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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“The hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) has apologised in advance for having to leave early on account of new Front-Bench responsibilities. It is normal protocol for hon. Members to stay for the whole debate, but on this occasion I accept her apology.”
“Before the pause, electrification was due to be completed by 2020, which is also the date when all trains have to comply with new disability legislation. What will the Government do between 2020 and 2023, when the old HST trains on the line, with their slam doors, will not comply with disability legislation? Will they abandon the legislation or put in temporary rolling stock?”
“I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s opening remarks and his report, which, as he said, stimulate discussion and debate about the future. I have one issue about councillors. The Communities and Local Government Committee held an inquiry in the last Parliament in which we looked at the role of councillors. We recognised that many still work, and they lose out financially when they become a councillor. That is perhaps okay until they get a family, but then it all becomes too difficult. My concern about his proposal is not that it is intended to elevate councillors’ income to some degree, but that it will almost exclude people who have careers and want to continue with council work.”
“I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way once again and I apologise to him and to you, Mr Howarth, because I probably cannot stay to the end of the debate as I have an appointment at 11 o’clock. I very much agree with his comments about moving tax-raising powers down and about bringing health and social care together. However, he proposes that a model be forced on authorities. Combined authorities work because counties come together to pool their powers. The met councils come not work because they were an imposition from the top, which districts really resented, and that created a lot of conflict. I wonder whether he has thought through that concern.”
“While Orgreave happened many years ago, problems still exist in South Yorkshire police, as the recent peer review identified. I thank the previous Home Secretary and the previous Policing Minister, the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning), for their help in setting up that peer review and their support for the police and crime commissioner in getting in an interim chief constable and then appointing a permanent chief constable—that was welcome. Will the Home Secretary now commit to support the IPCC in addressing the issue identified by the peer review? Will she also have a look at the role of Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary? It has done several reviews of South Yorkshire police in recent years but never identified the issues raised by the peer review.”
“I welcome the Minister to his new role and look forward to seeing him and the Secretary of State at the Select Committee before long. Are the Government still committed to building a million homes in this Parliament? Given that leaving the EU could have a depressing effect on the private house building industry, will he reconsider the Government’s current policy of not providing one single penny towards the building of social housing in their budgets, and recognise that to deliver a million homes, we will have to build some social housing?”
“Order. The format is for the mover of the debate to have literally two minutes to finish. I know we have got time, but there is normal procedure with this. Will the hon. Gentleman bear that in mind and come to a conclusion?”
“The hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) asked a very relevant question about the next World cup, which will take place in Russia. Will the Home Secretary ask UEFA and FIFA to investigate the alleged links between the Russian football authorities and extreme groups? Will she also ask FIFA to investigate the ability and willingness of the football and political authorities in Russia to offer a safe and secure environment to law-abiding fans who want to travel to the World cup, especially in view of the amount of racism and homophobia that exists in sections of that country?”
“If the Government continue with their rent and benefit changes it is likely that most supported housing will close, so it is welcome that they have instituted the review. In that review, will the Minister consider an issue that has been raised with the Communities and Local Government Committee as part of its inquiry into homelessness, which is whether, when people who are out of work and homeless go into supported housing, costs are covered through housing benefit? Under current arrangements, people who are in work can find themselves worse off than those who are out of work, so in the review will the Minister consider whether that problem can be rectified, along with the other issues?”
“It was announced on Tuesday that Polestar, a printing works in my constituency, would close with a loss of 650 jobs. That followed the loss of 600 jobs at Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and 700 jobs at HSBC. This has all come in a short period. As well as immediate help for the Polestar workers, could we have a debate on what the Government can do to assist areas where a multiplicity of significant redundancies are announced across different sectors in a short period?”
“May I thank the Minister for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise for coming to visit Outokumpu and representatives of Forgemasters in my constituency, and for enabling my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) and me to join in the conversation? That was really helpful. For the future not merely of Tata but of firms such as Forgemasters and Outokumpu, when are the Government going to act to take away from them the unfair burden of having to pay 85% more for their energy than do their competitors in Germany?”
“I am interested in the Secretary of State’s thoughts about the serious impact on morale that the dispute has had. I was talking to a junior doctor in Sheffield the other day who said that before the dispute he had never looked at his contract, he had simply got on and done what was needed, whenever it was needed. Does the Secretary of State realise that even if the dispute is now settled, as we hope, it has had a serious impact on good will in the health service, which could affect service delivery in the future?”
