Mr Clive Betts
MP for Sheffield South East · Labour · United Kingdom
“I wholeheartedly welcome the Foreign Secretary’s statement, both its content and its tone. I would like to ask about his discussions with our colleagues and allies in other countries who are looking to implement similar sanctions.”
“I offer two congratulations: first, to my right hon. Friend and constituency neighbour, the First Secretary, on her well-deserved promotion—I am sure she will do an excellent job. Secondly, I congratulate her and the Prime Minister for their real commitment to devolution, which I have wanted to see for an awfully long time.”
“I apologise for the fact that—as I have explained to you, Madam Deputy Speaker—I will have to leave straight after my question to chair Westminster Hall. I thank my right hon. Friend for doing this very challenging piece of work. I think that the theme of fairness, for the people who need benefits and for taxpayers, is right.”
“On the other hand, so many constituents with really serious conditions get turned down for PIP, and can get it only if they struggle through the appeal system, sometimes without any help at all. So the system is not fair to anyone at present.”
“When the previous Government let the contract, we were in a situation in which procurement could not properly take account of the past record of companies, and I understand that the Government have now changed that.”
“I will dive very deeply into the question, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Chair of the Committee sends his apologies for his absence; he is presently in a Committee meeting.”
The complete record
Every one of 4,726 lines we hold for Mr Clive Betts, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 1 of 95.
“Order. Six Members have indicated that they want to speak, so that means they have about seven minutes each. I would normally advise Members to bob if they want to speak in the debate, but two Members have indicated that they have challenging circumstances, so I will exempt them from that requirement on this occasion.”
“I wholeheartedly welcome the Foreign Secretary’s statement, both its content and its tone. I would like to ask about his discussions with our colleagues and allies in other countries who are looking to implement similar sanctions. The Netherlands Government announced their intention to reimpose sanctions in July and will implement them on 22 September. Will my right hon. Friend ask them why that has only taken them two months, when we are going to take eight to nine months?”
“When she looks again at devolution to bodies with democratic control, could she look at the education system? That will be key to tackling the problem of those not in education, employment or training.”
“I offer two congratulations: first, to my right hon. Friend and constituency neighbour, the First Secretary, on her well-deserved promotion—I am sure she will do an excellent job. Secondly, I congratulate her and the Prime Minister for their real commitment to devolution, which I have wanted to see for an awfully long time. I hope it is devolution to local councils, as first-tier authorities, as well as to strategic authorities. One area that has not been covered so far is education. The First Secretary is probably aware that in five wards in my constituency with high levels of deprivation, there is not a single sixth form. Responsibility for that rests totally with academy trusts, and the local council has no power or influence over it whatsoever.”
“We now move to the Front-Bench spokespeople. They are entitled to speak for at least 10 minutes each, but given that we are not particularly time-constrained, I will leave it with them to make a judgment on that.”
“On the other hand, so many constituents with really serious conditions get turned down for PIP, and can get it only if they struggle through the appeal system, sometimes without any help at all. So the system is not fair to anyone at present. I commend him for his suggestions, but is he going to have a real look at the different reasons people give for applying for PIP, and at how to respond to them properly?”
“I apologise for the fact that—as I have explained to you, Madam Deputy Speaker—I will have to leave straight after my question to chair Westminster Hall. I thank my right hon. Friend for doing this very challenging piece of work. I think that the theme of fairness, for the people who need benefits and for taxpayers, is right. I have spoken to him briefly about the complaints from the Link Community Hub in Stradbroke in my constituency about the fact that people there with mental health conditions who are claiming PIP have drug abuse and alcohol abuse conditions, and are using PIP to fund those conditions. I have also complained about the young lads in their 20s driving around in Motability cars in Darnall; someone in the community has been paid to fill in the forms for them.”
