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 24 of 95.
“We have had 5% council tax increases year on year, and a lot of it has been to fund social care, so we are going to get above-inflation council tax increases again, are we? If we say national insurance payments are regressive, council tax is now regressive, too. That is the reality.”
“The gap is between £2.5 billion and £4 billion a year, yet we know the £5.5 billion has to fund: the cap and floor system, which will be at least half of it, maybe more; and the £500 million for workforce training, which is welcome. The money goes nowhere near funding the current gap, let alone bringing about any improvements or bringing people into the social care system who are currently excluded. It just does not do it. The Government have said they will “ensure local authorities have access to sustainable funding for core budgets at the spending review”. All will be revealed in the spending review, but the key bit is that the Government say they expect “demographic and unit cost pressures” will be met “through council tax, social care precept”.”
“The Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee and the Health and Social Care Committee have received estimates that the funding gap for social care alone is between £2.5 billion and £4 billion a year, which does nothing to restore services to the level they should be at or to address the real problems of low pay, which will eventually destroy the service because it will not be able to recruit people as alternative jobs, such as at Amazon, pay so much more. That is simply the reality. How much money will come from the levy? Paragraph 30 is the only bit that talks about money: £5.5 billion over three years.”
“Other services, such as parks, libraries, buses and highway safety, have all been cut by up to 50% in local authorities across the country. We are repeatedly asking our constituents to pay increased council tax, often for care services they are not receiving, when the services they do receive are being cut to shreds. That is the reality. As representatives of both parties in the local government sector said to the Select Committee on Housing, Communities and Local Government, we cannot sort out the funding problems in local government without sorting out the funding problems in social care. That is the reality. We are in the middle of a Select Committee inquiry, and we will be taking evidence from Ministers. I hope they will start to explain to us how the care plan will solve that problem.”
“I have made my position clear on the extent to which local government has been unfairly cut compared with other parts of the public sector. Across the piece, local councils of all political persuasions have done a brilliant job of protecting their communities over the past few years. They have done it by giving priority to social care, but that has still meant real-terms cuts due to the demographics, with more older people, with people with learning disabilities living longer and with increased costs and demand for children’s social care—demand for the latter two has gone up faster than the demand for elderly care over the past few years. In protecting social care, there have still been real-terms cuts. There are 1 million more elderly people not getting care who would have received it in the past.”
“Furthermore, the alternatives will be: bigger rises in council tax—the Government have almost signalled that in this report; or further devastating cuts to other services received by most of our constituents, who do not get social care but have to pay for it. This is a recipe for disaster. Eventually, when it works through, everyone will see that there is no plan for social care here, because there is no funding for social care that will deliver the sort of social care system we all want to see.”
“There is a crisis in social care, and we have all got that; we all have constituents come to us begging for social care. They are really concerned about having to sell their home, but sometimes it is about not being able to get into a care home or get the care at home they need. Most social care should be delivered in the home where people live. The reality is that there simply is not a proposal in this so-called “plan” to give local authorities that money that is needed to both fund the existing gap and to extend social care to the many people who have been denied it because of the cuts in the past few years.”
“In paragraph 95, we also made the important point that people should not have to sell their homes to pay for social care and proposed instead “that a specified additional amount of Inheritance Tax should be levied”. We all agreed to that. That system is a lot fairer; people would pay according to the value of their home and it would not be that people in constituencies such as the right hon. Gentleman’s, where house prices are relatively low, end up paying a bigger percentage of the value of their home to fund care than people in areas with higher house prices. I stand by that recommendation. It is a different proposal from the one the Government are now putting forward. I want to come back to the point for the Minister.”
“Yes. However, may I just say to the hon. Gentleman that it was a slightly different recommendation from what the Government are proposing now? I have our report here, just by chance—I thought I might be asked the question. We talked about the rate at which national insurance would be paid—this was to cover the points that the right hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry) made about low-paid areas. We talked about paying right the way up the income scale. We talked about extending it to pensions and unearned income, and about it not being paid for by the under-40s, who have been really badly hit by this pandemic, and we ought to be doing our best to protect them.”
“I think the right hon. Gentleman probably knows which point I am going to raise. I am very interested in the impact on local authorities. Out of the £36 billion that will be raised over three years, how much extra money will go to local authorities after the costs of the “cap and floor” system have been taken into account? How much extra money over three years will go to local authorities out of the £36 billion?”
