Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Steve Reed and Robert Jenrick

Monday 19th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

The anti-corruption campaign Transparency International says that the Conservative party has become overly dependent on donations from developers. It is particularly concerned that Ministers failed to report the details of what they talked about to developers in over 300 meetings about which they simply disclosed generalisations such as “housing” or “planning”; it fears that that could amount to what it calls aggregate corruption. Will the Secretary of State now publish the full minutes of all those meetings so that the public can see exactly what Ministers agreed to do for their developer paymasters?

[Robert Jenrick]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, all meetings that Ministers have are correctly identified on the register of interests, but I have to say that he has been on quite a journey. One adviser who worked with him as leader of Lambeth Council has been left bemused: is this the same Champagne Steve he remembers meeting with developers? It is not just him who has invited charges of shameless hypocrisy; the Leader of the Opposition has received thousands of pounds of donations from developers, and the deputy leader of the Labour party caused a splash in the papers the other day for accepting £10,000 from developers for her leadership campaign.

[Robert Jenrick]

I will certainly withdraw that, at your request, Mr Speaker. We can only imagine how much the deputy leader of the Labour party will be asking for when it comes to her impending leadership campaign.

[Steve Reed]

It is not surprising that the Secretary of State is refusing to be transparent, because we all know who benefits the most from their developers’ charter. Just weeks ago, this House passed Labour’s motion to guarantee residents’ right to a say over local planning applications in their own neighbourhoods. This week, councillors of all parties—including the right hon. Gentleman’s—in Medway and Richmond passed similar motions. How many more councils will need to do the same before he ditches the developers’ charter and his plan to pay back developers by selling out communities?

[Robert Jenrick]

I am sure that Conservative councillors the length and breadth of the country were over the moon to receive the hon. Gentleman’s letter. I can see the scene now over the summer recess, when the gate rattles or there is a knock at the door and he rushes to check what the post has brought in, but like a jilted lover or a pen pal who assumes his letters got lost in the mail, he finds nothing there except just another letter from Croydon Council telling him that the bills are going up as a result of the terrible mistakes and mismanagement that his friends and cronies are making over at Croydon. He has taken an avowedly anti-house building approach. This is a far cry from the Labour party of Attlee and Bevan, who said that this was a social service and a moral mission. This Government are going to keep on building houses, but we will build them sensitively. We will build beautiful homes, we will protect the environment and we will help young people and those on lower incomes to enjoy all the security and prosperity that comes with owning a home of their own.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Steve Reed and Robert Jenrick

Monday 19th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I am very happy to join my hon. Friend in thanking all the volunteers he mentions for their hard work. As lockdown lifts, we want the countryside to look its glorious best this spring and summer, and he is absolutely right to say that councils should be using the powers that are available to them. Littering not only blights local communities but is ultimately a criminal offence. We have raised the maximum penalty for littering to £150, and we have published guidance for local authorities on the use of their powers.

[Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

There has been a 400% increase in donations to the Conservative party from developers under the current Prime Minister. In the interests of transparency, and to allay growing concerns about sleaze at the heart of government, will the Secretary of State publish notes of all the meetings that he, his advisers or representatives of No. 10 have held with any of those developers about changing the planning system and what they asked for?

[Robert Jenrick]

All ministerial engagements are already published through our regular official engagement notifications and all donations to political parties, whether that be the Labour party or the Conservative party, over the statutory amount are also published. Of course planning decisions and the production of Government policy have nothing to do with donations made to political parties and there is a complete separation of the two.

[Steve Reed]

The Campaign to Protect Rural England, the National Trust, the Town and Country Planning Association, the Royal Institute of British Architects, the Royal Town Planning Institute and others have all condemned the Secretary of State’s planning reforms for handing too much control to developers and blocking communities from objecting to individual applications in areas zoned for growth or for renewal. Given their increased donations to the Conservative party, is he paying back developers by selling out communities?

[Robert Jenrick]

Once again, the hon. Gentleman makes a low point. What we are doing is getting people on to the housing ladder. Once, the Labour party cared about young people, people on low incomes and people on social housing waiting lists, but those days are long gone. The Conservative party is the party of home ownership. This is the party standing up for the millions of people whose jobs depend on housing and construction. This is the party supporting the brickies and the electricians—the people out there trying to earn a good day’s living. The hon. Gentleman needs to get his priorities straight and support people who are working hard, trying to get on the housing ladder and trying to get this country going again after the pandemic.