“When the previous Government let the contract, we were in a situation in which procurement could not properly take account of the past record of companies, and I understand that the Government have now changed that. Looking at Capita’s past record on both the teachers’ pension scheme and the civil service pension scheme, we see that it has not run one scheme properly. That should have been taken into account before the contract was let. The other issue, and this is where the Opposition spokesperson did say something relevant, is that this scheme was falling apart last year. The National Audit Office looked at it, and clearly it was going wrong then. So I ask the Minister: did he start to look at alternatives then and did he at that point start to put together in-house provision that could eventually take over?”
“I will dive very deeply into the question, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Chair of the Committee sends his apologies for his absence; he is presently in a Committee meeting. We have looked at this situation on a number of occasions, and we will have a joint session with the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee and the Minister on Wednesday. The individual cases that we have heard are absolutely appalling, and we will relate them to Capita and the Minister. We have heard from two widows who have been waiting since last year to get their pensions sorted out, which is not acceptable. I have two issues for the Minister to reflect upon.”
“I welcome the Secretary of State’s commitment to buy British and create British jobs. When he produces his further strategy on procurement in the autumn, will he try to get a joined-up approach to procurement across Government, as that is important to our industrial strategy? The MOD is investing £1 billion-plus in Sheffield Forgemasters to create the capacity to build nuclear reactors for our submarines, yet at the same time, Rolls-Royce is purchasing the same sorts of nuclear reactors in South Korea to go into civil nuclear plant. Do we not need to get that sorted out, right across Government, to make sure that we are doing British industry proud and buying British products to create British jobs?”
“It is absolutely right in principle for the Government to try to defend the steelmaking sector, particularly Liberty at Stocksbridge and Rotherham. However, there are downside implications for smaller firms, particularly manufacturing firms such as Ansell Handtools, Special Steel Group and Crown Hand Tools in my constituency, all of which have said that they cannot buy precisely the steel that they need, or the quantities of steel that they need, from British manufacturers. That is the challenge. I know that the Minister has been doing a great deal of work on this; can he tell me how he will leave a channel open for concerns to be raised by those companies if the further measures that he has taken do not address their particular grievances?”
“The Dutch Foreign Minister made it very clear that the Dutch Government acknowledged that enforcement would be difficult and that they carefully weigh up these matters, but they decided in the end that doing anything was better than doing nothing. May I suggest that might be an appropriate course of action for our Government? We ought to be seen on the right side of this, and finding reasons why we cannot act is not right. We ought to be acting on this matter.”
“Let me add a few words about the murder of Jo Cox. I was a friend and colleague of Jo’s, and I still remember the numbness and shock that I felt on hearing the news. Quite simply, no Member of this House should fear for their life because they speak out on behalf of their constituents. The west bank is illegally occupied by Israel. The settlements are illegal and have been expanded through extreme violence by settlers, supported by the Israel Defence Forces. I do not know whether my right hon. Friend is aware that, in May, the Dutch Government decided to ban trade in goods from settlements. They did so because they wanted to put pressure on the Israeli Government.”
“I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his appointment—he is very well suited to the job at hand. I am sure he will understand, though, if I also express my disappointment that his predecessor and my constituency neighbour, my right hon. Friend the Member for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough (John Healey), felt he had to resign because of the inadequacies, as he saw them, in the defence investment plan. I congratulate everyone involved on the seizing of the tanker. It is an important lesson for Putin that we are going to disrupt his war machine, but it is also a first; will the Secretary of State indicate if we are looking to undertake such operations more regularly in order to ensure that the many such tankers that sail in these waters are not free do so in future without the fear that our Government may act against them?”
“Order. I will call Mary Kelly Foy next, as the co-sponsor of the debate. After her speech, I will give hon. Members an indication of how long they may have to speak, to try to get us to the end of the debate in a reasonable fashion.”
“Order. We have four Members who want to come in, so I will issue a guideline of nine minutes each for speeches, if Members could stick to that, please.”
