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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“It will be great to see children out on the national Clean for the Queen day, because they can then start to appreciate the consequences of dropping litter and what dealing with it entails. Of course, however well we educate, some people will not want to listen and will carry on dropping litter. They deserve to be penalised. The Committee said that we should increase the rates for fixed penalty notices. Again, the Government agreed and are going to consult on the level they should be raised to. Personally, I think—and the Committee generally supports this—that the levels should be increased significantly. There has to be a real deterrent when people are caught littering.”
“We look forward to hearing how they are going to do that. There was a disagreement—not a fundamental one—between the Committee and the Government about what the cost of litter clean-up is. We said it was somewhere between £700 million and £850 million. The Government said—I understand the logic of their explanation—that local government would need to sweep the streets anyway to clean up dust and dirt that is not due to littering, so the total cost of street sweeping is not a consequence of the litter that people drop. I accept that, but on the other hand no better figure is available. That is the only figure that the Committee had to work with. Education is important, and we want schools and others to do their bit to encourage children.”
“There is the “Local Environmental Quality Survey of England”—that is a bit of a mouthful; I hope we find a snappier title for whatever replaces it in due course—but the problem is that the surveys do one of two things. Some simply look for evidence of a particular kind of litter in an area, and then have a tick-box that says, “That litter is there”, without recording whether it is one, a dozen or 100 pieces of litter, so we do not know about the incidence. Others count the amount of litter, but do not distinguish between the type—so 100 cigarette butts are recorded as the equivalent of 100 plastic bags, even though it is pretty obvious that their environmental and visual impacts are different. The Government accepted that we need to think about how better to collect data and agreed with the recommendation in our report.”
“We recommended a national clean-up day. The Government, perhaps anticipating that, got in before us and accepted our recommendation before we made it, so that is positive. We have a Clean for the Queen day this year, which we should all encourage community groups and individuals in our constituencies to participate in. Again, there is cross-party agreement on that: everyone believes it is a good thing for communities to do. It is just a pity that it has to be done and that people drop litter in the first place. Nevertheless, that is a positive achievement. One of the initial problems we have in looking at litter—I am pleased that the Government accepted this; we now need to see what they do about it—is that we do not know how much there is, because there is no reasonable assessment.”
“They do not necessarily want politicians to squabble about it, but it is one of the issues that is likely to be raised with us on the doorstep. People are distressed and often appalled by its environmental impact. They are concerned about the inconsideration of the people who drop it without any thought of the consequences, and that they, as taxpayers, have to pay for it to be cleaned up. That money, certainly in the current circumstances, could be spent better on other services that are important to them. It is an issue that also gets raised with local councillors regularly, so it is right that we wrote a report and are having a debate about it. There are some clear areas of agreement. We called for a national strategy, and the Government agreed. It will be interesting to see how that develops and what effect it has.”
“To be fair to the Government, they agreed with many of our recommendations, and where they did not they gave explanations. There are one or two areas that we want to push them on, to see whether we can make progress. It is difficult to understand why it took so long to produce a relatively straightforward and generally acceptable response to our sensible proposals. In the end, litter is not an issue that we tend to have massive party political debates about, and that is not how the Committee approached it. The report was unanimously accepted by the Committee, which is par for the course—that is our general approach to things. We did not have to struggle to get that agreement. There was clear evidence, and we made clear recommendations on it. Litter matters to the public enormously.”
“Once the report was produced, the attempts to reach an agreement between the Departments continued for nine months—rather a long time, given that Select Committees normally get responses from the Government in eight weeks. Obviously there was a general election, so one might reasonably have expected a Government response by, say, July. December is a long way on from July. Indeed, the Government’s response to our recommendations took so long that I expected it to contain a bombshell. I thought we might see a proposal to increase littering fines to a level that would halve the deficit overnight, or perhaps the Government were going to be so generous as to hypothecate the total revenue from tobacco taxes to local authorities to help with their work—but no, not in the end.”