Liverpool City Council

Debate between Steve Reed and Robert Jenrick

Wednesday 24th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement and the report and, indeed, for his openness with me throughout the process.

This report raises grave and serious concerns about decision making in key functions of Liverpool City Council. All councils are under an obligation to meet their best value duty to ensure value for money at all times. In these respects, Liverpool City Council has been found severely wanting. Labour, both here and our leadership at the city council, accepts this report in full. The council will respond to the letter from the Secretary of State in detail, but we support his intention to appoint commissioners, not at this stage to run the council, as he says, but to advise and support elected representatives in strengthening the council’s systems.

This is a measured and appropriate approach. I want to reassure people in Liverpool that it does not mean that Government Ministers are coming in to run their city directly. This is not, as some would put it, a Tory takeover. It is about the Government appointing independent people of the highest professional standing to help the council improve as quickly as possible, and intervening directly only if the council’s elected leaders fail to implement their own improvement plan.

Investigations are currently under way into matters raised in the report and I will not pre-empt them. I do, however, want to reiterate my party’s absolute commitment to protecting the public interest at all times and upholding the highest possible standards in public life. Given the concerns raised in this report, the general secretary of the Labour party intends to appoint a senior figure to lead a review, and reassure the people of Liverpool that the Labour party takes these concerns seriously and will take action against anyone in our ranks who was involved in wrongdoing of any kind. Our councillors in Liverpool have already met senior Labour councillors from other parts of the country who will support them in strengthening the city council’s defences against any risk of fraud.

The overwhelming majority of councillors and frontline staff will be shocked by what they read in this report. As the report and the Secretary of State have made clear, the severe institutional weaknesses identified do not obscure the outstanding work they have all done together over many years. The Prime Minister was right to praise the council’s impressive work in getting the city through the pandemic, and I want to add my thanks to everyone who continues to play a part in that. In particular, the report praises the council’s chief executive, Mr Tony Reeves, and I offer my support to him and to the acting mayor, Councillor Wendy Simon, for the work they have already started to put things right. I would also like to put on record my thanks to Mr Max Caller and his team for putting this very important report together.

This is a moment for change, and I know that everyone who cares about the great city of Liverpool and its wonderful people will accept this report and use it to strengthen the council for the future.

[Robert Jenrick]

Can I thank the hon. Gentleman for the remarks he has just made and for the way in which we have worked together over recent months? He has been most helpful and constructive, and I hope that can continue. I thank him on behalf of the Government for the remarks he has made with respect to the Labour party and the Labour group on Liverpool City Council, which are extremely welcome. The step we have taken today is unusual, and it is better to do it in a cross-party way. We all share the same interests, which are the delivery of public services, ensuring that the people of Liverpool get the value for money and the council that they deserve, and ensuring that the city can attract the inward investment, regeneration and good-quality development that it certainly needs and that we want to see delivered as we come out of the pandemic.

The hon. Gentleman was right—I thank him again—to highlight the praise for the chief executive, Tony Reeves, who has done an outstanding job. In my remarks earlier, I praised his conduct and that of the other statutory officers at the council. The hon. Gentleman is also right to say that this report focuses on particular functions of Liverpool City Council and does not comment on the wider delivery of public services in the city by the council. There is no reason to question the delivery of adult services, children’s services or other important functions that people in the city rely on. He is also right to praise the work of many people in Liverpool, including within the city council, in their response to the covid-19 pandemic.

I would underline my remarks once again that this is a report about Liverpool City Council. It is not about the neighbouring councils across Merseyside, and neither is it any reflection on the Mayor of the Liverpool city region, Steve Rotheram, to whom I extend my thanks once again for his co-operation and support. It is right that we take this action, and I hope that we can continue to work together on it. None of us does this lightly. Localism is our objective, but localism does require local accountability, transparency and robust scrutiny, and that I hope is what we can now achieve.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Steve Reed and Robert Jenrick

Monday 22nd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op) [V]]

I offer my condolences on behalf of the Opposition to the family of Julia Clifford on their very, very sad loss.

High streets need support to help them to recover, so will the Secretary of State guarantee that the funding that all areas receive under the levelling-up fund will be at least as much as they received under their local growth deal?