“Before I call Wendy Chamberlain, let me say that the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) has indicated to me that he has to leave at about quarter past 4. He has a plane to catch; I accept that as a reason, and he has given advance notice, which I thank him for. We will begin the wind-ups by 4.05 pm at the latest.”
“We asked the Cabinet Office permanent secretary whether she would go away and look at having an in-house team built up to administer public sector pensions in a way that might prevent these recurring problems with a variety of private sector providers, whose arrangements always seem to go wrong.”
“The Public Accounts Committee has had a number of hearings on this issue, and I am sure the Chair, the hon. Member for North Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), will want to ask some questions. First of all, there is a shared responsibility here. MyCSP has responsibilities, but I have to say that the Cabinet Office oversaw this, and there are real questions that the Minister should be asking officials in the Cabinet Office about their degree of responsibility. We have had so many assurances on this. Are the June assurances really going to be kept to? This is not a one-off issue, is it? The civil service pension scheme has had at least three different problems with three different providers in the past. We have had the teachers’ pension scheme, the Royal Mail pension scheme—an awful lot of them.”
“Order. Six Members wish to contribute to the debate and we have about 50 minutes, so people can do the sums on that—it is about eight minutes maximum for each speech.”
“The right hon. Lady had the courtesy to advise me in advance that she would have to leave shortly after 4 pm, so I think it was reasonable to allow her to speak in the debate.”
“We move on to the Front Benchers, who are entitled to 10 minutes each. I hope that we can allow at least two minutes for Julian Lewis to wind up at the end. I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.”
“Will this deal ensure that the steelworks has a viable future and that jobs are retained for the whole of Sheffield?”
“I welcome the strategy. Sheffield’s history is inextricably linked to steel, and we want our future to be linked to steel as well. My right hon. Friend mentioned the excellent work that Forgemasters is doing to provide steel for our nuclear reactors, our nuclear submarines and, hopefully, our civil nuclear program, through small modular reactors. The strategy mentions the procurement of British steel. Will the Secretary of State set out how the Government will ensure that public bodies do procure British steel rather than just saying that they will? My hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Dr Tidball) has fought so hard for the future of Liberty in the past few months. What would the Secretary of State say to her about Stocksbridge steelworks?”
“Order. We have five speakers, which gives each of them between eight and 10 minutes, so that we can get the Front Benchers in after that. I call Chris Evans.”
“Order. The hon. Gentleman has not been reading the media—we had some good news this morning, which has moved us forward. I just wanted to make sure everyone is up to date with the important information.”
“We now come on to the Front Benchers. Everyone is entitled to at least 10 minutes, but I think you can work out that you have a little bit more if you want to take it.”
“We now move on to the Front Benchers. The Liberal Democrat and Opposition spokespeople will have five minutes, and the Minister will have 10. There is a bit of flexibility on that time, so we can be a little more generous if required.”
“Will he have a look at what he might do to enforce such agreements, and change the criteria for banking hubs when they could be vital to local communities?”
“I warmly welcome the Minister’s statement. May I raise two specific issues relating to post offices in my constituency? First, Mosborough post office, a fairly small but growing business, is on the margins of viability. Will the Minister think again about how small post offices in communities that rely on them can be supported? Secondly, the Lloyds bank branch in Woodhouse—the last bank there—has closed. Woodhouse is an old mining community. We thought it was an ideal place for a banking hub, and we had someone willing to run it: Richard Trinder, the sub-postmaster at Handsworth post office. However, the plan was turned down because the banks were not prepared to fund it The Minister mentioned discussions with the banks and the Post Office about a voluntary agreement.”
“The Public Accounts Committee has looked at the cost of home-to-school transport. Clearly, one of the drivers is the cost of sending kids with special needs miles away from their home to very expensive private schools. The Government have announced help on the statutory overrides that have been incurred by local authorities with regard to those costs, both recently and currently. Given that the reforms the Secretary of State has announced, which I very much welcome, will take some time to come into effect, will she guarantee that local authorities will not have to rely on statutory overrides to continue to provide their statutory duties in future?”
