Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill (Tenth sitting)

Tim Farron Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 5th July 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Alex Norris]

I am glad that my hon. Friend has had the chance to do so; what she says is very much true. Of course, the traffic on our roads has only grown over that period, so as my hon. Friend says, those incidences are likely to be something that we will always need a service for, and we are lucky to have the ones that we do. However, given that this is so multifactorial, the challenge we face is to work out what we can safely afford to change, and certainly what we can afford to do from a financial perspective. Have we reduced fires to a new normal, or are we suppressing and dampening them through our activities? We would only know the answer if we pulled resources out, and the reality—and this is really important for the purpose of this amendment—is that there is not an awful lot of money to take out of the fire service.

The Minister talked about the possibility of chief constables taking on leadership of the service. All those points have been well made and, as he has said, are mirrored in the 2009 Act and on the face of the Bill. However, combining senior management achieves some savings, but not an awful lot in the grand scheme of things. It obviously creates the advantages of colocation, but it does not mean that the services sit on top of each other, so they still need the space, although they may get some aggregation benefits. Then we start looking at going back to retained firefighters, which suits some communities but will not suit others. Finally, we are left with the two areas where savings tend to come from, which are a reduction in appliances and short crewing.

On the appliances front, I live just near junction 26 of the M1, which is a very busy place for the rescue functions that my hon. Friend the Member for York Central talked about. We currently have two appliances there, which means that fire cover is a challenge for the rest of the community. Every five years or so, we have to fight off a proposal to reduce the number of our appliances from two to one. I expect that we are due another proposal soon. It is one of the earliest political campaigns I got involved in. Like the football World cup, it comes around every four years and we keep succeeding. Long may that be the case, because reductions create gaps in fire cover. Some of the gaps that my hon. Friend talked about are significant, and these are things that people feel very strongly about, in terms of the money they pay in taxes and the support they would like to have. That is a challenge.

There is only so far that services in distress can go with appliances. It is kind of possible to have half an appliance, but not really because it does not give services the same financial benefit. When a service is down to short crewing, firefighters are asked to deal with really dangerous situations that they have not been trained to deal with, and the best health and safety and work modelling does not suggest that that is the way to do it. We should be very careful about entering that space. There needs to be a backstop. As my hon. Friend the Member for York Central said, we would not want to use it routinely, but it would be helpful if the Bill made that provision available. The Minister may say that there are other ways to deal with this. If so, we will listen with interest, but my hon. Friend’s point is well made and I think that our constituents feel very strongly about it. She has made a strong case.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

This is a very helpful amendment, and one that I hope the Minister will take seriously. As has been said, huge strides have been made over the past few years in reducing the numbers of horrific incidents. That has happened for a lot of reasons, including the fire and rescue services focusing on fire prevention work and on seeking proactively to educate homes and businesses on the need to avoiding risks, as well as all sorts of other structural factors that have already been mentioned.

In my part of the world, we are dependent on people who are not full-time firefighters. That is not just retained firefighters—I will come back to them in a moment—to whom we owe a particular debt of gratitude. The work of mountain rescue and bay rescue services, integrated with the fire and rescue service, provides a unique perspective and a reminder that we try to use all sorts of innovative ways—voluntary ways, often—to meet the need to protect the community, despite a lack of resource.

Among the reasons why the amendment is important is the fact that we need to understand that if we are considering a fire service that is predominantly retained—particularly in rural communities, in places such as Sedbergh, Staveley and many other communities that I represent elsewhere in Cumbria—it will only have a retained pump. That is all it has. With a declining workforce, the change in housing tenure over the past few years, which has become radically different in the past two, and a shrinkage of the working-age population, we are running the risk of having no one available to take on those roles. In those circumstances, it makes sense for the fire and rescue service, and Government working with services around the country, to look at ways of augmenting communities where it is simply not possible to find the people to staff a retained pump and, therefore, to keep the community safe.