“I beg to move, That this House has considered the Seventh Report from the Communities and Local Government Committee of Session 2014-15, on Litter and fly-tipping in England, HC 607, and the Government response, Cm 9097. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner. This was the last report by the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government in the previous Parliament. It was produced in March 2015, and we then had a little wait. As we flagged up in the report, we were not sure whether the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs or the Department for Communities and Local Government was responsible for this issue. The DCLG Minister is in his place today, although we are told that this was a DEFRA responsibility. I am sure he will sort out that confusion when he has the opportunity to do so.”
“Member for Keighley (Kris Hopkins), said that the Department suggested to the Chancellor that part of any extra tax on tobacco products should go to local authorities. The Department dismissed that in its response, but the suggestion was made by a Government Minister. The hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) is nodding away because he was in the Committee and heard the evidence. I do not know whether the Government changed their mind or whether—surely not—one Government Department has a different view from another. We now understand that Ministers have different views. Indeed, we are getting quite used to that idea on certain subjects. Anyway, the Minister might like to reflect on those points.”
“The authority bears the costs, but the fines go to the Treasury. There is a disjuncture between the revenue from fixed penalty notices, which goes to the local authority, and fines, which go to the Treasury. Could we not have a more joined-up approach so that the local authorities, which incur the cost, get the returns from any action they take? We then looked at the types of litter and tried to distinguish between them. Cigarettes are the most littered object. The problem is that many people do not see puffing away on a cigarette and then putting it out on the floor as littering—“It’s only a cigarette butt”—but it is. Cigarette butts are the most common item of litter. We had quite a discussion about that, and we were surprised when the then Minister, the hon.”
“That is an interesting idea. The Committee misunderstood the position—we do not always get everything absolutely right, but we try. We said that fixed penalty notices are easy because of their civil nature, but the Government corrected us and said that they are a criminal penalty. The Government should think about the hon. Gentleman’s suggestion, because that is an issue. If people are fined, we want to deter them and we want a process that is easier than going through the courts to get a fine. That could be looked at without reducing the intention to deter. The advantage of fixed penalty notices is that the money goes back to the local authority. In the past, the Committee suggested that the Government should think about allowing money from other fines to go back to local authorities.”
“We had a serious look at that and received a lot of evidence. We deliberated and came to a reasonable conclusion. The Local Government Association was absolutely clear in its evidence that it is signed up to the local government declaration on tobacco control and believes that that means that the LGA and local authorities must have nothing at all to do with tobacco companies. The view is that, because of the nature of tobacco and the need to get the message across, in particular to young people, that tobacco products kill, there should be no connection at all and that the tobacco industry should not get involved with democratically elected bodies. Indeed, I understand that the national health service takes exactly the same line nationally: no connection at all.”
“No, it does not, because they are not part of the same declaration, but I will come on to chewing gum in a minute, because it is a different but interesting subject.”
“I was just about to say it, but the hon. Member for Harrow East got in before me—I was reflecting on whether it was appropriate, but it obviously was. It is a difficult issue, but the Committee—most of us are generally localists—decided that we understood the declaration and the LGA’s position, and that it was up to local authorities to make a decision themselves. We also said that if they did so, they should not allow themselves to be used in any way by tobacco manufacturers to gain any advantage or engage in any promotion of tobacco products—to give any impression that tobacco was okay because the companies were making a contribution towards a public service.”
“Why don’t you issue them free with all packets of cigarettes?” I have not noticed that that has happened in the months since they made that suggestion. Was it just a publicity gimmick to suggest that they are not as bad as everyone makes out? It is quite a good idea, but nothing has happened. We should encourage them to consider it again if they want to do something practical to alleviate the problem.”
“Again, in the end we said it was down to local authorities, but we emphasised over and over again that tobacco companies should in no way be allowed to pay out money as a salve for their consciences and to show that they are okay and not really the bad guys because they are making a public contribution. They are not okay; they sell a dangerous product, which the House has recognised through legislation in a number of ways in recent years, and I think we all support that. We do not want to do anything to give the tobacco companies a way into the public’s good books. The Tobacco Manufacturers Association made the interesting suggestion that tobacco litter is not that bad because portable, fold-up ashtrays mean that people do not have to drop ash. We said, “Great!”