“I am a bit worried about Sheffield’s position in that list of schemes. The Secretary of State referred to HS3 as going from Manchester to Leeds, not connecting to Sheffield. Has that connection disappeared off the Government’s radar? Will he confirm that there is no truth in the stories that consideration is being given to abandoning the HS2 station in Sheffield, and that wherever that station might be, there will be one? Are we going to get HS3 as well?”
“There are 200 workers in Sheffield who will have listened with incredulity when the Transport Secretary said that HS2—he said it will benefit Sheffield, and I clearly hope it does—should be a reason for companies to look at transferring jobs out of London to northern cities. Yet, in a reversal of that process, the Business Secretary is currently transferring 200 jobs from Sheffield down to London—down the midland main line instead of back up the HS2 line. How will workers in Sheffield feel about the complete contradiction between the Transport Secretary and his colleague in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills?”
“Has the hon. Gentleman thought about the fact that there will be, presumably, at some stage a trade agreement between the European Union and the United States, and that if we want to protect ourselves from unintended consequences such as those that he mentions, it is best to argue the case as part of the negotiations, rather than having to stay on the outside and accept the agreement, whatever it contains, at the end of the negotiations?”
“I am interested in the hon. Gentleman’s comments about a common basis for assessing housing need. It is something that the Communities and Local Government Committee recommended in the previous Parliament, something that the specialist group that the Minister set up has recommended, and something that Lord Taylor of Goss Moor recommended in his work on planning guidance. It would take a lot of the heat out of local controversy about how numbers were arrived at, and it would be there for local authorities to take up if they wanted to. The hon. Gentleman makes a good proposal that the Government ought to take seriously.”
“It is now run as a democracy, having had presidential elections, having changed presidents and having had narrow election results that were accepted by the losers. Somaliland is a democracy, but it is not recognised by the international community. I understand that it is difficult for the United Kingdom Government, as the former colonial power, to be the first country to recognise Somaliland. All I will ask, and all Somaliland’s Government and the community in this country are asking for, is that the British Government will at least give an undertaking that they would accept, recognise and encourage an international commission on the status of Somaliland looking at the fact that it is de facto an independent country, but de jure it is still not recognised by the international community.”
“He probably hopes he will be elsewhere and not responsible for explaining why that figure has not been reached. Turning to something completely different, yesterday, with my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) and a number of other Members, I had the pleasure of accompanying members of the Somaliland community in England to Downing Street to present a letter to the Prime Minister. Somaliland achieved independence from the British empire 25 years ago yesterday. Its subsequent history has been troubled: it had a union with Somalia, which was an Italian protectorate, then a bitter civil war, fighting against a dictatorship. Through that process, Somaliland achieved de facto independence.”
“The CML thought the numbers were too big and raised questions about market distortion, valuations—it had a whole load of questions about the fundamental building block of the Government’s programme to getting 1 million new homes. At some point, the penny will drop with Ministers that we will not achieve the 250,000 homes we need to build in this country without a substantial programme of social house building, with local councils as well as housing associations forming a key part. Without that commitment—the Government have taken all the money away from social housing; there will be no section 106 money for housing either—I simply do not believe the Government will achieve their million homes. I do not know whether the Minister for Housing and Planning will be here in four years’ time to answer for that.”
“I am pleased to see the Minister for Housing and Planning in his place. During the general election, we had promises of 1 million homes from the Conservative party. I think that was then a target, but afterward, when I asked him about the target, the Minister said it was only an aspiration. Now that the 1 million figure has been in the Queen’s Speech, I assume it is a clear and firm commitment—you do not put figures in the Queen’s Speech without committing to them, do you, Madam Deputy Speaker? Of course not. My concern arises from what the Council of Mortgage Lenders said yesterday, in a very interesting piece, about not being sure that the 200,000 starter homes and the 125,000 shared ownership properties were deliverable.”
“Thirty years in Germany, 10 years thinking about it in the UK, and we do not even have a date when the trams will start running on the tram-train network. I was pleased when, in December in Sheffield, the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones), got on one of the trams that have been delivered, but now we have no date for when it will run on the tram-train tracks. This is complete nonsense and the Government should launch an inquiry into it. On wider transport issues, we still want firmer assurances from the Government that the station for HS2 will be in Sheffield and that HS3 will link Sheffield and Leeds across the Pennines. We also want a commitment to the review of the Pennine tunnel, in which many of us are interested.”
