the crease on behalf of local services and the Government funds on which local people depend. Rather than try to work with councils, he tried to squeeze himself into the club with the Prime Minister and Chancellor by settling early, irrespective of the consequences on local services. [Interruption.]

Let me explain for the benefit of Hansard that there are chuckles in the room. That may be for the image of the Secretary of State squeezing himself in anywhere. However, I do not believe that he is interested in hearing what local councils think. Perhaps the Minister can tell us how many local authorities the Secretary of State has visited since taking on the job—I think it was five; just five out of hundreds. The cuts being brought forward to local councils are greater than in almost any other area of government. It is a shame that the Secretary of State did not take time out to listen to the concerns of local councils.

For months we were told by the Secretary of State and his ministerial colleagues that there would be no front-loading of cuts to local services; we were told that the Labour party was scaremongering. Shortly before Christmas, we saw the figures from the Minister’s Department, and contrary to all the claims, the cuts were front-loaded. That will impact on front-line services. Although local authorities had pleaded for the cuts to be spread across the period of the comprehensive spending review in a way that would allow for the preservation of some services with a delivery model adapted to fit the funding cuts, there was only the cold reality of front-loading. That will see services halted, not transformed.

As I have mentioned, we heard from Baroness Eaton. She is a loyal member of the Conservative party and an experienced local government leader. She said:

“Local councils knew the cuts were coming”—

—that is true whether a Labour or a Tory Government were elected, and that point has been made by other hon. Members today—

“and had planned prudently to reduce spending over the coming years. We cut more than £l billion from our budgets in the middle of last year, rolled up our sleeves and got on with the job.”

That is what one would expect from local authorities.

“But the unexpected severity of the cuts that will have to be made this year will put many councils in an unprecedented and difficult position.”

The Government are beholden to revisit that matter before coming to any final decisions on funding and they should consider those comments carefully.

The Secretary of State does not even seem to acknowledge the difficulties faced by local authorities from front-loading. He sees it as a virtue, despite the comments from Baroness Eaton. It appears that no one was listening to local people and their representatives. The Secretary of State said:

“I think that the amount of front-loading, as it exists—there is a fair bit this year and a fair bit next year—is very important to encourage local government to deal with this whole question of restructuring.”

It is important that we remind ourselves what cuts to local services mean, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham made that point extremely well. The impact will be on adult social care for the elderly, day care centres, child protection, fostering and adoption, children’s centres, the quality of local housing and a host of other areas. The cuts will result in real damage to the levels of service that people rightly believe they deserve when they pay their council tax.

It would be wrong to say that only the Labour party opposes the cuts—we have a coalition of our own against the measures. The Conservative leader of Bury council said:

“it is almost impossible to absorb such vast figures in the time that we have available”

and it is on the time and speed of what is being proposed that the Labour party most disagrees with the Government.

The Liberal Democrat former leader of Liverpool city council, one of the most deprived local authorities that will be among the hardest hit by the Government proposal, said of Ministers:

“Either they really do not know how serious the situation is that they have created...or they are deliberately trying to distract attention from the problems that they have created.”

I ask the Minister: which is it?

As a result of initiatives by the previous Government, including Total Place where there were benefits of joint procurement, councils of all political colourings are already sharing back office functions. They are cutting executive posts and looking at executive pay. We all expect them to do that in the current circumstances. However, if every local authority cuts the post of chief executive and of every member of senior management, the money that would raise would not scratch the surface when set against the cuts that the Government demand from local councils. The argument about executive pay is valid; many councils have already addressed that and others will follow. However, when set against the lack of action on bankers’ bonuses, the Government lose all credibility.

The situation in Manchester that has dominated the news today will be replicated. Ministers should stop taking the public for fools and come clean about exactly what the cuts will mean to local services. They must stop trying to wind up the public into believing that this is all about the salaries at the top—the public are not stupid and will see through that smokescreen. Once the cuts start to appear, they will know that it is not simply a question of executive pay.