I am proud to be a Cumbrian MP. I also represent Westmorland and old Lancashire. I am, however, Yorkshire’s secret MP, because I represent Sedbergh, the dales, Garsdale and Cowgill—we border North Yorkshire. There are huge distances between places out there, from the lakes to the dales. Yes, the incidence of fires that we now encounter is low, compared with a couple of decades ago. Lots of people should take credit for that, including Governments of different colours and, in particular, the fire service.

However, the distances that need to be covered to get from the fire station to the fire are vast. If a retained firefighter is on their farm and drops what they are doing to cover that distance to get to the pump, only to find that there are only two other people who have got there at the same time, they then have to make a call about whether it is safe to attend the fire. There are only three of them who managed to get away from work, and there are only five people on the list in the first place. They have to think: “What do we do? Do we scramble Kendal and get a full-time pump? That is another 10 miles away.”

The amendment would allow the flexibility to create and provide funding to ensure the provision of a full-time pump for communities that, under normal circumstances, might not qualify under the funding formula, so that we are not putting rural communities, in particular, at risk.

[Rachael Maskell]

The hon. Gentleman is making a strong case in support of the amendment. We are entering a period of increased drought; with climate change, that situation is likely to get worse. We are seeing more and more fires across our moors. That in itself is surely reason not to see cuts on such scale, which will devastate the service and put firefighters at risk.

[Tim Farron]

The hon. Lady makes an excellent point. We are the wettest bit of England. We need to be, because of the lakes—we have to keep them topped up. Nevertheless, Members will remember that in the past few months there were flash fires at Cartmel Fell, which raged for a full weekend and took many pumps to get under control. I am massively grateful to those who got those fires under control.

With that changing weather, we can go from very damp weather to very dry weather for long periods. In areas with lots of forestry and agriculture, there is the potential for flash fires, which can cause death and damage to wildlife, livestock, homes, businesses and families—human beings. We therefore need to be all the more aware of the fact that we cannot allow the technicalities of funding formulas to get in the way of keeping our people safe.

[Neil O’Brien]

I am extremely sympathetic to hon. Members campaigning on local services. I know that the Home Office has been engaging with the North Yorkshire fire and rescue service specifically on these issues. In 2022-23, the North Yorkshire fire and rescue authority will have core spending power of £33.5 million, which is an increase of £1.4 million or 4.5% compared with 2021-22. As of 31 March 2020, North Yorkshire held £4.9 million in resource reserves, equivalent to 60% of its 2020-21 core spending power. According to its draft 2020-21 accounts, total resource reserves increased by £8 million by 31 March 2021, an increase of £3.1 million or 62%. The issues that the hon. Member for York Central has raised, which are very important, are certainly being looked at.

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[Alex Norris]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for York Central on her amendments. The importance of public interest, public consultation and engagement has been a theme of our recent discussions, because it is important to make sure that the proposed structures are introduced with the backing of the public, so that they have a stake in that and understand the role and responsibilities of those bodies. In turn, that means that the public can understand how those bodies are working in the public’s collective interests. That gets to the root of trying to do things with people rather than to people. I am anxious that the changes are likely to drop out of the sky on to people rather than being something in which they have been part of the conversation.

In an earlier answer, the Minister said that the purpose of the bodies was to serve voters. In that case, it is really important that those voters are brought along and that their views are listened to, whether on less significant matters such as what the Mayor should be called or really significant matters about what powers should be sought, how they are exercised and what the leadership should be. All those conversations should be bottom up rather than top down, but I am afraid that we have not reached that point in the Bill.

The amendments offer a good opportunity to add some of that consultation, so I hope that the Minister is listening.

[Tim Farron]

In looking forward to changes in the way in which local government will be organised in the future, we are bound to reflect on how things have been done in the past.

