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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“On that point about coming to a town near you: it is indeed coming to cities and towns in the Sheffield city region, it was announced today. The package of assistance is totally inadequate. It is nothing like what the leaders and the Mayor asked for. It is exactly the same as has been offered to other areas—the standard package. It is not locally negotiated; it is the standard package. As the leader of Rotherham said, “They put lots of civil servants into a room with us to tell us what we couldn’t have.” That is actually what has been happening in the negotiations.”
“I welcome the support for local testing, tracking and tracing. It should have been done months ago: that is the reality of the situation. As regards local negotiations—I put this to the Health Secretary last night and he did not deny it—there are not negotiations; there is a financial package that the Government have decided on that has been offered to all areas that have been put up to tier 3 status. It is a case of saying, “Take it or leave it: there’s no extra money going to be negotiated.” That is exactly what leaders in South Yorkshire have said it is: lots of civil servants in a room telling us what we cannot have. These have been the discussions, not negotiations, that have been happening in South Yorkshire in the past few days.”
“I was told that that is the Government guidance now—that is, if someone is walking on a rural footpath, with no chance of giving covid to anyone, they should stop at that imaginary boundary, turn around and come back. I am sorry, but it is that sort of stupid, simplistic advice that brings the whole system into disrepute. Finally, will the Government please tell people the measures by which tier 3 will end? No one has told us yet.”
“What is going to happen in such cases? The most stupid thing of all—I know that the Minister will not have an answer to this because nobody could give me an answer on the Zoom call this morning; they tried to, but it was a piece of nonsense—is that in my constituency during the last lockdown, people got great enjoyment from walking in the Moss valley, where the footpaths run between Sheffield and Derbyshire. When people walk on those footpaths, they walk between a tier 3 area and a tier 2 area, but the Government advice says that they are not supposed to leave a tier 3 area. I asked this morning whether people should stop at the boundary on those footpaths, and then turn around and come back. It is an unmarked boundary, so people would have to look at an Ordnance Survey map to find its location.”
“Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), confirm whether that is the case? The Health Minister this morning confirmed that it was. Can the Minister also explain what will happen to a constituent of mine who emailed me? They said, “I am already on holiday in the UK. Do I have to come back, because I am not supposed to stay in another part of the United Kingdom once the tier 3 restrictions come in?” Nobody could give me any guidance this morning. This plan is half-baked and half thought-through. Other constituents of mine can walk to the pub in north-east Derbyshire, which will be in tier 2. The pubs will be open there and my constituents can go for a drink in them. They cannot go for a drink in my constituency, without a substantial meal. The Government are giving advice, but they are not actually enforcing it.”
“For heaven’s sake, extend the scheme beyond the £500 for the poorest families to those who are on average or below average incomes to encourage them to isolate when necessary, knowing that they do not have to make a choice between putting food on their family’s table and paying their rent, and going into isolation. No family should have to make that choice. Let me turn to the travel restrictions. What we have been told this morning about going into tier 3 is that my constituents cannot go on holiday in the United Kingdom. But they can go on holiday abroad to any country that will have them. What does that say about helping the UK tourism industry? It is exactly the opposite of what Government were saying to people only a few weeks ago: “Go on holiday in the UK, not abroad.” Can the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, the right hon.”
“Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) and the coach companies mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg)—are not going to get help at all. They are going to struggle and they may have to close. If they close but are not forced to close by Government diktat, then of course help would not be forthcoming. People who are made unemployed will not get the same help that they did under the furlough scheme. How can they manage? It is a simple question, and the answer, of course, is that they cannot manage. We know that the number of people going into isolation who should be isolating is not nearly sufficient, and the reason is that many families simply cannot afford two weeks without any income.”
“As I have already said, I welcome the extra money for track and trace; that should have happened a long time ago. Directors of public health are the professionals—not Serco—and if we had given them the responsibility a long time ago, virus infection levels would not be as high as they are today. Let us be clear: there have not been local negotiations; there have been discussions with local leaders about how much the Government are going to give them from a standard package, which is the same in every area. The Government have not denied that that is what has happened; it is the reality. If the standard package was sufficient to provide the help that businesses and local people need, I would welcome it wholeheartedly, but it is not. Many businesses that are partly affected—such as the breweries mentioned by the hon.”