“My right hon. Friend is being a little unfair to the Tories. The biggest cuts under austerity from 2010 to 2024 came from 2010 to 2015 when the Lib Dems were in coalition, so perhaps they should share some of the blame.”
“It is interesting to hear the hon. Member completely remove from his memory what happened in the 14 years of his Government. I ask him to remember back to when this began in 2010, when council tax generated about 20% of council funding, and how it has grown over the years under the Conservative and coalition Governments to deliver more than half of local government funding. How can he say that this is a problem when his Government originated that process?”
“There is again memory loss on the Lib Dem Benches. It was the coalition Government who made the biggest cuts to local government funding and started passing funding responsibilities over to the council tax system—that all began with the Lib Dems in the coalition Government. Why does the hon. Gentleman not apologise to the Chamber and to people up and down the country for what the Lib Dems did to them when they were in government?”
“As demand for targeted services such as social care, special educational needs, and temporary accommodation has grown, there has been a significant reduction in spending on commonly used discretionary services, such as street cleaning and lighting, parks and gardens, and leisure services.” That is a truth that councils up and down the country have experienced and dealt with for many years. I congratulate councillors of all parties, in all councils across the country, for how they have performed during the years of austerity—they have continued to work, and to deliver efficiencies that some central Government Departments, as the PAC can testify, would do well to emulate.”
“I first congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and my hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government on this settlement; it is a welcome change. I also thank the Minister’s predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton (Jim McMahon), for his work in both opposition and government to get us to this better place. I am now the deputy Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, and we recently produced a report on local government funding. I want to read out our cross-party conclusions: “Local government finance is in a perilous state…Funding has not kept pace with population growth, demand for services, complexity of need, or the rising costs of delivering services.”
“I just point out to the Opposition that Greg Clark, when he was Housing Secretary 10 years ago, promised a fair funding review on behalf of the then Conservative Government. However, we are still waiting for that review in 2024. The Opposition had their chance, but they did not take it. We now have a review to deal with the simple matter of some figures and data in the funding settlement being at least 20 years old.”
“Absolutely. I think that goes for both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, as my hon. Friend will understand. This Government clearly face a serious situation, and we must say that they have got some things very right indeed. First, we have the multi-year settlement, which has been called for, cross-party, for many years—it was certainly something that we called for when I was on the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, and the Committee is again calling for it now. It is good that we have one; it gives councils a degree of certainty, so that they can look to the future and plan ahead. Fair funding has always been a subjective term; one side will say that something is fair funding, and the other will say that it is not.”
“We came in with a manifesto of change; we have a large majority, and with willingness, we can deliver on it. There are major issues in social care. I am still disappointed that we will not make changes to social care funding until 2029, after the review. I think we could make them more quickly. We are clearly moving on special educational needs and disabilities, but we need to move on children’s social care as well. There are things that some councils can do to help themselves; for example, Warrington council has started to build its own children’s home, so that it does not have to send children to very expensive private homes.”
“To be fair, when Michael Gove was Secretary of State, there was an agreement that this needed to happen, but not much evidence that it did happen. I think we have moved in the direction that everyone wanted us to take. This settlement is a good start. It steadies the ship after the cuts that councils with higher levels of deprivation have had to suffer, and it brings in a strong element of fairness. Now, I am going to challenge the Minister—I know she would not expect me to be completely complimentary. I come back to the point that the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi), made about the need for change. This is a good start, but there is a need for radical change.”
“Now, the budget can be balanced without those cuts, which is a fundamental change. We can start to look at some improvements and preventive measures for the future that will bring about the sort of change we all want. I say well done to the Government for getting us to that position. I also say well done to the Government for dealing with the ringfences—not just in the Minister’s Department but across Government, whether they be in transport, health or education. There are ringfences all around that restrict local councillors’ ability to do the right thing for their communities, so it is good that the Government have moved in the right direction. The current Select Committee and previous Select Committees have called for that change, and the Government have listened.”