“The Committee did not say that no one should engage, but we placed strong caveats on any engagement, for obvious reasons. In the end, we said it was down to local authorities to make a decision, but we also thought the Government might make a contribution from the tobacco tax levies. The other interesting thing about our discussion on the involvement of tobacco companies was that we had two Ministers—one from the Department for Communities and Local Government and one from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs—who gave us completely different evidence. They sat and disagreed with each other in front of the Committee. We had two different political parties coming up to a general election, so perhaps collective responsibility was breaking down in the last Parliament, for reasons different from those in this Parliament.”
“As councils concentrate on absolutely vital statutory services such as adult social care, areas such as cleaning up litter are those that can suffer and experience reductions in spending. We do not want further problems. Local authorities ought to be imaginative, so we suggested that they look at the modern bins available. Nottingham City Council has a lot of bins that give the council’s control centre an indication of when they are available for collection. That means that someone does not have to be paid to go around emptying bins that are not full, as the council will respond when a bin is full, rather than having a rota for collection at certain times. Local authorities can therefore act to meet the challenge, but there are many issues for the Government as well. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.”
“We also suggested improving information not only about littering, but about fine collection and penalty notices. The Government accepted that recommendation and will consider how to do that. The report, which was considered and focused on the main issues, had a generally positive response from Government, but we did not get a totally satisfactory or complete response to some of the items, which I have highlighted. I hope that the Minister will address the issues that still need to be dealt with. In short, we need better stats and a sense of how we really get to grips with cigarette, chewing gum and fly-tipping problems. Everything, of course, has to be seen against the background that local authorities face further spending cuts.”
“We also suggested that retailers that sold a good should take the old one away free of charge, with the cost perhaps being built into the original price of the item. The Government said that existing electrical regulations meant that a company selling electrical products had to provide disposal of the old product free of charge. The catch is that the company does not have to take it away free of charge—only the disposal is free. That is a loophole, because someone then still has to pay for an old product to be taken from the home. Will the Government consider toughening up that measure? Furthermore, those regulations apply only to electrical products, not to things such as beds or sofas, which can be even harder to get rid of. Will the Government try to find a way forward?”
“That excellent scheme involves the charity recycling much of the furniture—sprucing it up, putting it on display and selling it off—and, by agreement with the local authority, taking what it cannot sell free of charge to the local council site. I wish that more local authorities were involved in such schemes, because they could then tell people, “There is no charge for your bulky items. This organisation will take them for free.” Items could be put to good use and recycled, and the scheme is good for the charity as well, because it will make some money. The Government also welcomed that suggestion, but it could be publicised further. Perhaps the Local Government Association will do something to get the information out to its members.”
“Fly-tipping is a serious problem, but while a builders’ merchant ought to be taken to court for a major incident such as dumping building material in a lay-by, for a discarded plastic bag, a fixed penalty notice would be the appropriate and proportionate response. It is extremely welcome that the Government will introduce such notices. A further concern is that as local authorities get increasingly short of cash and look for savings, they charge for taking away bulky household goods. We encourage local authorities to team up with charities—a number of organisations do this—that will take away the goods, recycle and reuse what they can, and then take to the council site what they cannot. I talked to the British Heart Foundation, which operates such a scheme in certain parts of the country.”
“All the data we have, imperfect though they are, show that litter is a problem. In our report’s summary, we stated: “England is a litter-ridden country compared to most of Europe, North America and Japan.” The Government disagreed and said that there was no evidence for that, probably because the figures are not available, but most of us can see with our own eyes when we go to other countries that things there look better in general. However, it is absolutely clear that the problem of fly-tipping has become worse in this country. There is no doubt at all about that, because there has been a 20% increase in the previous 12 months, as we were told in evidence. The Government accepted the suggestion of adopting fixed penalty notices for fly-tipping to add to the range of options for local authorities so that they may prosecute more simply.”
“Alternatively, how about producing chewing gum that is less difficult to get off the pavement if people drop it?” The Government’s response referred to a wonderful-sounding organisation called the Chewing Gum Action Group. We hope that it is doing good work, but we would like to hear what it is going to do and how the Minister will judge its success. If, despite its work, chewing gum is still being thrown around to the same extent, with no change in the materials used in gum to make it easier to remove, and if the industry does not volunteer to take up its share of the burden, will the Minister consider alternatives? The Committee intends to reconsider the issue—and, indeed, quite a few of the points made in our report—to determine whether progress has been made. Another big problem is fly-tipping.”