In Cumbria, we are working hard to ensure that the reorganisation to unitary authorities is a big success, and the early signs are positive. It is worth bearing in mind that there was a consultation, and that fewer than 1% of the public engaged with it. We can glean that the massive majority felt it was not necessary to reorganise local government in Cumbria. People in the southern part of Cumberland object to being lumped in with Westmorland and split from the rest of Cumberland, and people think we would be far better off with smaller units of local democracy. After all in Scotland, where it is an entirely unitary local government landscape, there are unitary authorities with as few as 17,000 people living in them. In England, there is no recognition of the similar rurality need for smaller authorities.

Many people also thought, “We are going through a pandemic, what a stupid time to be rearranging the deckchairs.” If there is a need for local government reorganisation they thought that surely now was not the time to do it. We are where we are, and we will make a success of it—we are determined to do. These are important amendments, because they remind us again that we need to scrutinise the motivation behind the Government’s proposals. Who are these proposals for? The Government are minded to reorganise local government to bring in new CCAs, Mayors and all the rest of it, but unless we are clear that the public want those changes and the Government are responding to that, it is yet more evidence that this approach to local government reorganisation is about fixing Whitehall’s desire for control and convenience, rather than about listening to local people anywhere in the country.

[Neil O’Brien]

We discussed in a previous sitting the new combined county authority model and the associated consultation requirements. At that time, I set out our commitment to ensuring that whenever a CCA is established, its boundaries change or, if it is being abolished, that the local public are consulted on the proposal.

Clauses 42 to 45 set out the requirements, including public consultation, associated with establishing, changing or dissolving a CCA. They include the preconditions for any regulations with those effects to be made. One such condition is for the area or CCA to undertake a public consultation on the proposal to establish, amend or dissolve a CCA. A summary of the consultation responses must be submitted to the Secretary of State alongside the proposal, and the decision to submit it must be taken at CCA or council meetings, which are held publicly. As such, that summary of consultation results will be publicly available.

Another condition is the specific duty on the Secretary of State to consider whether, prior to making regulations, further public consultation is needed. Indeed, the absence of a public response to an earlier consultation might give rise to further consultation—that addresses the point made by the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale. If the Secretary of State makes such regulations, they must publish an explanatory memorandum setting out the results of the public consultation. As a result, although we totally agree with the sentiment behind the amendments, they do not add anything to the requirements that are already provided for, and I hope that they will be withdrawn.

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[Tim Farron]

I wonder if I could crowbar something in? Within the combined county authorities there will be housing powers. There is reference of course to a lack of borrowing powers, and I want to push back on that. On both sides of the House, we often talk about the chronic need to build more affordable and social rented homes. Many councils retain ownership of council housing, and I was pleased that one of the upsides of the new authority in Westmorland and Furness is that, because Barrow never got rid of its council houses, our new authority will have a council housing department. That is really positive.

I know that there are fingers on the public sector borrowing requirement, and there are reasons why the Government are reluctant to give authorities’ council housing departments the ability to borrow in order to build the homes we need, but that is clearly wrong. If the Government want to empower local communities to build the houses we desperately need, they are going to have to give housing authorities the power to borrow to build them.

[Neil O'Brien]

In general, the hon. Gentleman’s question takes us a bit beyond the scope of the clause. However, the narrower part of it, which connects up with the good question put by the hon. Member for Nottingham North, gives me an opportunity to explain what the clause does and does not do.

The clause does not give a combined county authority unbridled power. It gives it the power necessary to do anything it considers appropriate for the purposes of carrying out any of its functions—its “functional purposes” in the law. That might include undertaking a feasibility study as a preliminary stage to an infrastructure project. The clause sets out boundaries and limitations for a combined county authority’s exercise of its powers.

These are therefore broad powers, but there is still a requirement in law that they are related to the carrying out of its actual functions.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 46 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 47 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 48

Power to make provision supplemental to section 46

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[Rachael Maskell]

I will be brief, because we have discussed these matters a number of times. The Committee has come to recognise that there will be asymmetry and that the powers will evolve at different times and in different authorities. That is the nature of devolution, and it is positive because it means local areas are in control of their own destiny. Capping those powers will have an impact on the economic ability and drivers of an area and will result in socioeconomic loss. Restraining local authorities in reaching their potential could mean that we do not see the growth and opportunity that a CCA could bring.

