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.”
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“My simple memories of the Queen, from that and future occasions, are of someone with a real understanding of, and interest in, the issues of concern to her subjects and my constituents. She had a personal warmth and a lovely sense of humour, and she put me at ease through her approach at a time when I was frankly extremely nervous, though she took what was happening in her stride. On behalf of my constituents, I simply say thank you to an incredible sovereign for an incredible life of service. God save the King.”
“Make sure you are on that side of the Queen when you walk along.” Before we began the official opening, the Queen talked to me and others with knowledge and understanding of what was going on in the city, of the loss of jobs in steel and engineering, and of the effect on people’s lives and employment. She showed empathy for what was happening in our city. When we walked out to do the opening, there was a trumpet voluntary—we do things properly in Sheffield. The Queen stopped after a little bit and said, “Do you think they have seen us come in?” I said, “Your Majesty, they don’t normally do trumpet voluntaries for the leader of the council.” Then she said, “Do you know what we do next?” I said, “I rather hoped that you’d done this sort of thing before.” But she had a laugh; she enjoyed the opening. She put me at ease and I relaxed.”
“On behalf of my constituents and the citizens of Sheffield, I pay tribute to the Queen and associate myself with the wonderful comments made from both sides of the House this afternoon. I met the late Queen on a number of occasions as a Member of Parliament, but I want to refer to the first time I met her back in May 1991, when I was leader of Sheffield Council and she came to open the Sheffield Arena. We built a raised walkway into the middle of the arena for the opening, and I had to walk alongside her down to the microphones. Before we did the walk, royal officials came to me and said, “Councillor Betts, there is a rather steep drop on one side of the walkway.”
“A couple of weeks ago, heavy rainfall in Sheffield resulted in sewage flowing into the garden of my constituent Perri Bradbury and on into her home, so it has damaged the carpets, the floorboards and furnishings. She has young children. I do not think that we can imagine the awfulness of this situation. When I asked Yorkshire Water about compensation, it did a bit of a clean-up and then said that, under the Water Industry Act 1991, because this was due to exceptional weather, it was not obliged to pay any compensation and would not do so. Is it not time that we changed this out-of-date legislation and made sure that the cost of the consequences of sewage overflows falls on the water companies and not on residents, who have completely no responsibly for this?”
“I am listening with interest to the hon. Member’s comments. As he says, we have been on the Finance Committee together for many years. I have some concerns, which I do not know whether he plans to reflect on. We have had long debates and many reviews, although I have not been involved in all of those. I thought we had got some agreement, although it was controversial, that we were going to have a decant and it was going to be expensive. Maybe there were concerns about how the Sponsor Body operated, but the main thing I am concerned about is that bringing the arrangements for the organisation of this massive project in-house will not necessarily solve those difficulties. We do not have a great track record in this place of managing large capital projects efficiently and well, and those projects were nothing like as large as this one.”
“Some of us asked questions about that when we still had not decided on matters. We used to have a longer summer recess, when a lot of works could be done in this place, but it suddenly got shortened because some elements of the popular press criticised it as us simply going on 12 weeks’ holiday. However, there is a big problem here, which needs to be looked at and could save us a lot of money. I am not saying it is an absolute solution, but we at least ought to have a look at it to see if, in the long term, it would save us money and enable the place to work better.”
“When will the Prime Minister act to ensure that people who have come thousands of miles to this country are not placed in temporary accommodation and that we take up the generosity of those families who are willing to offer them a home?”
“The Local Government Association has told us that more than 400 families who have come to this country from Ukraine under the family scheme have subsequently presented them- selves as homeless to local authorities. Because the local authorities have not got enough accommodation, those people are going to end up in temporary accommodation. There is a simple answer: local authorities could be allowed to contact the many thousands of people who volunteered to provide homes under the Homes for Ukraine scheme. The problem is that the Government do not allow families to transfer from the family scheme to the Homes for Ukraine scheme.”
“I am pleased that the reopening of the Barrow Hill line to passenger services has reached the next stage of the review. The problem is that it will be a heavy rail service to a reopened Sheffield Victoria, which has very poor connectivity. Will she look again at the idea of a tram train, following the successful service between Sheffield and Rotherham, which would go into the centre of Sheffield and have real connectivity there? People could then use the newly reopened Beighton station to access it. I know the Minister has offered to meet me already, but will she have a look at that in advance of our meeting?”