“Order. In order to ensure that we have enough time for the winding-up speeches and a response from the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous), I will begin by giving hon. Members five minutes in which to speak, but I may have to drop that to four minutes at some point.”
“We will have to reduce the time limit to four minutes. I may have to take it down further, now that other Members have arrived. I call Robert Halfon, Chair of the Education Committee.”
“We have only two minutes before the wind-ups. I dropped the hon. Member for Warrington South down the list for the simple reason that he arrived well after the start of the debate.”
“As the Secretary of State will know from the Zoom call we had on Sunday morning, for which I thank him, the Mayor and leaders of the Sheffield city region are engaged with Ministers and officials on a number of asks in order that a move to tier 3 could be considered. Those asks are about extra help for businesses that are not completely shut but have a substantial reduction in income, and more help beyond the £500 scheme for people who are asked to isolate. The Secretary of State can correct me if I am wrong, but it seems from his answers to previous questions that he is saying that the offer made so far to Lancashire and Merseyside is the final offer that anyone else could expect to receive, and that no one else will get any more, particularly in revenue or resources, than has been offered to those areas. Is that true or not?”
“The hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie) said that £300 million had been given to local authorities to do tracking and tracing. My recollection is that it was not given for that purpose. It was given to local authorities to help them develop outbreak control plans and set up outbreak control committees. There has never been any general amount of money given to local authorities to do tracking and tracing. That has been a demand, but it has not been responded to by the Government.”
“I very much welcome the plan in the Liverpool city region, where the local authorities have been given £8 per head to take over responsibility for tracking and tracing. It recognises the most serious problem in the country, the Liverpool city region, and the funds have been given to local authorities. If that is the case, why does the scheme not extend to at least tier 2 regions, such as Sheffield, so we can avoid becoming a tier 3 region in due course?”
“That is what they do as a profession—control infectious diseases—and very simply, if we are going to be effective, it is much more effective for a director of public health to recruit a local person to go and knock on someone’s door than for that person to get a phone call from someone else 200 miles away who does not understand the local area.”
“I have believed from the beginning that we should have had more stringent penalties in the national system to ensure that people complied with the requirements, and people should have been compensated for a loss of income when they isolated from the beginning. I am not against the private sector being involved, but it is about where the expertise is. The private sector’s expertise is clearly in developing a vaccine. It should be allowed to do that, but the expertise for contact tracking and tracing is with directors of public health.”
“This is a major failure—a system that is not effective, but is simply failing. Compare that with the 97% contact rate that has been achieved where contact tracking and tracing is being done at a local level by local authorities and local directors of public health. I am not against a national system. I am not saying that everything is going to be invented locally. I argued to the Prime Minister, however, when he came to the Liaison Committee on 27 May, that when the national system was developed, it should have been developed in co-ordination with and with the advice of the Local Government Association and the Association of Directors of Public Health. That advice should have gone into it in the first place.”
“And then, of course, people wait days for the results to come back, meaning that other people are either walking around when they are infectious, and should be isolating, or isolating when they have no need to. What a waste of people’s time. What a risk to health. The Sheffield Star has done an excellent job in giving local people information. The other day it said that on the most recent figures, only 60% of people who should be contacted because they have been in contact with an infected person are actually being contacted through the track and trace system. Towards the end of September, only 60% of infected cases were being put in the system in the first place, which means that only one third of those who should have been contacted were actually being contacted.”
“Arguing about what restrictions should be in place is no use—it is completely irrelevant—unless we have an effective contact tracing and tracking system. We will not get the R number down. We will not control the virus. I am just asking for an effective system, not a world-beating one. It should not be too much to ask. The Minister mentioned walk-in centres—great. Darnall in my constituency had a high level of infections. A walk-in testing centre was introduced. Within a few days, people could not walk into it any more, but they could phone. When constituents phoned up to make an appointment at the local centre, they were diverted to another centre many miles away. That is no way to run an effective system.”