“The Government said that there was not enough evidence that the extra powers had led to an increase in fines in London, but I still urge the Minister to have a look at that option as it seems to be impossible to determine proof outside London, because if there are four people in a car and a cigarette packet or a sweet wrapper is thrown out of it, who actually threw that? We hope that the Government will consider adopting the London position. We carefully considered the idea of taxing chewing gum to pay for the cost of clean-up. Cigarette material might be the most prevalent form of litter, but chewing gum is certainly the most difficult to clean—it is a nightmare. In the end, we said to the industry, “Look, this is the last-chance saloon. What are you going to do to help with the cost of this and the practicalities of clearing it up?”
“It clearly needs a resolution, because what we have at present is unacceptable and is not working. If the Government come up with another idea, okay, but they ought to say that if their new approach does not work, they will come back and consider whether one agency should be responsible, because that is often the way to sort things out. There is also the question of how we penalise the offence of dropping litter from cars. As I understand it, the offence is committed by the person who drops the litter, but the difficulty is that if a car whizzes past and litter comes out of it, can who dropped it be proved? The law in London is different, because the owner of the vehicle can be charged, irrespective of who throws the litter—it is for the owner to decide. The Committee suggested that that approach should apply nationally.”
“I understand that this is a very long road, Mr Turner. The Committee did consider that point, and I am going to come on to fly-tipping, which often happens on highways, in addition to ordinary littering. We considered two issues about vehicles and highways. One was about the division of responsibility between local authorities picking the litter up and Highways England being responsible for safety on the highways. We suggested that responsibility for litter be transferred to Highways England after consultation. The Government said no and that they wanted to have another look at how that might work, so I will be interested to hear more details about that from the Minister. I am not saying that the Government are wrong, but we identified a problem and made a suggestion about how it could be resolved.”
“I did not cover this point in my introduction, but the hon. Gentleman is right. My Committee gave specific praise to McDonald’s because of what it does and said all fast food restaurants, takeaways and so on should have a legal responsibility to clean up in their areas. The Government came back and said that they did not want a general duty, but that local authorities have powers to act under the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 where there is a persistent problem. I wonder whether many local authorities use that power; I am not sure if figures are kept about that. Going down that route presumably has quite a considerable cost for local authorities. Does the hon. Gentleman think we ought to push the Government a little bit harder, to see what we can effectively do about this?”
“I understand the problem. It certainly caused a great deal of concern in my constituency when charges were introduced. The problem was that it is not the council that introduced the charge; it is Veolia, the contractor. Veolia fixes the charge and refuses to take instalment payments, so people have to pay it up front. That is a deterrent to people, particularly those on low incomes. There is a challenge when contractors—ones that make a lot of money out of this—introduce that sort of charge for the service.”
“To deter fly-tipping, we said we wanted to see powers to impound vehicles engaged in fly-tipping. One very positive thing that we probably ought to report—and, again, congratulate the Government on—is that they brought those regulations into force on 6 April. That was really welcome. In serious cases, a vehicle engaged in fly-tipping can be impounded and taken away, which is a really strong penalty and deterrent.”
“I was nodding across the room to the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) when the Minister said that the levy would be passed on to smokers. Ultimately, they are the ones who drop the litter. A little contribution from them towards local authority costs does not seem completely unreasonable, does it?”
“I will take the Minister a little further down that road into areas that he probably does not want to go into. When we get to 2019-20 and the full localisation of business rates, there will not be any Treasury contribution towards local authorities from tobacco tax or any other form of tax. Would that not be a different situation, in which there might be a need to reconsider whether there should be some Treasury contribution from tobacco tax towards the clean-up of tobacco litter?”
“Although there may be anecdotal evidence, we can only really tell whether things are improving from the data that are collected. We need better data for the future. I think we have all enjoyed the debate. I hope we have, and that it has also been constructive and useful. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the Seventh Report from the Communities and Local Government Committee of Session 2014-15, on Litter and fly-tipping in England, HC 607, and the Government response, Cm 9097.”