“Welcome, everyone, to this session at Westminster Hall. It is good to see you all in person. To begin with, I need to remind everyone of the guidance. It is not my guidance; it is Government guidance and guidance approved by the House of Commons Commission, encouraging all Members to wear masks when they are not speaking. Please will Members and members of staff give each other space when seated, and when entering and leaving the room? Also, could Members’ speaking notes be sent to Hansard by email, please? Similarly, could officials communicate electronically with Ministers? I understand that Ministers can read emails and texts, so that should not be a particular problem, and it helps to make sure that we follow the guidance. Thank you all for your co-operation.”
“I think we have five hon. Members who want to catch my eye, which gives them about nine minutes each. I am not imposing a time limit, just giving guidance on how long to speak for.”
“We now move on to the Front-Bench speeches. We have slightly more than the normal 10 minutes. We will allow two minutes for the mover of the debate to wind up at the end, so you have about 12 minutes. You do not have to take that time, of course. I call Alan Brown of the SNP.”
“Before we start the debate, I have to advise Members, in line with recommendations from the Government guidance and that of the House of Commons Commission, that they are encouraged to wear masks when they are not speaking and to give proper space to each other when seated or leaving the Chamber; that Members’ notes should be passed to Hansard by email; and that officials should communicate with Ministers electronically. That is the advice that I have to give, so I have given it. Before I invite David Warburton to move the motion, are any other Members intending to speak in the debate? No? Obviously, Members can intervene, if their intervention is taken, but they can speak only with the mover’s permission.”
“I remind hon. Members that the guidance from the Government and the House of Commons Commission is that Members should wear masks when not speaking and give each other space both when sitting and when leaving the room. Members should give their notes to Hansard by email and officials should communicate with Ministers electronically as well. That is the guidance I have to pass on. We now move on to the matter in hand.”
“We have 24 minutes and seven speakers, so there will be an initial time limit of four minutes. I ask Members to be as brief as they can. If Members take interventions, I will have to allow a minute extra, which will come off somebody else’s time. That is just the reality of the situation.”
“Will the Minister please allow the Member who tabled the debate a minute to make some final remarks? That will be appreciated. I call the Minister.”
“Before the pandemic, the Conservative-led Local Government Association said that there was a gap in social care funding and local authority funding of about £5 billion. It has got worse since. Will the Prime Minister therefore state clearly, of the £36 billion to be raised through this addition to national insurance contributions in the next three years, how much will go to local authorities to fund social care? When, in 2023, he brings in the cap and floor system, that will mean less money coming in from people’s own funding, so what will the net addition be for local authorities from the increase in national insurance payments and the reduction in payments from the cap and floor system?”
“I thank the Secretary of State for the kind words he said about the Select Committee’s scrutiny of the legislation. On the new homes ombudsman, many of us have been shocked by what we have seen from developers of new housing and the cavalier attitude they have towards their developments. Will he confirm that the new homes ombudsman will have the powers to deal with the appalling practice of non-disclosure agreements which some people have been asked to sign in order to get builders who have not built their homes properly to put that right? Will he consider going a step further and requiring the builders of new homes which have faults to put right all similar faults in other homes, just as a car manufacturer would have to do?”
“This is a very significant statement, and it is difficult to read it quickly and grasp it, but it says that EWS1 forms “should not be needed for buildings less than 18m. This position is a significant step and one supported by the National Fire Chiefs Council and the Institute of Fire Engineers.” That is a significant step, so will the Secretary of State explain, if the form is not necessary for those buildings, whether he is saying that, in effect, apart from cladding removal, significant remediation works are not necessary on buildings below 18 metres? Is that what the Government are saying? Because that is a major step in this debate and the House needs a lot more explanation.”
“I keep reading this statement and I am not sure I am any clearer than I was at the beginning. The Secretary of State said that EWS1 forms are not needed on properties below 18 metres because there is no systemic risk across those sorts of buildings. What I am not clear about is whether the lack of systemic risk applies to cladding that is of limited combustibility. Is he now saying that there is no need to remove combustible cladding from buildings below 18 metres, or that there is a need? If there is, is not an EWS1 form needed as part of that process? If it is not, we still do not know who is going to pay for the work.”
“A one-storey care home is potentially risky, and that must be taken into account in the role of the Building Safety Regulator. The Government are to come forward with proposals on the qualifications and training of everyone working on high-rise buildings. That is really important, because currently an electrician rewiring a flat in a high-rise development does not have to be qualified. Their employer must be part of a competent person scheme, but the individual does not have to be qualified anywhere in the building industry. Those matters need addressing now in the Bill.”
