Local Growth Deals

Debate between Toby Perkins and Greg Clark

Monday 7th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

They certainly will. It is very important that our cities should prosper and succeed, but we have huge strengths in our counties and districts, which is why I am particularly pleased that we could extend city deals to all parts of England through what we have agreed in the programme today.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

In Chesterfield, we are grateful that the Minister has approved two of the proposals brought forward by our local enterprise partnership. Does he not recognise, however, that real devolution is not about the Minister sitting in Whitehall and saying which proposals he agrees with? It is about devolving the funds and letting the responsibility lie with local authorities, precisely as Lord Adonis has proposed. Will the Minister acknowledge at the Dispatch Box that what he is proposing is a third of the size of the devolution proposed by Lord Adonis and does not put responsibility and powers truly in the hands of local authorities? Why does the Minister not follow Lord Adonis’s recommendations?

[Greg Clark]

No, the hon. Gentleman is not right. He is right that Chesterfield will have substantial investment in skills, which will be very important for his constituents, but he is wrong to say that there will no flexibilities. It will be open to the local enterprise partnership to bring forward projects, as it has done—it made those proposals—and to vary them if it thinks that that is in the local interest.

Banking Reform

Debate between Toby Perkins and Greg Clark

Monday 4th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

We agree with my hon. Friend, and that will form part of the Bill.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

The Minister is absolutely right to say that the reputation of our banks has never been lower. We hope that we will start to see the important changes we need. One reason for that reputation is the experience that many small businesses had with interest rate swap agreements. While many welcome the FSA announcement on that, there are still some concerns about whether people will really consider that they have had justice at the end of the process. Will the Minister confirm what representations he has made to the FSA about what it should find during the deliberations, and will he give us any assurances that the interest rate swap problems we have had in the past will not reappear in future?

[Greg Clark]

The hon. Gentleman raises a very important point. I met the Federation of Small Businesses and the Bully-Banks organisation and I conveyed their concerns to the FSA, which the hon. Gentleman knows is set up to be the independent regulator. I think most people were relieved that the FSA proposals of last week will result in compensation for the affected businesses within a rapid time frame. What happened is totally unacceptable, and is another feature of the scandalous decline in reputation that the banks have suffered. Small businesses in particular have a right to regard their bank manager as someone who acts in their interests, rather than someone who flogs them dodgy products that they do not need in the first place. That is a breach of trust in banking. I am absolutely insistent that the FSA should conclude this process, giving full recompense to those who have been mis-sold products.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Toby Perkins and Greg Clark

Thursday 24th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

I will indeed join my hon. Friend in congratulating that company. In fact, a record number of the recent Queen’s awards, announced last month on Her Majesty’s birthday, were for small businesses, which shows that this country’s small businesses have a huge amount to contribute to the future success of the nation.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

Yesterday I met 35 small businesses that borrowed money to fuel growth but now feel that they were mis-sold interest rate swap products by their banks. There is a real urgency to investigate that issue before more otherwise healthy companies are brought down. Will the Minister join us in calling for banks, while they are investigating whether these products were mis-sold, not to foreclose on companies that are falling behind because of these products?

[Greg Clark]

If the allegations are correct, the companies will need assistance to cope. An investigation on that is about to conclude. I will take the matter forward with the hon. Gentleman and am happy to discuss it outside this place with his Front Benchers.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Toby Perkins and Greg Clark

Monday 5th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

In response to the question from the shadow Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), the Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government, the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) said that we were facing a crisis of growth. What does it say about the policies of the present Government that after the abolition of the regional development agencies and six months after the budget for growth, a Minister has come to the House and admitted that there is a crisis of growth?

[Greg Clark]

The crisis of growth that I was referring to was that bequeathed to us by the previous Labour Government. We noticed that the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) has decided not to say what she thinks of the reforms that we are enacting. She has spent six weeks failing to give a view on that. A few weeks ago, the leader of her party said that

“the promise of a better life for the next generation is under threat…How are they going to buy their first home?”

Does she support our simplified planning system or not? She did not answer.

Localism Bill

Debate between Toby Perkins and Greg Clark

Monday 17th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Greg Clark)]

You would not know it, Mr Deputy Speaker, but this is an historic day for the House. Opposition Members should have tuned into the TV this weekend to see the Leader of the Opposition say that he was abandoning the tradition of Fabianism in his party and adopting localism. There was precious little of that in the speeches of the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) and her hon. Friends.

The two parties in the coalition see the Bill for what it is—the first of many measures that will do something very different from those introduced by the previous Administration. We are using the powers of the Government and Parliament to give power away rather than to increase it for ourselves. That is the direction in which this Government will continue to go. We will give more and more power to the people.

Successive Governments have increased the power of the centre, which has led to Britain becoming one of the most centralised and rule-bound societies in the world. French local councillors would be astonished if we told them that local councillors here would be in breach of the rules if they passed a view on a local planning application—they would think that that is nuts. In America, they would think it ridiculous and barmy if a member of President Obama’s cabinet set the local taxation in a small American town; and in Australia, they would wonder what planet someone was on, if they told them that to judge a planning application one has to wade through planning guidance longer than the complete works of Shakespeare. This is the time to reform and bring us back in touch with the rest of the world.

The response from Labour Members made it clear that were it not for the election of this coalition, which is united in wanting to return power to the people, they would have continued in the direction they had previously taken us. That degree of centralisation did not work, of course, and we know why: there is something about the British people that means they do not like being told what to do; they have a quality that makes them want to push back when people try to boss and bully them, as the previous Administration did. It is costly, too. We can imagine the bureaucracy of enforcement that needs to be put in place to impose and send out the directives, to gather the statistics and to send in people to ensure that others comply. We cannot afford that in the circumstances left to us by the Labour party.

More than that, Government Members know in their hearts that the best way to improve society is to give people their heads, and to allow them to follow their vocation and use their initiative, rather than to suppress it with top-down impositions that merely demoralise people.

[Toby Perkins]

The right hon. Gentleman is telling us about how many powers the Secretary of State is giving away, but which of the 126 new powers that he is taking under the Bill does he think local people cannot look after for themselves?

[Greg Clark]

If the hon. Gentleman is under any illusion that this is not a Bill that transfers power to people, he should talk to the coalition of voluntary and community organisations that this very day launched a campaign to ensure that the Bill is not watered down by the amendments he would suggest.

If this is the occasion when the Labour party converts to the cause of localism, it has a long way to go. The right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) implied—breathtakingly—that when in government her party had tried to localise power. Even the Leader of the Opposition does not believe that. He said in his leadership campaign that the Labour Government looked down their nose at local government. So much for conversion! The hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) said that the Labour party downgraded the role of local government when in office. First base for the right hon. Lady is to admit that her party got it wrong in the past—I thought that was what her leader tried to do this weekend—in order then to point in the right direction.