“I have talked to engineering firms in my constituency such as Tinsley Bridge and Forged Solutions in the last few days, and they use specialist steel that has to be imported because they cannot source it in this country. They have therefore been paying hundreds of thousands of pounds a month between them in tariffs imposed on those imports. The Secretary of State says she is extending the category 12A quota to help this situation, but these firms will still have significant costs because of the tariffs and quotas that have been imposed. Will she agree to meet me, the companies and the Confederation of British Metalforming to consider how the introduction of greater flexibility could help these companies?”
“Last year, at the spending review, the Government announced that after years of austerity there would be a small real-terms increase in local authorities’ spending power—but that was when inflation was around 2% to 3%. Has the Chancellor seen the recent assessment from the Local Government Association showing that, with inflation at a somewhat higher level now, it will cost local councils £2.4 billion extra this year? What steps will he and the Levelling Up Secretary take to have talks with the Local Government Association about extra help for local authorities so that we do not get another round of austerity imposed on our constituents?”
“I welcome the initial support—it is initial I am sure—that the Government are giving towards regeneration in my constituency. However, there is a problem. Initially, Sheffield Council was planning under the local plan to build around 40,000 homes in the next 15 years. With the metropolitan uplift, that has increased the number to more than 50,000. That will mean unnecessary building on greenfield sites, which otherwise could have been saved, and it will take the impetus away from building on regeneration brownfield sites. Will the Minister agree to meet me and representatives of the council to discuss how we can avoid this double disaster from happening?”
“I apologise to the House for being late to the debate; I have been chairing a meeting of the House of Commons Members’ Fund, which I gave prior notice of. The Secretary of State rightly talks about help for leaseholders and others living in blocks that have been affected by Grenfell-style cladding, other cladding and other building safety defects. That is an important issue, but coming back to social housing, he is aware that there is still a problem: apart from ACM cladding, there is no automatic right to funds for social housing landlords. Ministers have said before that that is still under consideration. If it is not provided, there will be a massive black hole, particularly in housing association funding, which means they will build fewer houses than we want them to.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the body—the Tenant Services Authority—that used to exist and was in place to do that. Let me return to the point that I made to the Secretary of State in an intervention: this is about resources. Councils and housing associations are short of resources. They cannot bring their homes up to a proper standard—the new decent homes standard—build new homes, and do all the necessary building safety and other works with the money they have. Will my hon. Friend join me in pressing the Secretary of State—hopefully he is listening, as he said he was—to make sure that social housing landlords have the same access to funds to deal with safety works that are now, quite rightly, available to the private sector?”
“There are two important questions here. First, will participation by housing associations be voluntary? They are independent organisations, not part of the public sector. Secondly, replacing one for one, like for like, a family home for a family home, is not just about the Treasury making up the discount. Talk to housing associations: the cost of building a replacement is often greater than the market value of the home sold. There is another gap, which the Government have to fill.”
“We raised the issue of insurers at the Select Committee. Premiums have gone up by ridiculous amounts, often for buildings that are now safer than before the premium increases. The Association of British Insurers could not tell us how much more the insurance companies have paid out in the last three or four years on high-rise blocks, so we have no idea how much has been paid out, but we do know there have been massive premiums increases. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we should encourage Ministers to take further action with the ABI and others to start sorting out these unreasonable premiums increases?”
“When I was housing chair in the 1980s we had more than 90,000 council houses, but the number is now down to 45,000. By and large, it is the nice family homes in the suburbs that have been sold under the right to buy; not many inner-city flats have been sold. When I was housing chair, we would not let a flat to a family with children and ask parents to lug prams up the stairs to a second or third-floor flat or maisonette; they would be given a family home. That is not possible now. People come to me and say, “Mr Betts, we have a family and we need a house with a garden”, and the answer is “There are not any to let.””
“That money will have to come from somewhere in the budgets unless the Government find it. All those challenges, which social housing providers will have to meet, will not be met by the current budgets. Once again, social housing tenants are being treated as second-class, second-rate citizens, which is simply not acceptable. Then there is the issue of new housing. My hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden described the devastating position in which so many of her constituents find themselves, but we are all seeing those circumstances. People who are in desperate need of housing cannot get a home to live in from their councils or housing associations. It was interesting to hear the council house figures from my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central. We are seeing exactly the same in Sheffield.”
“We need to make buildings safe and more energy-efficient; we need housing associations and councils to ensure that they are fit in live in; and we will need to address the decent homes standard when it is introduced; but the money simply is not there to do enable all those things to be done, and it is certainly not there to pay for building safety work on top of that. The Committee heard from Placeshapers, a group of middle-ranking housing associations that are more locally based in their communities, but none of them can afford to make their buildings into zero-carbon homes by 2050. They do not have the budgets; the money simply is not there. We have to listen and learn from that. We have heard from the National Housing Federation that it will cost at least £10 billion to deal with fire safety building work.”