“Welcome to the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is good to see you there. The Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee did pre-legislative scrutiny on the Bill—it is a technical Bill, which we went through line by line and made recommendations—and I think that shows how the House should operate. I thank the Government, and the Minister for Building Safety and Communities in particular, for taking it seriously, responding to all our points in great detail and talking to us about it. The Committee still have some concerns and wrote again to the Minister the other day about what we think is missing. One thing, of course, is building control. Developers should not be able to appoint their own building control inspectors, because that is a conflict of interest. On risk, it is not height alone that makes buildings risky.”
“The Government floated the idea of a loan scheme, but there is no reference to that in the Bill. Has the loan scheme been ditched? We need clarification on these important issues because leaseholders need certainty that they are not going to have to face these bills. There are important issues in the Bill. It is generally to be welcomed. There are still issues that we want the Government to go further on, but the explanation in this statement of who is going to pay for some of the costs that the building safety fund does not cover is still an essential matter that the Government need to think again about.”
“I hope that the Secretary of State will accept an invitation to come to the Select Committee after the summer recess and discuss the matter with us in more detail. Whatever the statement says, it still leaves out buildings over 18 metres that have defects that are not just about cladding. Even when cladding defects have been put right, people are facing bills of £50,000 that they cannot afford. Where is the help for those leaseholders? It is not anywhere in the Bill. I turn to buildings between 11 and 18 metres. I do not understand how the Secretary of State can say that systemic defects were not found in those buildings. Where does cladding fit into that? Will the removal of combustible cladding from buildings between 11 and 18 metres no longer be required? If it is still required, who will pay for it?”
“There are major issues about the independence of building control not just on the highest-rise buildings but right throughout the building industry. The Select Committee report drew attention to that. On product testing, we await the Government’s proposals. Hackitt identified that the product testing regime is broken and needs fixing, and the Committee stands by its view that if a product that has gone to testing and failed a test comes commercially to the market, that information should be made available publicly. That is important information. The Government rejected that recommendation, but I hope they might consider it further. It is very difficult to make comprehensive sense of the statement published today.”
“Under the proposals, large areas of the north outside the major cities will see their housing numbers fall, which seems to be in contradiction to the Government’s levelling-up agenda.”
“I hope that the Secretary of State has seen the Select Committee’s report into the planning reforms. We were supportive of a number of aspects, including the need to strengthen local plans and how they are drawn up. Could I ask him two things in relation to our recommendations? We need to recognise the serious change in moving to a zonal system and the importance of getting the details right, and I wonder if he might consider the recommendation to move, at the next stage, to a draft Bill, so that we could give it serious pre-legislative scrutiny as to what it would mean in practice. Secondly, will he have another look at the distribution of housing under his latest proposals?”
“When the Select Committee on Housing, Communities and Local Government went to Germany about four years ago to look at its social care system, we saw that people entitled to public funding for social care could either pay the public authorities or care agencies to deliver it. Alternatively, for a slightly reduced amount of money, they could pay their family members, which meant that the person receiving care got the care they wanted, family members got paid for their efforts and the public purse actually saved some money. In reforming the social care system, would the Minister look at introducing elements of the German system into our system in this country?”
“This is a major challenge, and so far, bit by bit, the Government are moving steadily towards addressing it. All I would say to the Minister today is that, although progress has been made, there is still an awfully long way to go. I hope we will get a positive response from him to the recommendations in the Select Committee report. We will write to him further to list all the questions we would like answers to following the debate.”
“To confirm, will the tax and levy produce money in addition to the £5 billion, or are they part of that, reducing the Government’s cost? Do we know when the money from the levy and the tax will start to arrive? Presumably the tax will need legislation, and perhaps the levy will as well. Is it true that a levy, if introduced, will be applied only when planning permission is granted? If so, it could be years down the road before a building on which the developers are due to pay the levy is actually built and the levy is handed over; we could be years away from getting any money. Will the Government confirm the likely timetable? This issue will not go away until all homes are safe in this country. It is an issue that we will come back to as a Select Committee and, I suspect, that we will come back to over and over again in this House.”
“We believe that where individual developers, architects or contractors can be held accountable for defects in a particular building, they should be held accountable properly in law and made to pay. However, we know that those legal battles can go on for years and years, so essentially Government have to step in first to fund this work, putting the money into a comprehensive building safety fund, although we believe that industry in general should also pay. That includes the development industry, as well as suppliers of products, because often faulty products have been a cause of these problems. We welcome the principle of a tax and a levy on the industry, which the Government have announced. That is a good step forward.”
“Does the Minister accept that buildings that have claimed and received money from the building safety fund to put right cladding problems are being left with other defects that make their homes unsafe? In some cases, we are spending enormous sums of public money and the end result will still be homes that are not safe, because other defects remain that the leaseholders simply cannot afford to put right. Is that an acceptable situation? Does the Minister accept the Select Committee’s proposal that we should now have a comprehensive building safety fund that covers all safety defects, not just cladding; all buildings, not just those above 18 metres or above 11 metres; and all tenures, including leasehold and social housing?”