The amendments would enable more parity but also ensure that CCAs do not have different powers or descriptions. We want more symmetry in the ability to attain powers, and we will no doubt keep labouring the point at later stages of the Bill, because it is fundamental to devolution and who controls the process. The amendments very much go into the detail of that.

[Tim Farron]

I add my support to Labour’s approach. I am not fixated on symmetry in terms of what devolution looks like across England, but like the hon. Member for York Central I am obsessed with symmetry of opportunity. The amendments would help to raise the bar and raise the expectations of all authorities so that they can see what powers they can aspire to.

If we do not have something like the amendments, and some communities, because they have a Mayor or for other reasons, are offered greater devolution—it is often more delegation than devolution—more powers and more responsibilities, that is not levelling up. It is quite the opposite: it is building privilege into some parts of the country over other parts of the country, and institutionalising privilege. Broadly speaking, it will be institutionalising privilege for urban and metropolitan areas that have city deals, Mayors and the highest levels of devolution and delegation of responsibility. Not allowing all parts of the country to opt in to having the greatest level of devolved powers, should they so choose, is a recipe for creating the need for a different kind of levelling up some time not very far in the future.

[Neil O'Brien]

This is indeed a continuation of the debate we have been having over several days now. We have stated our belief that one-size-fits-all arrangements of the type provided for by amendment 41 are antithetical to different areas having different functions and progressing at different speeds.

The effect of amendment 41 would be that, regardless of the functions conferred on different CCAs, unless the CCA has had conferred on it the broader general power of competence under clause 49, the conditions imposed on what can be done in pursuit of those functions will have to be the same. That would be an overly rigid approach, in practice requiring all CCAs to be at the same level before any conditions could be changed. That outcome, however unintentional, would not fit with our area-led and bespoke approach to devolution.

The general power of competence, introduced for local authorities by the Localism Act 2011, would allow a CCA to do anything an individual can do that is not prevented by law. For example, if a CCA does not have housing powers, the general power of competence would enable it to buy a house on the market, but it would not enable it to compulsorily purchase that house.

Amendment 42 would require the offer to all areas, implicit in this clause, to confer the general power of competence, if it is appropriate to their circumstance and if they want it, to be restated wherever it is so conferred. That requirement is unnecessary.

We have been clear that if a good case exists for any power to be conferred to any area as part of a devolution deal, we are open to proposals to do so that are in line with the devolution framework. Further, it could be unhelpful and inappropriate to be required to make an unconditional offer that might not be universally appropriate. To date, only three combined authorities have asked for this to be conferred, which we have done.

Both amendments seek to bind matters that should always be the subject of an individual agreement between the area and the Secretary of State, which Parliament will then have to approve. All variations will be public knowledge and the rationale for them will be subject to parliamentary debate informed by explanatory memorandums.

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[Alex Norris]

The country is currently in the depths of a severe housing crisis, with a lack of supply of affordable homes and opportunities for young people and families to get on to the property ladder. Members across the House will know from our casework just what a profound challenge that is, and how damaging the lack of affordable homes is for younger generations. Its impact is felt all over the country and across all communities in some way, but I think the problem is particularly acute in our coastal towns and holiday hotspots. Steep price rises due to a considerable trend in people buying second homes are having a significant effect on local housing markets in such places. This trend has only been accelerated and exaggerated by the pandemic, as working patterns have changed.

Local residents in holiday towns, particularly those with families going back generations in their home town, are being squeezed out of the housing market and forced to look elsewhere, as property is bought for second homes, rather than to help locals get on to the property ladder and have somewhere to house their families. As fewer properties become available and local supply is reduced, house prices rise inexorably and local people are forced to contend with the vicious circle of a lack of supply and rising prices.