“We proudly pioneered cheap fares and high-quality public transport in South Yorkshire back in the 1970s—even before the Greater London Council did so—but it has been downhill ever since deregulation came into effect. The buses Bill will work only if it is seen as part of a wider approach to integrated transport. I wish to put on the record my great disappointment that the tram-train project has once again been delayed. Network Rail has announced that after 10 years of thinking about it, the delay until 2017 is now unachievable, and it cannot even tell us the new delay date that it will set at some point in the future. That is a disgrace. Network Rail is bringing in a tram-train system that has been operating in Germany for 30 years.”
“Current legislation is inadequate: in the north-east, where transport authorities want to go for quality contracts, they are second-guessed by independent bodies that come to a different view on what the public interest is. I take the old-fashioned view that local elected councillors and mayors are better placed to identify the public interest than any appointed quango. Franchising of itself is not a panacea for all ills, but it can help to drive up standards, improve ticketing arrangements and make better use of resources by ensuring that there is not overprovision of buses on some routes and none on others. It can deal better with pensioner concessions and reverse the downward trend—the 50% fall in bus trips per head of population—seen in areas such as Sheffield since deregulation came into effect in the 1980s.”
“If a future Government made a significant change, like the one just made to small business rate relief, that could after 2020 significantly affect local authorities’ rate income without their having any say in the system and changes to it. There is a wider debate to be had on whether to have just retention of business rates, or wider localisation of the business rates system itself. I am sure we will return to that when we discuss the Bill. I welcome the buses Bill. It is right that an important part of devolution deals is the ability for local mayors, if they so wish, to take up franchising arrangements similar to those found in London.”
“The Select Committee will produce an interim report to advise the consultation, then come back later with ministerial information and evidence to produce a final report. That is a good example of a Select Committee and the Government working together to achieve a shared objective. Having said that, in its devolution report the Committee has already said that 100% retention of business rates should only be a first step in wider fiscal devolution. We hope the Government will engage in that debate, once the Bill has passed. There is a challenge in that we are only devolving retention of the money from business rates, with a bit of power for areas—certainly those with elected mayors—to reduce the rate or impose a small levy for infrastructure projects; what we will not have is local control over the business rates system itself.”
“We are already hearing about difficulties that need resolution, whether it be matters that will be devolved alongside 100% retention of business rates, the appeals system, concerns about what happens if an area suddenly loses a major firm that contributes to its rateable income, revaluations, or the very difficult issue of how to marry incentives to growth with help through equalisation for areas that cannot grow as quickly as others. There are a lot of issues there. I believe that the Government recognise the complications and they are going to conduct a further consultation this summer. It is right that we get this policy correct, so making sure we have a bit more time to do that is more important than rushing.”
“That is causing a great deal of anger in Sheffield, and the Government could do something here and now: stop and give a clear indication that their words about the northern powerhouse mean something in practice for people who live in my constituency and others in the Sheffield city region. The first major devolved powers Bill in the Queen’s Speech deals with business rates. I am pleased that the Secretary of State has had discussions with the Communities and Local Government Committee. We are conducting inquiries with the intention of assisting that process. There is general support for 100% localisation of business rates, and we want to help in that process.”
“More than 600 jobs have been lost from HSBC in Sheffield and more at Tankersley. Polestar in my constituency is in administration, with 400 jobs under threat. On top of that there is uncertainty over steel plants at Stocksbridge and Rotherham. We look to the Government at least to recognise the importance of all these things. But then we see the Government themselves creating 600 job losses at HMRC and, in contradiction to what the Transport Secretary said, moving 200 jobs from BIS headquarters in Sheffield down to London, without giving any rationale of cost savings. Indeed, it is pretty obvious that it will cost more to move staff from Sheffield to London. The Government talk about devolving powers, but they are centralising jobs.”
“I do not think I can follow the last points that the hon. Gentleman raised about certain garment manufacturers in his constituency, so I will rapidly move on to devolution, in which I am particularly interested. I want to talk about the proposals on business rates, buses and housing. The words “northern powerhouse” have been mentioned again in the Queen’s Speech. We could not have them ignored by the Government. Ministers have to be aware that, while there is a welcome for the general intentions on devolution to increase the performance of our northern cities to the national average—we are unique in the European Union in that our major cities do not perform better than the national average economically—there is a great deal of scepticism in my constituency and the Sheffield city region as we see job losses.”