“If that is to be done without any Government support, do the Government accept that that money will come out of commitments that would otherwise have been made to build new homes or refurbish existing homes? What assessment have the Government done of the impact of not allowing social housing to claim against the building safety fund? One of the biggest issues is that, apart from cladding removal, the building safety fund does not cover building safety defects. We know that there are faulty balconies, faulty fire doors, missing fire breaks and faulty insulation. Why have those issues been omitted from the fund? What risk assessment has been done of that? Do the Government accept that some leaseholders are facing bills of £50,000 to put right defects in their home other than cladding?”
“Have Ministers any idea what the total cost of the loan scheme will be? How many buildings will it cover? Do they accept that for some buildings it will mean a debt of several thousand pounds, running over many years, before the final costs are paid off? Does the Minister accept that buildings under 11 metres, which are not covered by the building safety fund or the loan scheme, could still be at risk? How many such buildings are there? What risk assessment has been done on them? Why has social housing been excluded from all the funds apart from the original ACM fund? Does the Minister accept the National Housing Federation’s figure that it could cost £10 billion for housing associations to put right building safety defects in their homes?”
“Has an estimate been done of whether the extra £3.5 billion will be sufficient? Why is the £3.5 billion not so far covered in the estimates? Has the funding profile for that money and the years that it will be spent over now been agreed? If so, can we know what it is? Why have 2,000 registrations for the fund not progressed? Are the Government satisfied that those buildings are safe even though their claims on the fund, having been registered, have not moved any further forward? Have we any further information on how the loan scheme for buildings between 11 and 18 metres will work? Ministers have been unable to explain any of it in previous discussions. They have said that neither leaseholders nor freeholders will be responsible for the debt for the loan, so who will be responsible?”
“On the £600 million funding to remove aluminium composite material cladding—the cladding that was on Grenfell—progress has been a little disappointing. Could the Minister explain, probably with an answer in writing at some point, when the removal of all ACM cladding will be finished and why there are still 33 buildings with ACM cladding where remediation work has not started? The Select Committee was also at the forefront of pushing for funding to remove other forms of dangerous cladding. The first £1 billion building safety fund was clearly not adequate: it was on a first come, first served basis, which was not appropriate. It is therefore welcome that the fund is now £5 billion, but why are only buildings over 18 metres covered? What risk assessment has been done to determine that?”
“Because it is an estimates day, I will concentrate on resources and Government funding—or sometimes the lack of Government funding. Do the Government yet know how many homes are unsafe and what the estimates are to put them right? There is a second, general point that we have repeated over and over again in our reports. We ought to be absolutely clear that we establish “the principle that leaseholders should not pay anything towards the cost of remediating historical building safety defects” for which they are not responsible. One of the questions we will probably ask—the second question—is: will the Minister confirm that that is still the Government’s policy? It has changed from time to time. In recognising that significant funding has been made available by Government, let me go through the funds.”
“I probably will not be able to put all of them on the record, but the Committee will write to the Minister afterwards and set out a list of questions in the public domain, if that is helpful. First, when will the Building Safety Bill in its final form be published? Can we have a timetable for that? Four years after Grenfell, thousands of families are still living in unsafe homes and facing bills they cannot afford. In many cases, their lives are put on hold because they cannot sell the homes they live in and move on. That puts enormous pressure on the mental health and wellbeing of those families. The Committee has produced three reports about building safety and cladding issues, and I have with me the most recent one, “Cladding Remediation—Follow-up”, which we published in April.”
“I thank the Backbench Business Committee for finding time for this important debate. I realise that the whole of the nation will be watching their television sets this afternoon, totally interested in the proceedings in the House on this important issue—but, seriously, four years on from Grenfell, the one thing that we should be able to agree on is that we should do everything necessary to ensure that a tragedy like Grenfell never happens again. We have had the Hackitt review and the draft Building Safety Bill on which the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee did pre-leg scrutiny, both of which are welcome steps forward. I will ask many questions this afternoon.”
“They said that the right Bill was the Building Safety Bill. I am pleased that the Minister has now said that the Bill is imminent. I hope that means it will be before the recess and is quicker than “soon” or “shortly”, which Ministers often say. The first duty of a Government is to keep their citizens safe. The only way to keep people safe in their homes is to remove all safety defects, and I say to the Government that the only way to remove all safety defects is to adopt the comprehensive building safety fund, as recommended by the Select Committee. Question deferred until tomorrow at Seven o’clock (Standing Order No. 54).”