“The finance director of Sheffield council has said that “The figures announced in the LGFS back up the Government’s commitment to redressing the unequal cuts seen during the austerity years of the previous Government, and its aim to deliver more funding to deprived areas of the country.” I think that is a fair statement from the officer responsible for the council’s finances. In this funding settlement, Sheffield has got about £55 billion more over three years than was anticipated under the previous proposals, which sort of fills the hole. In the past, we have been making cuts to essential services, but for the first time in 15 years, we can start a budget process without immediately looking at cuts to those services. Year after year of cuts—that has been the situation.”
“Friend the Minister is that the recovery grant lasts for three years, so there is a danger of a cliff edge in 2029, when those councils that now get it may suddenly lose it. The Minister is obviously trying to think ahead, which makes a change from previous Ministers, so let us start to think about that problem before it hits us. I welcome the settlement for Sheffield. I think the comments made by the leader of the council—which is a cross-party council—were about the council’s concerns and the challenges it faced prior to this funding settlement.”
“I certainly do. My next point was going to be that deprivation is properly recognised in the funding settlement. The problem is that councils that have deprivation either across their area, or in part of it, have borne the burden of the cuts over many years. Under previous Governments, both coalition and Conservative, councils with the greatest need—which previously had the largest grants to reflect that need—faced the biggest cuts. This funding settlement gives the biggest increases to councils that faced the biggest cuts under the last Government; we are getting some restitution for the funding reductions that we suffered. The recovery grant is right, because councils need recovery when their funding base has been decimated, after grants that they needed were taken away from them. My one challenge to my hon.”
“I will not go through every detail of this settlement. There is always a balance to be struck in local government settlements, and Ministers have to make their own judgments about that. It is the overall impact that I want to judge the settlement by. For me, this is a fairer settlement for those authorities with high levels of deprivation and some of the worst cuts in the years of austerity.”
“First, there are many more councils with Labour MPs. It might be the case that Labour MPs represent councils with higher levels of deprivation. That might be the simple explanation.”
“That is not sustainable. It undermines trust in local authorities. People say to me, “The council has put up my council tax, but I am getting less for it.” This really has to change.”
“When the Chancellor made commitments during the election campaign not to increase certain taxes, council tax was omitted. Therefore council tax has been going up disproportionately. It is an unfair, regressive tax that hits the poorest hardest. We simply have to do something about that. This comes back to the democracy point that the Chair of the Select Committee made. While this is going on, poor families have to pay disproportionately more, but in terms of local government spending, more is going on social care, homelessness and special education needs—the things that are really important, but which most people do not receive. That means that most people, particularly those on lower incomes, are paying more tax every year and getting less in services, because of the cuts to other services, as the Public Accounts Committee recognised.”
“In the modern age, how can we continue to fund local authorities using a council tax system based on valuations from 1991? It is nonsensical. It is not sustainable. Imagine asking someone how the value of their new house had been arrived at, and them saying, “Well, this is a guess at what it would have been worth in 1991, had it been built then.” This is ridiculous, and we must change it. It is also regressive. Michael Gove, the former Secretary of State, said that the system was regressive, and it is. Poorer households pay disproportionately more in council tax. It simply is not fair. In every year since 2010, council tax has taken a higher and higher share of local government funding, placing a greater and greater burden on that part of the funding settlement, which is regressive.”
“Absolutely. Councils should be funded according to need, not according to political representation. [Interruption.] Before Conservative Members start, I do not know whether they are old enough to remember Dame Shirley Porter and Westminster council, and how they were stuffed with money over visitor nights, just to ensure Conservative victory at the local elections. But we will move on from that. That was a long time ago. I say to the Minister that these are big challenges that need to be addressed. We have to get to grips with them. We also have a local government finance system that is fundamentally broken. The Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee commented on that in her excellent speech. Moreover, the Select Committee in the previous Parliament made the same recommendations as her Committee did.”