There is a significant problem. The housing crisis will be played out in days to come. There is a desire across the House to address it. At this point, I am particularly talking about holiday hotspots and coastal towns. Tight-knit communities are being hollowed out and left like ghost towns for significant parts of the year, outside of holiday seasons. We have heard stories of village pubs boarded up and the village shop on the brink, such is the lack of custom. Whole primary schools are closing, as there is a generation of lost children. Unfortunately, our local authorities do not have the right tools to really grip the situation and protect their local communities.

That is why it is welcome that clause 72 is in the Bill and that the Government are entering into this space and sees it is as their responsibility to allow local authorities to place a 100% council tax premium on long-term empty dwellings or dwellings occupied only periodically. However, the Opposition do not think that goes far enough to give local authorities real power to make the right decisions for their communities. Amendments 61 to 63 seek to improve the Bill in that way.

The offer in the amendments is for 300% as the premium, rather than 100%, as introduced in amendments 61 and 62. That applies to long-term empty dwellings and dwellings occupied only periodically. That means unused properties or second homes, frankly. We think that enhanced premium would be better. We have a recent comparable example in Wales. The Welsh Labour Government have been pioneers in this area. These amendments seek to introduce for England the recent changes we have seen in Wales.

Amendment 63 proposes that the threshold at which a point of dwelling is liable for business rates instead of council tax is raised substantially, so that those with second homes who seek to circumnavigate council tax by letting their property for just a short amount of time are no longer able to do so. At present, those who intend to let for 140 days and actually let for 70 can access a loophole whereby they will then qualify to pay rates instead of council tax.

Amendment 63 seeks to raise that threshold to 250 days and 182 days respectively. This would not only close the loophole for those seeking to avoid council tax; it would also provide—I think this would be beneficial for all concerned, including those who have holiday lets and want to operate them in the right way—a better delineation of what is a genuine holiday let, with lets provided all year round by a genuine business contributing significantly to the local economy and therefore legitimately qualifying for a business rate. As well as that being right for ordinary residents and people in general, it is also better for business that it is a level and fair playing field. A proper business with holiday lets would not be affected by an increase in the threshold.

I think we can deliver a win-win for coastal towns and holiday hotspots. By acting to close this loophole, we will get more empty homes back into productive use, while raising additional revenue to support local services, keeping council tax down and putting money into the local economy too. Indeed, that is pretty much verbatim what the Department website said when announcing the proposals for a 100% council tax premium. I think we are in the same place conceptually; it is more about the level. Again, these things would not be obligatory—they would be for local decision makers—but let us trust them, entrust in them the power to protect themselves from the scourge of empty and second homes, and empower them to fix their local markets for younger people, so that we can maintain our thriving coastal towns and villages for generations to come.

[Tim Farron]

Last week we covered the report from the Rural Services Network, which showed that if rural England was a separate region, it would be the most needy of all the geographical regions on the Government’s metrics, and this issue is one of the reasons why. We have a housing catastrophe in many parts of our country, especially in areas that we might call holiday hotspots. Although the problem does not affect rural areas only, it is principally found in rural or coastal areas, as well as in our historic towns and cities.

In the communities that I represent, before the pandemic 83% of homes in places such as Elterwater were not occupied, and well over 50% of homes in many other communities were not permanently occupied. Since the pandemic, estate agents in Cumbria estimate that between 50% and 80% of all house sales have been in the second home market. A crisis has become a catastrophe, and we do not have time to stroke our chins and issue calls for evidence when it is blindingly obvious what the problem is and what the solution is. One of the solutions has to be tax based.

When a community loses a permanent population, it simply dies, which is obviously tragic for the people who remain there. The census data released in the last few days shows that the retired section of our community in the south lakes has increased by 30% over the last 10 years, and that there has been a huge drop in the number of people in the younger age groups. That is miserable. It means that families are broken up, that communities that should be vibrant are not, and that areas soon lose their school, pub, church, bus service and shop. All those things cease to exist if there is not the footfall and the permanent population to underpin them, but a community also completely loses its workforce.