“In the end it is one thing to debate here, but another to get improvements on littering and dealing with litter. I am sure that we will want to keep an eye on, in particular, the serious problems of tobacco littering, chewing gum, fly-tipping and fast food, which we identified as real problems. We will be interested in the Government’s progress on the trunk road issue and littering from cars, which the Minister said the Government would look at again. In the end, to be effective the Select Committee will need better data on which to monitor performance. The Minister has accepted that and I think he has a working party looking at the question. We will be interested to see what comes out of it, because it will be crucial.”
“All those things seem to be positive ways to move forward, and the Government have responded to the Select Committee recommendations either by agreeing to carry them out—in some cases having done so already—or by looking at how they can be carried out in the future. There are things that local authorities can do irrespective of those issues. The smart bins that we talked about, on which there is general agreement, and engagement with charities on the collection of bulky household items are among them. Individual authorities can implement them, and can learn from other local authorities. That is at the heart of localism in the end; things may be done well in one area, and other areas say, “Yes, that’s a good idea. We will do it also.” The Select Committee will want to return to the matter and consider various issues.”
“They have the responsibility for dealing with litter directly or co-ordinating the activities of others who deal with it. Our recommendations were mostly directed at Government, but generally they were about asking for extra powers for local authorities, to enable them to do their job in a variety of ways. We had generally positive responses and agreement on fixed penalty notices—their extension to fly-tipping and the increase in the level of penalties—on which the Minister said there is consultation; the impounding of vehicles used for fly-tipping; and pilots on trunk roads to look at littering from cars.”
“It has been a good, constructive and generally agreeable debate, in the sense that we agreed on most of the issues. I thank the Minister for his apology, which I accept—and I am sure I can do that on behalf of the Committee. I suspect that responsibility was not totally within his Department, as he has delicately explained with reference to the complications of getting many Departments to agree on a reply. We started with general agreement about the need for a national strategy and the national clean-up day. We can probably see the effects of the clean-up day fairly quickly; the national strategy may take a bit longer, but I am sure that the Committee will keep a close eye on it. The Minister was right to say that local authorities are at the heart of the whole issue.”
“We all know—some of us better than others—how long it has taken to get this piece of primary legislation this far. All the Bill does is enable. The Bill still leaves the Treasury in the driving seat if it wants to remain there. I really do not understand the Minister’s position. She did not answer the fundamental question that my right hon. Friend raised, and it would be helpful if she responded to it.”
“Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East asked the Minister was: is it not true that the Bill as drafted does not ensure the amalgamation of the two estimates, but simply enables that to happen, with a very important caveat, which is that the Treasury can say no; and if the Treasury’s position remains that it does not want to approve the amalgamation, it can maintain that position? The Bill as drafted has an enabling provision whereby if in the future all the parties agree that it is a good idea to amalgamate the estimates, that amalgamation can take place. The Treasury would still have a veto, but if there were a change of mood, approach or position in the future, we would not need another piece of primary legislation to enable that to happen.”
“I hoped the Minister was going to give way because, with respect, she did not answer the question. The issue at this stage is not whether we should amalgamate the two estimates, though there is actually quite a strong case for that, given the disparity in size. If the Treasury really is so upset about £22 million that it thinks we need this great panoply of extra audit committees, extra scrutiny and extra laying of separate estimates, it has got its priorities a little bit wrong. In every other respect, the Government and the Treasury are encouraging public bodies to look for easy administrative savings—sometimes quite difficult ones—by sharing. That is what they are encouraging local government to do. The question that my right hon.”
“If it is about a balance and a few pounds of cost difference here or there, or the slightly greater inconvenience for Ministers of getting on the phone or using a video link, the balance must come down in favour of the jobs in Sheffield, as a fundamental indication that the Government are committed to devolution, to pushing powers out to the regions, and at least to keeping the jobs that already exist there. The term “northern powerhouse” is bandied around. It started with the Chancellor, but many Ministers and MPs now use it. The fundamental question is whether it is just a catchphrase or real policy—empty words or substance. I look forward to the Minister convincing me in due course.”