“Perhaps we could hope for the same result for the Select Committee vis-à-vis the Government when we come to their response to the Building Safety Bill. We have had a wide-ranging debate, and this is clearly a very important issue. We should also think back to Dame Judith Hackitt’s report, in which she identified a legacy of building regulatory failures in this country, but also identified a fundamental problem of culture in the construction industry. That culture is about cutting costs, a race to the bottom and conflicts of interest, and that is fundamentally at the heart of many of these problems, which eventually will probably take longer to address. When we debated the Fire Safety Bill, the Government said that it was the wrong Bill to be used for amendments to bring building safety matters to a conclusion.”
“Will the Secretary of State commit to rectifying that situation and ensuring that directors of public health are fully involved in the new model for testing and tracing that will be undertaken from July this year?”
“I welcome the Secretary of State to his new role. He could begin by launching cross-party work on social care reform by responding to the 2018 report by the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee and the Health and Social Care Committee, because three years later we are still waiting for a Government response. On test and trace specifically, the NAO report on the national system that was published the other day was hardly complimentary. The Secretary of State will be aware, from his previous role as Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, of the great professionalism of directors of public health and the work that they do. As the NAO report says, in many cases they are still waiting for up-to-date data to deal with local covid outbreaks.”
“In 2007 there were major floods in Sheffield, which not only affected homes but destroyed large parts of industrial areas, including Meadowhall shopping centre, Forgemasters and other industries. A great deal of work has been done on flood defences, with the council and the private sector working together, with some Government support. However, one thing that would really help is the preservation of the peat bogs in the moorlands above Sheffield, which act as a massive sponge to stop the run-off and the cascading of water down into Sheffield. Will the Minister take action now to stop heather burning on the peat bogs and to make sure that peat does not end up in unnecessary products, such as compost for gardens?”
“Our report also makes recommendations on the countryside, the environment, the use of brownfield land, the green belt, and many other issues. It is a very comprehensive document. We are currently undertaking a separate inquiry into permitted development rights. As a Committee, we look forward to the Government’s response to our report. We also stand ready, as I have said, to undertake prelegislative scrutiny of the planning Bill to ensure that changes to the planning system, which will always, by necessity, be complex, are given the full and detailed scrutiny they need. That is vital to ensuring that our planning system builds on its past accomplishments, of which there are many, addresses its present challenges, and is fit for the future.”
“Our inquiry considered the pace at which developments with planning permission were being completed. We concluded that it is too slow. Local councils complain regularly that the problem is not the lack of planning permissions but slow build-out rates, over which they have no control. We recommend that if, 18 months after the discharge of planning conditions on a site, the local authority is not satisfied with the extent to which work has progressed, it should be able to revoke the planning permission. We also recommend that if, after work starts, progress is not moving ahead satisfactorily, local authorities should be able to take into account a whole variety of factors to levy council tax on each uncompleted unit. We hope that the Government will take that proposal seriously.”
“We must also ensure that changes to the housing formula do not reduce the level of house building in other parts of the north and midlands, as that would not contribute towards the levelling-up agenda. Our report argues that the Government should be very cautious about sweeping away section 106 agreements. Those are legally enforceable contracts between developers and local authorities that ensure the delivery of new infrastructure such as schools and roads for new developments and the provision of affordable housing. If the Government want to proceed, they should bring in levies at local rates that reflect local land values. The Government should also guarantee that there will be no reduction in affordable rented housing due to the reform of the levy and the introduction of the First Homes programme.”
“All these issues are absolutely central to a holistic, integrated and complete planning system that shapes the places where people live and work. With emphasis on housing, however, in the Government’s White Paper, our report also looked at the housing formula and housing delivery. We call for clarity on how the Government intend to achieve their housing target of 300,000 new homes a year, which the Committee strongly supports and has been achieved in only a handful of years in the 1960s. We ask for further information about changes to the housing formula, including how the Government’s proposed urban uplift in 20 major towns and cities, which came during the course of our inquiry, will work in practice, why those areas were chosen, and the rationale for the scale of the uplift.”
“That is why the Committee believes that producing a planning Bill in draft form, and making it subject to pre-legislative scrutiny by the Select Committee would help ensure that whatever proposals come forward are workable and that planning lawyers and consultants will not be the greatest beneficiaries from any changes. We were warned of the real possibility of a flurry of judicial reviews. One of the forceful points made to the Committee was that the Government’s planning proposals were essentially housebuilding proposals. The White Paper contained no mention of commercial property, for example, as the British Property Federation pointed out, and virtually no mention of employment, leisure or climate change.”