[Robert Jenrick]

I am delighted to hear the hon. Gentleman’s and the Opposition’s new-found enthusiasm for business and supporting the wealth creators in this country. Of course, it was just over a year ago that they were supporting the overthrow of capitalism. The Leader of the Opposition’s relaunch last week was not quite the Beveridge moment that it was billed as, but we will keep on supporting small businesses on the high street. The Chancellor has done that very successfully over the course of this year in difficult circumstances, with the business rates holiday, the cut in VAT and the support for business grants. We are going to be doing more, as the hon. Gentleman said, with the £4 billion levelling-up fund, which builds on the success of the £3.6 billion towns fund. That will ensure that communities across the country—but particularly those that are furthest away from the labour market, have the highest levels of deprivation and have not seen the levels of Government investment that we would wish hitherto—get the funding that they need to move forward into the year.

Council Tax: Government’s Proposed Increase

Debate between Steve Reed and Robert Jenrick

Monday 25th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I certainly can. My right hon. Friend is fortunate to have a good Conservative council and it will benefit from the largest ever rural services grant in the settlement, which will give more money to help deliver the sorts of services that his constituents will rely on in a very rural part of the country.

The shadow Communities Secretary as leader of Lambeth Council hiked council tax by more than £100, including a 5% rise at the height of the unemployment crisis presided over by the last Labour Government. Yet today he believes that councils should not even have limited flexibility to do the same. Labour leaders in local government do not want limited flexibility to increase council taxes; they want to abolish the right of local people to veto excessive tax increases altogether, so that they can increase taxes by as much as they want. We all know where that leads for Labour councils: while council tax has fallen under the Conservatives in real terms since 2010, the last Labour Government presided over a doubling of council tax and, in Labour-run Wales, it is trebling.

Perhaps the Leader of the Opposition should pick up the phone, check in with his own local leadership from time to time and get their ducks in a row before opposing the very same flexibility that their councils are the greatest advocates of. From Leeds to Telford to the Wirral to Sefton, the A to Z of Labour local councils have demanded that we allow them to increase council tax “without limit”. They describe in their responses to the local government settlement that keeping their tax-raising instincts in check is frustrating, “an imposition”—not an imposition on tax payers, I hasten to add; they barely get a look-in. It is all there in black and white in the Labour councils’ responses to the local government settlement.

[Steve Reed]

The Secretary of State may want to correct the record, because actually I froze council tax, with a zero increase, the year following the crisis in 2007-08 and the year after that as well, but does he recognise that it is the Conservative leader of the Local Government Association, James Jamieson—a councillor I am sure he knows very well—who has called for the cap to be lifted for council tax increases and for a referendum to be abolished, not the Labour party Front Bench?

[Robert Jenrick]

rose—

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Steve Reed and Robert Jenrick

Monday 11th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

As we have been hearing, high streets are struggling like never before. When will the Government level the playing field on business rates between high street retailers and online businesses, so that they can compete on equal terms?

[Robert Jenrick]

The Chancellor announced earlier in the year an unprecedented business rates holiday, which is benefiting thousands of businesses the length and breadth of the country, and he will be considering what further steps are necessary. I know that he is making a statement later today, and we will bring forward a Budget in March. We all want to support small independent businesses on our high streets, which is precisely why I encourage the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues to support the planning reforms that we have already introduced, such as the ability to build upwards, to bring more homes on to the high street and to turn a derelict or empty property in a town centre into something more useful for the future. Those are the ways that we attract private sector investment and enable small builders and entrepreneurs in Croydon, in Newark and in all parts of the country to face the future with confidence.

Provisional Local Government Finance Settlement

Debate between Steve Reed and Robert Jenrick

Thursday 17th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement, and I echo his words of thanks to council staff for the sterling work they have carried out in the most daunting of circumstances. However, the Secretary of State’s announcement today leaves local authorities facing a vast funding gap that will inevitably lead to job losses, cuts in key frontline services, such as adult social care, and the closure of yet more treasured community assets such as libraries, youth centres and leisure centres.

Perhaps one of the most shocking aspects of the settlement is the Government’s plan to force councils to hike up council tax while the country still faces an unprecedented health crisis and the deepest recession for 300 years. The Government are proposing a council tax hike more than twice the rate of inflation. The Conservatives have decided to clobber hard-working families when their jobs and incomes are already under extreme pressure, and in return, those taxpayers will get fewer services.