“Before we begin, I remind hon. Members as they take their seats that, with the new rules, they should make sure to wipe their microphones and everything else. That is part of the arrangements that we have all agreed to. I have just done mine. Welcome to the debate. Four Members have indicated that they would like to make speeches—please keep speeches very short as the Minister needs to have time to reply. I call Christian Wakeford to move the motion.”
“Order. I think we are just about to have a vote, so rather than interrupt the Minister as she is responding, it is probably best if we suspend the sitting for 15 minutes. I will certainly not resume the sitting until the Minister and the hon. Member for Bury South (Christian Wakeford) get back, and then hopefully we can get down in the queue and move forward.”
“We have seven Members on the call list, so that is three minutes each. I will have to enforce that, as the wind-up speeches will start at 5.20 pm. I call Tom Randall.”
“We now move on to the Front Bench Members, who I am sure will be equally co-operative. I am getting ahead of myself. Anthony Browne, you have sat there patiently.”
“Ultimately, if measures are not brought in, such products and offerings will not be available for all of us to enjoy once the restrictions are lifted.”
“In the leisure and entertainment industry in my constituency, Cineworld shut its cinema, Hollywood Bowl has written to me about the problems that it has, wanting a further cut in VAT because of the impact of additional restrictions, Peller Agency has had virtually no work for any of its artists in live entertainment venues since March, and Central Travel and Linburg Travel were offered no help by the Government at all because, perversely, coach companies are not seen as part of the leisure industry. Those are effects on the constituency without additional restrictions; it can only get worse if additional restrictions come into play. Will the Government introduce a comprehensive range of measures to help the leisure and entertainment industry?”
“Could the Minister therefore update the House on what is happening in general on this issue, and will he agree to meet Sheffield MPs to discuss this issue, which really affects our city and its finances?”
“Could I say that the Government’s decision to help councils with loss of funding, particularly for leisure centres, parking revenue and such things, is welcome? There is one group of authorities, however, that have not been compensated—the councils that run their leisure services at arm’s length. I raised this with the Minister’s predecessor back in July, and the response I got was that the Government “are very serious about tackling it.” —[ Official Report , 9 July 2020; Vol. 678, c. 1224.] Since then, because Sheffield has lost over £10 million, which it has not been compensated for, from its leisure centres’ loss of income, we have written as Sheffield MPs to the Secretary of State twice—once in August and once in September, the second with the local leisure clubs—and we have not had a response.”
“If the Secretary of State and the Minister believe there are just benefits and no disbenefits from expanding PDRs, why will they not commit now to do a full impact assessment of the changes made previously and the changes proposed now?”
“Our 2019 report therefore said: “The Government should suspend any further extension of PDRs, pending an evaluation of their impact on the high street.” Other organisations have gone further. The Town and Country Planning Association, the Royal Town Planning Institute, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, the Royal Institute of British Architects, and the Chartered Institute of Housing have all called for an impact assessment of the PDRs that have been allowed and changed over the last few years and those proposed for the future. Indeed, the Select Committee first called for an impact assessment back in 2012.”
“The problem is that some of our high streets and town and city centres need more radical reconstruction. They need to be redeveloped significantly and cleared. That is why we called for improved compulsory purchase order powers for councils in our report. However, we can find in a couple of years’ time that the local plan proposing the clearance of a derelict and underused retail area is made more difficult to construct and implement, because it seeks to get a CPO and demolish derelict retail properties that have just been made into residential homes. Trying to put together rights to convert—and properly convert—in the light of wider local planning situations simply is not taken account of.”
“That will have a significant impact on communities up and down the country. Why are the Government excluding permitted development from that obligation? I have not seen any justification for it. That is what happens, and it is important, so we ought to take account of it. The Select Committee produced a report in 2019 on the future of the high street, “High streets and town centres in 2030”, which we are going to update in the light of the covid situation. We looked at permitted development. There are some odd properties that had been for retail use and can be converted for residential use perfectly reasonably, and those should be encouraged and helped. That can be done through the planning system now, if the development is appropriate.”