One of the huge problems across the country, but particularly in places such as my constituency, is that we have seen a decimation of the workforce as long-term rental properties become short-term—principally Airbnb—holiday lets. As houses that were family occupied or locally occupied become second-home boltholes, we see an evaporation of the working-age population. I have a couple of quick stats—I cannot remember whether I have mentioned them in Committee, because I mention them regularly in other places. A survey of its members by Cumbria Tourism showed that 63% of tourism businesses in the lakes last year had to operate below capacity because they could not find enough staff.

What does that mean for our economy? The £3.5 billion tourism economy in Cumbria could be an awful lot more, but we are not working at capacity because we cannot find the staff, and this is one of the reasons. People find themselves in a ridiculous situation whereby they might rent a holiday cottage in the lakes or the dales—a nice place—for a week or so, but they end up not being able to get a bite to eat. Why? Because the cottage that they are renting was the chef’s house last year. All these anecdotal issues lead to an overall picture of a serious problem that the Government surely know about, because many of us have raised it time and again, but are doing precious little to rectify.

We have the potential to use council tax as a mechanism to ensure that people do not use the loophole of renting out their second home for 70 days a year, then qualifying as a small business that does not pay any council tax or business rates. That is not acceptable. Thousands of people who own homes in my constituency use that loophole, but it should be closed and we should increase the number of nights that someone has to rent out their property before it counts as a business. We should even consider charging council tax on all holiday lets and be done with it. We are not saying that every council must do that; we are saying that authorities should have the power to do so. If the Bill is about empowering communities rather than telling them what they must or must not have, we should give councils that power, because it can make a huge difference. If we were to treble the council tax for Coniston alone, we would raise just over £1 million a year from that one village. What could it do with that money? It could pump-prime affordable housing projects. It could subsidise its primary school and secondary school so that they had the resources to match the number of kids that they should have in the first place. It could support the post office and rural bus services. All those things could be done.

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[Neil O’Brien]

I will give way in a moment, but I will make some progress first. We have already introduced a higher level of stamp duty for the purchase of second homes, and the Bill could double the council tax bill for those properties, providing additional council tax income for councils to invest in local services and communities. We are investing £11.5 billion in the affordable homes programme, delivering up to 180,000 affordable homes. The Bill includes provision for the Secretary of State to adjust the level of the second homes premium in the future, but we need to see the impact and assess the evidence before considering different arrangements in the council tax system.

Wales has been mentioned a couple of times. So far, only three authorities in Wales are using the 100% premium, and the 300% premium will start only next spring. The hon. Member for York Central said that it was not a sufficient deterrent to stop purchases. The truth is that we do not yet know that because it has not come into effect. We do not know how many authorities will use it and what its effects will be. She talked about these being small measures, but it is useful to talk about what it means in cash terms—pounds, shillings and pence. If, in a place like North Norfolk, we took a typical council tax band D property at roughly £2,000, going to a 300% second homes premium would mean a council tax bill each year of £8,120. In Scarborough, it would mean a bill of £8,386. In South Lakeland, it would be £8,242, and somewhere like Dorset it would mean an annual bill of £9,160. These are not trivial sums of money, and it is right for us to consider the impact of the initial measures of the 100% precept before we decide to go further.

[Tim Farron]

We are contemplating radical measures, and we are dealing with a catastrophe. We are doing our very best—surely we should be—to get the stable door shut before all the horses bolt, and if we ponder and contemplate our navels any longer, there will no horses—no community—left whatever. The problem will have solved itself by fulfilling the terrible prophesy of where I fear we are heading. If the Minister is taking this incremental, cautious approach, might he consider letting national parks be the pilots? I have asked both the Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District national parks. They are both up for it. They would bite his hand off if he offered them the opportunity through their constituent local authorities to double or triple council tax on second homes just within their own boundaries.