The CLG response to the CSR has been weak in terms of the fight to protect services for the most vulnerable. The way that the cuts have been distributed across local authorities is unfair, and the way that they have been front-loaded is reckless. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

Water Bills (South-West)

Debate between Stephen Gilbert and Alison Seabeck

Monday 14th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Alison Seabeck]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right, and I concur with that view. Again, however, I will deal with that issue in more depth a little later.

Bills in the south-west are 25% higher than the national average, which over the course of a year equates to £100 more, while for unmetered customers the figure is considerably higher, at almost £300. For people on low or fixed incomes, that can mean a substantial amount of their income. Indeed, for those on the lowest incomes, water bills can take 10% of their incomes. For elderly individuals living alone on a basic pension—we in the south-west have a larger-than-average older demographic— or for lone parents with young children or single people in rented accommodation, water bills present a struggle.

The Minister will know that the area covered by South West Water is large and diverse, ranging from Cornwall in the far west through to Devon, and taking in parts of Dorset and Somerset. We also have some of the poorest areas of the country. Cornwall is the only area of the country to be in receipt of EU convergence funding—previously known as objective 1 funding—and poverty remains an issue, despite big moves in the right direction over the past 13 years. The Consumer Council for Water has actively campaigned to try to influence price levels in the south-west, and has carried out further, detailed research to try to discover what the bill payers themselves feel should be done to remedy the problem.

The bill payers whom I have spoken to—I am sure that other hon. Members have had similar conversations—feel that it is unfair and indefensible to expect some of the nation’s least well-off families to shoulder the burden of the cost of a system that requires them to pay for the upkeep of beaches that are largely used by wealthier holidaymakers from outside the region who do not pay for the coastline in the south-west. A solution to that long-standing injustice must be found. Many of my constituents have already lost patience with the process. A recent letter from one elderly constituent from St Budeaux expressed utter exasperation at the lack of transparency in how the costs are apportioned.

In acknowledgement of the problem, the previous Government set up the Walker review to examine the case surrounding water charges. Anna Walker was asked, among other things, to examine the current system of charging households for water and sewerage, and to assess both the effectiveness and fairness of the current and alternative methods of charging, and the link to affordability. Anna Walker delivered her extremely thorough report last year, having toured the country and visited the south-west and Plymouth on more than one occasion. The report acknowledged for the first time what most of us knew: that the long-standing high charges in the south-west were a direct result of the privatisation in 1989.

Anna Walker also suggested that the options for tackling the root causes should include a specific one-off adjustment, estimated at around £650 million, to pay off South West Water’s debt, or annual transfers either from the Government—I suspect that this is unlikely in the current economic climate—or from other water customers around England and Wales. That would not be popular either, because Thames Water customers are financing the Thames tideway project around the city, and water shortage issues have a significant future cost in a number of other areas.

A further alternative would be to rely on a package of proposals targeting specific groups of South West Water customers, perhaps through a series of measures such as the use of a seasonal tariff charged for additional summer use. That would pick up second-home users, but also businesses. It could help some residents to achieve a saving of between £40 and £50, but it is not a popular option. It is seen as a tourist tax, and would require compulsory metering, which would also have a cost. I know that the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) is concerned about second-home owners and their potential for benefiting significantly from having meters. He sees that as unfair. Indeed, in a debate on 2 June 2008, he said that metering was

“a way of rewarding people who should be paying more”.—[Official Report, 2 June 2008; Vol. 476, c. 619.]

Another option would be the wider use of affordability measures, and South West Water has been quite proactive in trying to identify and assist vulnerable customers in that regard. Such measures could be more widely applied and could deliver around £80 per annum for low-income households. That would have to be linked to water efficiency, however. It is essential to encourage that, not only for economic reasons but because water is becoming an increasingly scarce resource at certain times and in certain areas.