Council tax is a regressive tax that hits families on average incomes harder than the wealthy. It also raises less money in poorer areas. A 5% increase in Surrey raises £38 million, while a 5% increase in Blackburn with Darwen raises just £2.8 million. An older person living in a less wealthy area, such as one of the red wall seats, will see their Conservative MP tax them more but cut the care services they rely on.

In his first speech as Prime Minister, Boris Johnson stood on the steps of Downing Street and said he would

“fix the crisis in social care once and for all with a clear plan we have prepared”.

No one has seen a dot or comma of that plan in the 18 months since. Costs for social care are soaring, yet today’s settlement will make the crisis worse and will hit older people living in less affluent areas hardest.

In 2011, the average band D council tax was £1,439. With the Conservative council tax bombshell announced today, the average bill for next year will be £1,909. That is a rise of 33% under this Conservative Government. The message to the public is clear: “Pay more but get less under the Conservatives, with Rishi Sunak’s council tax hike coming your way in the middle of the worst recession for three centuries.”

Can the Secretary of State please tell us how he expects families to afford a 5% council tax hike in the middle of an unprecedented economic crisis? When can we expect to see the Government’s plan to fix the social care crisis instead of leaving older people struggling without the support they need? Given the urgency of the pandemic, how much are the Government increasing the public health grant next year, and what does the Secretary of State expect councils to do about the 25% lost council tax and business rate income that he is not compensating them for?

[Robert Jenrick]

I echo the hon. Gentleman’s thanks to local council workers across the country. He talks about our pledge to support local councils and to ensure that they are fully funded for the work that they have done during covid, and we have made good on that promise. We have provided £7.2 billion already. Local councils to date have reported that they have spent £4 billion and are projecting that they will spend almost £6.2 billion to the end of the year, so we will have provided local councils with as much, if not more, funding than they have reported.

The hon. Gentleman refers to funding for local council tax losses and for sales fees and charges. Our schemes are extremely generous in both regards, providing 75p in the pound of losses for local councils to ensure that they can weather the particular storm that they have been through this year. He refers to council tax costs. Local councils are not under any obligation to increase council taxes. We only have to look back at the record of the last Labour Government to see what happens under Labour. Under Labour, council tax doubled. Under this Conservative Government, council tax is lower in real terms today than it was in 2010-11.

It is difficult to see how the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues can pose as the guardians of taxpayer value. I appreciate that he is on what we might call a sticky wicket in this regard. We only have to look at his local Labour council in Croydon. It purchased a hotel above the asking price, which has now gone bankrupt. It created a housing company with a £200 million loan and it could not say whether it had built any houses. The cabinet has been described as acting like some kind of wrecking ball, except that the wrecking ball was directed at its own council. Or, indeed, we could look at Nottingham’s Labour council, which was described recently by its auditors as having “institutional blindness” to its financial mismanagement and ineptitude, which included creating an energy company called Robin Hood. That is a rather unusual definition of Robin Hood’s activities—instead of taking from the rich, it robbed off everyone.

The truth is that under Labour councils, it is the public who lose out. The public will pay the price in Croydon in lost jobs, poorer services and, ultimately, higher council taxes. We will continue to support local councils, the overwhelming majority of which, of all political persuasions, have done a sterling job this year, and we will ensure that they get the resources they need to continue that work into the new year.

Towns Fund

Debate between Steve Reed and Robert Jenrick

Wednesday 18th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Secretary of State is accused today of blocking funding from the £3.6 billion towns fund going to the most deprived towns for which it was intended, and instead funnelling it into marginal Conservative party seats ahead of the general election, including to help his own re-election campaign. This clearly is not about levelling up, so let us see whether he will level with the British people about what really went on.

Did the Secretary of State discuss which towns would receive funding with No. 10 or any Conservative party employee before making the allocations, and will he publish any correspondence? Why did he tell his constituents,

“I helped to secure a £25 million town deal which…will…make the town centre a more attractive place to spend time in”,

despite claiming not to have been involved in any decision about Newark on “The Andrew Marr Show” on 11 October 2020? Was he present when his junior Minister made decisions about his constituency, and will he publish all minutes from that meeting, in which they both chose 61 towns that would benefit from funding?