[Neil O’Brien]

My fellow Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey, is doing roundtables to explore the different possibilities on that point. I am sympathetic to what the hon. Gentleman says about the scale of the problem. We are seized of it, and there are multiple things we are looking at to tackle it. On the numbers I read out, if someone has a £9,000 council tax bill for a band D property—never mind an expensive fancy property—that is a non-trivial sum of money. That is quite a lot of money for a band D property.

[Tim Farron]

Brilliant.

[Neil O’Brien]

The hon. Gentleman says, “brilliant”, but the people who made a long-term commitment to those communities and who face a £9,000 tax bill would be unlikely to have the same reaction. However, as the hon. Gentleman says, they are one local stakeholder, and there are others as well.

However, as the hon. Gentleman says, they are one local stakeholder, and there are others as well. Our argument, which I think he understands, is that although we will have the powers in the Bill to go further and to do the 300%—we will not need to legislate again—it is sensible to look at the effects of things before making further adjustments. [Interruption.] I think he is keen to speak before I turn to amendment 63.

[Tim Farron]

The Minister is very kind. In a Committee such as this, I should not be chuntering from a sedentary position when it is easy to get up and contribute, particularly when he is generous with his time. I will chunter standing up, if I may. Those are not trivial sums—they might be impactful and make a difference.

Now, do I feel for somebody with a second home? There are plenty of people who do so. I remember, as a kid, “Not the Nine O'clock News” taking the mickey out of the awful things happening in parts of rural Wales—“Come home to a real fire; buy a home in Wales”—and I absolutely do not want the tone of this discussion to be one of demonising people who have second homes. This is a property-owning democracy and people have the right to use their money the way they wish.

However, true Liberals stand for the rights of those people whose rights have been trampled on by others, and there is sometimes a balance. If we have people owning properties in communities, and those communities dying out as a consequence, we must do something. Either we can change planning law, which might also limit the issue—we should do that too—

[The Chair]

Order. This is a very long intervention. If you want to speak after the Minister—

[Tim Farron]

I simply want to say that a large sum of money would act as a disincentive, and given the crisis that it would tackle, it is worth considering; it is worth looking at pilots to do this in the first place.

[Neil O'Brien]

I think the hon. Gentleman has in a sense answered his own question, in so far as there are indeed multiple policy tools that we can use to tackle something that we regard as a very serious issue. We are absolutely seized of the fact that, in particular parts of the country, there are hotspots that need action.

I think hon. Members have heard the argument that I have set out. On this issue, we will have the power to go further in the Bill—even further than we are already going, which is pretty far—but we would like to see the evidence and make our plans in the light of evidence, rather than simply jump to that now, given the large sums of money involved.

Turning to amendment 63—

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[Rachael Maskell]

I am talking about the impact that is having on my city of York. Many of those properties are in band B—they are smaller properties that people purchase because available properties are few and far between. Even if it was band D, we are only talking about £1,852.45 council tax. It will vary across the country, and that is why giving more powers to local authorities to make those choices is important. The financial deterrent in York will not be there with 100% council tax. As a result, those properties will continue to be purchased and the measures will have little impact. That is why it is important that the Minister has an understanding of the breadth of challenges faced in different communities.

I am looking forward to the Housing Minister coming to York for a roundtable to look at the Airbnb situation. We have specific issues and it is about the pace with which they are occurring, in a holiday destination. That is why the pilot should not just be in rural areas but in cities that are holiday destinations, because it is having a massive impact. There needs to be a bit more reality in the Government’s analysis.

The other point that I wanted to take up with the Minister in an intervention was the benefit to tourism. I would like to see the evidence of that, and to know the basis on which he made that statement. In York we now have an unregulated tourism market, versus a regulated tourism market of the traditional B&Bs and guesthouses that are losing trade at such a rate that they are going out of business. That is having a negative and incredibly destructive impact on our tourism industry. These measures will not provide sufficient deterrence against the impact on our city.