“I thought the Minister had either forgotten about it or was waiting to reveal a significant change of policy. It appears that it is the latter. At least on that issue, we now have some recognition that local authorities can take into account the issue of space standards, along with the right to light and the impact on the wider environment from permitted development applications. That is welcome, because properties of 16 square metres or even smaller are nonsensical and not fit in the modern age for anyone to live in. In terms of section 106, this is a serious matter. If the Government are seriously going to allow more development without 106 commitments, that will simply mean we have fewer affordable rented homes built, because the reality today is that the majority of affordable rented homes come through 106 commitments.”
“Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) drew attention, I asked the Prime Minister at Prime Minister’s questions whether it was reasonable that flats of 16 square metres were allowed to be built, which was 1 square metre larger than the footprint of his car. Clearly, it is not a reasonable size for properties. The Prime Minister’s response to my question, which was welcome, was that the Government will “give people the space they need to live and grow in the homes that we will build.” —[ Official Report , 22 July 2020; Vol. 678, c. 2149.] Given that response, I wrote to the Housing Minister on behalf of the Select Committee on 4 August to ask what he was doing to put the Prime Minister’s commitment into effect. I have not had a reply to that letter.”
“The planning system is there so that individuals and organisations can develop sites and buildings appropriately. It is also there to protect the community from inappropriate development. Permitted development rights confer rights on some individuals but take away rights from others to have their say on developments. They take away community rights to object and to have an application turned down. That is a very important and serious issue that we all ought to be addressing. I want to talk about space standards. Shortly after the Government produced their independent review of conversions under permitted development, to which my hon.”
“Macmillan homes, built after the Bevan homes in the 1950s, were actually built to smaller space standards. I know that because I was actually brought up in one.”
“Will he further consider those points, do what the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee has asked and strengthen the pre-action protocol to give the courts more discretion?”
“I have two simple asks of the Minister. First, does he recognise that there will be people in dire financial hardship who struggle and cannot pay their rent? I heard what he said about help for discretionary housing payments. Will he continue to monitor that, and if local authorities say they do not have sufficient to help people in real need, will he look at expanding the amount of money? Secondly, with regard to the issue of discretion, will the Minister confirm that, as long as landlords have talked to their tenants and presented their financial information to the courts, when applying for a section 21 notice or possession on ground 8, of rent arrears, the courts have no discretion at all to reject those applications?”
“Two weeks ago, residents in Darnall in my constituency were pleased that a new walk-in test centre was going to be opened. They are now being told not merely that they cannot walk in to that test centre, but that they cannot walk or drive to any other local centre. Across the city, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust has done a brilliant job in using its own laboratories to process tests for staff and patients since the beginning of the covid crisis. Will the Secretary of State now answer the question posed by my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) from the Front Bench and indicate when he will fully use the capacity of public sector laboratories to fill in for the failures of the private sector to perform the contracts it has been given?”
“Will the Secretary of State now remove that obstacle and make sure that all authorities that really want to engage fully in this are enabled to do so?”
“The Secretary of State says that we all need to work together, and I am sure he will agree that we need to make better use of the excellence of public health officials at the local level. The director of public health in Sheffield, Greg Fell, has said to me that there are two obstacles to doing that. One, of course, is the need for more resources from the centre to enable local-level activity to take place. Secondly, he says that local authorities such as Sheffield have not got full access to the data under the contact tracing and advisory service system. Currently, they have access only to the case management element of the system and not to the contact management element. That second element is made available only to authorities on the watch list.”
“I do not know whether the Prime Minister has had a chance yet to read the report commissioned by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government on the standard of homes delivered under permitted development. The report found properties with no windows, that three quarters of the properties did not meet the national space standards, and “studio flats of just 16m 2 each were found in a number of different PD schemes”.To put this in context for the Prime Minister, 16 square metres is just about the size of the base of the ministerial limousine that he gets driven around in each day. Will he now change the rules and ensure that we never again allow slums to be built and people to be asked to live in a space as small as his ministerial car?”