“The tenants should not have to pay for it out of their rents. If we want to ensure that social housing tenants have safe homes, we must also ensure that they have good-quality homes. We heard some appalling stories from my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) about her problems with housing associations in her constituency, and the Select Committee has heard from Dan Hewitt from ITV News and from tenants about the conditions in which people are having to live, which are completely unacceptable.”
“This is not just about the buildings; it is about the people who live in those buildings and the mental stress and strain that they are experiencing, not knowing whether their home is safe and whether they can afford to make it safe. Those matters ought to be of fundamental concern to us all. Let me return to the point that I made earlier about social housing and the need to find the necessary resources. If we really believe that social housing tenants are as entitled to good homes as anyone else, we must recognise that they are entitled as anyone in the private sector to receive Government help, and help from those who were responsible for the problems in the first place, to make their homes safe; or else the landlords should pay for the work by diverting money from other sources.”
“They are not reliant on the council’s benevolence: they are entitled to that money to run their own associations, and I think that that is a good approach that might be looked at more widely. We have clearly made progress on making buildings safer throughout, and the Secretary of State has made further changes. However, when the Select Committee looks at the numbers, we will see gaps in the legislation whereby some properties are not covered by it. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) pointed out, lower-level properties are still not covered. There is also the question of the speed of our progress. Are we really achieving the speed that is necessary to make people safe in their homes? They have been under such pressure over the last few months.”
“Unfortunately, that attitude is still present to some extent among social housing landlords, whether they be councils or housing associations: it is a case of “We will do things to you, as tenants; we will not do things for you and with you.” That attitude needs to change fundamentally. We have made some progress. Hopefully some of the moves towards ensuring that tenants’ voices are heard, both locally and nationally, will bear fruit. This is not a new development. When I was chair of housing in Sheffield in the 1980s, there were a number of widespread tenants associations and a tenants federation. Sheffield still has the unique system whereby tenants pay a levy on their rents, voluntarily, towards the funding of their tenants associations.”
“However, Grenfell did not just highlight problems relating to building safety; it highlighted fundamental attitudes towards social housing. Essentially, social housing was believed, by some in positions of authority, to be poor housing for poor people, and that was an attitude that stuck. I remind the Secretary of State that there was a time when the Government’s approach was to sell off high-value council housing, because if it was high-value the presumption was that it was too good for council tenants to live in. I hope that we have moved on since then, but there are lessons to be learned. As the Grenfell residents have told us time and again, when they approached their landlords with problems and concerns, they were ignored—because they were just council tenants, and they would not know what they were talking about, would they?”
“Thank you for calling me, Mr Speaker. I did apologise for being late for the beginning of the debate, for reasons that I explained. Let me first welcome the Grenfell residents who are with us today. We must never forget those who died, those who were injured, and those who were bereaved by that tragedy. The Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee has done a great deal of work and produced a great many reports about building safety since Grenfell, and indeed we carried out pre-legislative scrutiny of the Building Safety Bill, now the 2022 Act. That, I think, shows the strength of Parliament working together, with the Government presenting legislation and Select Committees scrutinising and trying to improve it.”
“If we are in favour of transparency, as I believe the Secretary of State and the Housing Minister are, this issue needs addressing. If something goes wrong in the future, everyone will ask why, and the answer will be that no one was allowed to see what was happening in the process. I am just raising that as an issue. Thank you for the opportunity to speak, Mr Deputy Speaker. This has been a very thoughtful debate. I come back to the point that we need to start treating social housing and social housing tenants as a priority for investment in order to build more of the decent homes that they ought to be able to live in.”
“Some residents were concerned about the way the foundations were going in, so I asked the National House Building Council, the appointed building control organisation, whether it could give me some information about the number of visits it had made, the number of inspections it had carried out and the history of its work on the site. The answer I got from the NHBC stated: “I am sorry to inform you that NHBC is not able to provide this information. The information we hold in respect of Owlthorpe Fields is not a matter of public record and cannot be released without prior approval from Avant Homes.” Avant Homes is the developer. In other words, everything is secret unless the developer decides to make it transparent. That is not acceptable.”