“I do not think BIS will get many stars from Sheffield City Council in the devolution report. If we are to have devolution in what is the most centralised country in western Europe, it cannot be left to the Department for Communities and Local Government to do very good deals with councils, including those in the Sheffield city region; the whole of Government must be signed up for it. Therefore, what we are talking about is not just a matter of substance in relation to BIS and its operation, and people’s jobs, important though those are—and I will fight hard for my constituents involved in the process—it is also symbolic of the whole Government and their attitude towards devolution. Is devolution a matter of a few deals with local government, or is it a matter of Government policy to which the whole Government, including BIS, is signed up?”
“We unanimously said: “We strongly support the principle of devolution. We welcome the fact that, at the start of this new Parliament, it occupies such a prominent position on the Government’s agenda.” I agree with that. It is not a party political issue but a commitment to devolution. I welcome the Government’s move in that direction. We also said: “The Devolution Bill is just one part of enabling devolution. There also needs to be an enthusiasm for it across all Government Departments and a commitment to it as the ‘default position’” and that we “would like to see a culture of devolution embedded in all Government Departments”, an annual report about what Departments do, and an opportunity for local authorities to report back on the Government’s commitment to devolution and rate their experience of different Departments.”
“Friend the Member for Sheffield Central said, it is of benefit to the civil service to have a wider pool from which to draw talent—and it is beneficial to the Government, the people doing the jobs, and the city of Sheffield. The Government will have to work hard to convince us on any of those counts that it was the correct decision to take those jobs from Sheffield and move them to London. I do not want to say more about the particulars of the staff and their situation, or about the diminishing of the wider pool of talent, although I look forward to the Minister’s reply on those points. I want to make a few points about the Government’s commitment to devolution. I am the Chair of the Communities and Local Government Committee, which has just produced a report on devolution.”
“That was excellent, although from what I understand we do not seem to have made much progress since then. The decision is about real people, who have lost their jobs. Darren Shepherd and his colleague Alison came to my surgery on Saturday because they are going to lose their jobs, and they are worried. They are frightened for their families’ future. They said to me, “Why is this happening, Mr Betts? Can you tell us why?” I said, “Well, I’m sorry, I can’t, because nobody has told me why.” That is not an adequate position to put people in when they work hard for the Government and the country, doing a variety of jobs. They do not know why and no one can explain it to them. That is the fundamental question that we are asking today. As my hon.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Kevin Barron) on obtaining the debate, and my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield), who did an excellent and thorough job of taking on the paucity of the Government’s thinking on and explanation of the decision, and their business case. In passing I would point out to the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg) that the key point my hon. Friend was making was that we have not had an explanation showing any savings. We do not know that that is what has driven the decision, and it would be helpful if the Minister would explain. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) for obtaining an urgent question straight after the announcement.”
“May I ask the question a different way around? If the Department pursued its restructuring and the “BIS 2020” programme, but left the jobs in Sheffield, how much more would that cost the Department?”
“The northern powerhouse is about private investment, and that is important, but so is the symbol that the Government give about their commitment. We cannot get precise figures about the savings for the Department in moving these staff, but does the Minister agree that his permanent secretary could scope out an alternative model of how the Government would operate—with all the changes and the policy streams, but with staff remaining in Sheffield—to see what the difference is, and would he publish that, so that we can have an open and transparent consultation?”
“T10. On the Foreign Office website, there is very clear advice to private companies thinking of doing business with illegal Israeli settlements. It states:“Financial transactions, investments, purchases, procurements as well as other economic activities…in Israeli settlements or benefiting Israeli settlements, entail legal and economic risks”and “we do not encourage or offer support to such activity.”Do the Government give exactly the same advice to public bodies, including local councils, with regard to their procurement decisions?”
“We encourage the regulator to adopt a framework that is based on risk, rather than factors such as size, and that recognises the sector’s diversity. Regardless of how housing associations might change in future, it is vital that they remain mindful of their social mission and philanthropic purpose. The Government have ambitious plans to address the severe housing shortage, and they are seeking to do so by prioritising affordable home ownership. None the less, rented housing at full market rents and sub-market rents will continue to be essential to meet the needs of many in our society and should exist alongside other forms of housing. Finally, I thank all members of the Committee for working assiduously and collectively to produce this unanimously agreed report.”