“In the end, as I am sure the Minister will agree, we all want to get to a position where no tenant is evicted because of covid-related matters. I recognise that the Government have made efforts, through the statutory instrument and the guidance, to toughen up the pre-action protocol, but what happens if a landlord comes to the court with all the information about a tenant’s circumstances but still wants to go for a section 21 eviction—they do not have to give any reasons—or for a ground 8 eviction, where simply rent arrears will do? If all the information is given to the court, does the court have any discretion to refuse the eviction request?”
“Does the Minister accept, therefore, that while this information is held by Public Health England, it needs to be passed on to directors of public health, and passed on quickly, and will he give an assurance that that will happen this week?”
“The Minister may not know this, but on 1 June, following the Prime Minister’s appearance at the Liaison Committee, I wrote to him about local authority involvement in tackling this virus. In particular, I asked him to “give an assurance that data will be shared fully with all partners…In particular…directors of public health.” I have not had a response to that letter, but I have heard from Greg Fell, the director of public health in Sheffield, and other directors that they are only getting generalised data—they are not getting, on a daily basis, the names, addresses and NHS numbers of those infected and those they have been in contact with.”
“Those services—housing, health and safety and public health—are exactly the sorts of services that have been required to deliver in response to covid. None the less, they have stepped up to the mark and done extremely well. What have the Government done in response? I think that we have had a change of language from Ministers, which is a bit concerning. On 16 March, the Secretary of State said that the Government would do whatever was necessary to support these efforts—very similar words to the ones that were used in relation to the health service.”
“Local councils have had bigger cuts to their funding than any other part of the public sector in the past 10 years. The National Audit Office figures show an 80% cut in grants and an almost 30% cut in spending power over that 10-year period. Of course, the councils in the poorest areas have, by and large, had the largest cuts in grant, because they had the largest grants in the first place. Despite that situation and despite the fact that they have had to try to prioritise social care spending for both adults and children, councils have kept services going. When we look at some of the cuts that they have had to make in other services, we see that it was nearly 50% on housing services, 50% on health and safety, and 20% in five years in real terms in public health grants.”
“First, I will look at the covid crisis and how local government has responded to it. I think I speak for every Member of this House when I say that local councils, collectively across the piece, whatever their party, have responded magnificently. We do things virtually these days, so perhaps a virtual round of applause for local councils from Parliament would not go amiss. What local councils have done is deliver social care; rehouse rough sleepers; work with the voluntary sector to help vulnerable people; administer the business grants scheme that the Government introduced; get the director of public health working at a local level on testing, tracking and tracing; and, of course, keep essential services, such as refuse collection, up and running for our constituents. They have done all that against the background of austerity.”
“The Government have already included loss of income in the £3.7 billion compensation, so will the commitment to cover 75% be reduced? I see the Minister shaking his head; it would help if that was explained very clearly indeed.”
“That is important, and quite different from the national health service, which seems to be given, rightly, “everything that it takes”—the commitment given to local councils. We have had tranches of money—£2.16 billion, then £500 million—given to councils to cover both extra costs and lost revenue, which is just as important for many councils as the extra costs they have incurred. However, the LGA is saying that by the end of June, according to the returns that went to the Ministry, the costs were £4.8 billion against the £3.7 billion received—a gap of £1 billion. The Government said they would give some help with lost income by compensating councils for 75% of the amount after the first 5% of losses, which is welcome, and somehow apportioning the lost revenue from council tax and business rates. There are two questions to ask about this.”
“That leads into another area. The Select Committee has just produced a report about cladding and other such issues. We have challenged the Government to produce funding in that report, so I am sure that we will take up that issue as well. The change came when the Secretary of State appeared before the Select Committee. Suddenly, he was saying that the Government had asked councils to do things, but that they would be fully compensated for the things that they had been asked to do. Then there was a very general list. The Public Accounts Committee and the Select Committee, as well as the Local Government Association, have been trying to get more information on that. There is still a lack of clarity about precisely what will be funded.”