“We believe that building control inspectors should be independently appointed and not appointed by the developer. The Government have conceded that point—or, I think, proposed it—in relation to the highest-rise, most vulnerable buildings, for which the new building safety regulator will be responsible for appointing building control officers, but not for the rest of the sites. I have a problem in my constituency at a development called Owlthorpe Fields, about which I have challenged the Housing Minister before in relation to non-compliance with planning conditions.”
“In the past, there was a voluntary agreement with the National Housing Federation when the pilot scheme was introduced. Is it going to be a voluntary agreement again? I am not aware that NHF has been consulted about this scheme or its details. I assume that those conversations are going to happen, but it will be interesting to see what the approach actually is. I would like to make one completely separate, important point. It goes back to Dame Judith Hackitt’s report on the Grenfell disaster. One of the things she said was absolutely fundamental: she talked about the golden thread running through all housing developments and construction and said that there had to be absolute transparency. The Select Committee has had a disagreement with the Government about building control.”
“If so, instead of the extra money for social housing that I am arguing for, are we going to get less money in those budgets? Will the Government provide a replacement for the discounts given to housing tenants when they buy their homes, and will they also make the money available for the full cost of replacing each home sold? Talking to many housing associations, I understand that the cost of replacing is greater than the market value of the homes when they are sold. That point is often lost. I am not sure where those assurances will come from, but hopefully we will get them. Are housing associations going to be allowed to say no to this? They are private organisations—some of them are charities—and they have to meet particular requirements.”
“Unless we build those 90,000 homes a year in the social sector, we are not going to hit the 300,000 target nationally, because the private sector is not going to build anything like 300,000; historically, it has not done so. So there is a challenge on these issues as well. I want to say one or two words about the right to buy. I have mentioned the consequences of the right to buy in the past. If the Government want to go ahead, and if they genuinely feel that it provides the best value for the Government’s money to subsidise discounts for housing association tenants to buy their homes, I would like to see the impact statement that goes with that. I would like to see where that Government money is going to come from. Will it be diverted from existing housing budgets?”
“It is a problem that is replicated nowadays. At one stage it was just a London problem, but it is now a problem in many other places as well. Although Sheffield Council has an ambitious programme to build 3,000 council homes, which was pioneered, eventually, by my good friend and colleague Councillor Paul Wood, the cabinet member for housing, that will not address the problem quickly. More money needs to be provided, and more needs to be done. We did another report in the Select Committee in which we said we needed to build at least 90,000 social houses a year in this country, but that to do that, the Government would need to put in funding of £10 billion a year, which is much more than they are currently putting in. That is the reality.”
“I thank the Minister for always being courteous in giving way. Is it not true that in the pilot there was nothing like a one-for-one, let alone a like-for-like, replacement of the property sold? That is one of the reasons why the pilot was stopped, is it not?”
“I hope the Secretary of State will agree that it is key that managers in the NHS and local authorities can work together effectively. I give great credit to the leaders in the clinical commissioning group, the hospital trust, the director of public health, the social care directors and the city council, who worked really well together in Sheffield during the pandemic to deliver a joined-up service and have kept us as MPs thoroughly involved. As we move on to the slightly wider integrated care system and integrated care board, will he give a commitment that the place-based working that has been so effective in the past will be allowed to continue at local authority level?”
“I want to follow up on the two questions that Conservative Members have asked about transferring powers to local authorities and Mayors. I can see in the Bill welcome proposals to expand combined authorities to more parts of the country, particularly to county areas. What I cannot see anywhere—if I am wrong, the Secretary of State will point me to the precise clause—is the making available of more powers that are currently not devolved to any local authorities. Are any such powers going to be devolved, and if so, in which clause do they appear?”
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am sure that the Secretary of State would not want to inadvertently mislead the House. In response to the question from the hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) about the conflict between local plans and national policies, he made a comment—”
“I thank the Secretary of State for giving way. Clause 83(2) proposes a new section 38(5C) to the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, which says: “If to any extent the development plan conflicts with a national development management policy, the conflict must be resolved in favour of the national development management policy.” That is what it says—it overrides the local plan. It is in the Bill.”
“That is another measure that is positive. However, I am really doubtful whether the specifics, particularly around planning in total, add up to a real agenda that will deliver the levelling up goal that we all want to see.”
“The strengthening of powers over retrospective applications is also to be welcomed, but will there be an impact assessment to see whether it is really going to work? The Royal Oak, a centuries-old pub in Mosborough in my constituency, was demolished, and the developers came back months later to get permission to rebuild on the site. They are going to get a slap on the wrist, and that is not good enough. We need real powers to deter that. On the levy being implemented instead of section 106 agreements, can the Government absolutely assure us that this will not reduce the number of affordable homes being built? This will be tested at the Select Committee. We all share the ambition on levelling up, and there are some good specific measures in the Bill, including the ability for local authorities to set up local development corporations.”