“May I return the Minister to a point that I raised earlier? May we have this on the record? Is the building of a million new homes during the current Parliament a Government commitment?”
“Something else that the Government can do is deal with the problem of energy costs for the UK industry. They are 85% higher than the costs for the German industry. Is the Minister going to act on that?”
“The hon. Gentleman is making a very coherent case. When my constituents hear the phrase “northern powerhouse”, they ask what it means. We tell them that it means transferring powers, responsibilities and decision making out of London and to the regions, but they then say, “But why are you taking all these jobs from Sheffield and transferring them to London?” Is that not completely inconsistent with what the Government claim their objectives are?”
“That would enable the NAO at least to advise Members of the House about whether Ministers have taken this decision, or will take this decision—I hope that it has not yet been made—on clear and credible facts and figures about the financial benefits of their proposals.”
“If Ministers cannot demonstrate that there will be either a clear and explicit cost saving or demonstrable benefits in policy advice to Ministers, why on earth are they pursuing a policy that seems completely contradictory to the overall thrust of Government devolution policy? The Government have been given a challenge: produce the McKinsey report, the McKinsey papers or the McKinsey input into decision making—whatever it is—or produce some cost-benefit analysis. Ministers must have such analysis at their disposal. They cannot have taken this decision, or be about to take this decision, without having any figures before them. Will they share those figures with the House, or at least commit to making all the information available to the NAO so that it can conduct an audit into the decision?”
“The Minister has to be able to justify this to the House, as well as to my constituents. Is the policy being followed through because of clear, demonstrable and provable cost benefits, with figures that can be laid before the House to show what those benefits are, or because Ministers can demonstrate that there is a clear policy benefit—that policy will be unequivocally better and Ministers will be better advised—to having all their civil servants located in one place? Could it not work just as well with two hubs as with one, if Ministers want a concentration of policy making?”
“This approach is going to change the way in which our country is governed if we carry it through and onwards in the next few years. What people see on the ground in terms of this policy is the Government talking about a grand design with the northern powerhouse but saying one thing and doing another. People do not understand the general direction of Government travel. They hear Ministers talking about the northern powerhouse and then see the reality of jobs being moved out of their home city and transferred down to London without, as far as they can tell, any good reason. If the Minister is intent on pursuing a policy that seems, at least at face value, to be contradictory to the overall thrust of Government devolution policy, there has to be a very good, explicit and clear reason why that policy is going to be carried through.”
“Gentleman rightly said, the location of civil service jobs is not the only reason for a totality of approach through the northern powerhouse. Indeed, it is probably not even the main reason. The main reason is to try to secure a growth in GDP per head in our northern cities to get them up towards the national average, because currently not one single northern city has a GDP per head that is equivalent to the national average, and that is a matter of concern. It is also about trying to ensure that decision making takes place nearer to those who are affected by it, and that we recognise that different approaches and policies will be formed in different areas as part of the process of trying to improve public services and their delivery and to get the increase in GDP per head that we want to see.”
“It leads to complete incredulity among my constituents and those of the wider Sheffield city region when the Government talk about the northern powerhouse over and again and then take a decision to move civil service jobs out of Sheffield and back to London which seems completely contradictory to their own policy on devolution. People just do not get it. I mentioned this in an intervention on the hon. Member for Warrington South (David Mowat). It was good to hear his excellent and well-thought-out contribution, which shows that there is real cross-party concern across the House about this aspect of Government policy, where it is going, and how it does not really fit in with the overall Government approach on devolution that we would want to see. As the hon.”
“We said that devolution is a matter not just for the Department for Communities and Local Government but for all Government Departments, and we want to see all Departments signed up to the policy and contributing to it. It is welcome that economic development and skills are an integral part of the devolution deals in cities such as Manchester and my own city of Sheffield. Key responsibilities of BIS are part of these devolution deals. We then move on to the use of the term “northern powerhouse” to cover the totality of devolution proposals for our northern cities.”