What did the Secretary of State mean when he said that the Government would “only” commit £25 million to Stapleford in the constituency of Broxtowe if the Conservative party candidate, Darren Henry, was elected? Newark and Sherwood District Council removed the Secretary of State from its board “following conversations with Government”. What were those conversations, and did they take place before or after he saw the damning NAO report?

Finally, will the Secretary of State clear this up and publish in full the accounting officer’s assessment of the towns fund and the full criteria that he and his Ministers used to select towns when they chose to override civil servants’ advice? If he refuses to publish, the public can only conclude that it is because they have something to hide.

[Robert Jenrick]

Once again, the hon. Gentleman seeks to sow discord where there is none. We followed a very clear and robust procedure. The permanent secretary of my Department made that very clear when he appeared before the Public Accounts Committee. Again, I think it is disappointing that the hon. Gentleman chooses to cast aspersions upon distinguished civil servants.

With respect to the accounting officer’s advice, such advice is not routinely published. That is a decision not for Ministers, but for civil servants. Once again, the hon. Gentleman is highly misleading in his remarks, because the accounting officer’s advice was shared in full with the National Audit Office when it produced its report for the PAC. The Chair of the PAC asked to see the report and, in line with usual practice, the permanent secretary wrote a comprehensive summary of the advice. I have asked him once again to check that advice, and he says that the summary was comprehensive and covered all the points. The Chair of the Public Accounts Committee has all the information at her fingertips, as I suspect she knows perfectly well, because she is a highly experienced Member of this House.

With respect to Newark, I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman shows such interest in my constituency. Perhaps he could come up and visit us, but he does not like to go north of the M25 very often. If he did, he would know that Newark was the 16th most highly ranked town in the east midlands to be a beneficiary of the fund, and we supported 19 places in the east midlands. There is absolutely no reason why a Minister should disadvantage their constituency. We are both Ministers and constituency MPs, which is one of the great virtues of our political system, but it is right that those decisions are not taken by that particular Minister and, in the usual way, the decision was taken by a colleague.

With respect to the hon. Gentleman’s question about why I had said on the campaign trail that the fund’s future would be in question if there were a Labour Government, I think he has made that point for us today. He does not support the towns fund. The 101 places that are benefiting from it would be poorer if they had been under a Labour Government.

The message from the Labour party is very clear today: while we want to level up, it wants to score pointless political points. The shadow Secretary of State cannot talk about local government because his own Labour council has gone bankrupt with debts of £1.5 billion. He cannot talk about communities, because the committee on antisemitism has called him out, along with the majority of the members of the community team on the Labour Front Bench, for antisemitic incidents—quite how he can stay in position after that, I do not know. He cannot talk about housing because he has said that his team has no housing policies, and it will be years before he produces any. He cannot talk about housing because we are building more homes than any Government have done for the past 30 years. We will keep on building homes, we will keep on levelling up, and we will keep on investing in the communities that need it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Jenrick]

The hon. Gentleman is quite wrong. One only has to look at his neighbours to see good examples of that. I think of Birkenhead, for example, which I do not think was high on the list of Conservative targets at the last election, but which is now the proud beneficiary of the right to bid for a town deal. I think of St Helens, where, as I have said, I met his Labour party colleagues—two fantastic MPs who are working hard on their town deal board to bring forward great proposals for the benefit of their local communities. A small number of places were chosen from what was deemed to be the low priority category, and that was exactly—

[Steve Reed]

Sixty!

[Robert Jenrick]

No. The hon. Gentleman has a bit of a habit of saying things in the House of Commons that are not exactly accurate. Sixty communities were not chosen from the low priority category; 17 such communities were chosen. [Interruption.] From his sudden change of demeanour, I take it that he is apologising for his remarks.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Steve Reed and Robert Jenrick

Monday 16th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend will know that my Department is working closely with the residents of Northpoint to ensure that they have access to funding. They are part of the building safety fund and will benefit from that £1.6 billion. He is right also to draw attention to the waking watch issue, which is increasingly a national scandal in itself; this is a rip-off. We have published research that demonstrates that some operators of these businesses—the contractors—are charging outrageous fees for very little. We will be reporting that to the regulatory authorities and we hope that they will clamp down on these practices as quickly as possible.

[Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

There is growing public concern that the Secretary of State may have misused taxpayers’ money from the £3.6 billion towns fund to boost the Conservative party’s general election campaign, but he can easily clear the matter up. Will he publish, in full, the accounting officer’s advice and the full criteria that he and the former Minister of State, the right hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry), used when they blocked funding for towns ranked among the 100 most deprived and instead funnelled millions of pounds to each other’s constituencies ahead of the general election?

[Robert Jenrick]

The Department has already made it clear that a robust process was established—before I became Secretary of State. It was followed to the letter and we will not apologise for investing in communities that have been under-invested in and undervalued by the Labour party for generations. With respect to the accounting officer’s report, accounting officer assessments are not routinely published. That is a matter for the Department, which I am sure will consider it and reply to the Select Committee in due course. But I can assure the hon. Gentleman that he will not deter us from our mission to level up all parts of the country.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Steve Reed and Robert Jenrick

Monday 15th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I am very sympathetic to the argument that my hon. Friend has made. I would like to see more outdoor seating and for it to be easier and cheaper for small businesses to get licences. I would also like to see more temporary markets and more pedestrianisation, and for it to be easier to do things such as putting marquees outside pubs for longer this summer. These are all things we need to do to help our economy get going in the summer months, and I will be working with local councils to bring forward our proposals very shortly.

[Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Secretary of State is caught up in a cash for favours row that now reaches inside No. 10 Downing Street, but last week he did not even have the courage to show up and answer questions in this Chamber, so I hope he will be answering now. Given the gravity of the allegations surrounding his unlawful decision on the Westferry development, will he agree to make a full statement to the House, publish all correspondence and disclose all conversations with other Government Ministers and officials relating to the case, to reassure the public that the integrity of the planning process cannot be auctioned off at Conservative party fundraising dinners?

[Robert Jenrick]

Propriety in the planning the system is extremely important and I take my responsibility as Secretary of State very seriously indeed. The application to which the hon. Gentleman refers was highly contentious —all applications that come before the Secretary of State are highly contentious—and had been contested for many years. In fact, it had only come before Ministers in my Department and my predecessor in April because Tower Hamlets Council had itself failed to determine it. I took the decision in good faith and with an open mind. I am confident that all the rules were followed in doing so.

It is not unusual for a Secretary of State to come to a different conclusion from a local authority. It is not unusual for a Secretary of State to come a different conclusion from a planning inspector—no disrespect to the great people who work there—and my predecessors did so on a number of occasions. All the relevant information relating to this matter is with the Cabinet Secretary. I have taken, and will take again, advice from my permanent secretary about what further documentation we might be able to publish. As the hon. Gentleman says, we want to ensure the correct processes of the planning system are followed. That means publishing documents while bearing in mind the legitimate interests of the parties to this case, which remains a live planning application.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Steve Reed and Robert Jenrick

Tuesday 28th April 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

Apologies to the hon. Gentleman for the fact that we did not hear all his question, but I think I understand the point that he was making, which was twofold. First, whether the Government will stand behind local councils for all the covid-related expenditure, to which the answer is absolutely yes. Those things that we asked of local councils in our national response, we will ensure that they get the resources that they need to do.

Secondly, will we ensure that smaller councils, such as district councils, get a fair share of that money to reflect the important work that they are also doing, for example, on rough sleeping? Yes, absolutely; and am I aware that those councils are concerned about loss of income and need to be given assurances that they can be on a stable and sustainable financial footing? Yes, of course I understand that, and we will take action accordingly.

[Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

May I first echo the Secretary of State’s thanks to everybody working in local government? They are all heroes helping to keep our communities safe. As he is aware, councils are not allowed to go into debt, so if the Government do not keep their promise to fund the full cost of the crisis, councils will be forced to make cuts potentially totalling billions of pounds, which will mean job losses.

Councils say that the additional funding announced so far covers barely a quarter of what is needed; it is not enough. Will he reconfirm the Government’s original promise to fund whatever is necessary in full? If he does not, the frontline heroes we are cheering today will lose their jobs tomorrow.

[Robert Jenrick]

I have been working closely with local councils across the country on a cross-party basis and speaking to them almost every day. The message that I have consistently delivered is that we will fund the brilliant work that they are doing to support the country through the crisis. We have seen that already with the £3.2 billion of additional funding that I announced, plus the other support mechanisms. We will keep under review whether further funding is required, and if it is, we will bring it forward, because we want to back this brilliant sector in all that it is doing.