“We welcome the plans for improved environmental impact assessments, and we are going to test how they will work in practice. We welcome the increased powers of enforcement for local authorities, and I come back to a point I have mentioned before. When a developer refuses to implement the conditions given to an application that has been agreed, should that not be able to be taken into account by a local authority when the same developer puts in an application to build somewhere else? If that developer has failed at the first hurdle, why should it be given a second permission? Avant Homes, in Owlthorpe in my constituency, is an appalling developer, and there have been problems with it elsewhere as well.”
“The proposals to simplify local plans and make them accessible to local people, so that the argument can be about where we build homes at that stage rather than having rows about individual planning applications later, are welcome. Will the other measures in the Bill really do it? We are going to test that in the Select Committee. The Minister for Housing, the right hon. Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) is going to come to the Committee next week, and we are looking forward to seeing him. I hope he is looking forward to coming. There are measures in the Bill that the Committee has asked for to simplify the powers available to local councils relating to compulsory purchase orders. Again, are they going to do it? Is there a real commitment to end the hope value system whereby landowners get money out of this process for doing nothing?”
“It was clear from his answer that he could not do so, because there are none. He reverted back to saying that there would be discussions between Mayors, combined authorities and the Government as the initial devolution measures that the Government introduced under the coalition were brought in. Why are we back to individual negotiations? Why do we not have a right, through a devolution framework, to powers for all local authorities to access? That is something that we on the Select Committee have asked for, but it is not in the Bill. Initially we were told that we were going to have a levelling up Bill with some planning powers incorporated into it. What we actually have is a planning Bill with a levelling up wraparound, because most of the serious measures in it are about planning. Some of them are probably welcome.”
“The principle of levelling up is absolutely right, and it is one that is shared across the House. We have one of the most unequal countries by geography, and one of the most centralised. Both of those issues need addressing. However, the two fundamentals to addressing them are missing from the Bill. First, where is the money? Individual pots of money adding up to a few billion pounds are not going to do it. We need to see a commitment from the Government to actually change the way in which whole departmental budgets are spent. Why is it right that we spend 10 times as much per head on public transport in the south-east as we do in Yorkshire? That is a question the Government need to answer. I asked the Secretary of State if he could point to any new powers in the Bill that would be available to councils and Mayors.”
“I want to raise with my hon. Friend an issue about local democracy and local plans, which the hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) mentioned. A local plan must be consistent with national planning policies, and correctly so. However, if there is a conflict between a local plan and national development management policy, national policy holds sway and is given priority in any determination. How can it be that a local plan can be drawn up in full consultation with the local community, but if the Secretary of State later decides to change the national policy, it will override the consulted-upon local plan?”
“I am just observing how many hon. Members want to speak in the debate. There are five. That means a guideline of about seven minutes for each Member before we come to the winding-up speeches.”
“Last but not least, I call Jim Shannon. If the hon. Member can finish before half-past 10, that will allow time for the winding-up speeches.”
“We move on to the Front Bench spokespeople, who have 10 minutes each. After that, there will be a short time for the mover to wind up at the end. I call Ronnie Cowan for the SNP.”
“I have a specific question about the household support fund. The Chancellor says—I think he is saying this—that, wherever people live, if they are in the same circumstances, they will get the same help from this fund. In other words, local authorities will have no control over how much money is spent from the fund. Will he therefore guarantee that councils will get pound for pound from the Government every pound they have to spend for the people who need it?”
“The Government’s help to local bus companies and help for light rail during covid has been appreciated, but already bus companies in Sheffield are starting to make cuts, particularly First. The Government have said that, come October, all covid support will end, and South Yorkshire received no funding whatever under the BSIP. Does the Minister understand that in Sheffield and South Yorkshire, come October, we are not going to get London-style services? Many parts are going to get no bus services whatever.”
“That has happened with Avant Homes at Owlthorpe in my constituency—I have talked to the Minister about this—where the developer is refusing to comply with a whole range of conditions, including on wheel washers, compounds for workers and engaging with the local tenants’ association. I notice that the other day, the Daily Mail drew attention to the fact that the same developer has not met conditions in Nottinghamshire. What sanctions will the local authority have to deal with a developer in such a situation and to take into account those failures when a future planning permission is put in for?”