“I, too, begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) on securing this debate and on his introductory comments. Unfortunately, I only heard the second half of those comments because I was chairing a Select Committee at the time. I apologise to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to him for my lateness in arriving at the debate. I want to concentrate on devolution. The Communities and Local Government Committee recently produced a report in which, on a cross-party basis, we welcomed the Government’s commitment and general approach to devolution. We might have had certain reservations on detail or on the pace at which devolution is going, but nevertheless recognised that it is a key aspect of Government policy that we welcome.”
“I am still a little confused about the position that local authorities will be put in if this amendment falls. They will, I think, still be entering into section 106 negotiations with a developer, part of which will involve a requirement to provide starter homes, but will they also have an ability to provide shared ownership properties and, presumably, affordable homes to rent as well? How will the balance and proportion of those homes be determined? Will that be a matter for local discretion?”
“So let me be clear: there will be requirement for 20% starter homes but if, as is the case in most of my constituency, the maximum requirement on sites for affordable housing is a total of 10%, does that mean that there would be nothing other than starter homes on those sites—that is, no other affordable housing?”
“The Bill and other Government measures effectively mean the end of social rented housing in large parts of my constituency, for the simple reason that there will be no social rented housing available to offer people on the waiting list or in urgent need.”
“The reality is that in large parts of my constituency no affordable homes for rent will be built through section 106, or through Government grant provision. Affordable homes for rent will be sold off in their totality in some parts of the constituency, with no like-for-like replacement. That adds up to one simple fact: where people are in urgent need of housing for whatever reason, their urgent need will remain, but there will not be an urgent offer of a property, because it will not exist. People in my constituency who have been on the waiting list for 15 years or more will wait not 20 or 25 years, but for ever, because a property will never become available under these policies.”
“On top of that, as a result of the rules about higher value council homes being sold off, every single vacant property in the slightly better off parts of my constituency is likely to be sold off, so there will be no vacant council properties coming up for rent. The Government have produced no figures whatsoever on how the money that comes in from the sales of those properties will add up to the replacement of the housing association property once the discount has been provided for. Then there is the contribution towards a brownfield remediation pot and a replacement council home. There is no possibility that the home sold off by the council will be replaced by a property that is for affordable rent.”
“Therefore, in complying with Government policy, the local authority would be in a position where, in order to conform with the requirement to have at least 20% as starter homes, there will be no other affordable homes built as part of 106 agreements in my constituency; they will be gone completely. If that is put alongside the Government policy on spending on housing for the remainder of this Parliament, there will be no money for councils or housing associations to bid for to fund affordable rented housing—it will all go on shared ownership and starter homes. There will be no new building as part of the Government’s spending grant availability.”
“When I intervened on the Minister, I raised the issue of section 106 agreements and the requirement that starter homes should make up 20% of homes on that site. I do not think that there are any sites in my constituency where there will be a 20% requirement. In fact, I cannot think of many sites throughout the whole of the city of Sheffield. That is not because the local authority does not want affordable homes built as part of 106 agreements, but because market values are so low that the sites would not be viable if a higher level of affordable homes were insisted on. That means that the policy of the local council conforms with paragraphs 47 and 48 on viability and deliverability in the national planning policy framework, which are a key element of Government policy.”
“I shall speak to Lords amendment 10B, 47B and 47C. The Minister is right to say that the Conservatives had a manifesto commitment to build starter homes. Although I may have some disagreements with elements of that policy, I respect it. It is the will of the electorate, and the Government have every right to put it into practice. However, what the Government did not say at the election was that, in large parts of the country, people who could not afford to buy a home would find it virtually impossible to find an affordable home to rent, or that, as a result of their policy, people’s chances of finding that affordable home to rent would be substantially diminished and, in some cases, removed altogether. That is the impact of the policies that are in the Bill, connected with other Government policies as well.”
“Yes, the houses for sale in my constituency are much lower in price than in many other parts of the country, though higher than in one or two other areas in the north. However, the tens of thousands of people on the waiting list are on the waiting list primarily because they cannot afford to buy the houses, even though they are lower in value than those in the constituency of the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman).”
“The Select Committee pushed the Minister on his impact and financial assessment of the full costs and implications of his policies around the sale of higher-value council homes; on whether those would deliver the replacement of housing association properties; and on all the remedial work on brownfield sites. When will that analysis be produced? I see that the other day the Public Accounts Committee made exactly the same criticism as the Select Committee: there is no information for us to go on.”