As a result of this debate, I have received some useful briefings from people on related matters, especially on the re-use of rain water and on building regulations. I suspect that there is a whole new debate to be had on those matters, but I want to put on record my gratitude to the businesses and organisations that have e-mailed me. This flags up just how useful these debates in an often rather empty Chamber can be—it is actually quite full tonight, so thank you to everyone who has stayed.

Low-income customers with medical conditions could benefit significantly if changes to the current WaterSure scheme, as recommended in the review, were adopted. That would result in it being capped, either at a national average or on a regional basis, whichever is the lower, and would have a redistributive effect within the region, but that in turn would mean that other South West Water customers would pay more, which would probably not have broad support. This is not a straightforward issue, which is partly why I am back here tonight, five years after I secured my first debate on the subject.

A national levy is another idea that has been put forward. That would have the effect of supporting South West Water bill payers now, but they could well find themselves having to pay for similar schemes in the future, such as additional reservoirs in the Thames Water area or elsewhere in the south of England, for example. The Consumer Council for Water’s research suggests that water bill payers would consider that option, and we local MPs certainly need to explore it with our constituents. I appreciate that many of the options would have consequences for bill payers elsewhere, but we must resolve to produce a fairer system that does not penalise low-income families merely for living on a peninsula surrounded by the sea.

[Stephen Gilbert (St Austell and Newquay) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing a debate on this topic so early in this Parliament. Does she share my concern that the modelling work to support the policy implementation of any of the options in the Walker review is not happening fast enough, and that we need to go further and faster towards reaching a solution to a problem that has bedevilled my constituency and many others for many years?

[Alison Seabeck]

I agree, and I hope that the Minister listened to the hon. Gentleman’s genuine concern. His comment is well timed, as I was about to say that the current Government have, in the work carried out by Anna Walker and by their own officials, a basis for going forward without further delay. The previous Government had already asked Ofwat to consider the Walker report, but no Government can compel the regulator to act. Before the election, MPs asked Ofwat to consider how the Walker review could be implemented. Ofwat was clearly willing to do that work, and its position has not changed. Serendipitously, Ofwat asked for a meeting with south-west MPs today. That has usefully coincided with this debate, and, I am sure, helped to inform those hon. Members present of Ofwat’s position and of its thoughts on the subject of affordability.

Action on water charges, particularly on behalf of vulnerable customers, is long overdue. The public have seen improvements to the quality of the water around our coasts, and this has without doubt benefited other businesses, including those linked to the tourism industry, but it has come at a huge cost and left many people struggling to pay their bills. In this difficult economic climate, people are worried about such pressure on their income. Will the Minister therefore confirm that he will meet Ofwat urgently, to ask it to continue with its assessment of Walker and to give it a timetable for bringing forward its advice to the Government? South West Water bill payers will not be pleased to hear tonight that that has been pushed further back into the long grass. I hope that the Minister can be positive, especially as we were tantalisingly close to getting an announcement prior to the last election.

Does the Minister intend to publish a water White Paper and take forward both the Cave and Walker proposals? If so, when will that be and is it likely to look at the future of Ofwat and its role? Will the Minister also confirm that work is continuing to ensure the widest possible data sharing, so that people receive the help and entitlements they are due? That work was in train between a range of Departments and other organisations prior to the general election.

Will the Minister also acknowledge that there is an ongoing need for all the bodies involved in environmental improvements in water supply and removal both to inform customers on work planned and to ask their views? On affordability, may I make the following plea, which came out of today’s meeting with Ofwat? The Minister must not rely solely on the Government office for the south-west figures, which include Wessex Water and skew the figures slightly. If we drill down and look at Devon and Cornwall separately, we will see that the situation there is much more serious. I hope that the Minister will press his officials to look at the minutiae.

Finally, will the Minister confirm whether he accepts the Walker review principle that it was right for environmental improvements to be funded regionally except where there is an exceptional expenditure, as was the case in the south-west? If he does, does he not feel duty bound to right the historic wrong that the south-west has suffered?