I appreciate that the Minister’s analysis may be in particular areas of the country, but it will not touch our city. That is why I urge him to carry out more research and to understand the different impacts on different communities in the country. We need to ensure that my local authority has the ability to put the right deterrent in place at the right level in order to deter this extraction economy that is, bit by bit, destroying the context and fabric of our city, our industries and people and families. For that reason, I urge the Minister to reconsider.

[Tim Farron]

I appreciate that the Minister is referring to planning, which I mentioned as another means of controlling, limiting and even reducing the number of second home owners and holiday lets, to create a higher proportion of permanently occupied dwellings in communities such as mine. We will deal with that later in the Bill. He said that there are a variety of mechanisms —yes there are, so let us use them, and he is one of them.

It could be argued that planning is a slightly blunt instrument, but there is nothing more blunt than an unregulated and failing market that is killing my communities. The Minister speaks as if that is something that we have only just discovered. It is not; it has been going on for decades, and has become catastrophic in the last couple of years. As geographers and geologists would tell us, erosion takes places over a long time, but one day, when there is some really bad weather, a whole piece of cliff falls into the sea.

That is what has happened to the housing market in communities such as mine in the last couple of years. The situation is already terrible: 83% of homes in Elterwater are second homes. I can name lots of other places with similarly high levels of homes that are empty all year round. People have the right to own and visit their second homes, but their right compromises the right of a much greater number of people to own even a first home. Sometimes, rights and liberties clash, and that is when we have to decide whose side we are on. Are we on the side of people who have plenty of rights already, or the side of those who have nothing? I am on the side of people who have nothing and who want to have a home and make their communities vibrant.

As the hon. Member for York Central mentioned, the tourism economy and its leaders are not in favour of the situation, and they want action. They will say, “Yes, holiday lets are a key part of our tourism economy, but if you get to the stage when there are so many of them that there is no community left for people to visit, and the workforce cannot afford a home anywhere near to where they work, so that the economy just suffers and ceases to function, that is problematic.”

I appreciate the Minister’s sympathy, but it is not enough. The Government say that they are looking at and investigating this, and that the Housing Minister has his roundtables. That is all very welcome, but we know what the problem is and what some of the solutions are. The frustrating thing is that the Bill is a golden opportunity to do something about the problem, rather than kicking it into the long grass and stroking our chins while our communities die.

[Alex Norris]

This has been an excellent debate. The contributions from my hon. Friend the Member for York Central and from the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale, have offered excellent explanations of how the problem manifests itself in two different communities with similarly profound effects.

I apologise to the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale, as I was absent for what I hope was an imperceptibly short part of his speech. I was startled to read in the notes that my hon. Friend the Member for York Central made for me that vacancy rates in his part of the world are 50% to 80%. That is extraordinary; what a profound impact it must have.

I was interested in the Minister’s response. We do not intend to press the amendment to a Division. I am glad that, through amendment 63, that is still an active process. If there is a better way than the one we have suggested, we would very much be up for doing a deal. The principle is settled and agreed; it is the level that is in dispute. The Government have settled on 100 days in the interests of balance. Perhaps that is a case of test and learn, which I think is something that will be littered through the next set of proceedings. There are circumstances in which that approach is a good one, but there are others in which it is used as a comfort instead of being brave. We will not always know which of those things apply; in this case, I wonder if it is the latter.

The Minister is right to say that they are non-trivial measures to bring in, and there will be a non-trivial impact on those who are affected, but as hon. Members have said, the impact is already non-trivial. The measures are definitely not an order of magnitude greater than the problem, because the problem is really significant. I will not press the amendment to a Division, because we will have opportunities to pursue the matter as the Bill progresses, and this exceptionally important problem will not go away. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Miss Dines.)